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Loony Jessica Jacobs fan back again

the Jessica Jacobs loony American fan has returned. Can someone with administratives powers do something please? Paul Benjamin Austin (talk) 05:08, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Sydney - time for a photo run?!

Sydneysiders, I found there were over 200 articles requesting a Sydney photo sitting in this category, the effect of which is just to make your eyes glaze over and think "gosh, I wouldn't know where to begin". So I decided to make it easier to tackle. I have weeded out the articles that actually did have photos and then created subcategories for the various local government areas in Sydney and relocated the remaining photos into those LGA sub-categories (where it was meaningful and I found sufficient information in the article to do so, e.g. an address or coords). For City of Sydney, I also created further sub-categories for some of very inner suburbs like The Rocks, Millers Point, Sydney CBD etc which had quite a number of photos requested. So if you fancy to go out and tackle one of these categories, it's much more achievable with categories ranging from 1 photo requested (in the Municipality of Burwood) to 28 (in The Rocks, New South Wales), this is a size that can be easily tackled in a day. Each category comes with a Open Street Map showing you the location of all the requested photos (click to generate) so you can easily optimise your travel around the area. Having done photo runs in and around Brisbane, I think having at least 2 people in the car works best. One to take photos and one to drive. If you have a 3rd person, get them to manage the route and navigation. Tip: if your camera or phone has geo-tagging capability, please turn it on (it helps a lot if you have forgotten where you took a particular photo). Before you go, check the Talk page of the article, it may have a quite specific photo request, e.g. the interior of a church as the article already has an exterior photo. Similarly reading the article may make you realise that the church's graveyard is a significant feature that might be worth a photo too. Also reading the article may tell you not to bother, like the bush believed to be extinct, a potential archaeologial site, and things that have now been demolished (but for which historic photos may exist) -- I'm not making these up! So get out there and photographing! Kerry (talk) 05:36, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

I also plan to tackle Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in New South Wales but with around 800 requests, in the words of Lawrence Oates "I may be some time". Kerry (talk) 05:38, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
Good idea Kerry, though I suggest that doing more than one photo to document a place is more helpful as it gives the writers something extra to work with, also if you see any plaques, foundations stone or signs grab a photo and check that information is in the article as well. Gnangarra 05:44, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
That's helpful Kerry, I've already spotted a few places I'm likely to go. --99of9 (talk) 23:18, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
OK, I have now cleaned up Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in New South Wales into subcategories of the various local government areas, people, fauna and flora. The subcategories range from 1 to 36 entries, making the task easier to tackle (there being 1218 requests in total within the category tree). Just FYI, all 25 requests in Category:Wikipedia requested images of fauna of New South Wales are for photos of 25 different types of velvet worms; who knew there was such diversity in velvet worms?! Kerry (talk) 11:10, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Australian Democrats article is being targeted

@The Drover's Wife:, @Kerry Raymond:, I think the "microparty trying to forcibly edit their own Wikipedia article" is happening here. Paul Benjamin Austin (talk) 10:14, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

It might be worthing mentioning on the Aus Politics list then or seeking page protection. TDW has retired from Wikipedia and I don't edit and therefore don't watchlist articles on current politics. I have quite enough other vandals/spammers/POV-pushers etc to deal with on my existing watchlist. :-( Kerry (talk) 22:04, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

NSW upper house count

We could really use some additional views here. Frickeg (talk) 22:06, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Event alert - AFLW Grand Final

The 2019 AFL Women's Grand Final is on at Adelaide Oval on Saturday 31 March 2019 at 12:30pm ACDT. Admission is FREE, as is public transport to get there. The pre-match entertainment by Amy Shark alone should be worth the price of admission. If you're in Adelaide on Sunday (because you live there, or are a fanatical Blues fan with deep pockets, or a Todd River bunyip) get down there and get some photos for the Wikipedia. They will be much appreciated. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:44, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Australian English question - "Educated from"?

Is the phrase "Nina educated from Presbyterian Ladies' College, Melbourne" good Australian English? (See Philadelphia Nina Robertson) I've seen it in a few articles, possibly all by the same editor, but as a couple of other editors have already tweaked this article without changing it I thought I'd check here in case it's a standard Australian usage. It isn't normal in British English where we'd say "Nina was educated at ...". (Yes, it ought to be "Robertson" not "Nina" - next thing to change). PamD 23:45, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

The statement as it stands is nonsense. WWGB (talk) 00:14, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Agree with WWGB JarrahTree 00:23, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 Done - thanks ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~ 00:25, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi folks - I don't know how to format map coordinates on a mpa. The point in the infobox needs to be on the southern rather than northern part of Norfolk Island....all help appreciated. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:38, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

It seemed to be getting the coordinates from Wikidata (which were wrong, apparently imported from the German Wikipedia in 2013), so I've fixed them there. The map frame seems to be blank at the moment so it might need to re-render the tiles or something. If you click on the zoom it should now correctly point to the southern part of the island. --Canley (talk) 00:09, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Australian National University edit-a-thon today, be nice & don’t create edit conflicts

There is an ANU edit-a-thon today, so lots of fairly new people writing about topics in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (so should be notable) with the topics randomly assigned from a list I have compiled (all in the ADB are dead so we have no BLP issues here). About 20 or so did basic edit training yesterday so they are not at Ground Zero in skills but not much above it either. And there may be some folk who could not make it to yesterday’s session who will be at Ground Zero today. If you notice any of them, please send them thanks and nice messages, but maybe refrain from reverting their edits or fixing their problems today as they won’t have the confidence or skills to cope with that sort of thing yet. It will all be good faith.. We have 3 experienced Wikipedians in the room (it’s nice not to be the only one for a change). Kerry Raymond 22:15, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Watchlist monitoring

I have a problem identifying microedits when comparing two versions. The tiny pale blue highlight appearing on one or the other column sometimes takes minutes for these tired old eyes to spot. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commonwealth_Day&type=revision&diff=891555825&oldid=888430478 is a recent case in point (pun intended). Any ideas? Doug butler (talk) 22:05, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

I use these two lines in global.css:
td.diff-deletedline .diffchange { border:1px solid red }
td.diff-addedline .diffchange { border:1px solid green }
You could add all sorts of lurid colours or borders to make things stand out. :-) —Sam Wilson 22:52, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
My intro to global.css. Dunno what it all means, and was informed that td was overqualified so removed them and boldly saved. Works a treat — thanks Sam! Doug butler (talk) 03:47, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
Really helpful. Thx Donama (talk) 04:13, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
I find wikEdDiff good for this. You can enable it from Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, under "Editing". Mitch Ames (talk) 12:11, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

"an heritage historic"?

Looking through some of the items in category:New South Wales State Heritage Register, I notice that many of them start out with "X is an heritage-listed ..." I was about to set up AWB to change these to "X is a heritage-listed ..." (change an to a) - but it occurred to me that there might have been some obscure past decision to the contrary. Before I do the bulk change, would there be any problem with it? --Gronk Oz (talk) 15:07, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Doing a bit of homework on this: Oxford,[1] Scribe Consulting,[2], and Grammarist[3] all come down in favour of "a historic". Merriam-Webster says it depends on whether you pronounce the "h" or not.[4] I don't recall hearing people in Australia dropping the h, in which case it would also support "a historic".--Gronk Oz (talk) 15:22, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "'A historic event' or 'an historic event". Oxford Dictionaries | English.
  2. ^ ""A historic" or "an historic"?". www.scribe.com.au.
  3. ^ "How to Use An historic Correctly". grammarist.com.
  4. ^ "Is It 'A' or 'An'?". www.merriam-webster.com.
Even if we were to go with "an historic" (we shouldn't), it still wouldn't be "an heritage". The "an h" construction only applies when the first syllable is unstressed. Frickeg (talk) 20:33, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
In my experience definitely a heritage. I could go either way on a/an historic, for which it depends on stressing or not the "his". But I suspect 'a' has become more usual in the last few decades. Aoziwe (talk) 22:06, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
please do not go ahead - there is more to this than two eds opinions. JarrahTree 22:36, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
I think 'a' in articles here if I have to decide, but would not change it where I found some one had written 'an'. I have wavered a lot when this has come up before, and would interested in the opinions of others. I suspect that spoken text has a bearing on discussion, a passing thought, and had only considered the usage in formal printed language. cygnis insignis 22:52, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
To answer the question, I oppose a 'bulk change' at this time. cygnis insignis 22:55, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
Can I just clarify - are editors above @JarrahTree: @Cygnis insignis: talking about "an historic" or "an heritage"? Because "an historic" is clearly up for debate, but "an heritage" is unambiguously wrong. Frickeg (talk) 06:43, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
my answer would be I dont like anything about either - but wait, when a certain editor gets home from work, he will no doubt want to chip in... JarrahTree 07:13, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
It is literally the first thing Fowler discusses, "a, an …" and historic is the example, what he says allows me to be consistent. What anyone else chooses – Fowler of pedantry – is their choice, unless the MoS and guidelines have something to say (probably "don't go round changing to your own opinion"). cygnis insignis 11:33, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
Yes, that's my point. "An historic" is clearly falling out of fashion, but is still an acceptable usage. "An heritage" is not, and never has been, standard English, because its first syllable is stressed. Frickeg (talk) 12:25, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
AARGH - I just noticed that I gave this section the wrong heading. It should be "an heritage", not "an historic". I will change it in the hope that it is clearer. "Historic" came up in several of the sources I found, and obviously stuck in my head, but my actual question is about changing "an heritage". I'm not sure what "Fowler" is that's referenced above - is it considered a reliable source for such matters? And I'm sorry but I can't make out from the above comments what Fowler's take is on "an heritage" - for or against? P.S. Don't worry - I'm not going to rush into doing anything before we come to a clear consensus.--Gronk Oz (talk) 14:18, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
I would support fixing all instances of 'an heritage' to 'a heritage' in bulk for all the very compelling reasons given above- summarised as more correct, more readable, more modern, more universal. Donama (talk) 04:15, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
regardless of what is decided here - there are always the editors who have no idea this noticeboard exist and who apply random acts of grammatical explanation - such as - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Redfern,_New_South_Wales&curid=306491&diff=891785826&oldid=873420208 JarrahTree 04:49, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
My !vote is for "A heritage ...", because (per Gronk Oz and Frickeg the "h" is always pronounced, and the first syllable is stressed. Also, paraphrasing Merriam-Webster's sage advice, "it suits general pronunciation". Mitch Ames (talk) 09:35, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
  • A historic and a heritage if necessary of course, but both should be avoided where possible. "An historic" and "an heritage" are not descriptively mistakes, but are antiquated. Instead of "this was a historic occasion", I would urge to use "the occasion was historic" to avoid it completely. Onetwothreeip (talk) 09:38, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
  • I would put a caveat on a bulk change that its isnt done by a brainless bot but rather by a mark I human to distinguish between written text of an article and where its been used as part of quote, or historic description and therefor the usage is appropriate Gnangarra
Okay, it sounds like there is agreement to use AWB to change "X is an heritage-listed..." (as found at Bald Rock Hotel) to "X is a heritage-listed..." provided I manually check each change to be sure the machine doesn't do something stupid. If anybody disagrees, now is the time...--Gronk Oz (talk) 14:51, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 Done --Gronk Oz (talk) 05:24, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

A dangerous PROD?

I hope this is not the start of someone's heritage crusade? Aoziwe (talk) 14:07, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Over the years, relatively new editors have provided prods for anything in sight, as they may well be short of understanding the standards of what WP:NOT and WP:ABOUT actually mean - and they havent yet encountered the delightful response tag of WP:IDONTLIKEIT is neither a criterion for whether an article or item has validity nor not. Considering the excellent effort, energy and very hard work by the editors involved in the NSW and Sydney improvement process included in the last year or so - the weight of WP:UNDUE for a single editors effort to query a heritage building article is like...well I leave it to the reader... JarrahTree 14:45, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Unrelated but I'm not entirely sure the article has the right title. Hack (talk) 15:29, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Royal Australian Navy for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Royal Australian Navy is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Royal Australian Navy until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 22:21, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Categories being required to use "organization" rather than "organisation"

In case anyone wasn't aware, there was a recent RfC on requiring all categories to use "organization" rather than "organisation", which was closed in favour of the proposal. There is currently a discussion on whether there was sufficient notifications of this discussion. Comments are welcomed. Cheers, Number 57 20:53, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

does this mean we get back to language wars? As an English speaker who uses "organisation" rather than "organization" I am not happy to see my brand of English wiped out by fiat. Is such a decision really necessary? MargaretRDonald (talk) 07:49, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
FYI, the dizcuzzion haz reopened if anyone wants to make comment. Me, I'm off to MickeyDees for a hamberder. --AussieLegend () 10:11, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
dumb, dumber and one size fits all strikes again - many australian articles for some obscure reason have BRIT engvar tags, and just as many AU engvar tags - both of these tags would or should indicate usage of the s JarrahTree 10:55, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
Not relevant to the RfC but one editor did go around tagging articles with EngvarB at one stage. His reasons were not invalid and it's better than nothing. Still, obviously Australian spelling is best. --AussieLegend () 11:03, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Duncan Merrilees

Other editors are invited to comment at Talk:Duncan Merrilees#The referendum that allowed many people to vote in elections for the first time. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:51, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Maintenance backlog

Since the moving on, blocking and general absence of the traditional talk page taggers, the Australian project has a remarkably large lag of assessment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unknown-importance_Australia_articles

Breakdown into largest backlogs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unknown-importance_Australian_sports_articles approximately 11,878 total.
Unknown-importance Australian politics articles‎ (6,388 P)
Unknown-importance Australian television articles‎ (5,577 P)
Unknown-importance Australian biota articles‎ (5,849 P)

With the state and territory and others - projects all now below 3,000...

Unknown-importance Queensland articles‎ (2,170 P)
Unknown-importance Tasmania articles‎ (2,196 P)
Unknown-importance New South Wales articles‎ (1,929 P)
Unknown-importance Australian Antarctic Territory articles‎ (1,671 P)
Unknown-importance Western Australia articles‎ (1 C, 236 P)
Unknown-importance Australian music articles‎ (1,135 P)

Most other projects are now under 1,000

What happens when the talk pages are not even considered - is the assessment process, which is a very good indicator of a particular sub project of Australia's general health in terms of active editors and editors aware of assessment processes - it indicates that editors creating articles are aware of the talk page items required, and they are making assessments.

Some editors seem to not even know that talk pages have information that is of use to the larger project. If you or someone you know is either mentoring new users, or doing new page assessment , it is well worth indicating what they are and how they work.

In many cases editors pick a standard talk page tag, and simply copy into new article talk pages without even looking at the precedents established in other articles of similar nature, and in many cases leave pages incomplete - without ticking all the boxes so to speak.

Anyone in the slightest interested, can also see that there is a very useful device: [[1]] - it makes the process of assessment very simple.

Project Tagging is not everyone's cup of tea, and in some cases some editors have in the past been hostile to talk pages in the argument that projects are not necessary. However they (project tags) have stood the test of time, and have been useful in ascertaining the health and maintenance understanding by any one project.

One small rejoinder to anyone wanting to leave a leave it to the bots response in response to this message, humans are far more likely to find the weirdnesses that occur on talk pages, and although AWB is touted as an easier than the manual process, actual human checking and tagging is so far the best way of getting through the numbers of talk pages. Bots, Awb and other mechanised methods no doubt have their place, however, with some of the quirks of previous editors, only human checking in the end works.

Very big thanks to those remaining editors who actually do check and tag, and their efforts although relatively invisible to the average editor, their hard work in reducing the maintenance issues is much appreciated and is valued. To those who never tag, or who leave very incomplete tags, give it a go, there is always the chance you might see how useful a 'complete' tag is to the project and sub projects. JarrahTree 05:30, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia citations for Trove newspapers

The Wikipedia citations for Trove newspaper articles seem to have disappeared in the last day or so (I am sure I used them yesterday without a problem). The Wikipedia citations still appear to be available for other facets in Trove, e.g. books, pictures etc (at least for the ones I checked). I have reported the problem and I hope it can be quickly resolved. Can someone else please check to confirm this, just in case it is some weird bug in my own universe and not more general. Thanks Kerry (talk) 06:33, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Strange. I cited this article last week on Weighing the fleece and the citation still appears on the article at Trove for me when I hit the Details ("i") tag in the top left corner. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 06:49, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
@Mattinbgn: Hmm, I can see the Wikipedia citation for that article too. Can you see a Wikipedia citation for [2] (I can't) Kerry (talk) 07:09, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
for a more general response - other editors could offer details too -

I tried a random sample and got a very truncated ref space https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110817002?searchTerm=serventy&searchLimits=#, like not just wikipedia - it would be well worth a more concerted more than two editors seeking answer on this. JarrahTree 07:32, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Having now checked a number of newspaper articles, the majority of them are missing the Wikipedia citation but some still have it. It does not appear to be totally at random (repeating the test on the same newspaper gets the same result, so far as my experiments can tell). I am starting to form a theory that there is a pattern to this. Every article in the Sydney Morning Herald that I checked didn't have a Wikipedia citation but there seems to be one in every article that I checked in the Albury Banner and Wodonga Express. So the common factor may be the newspaper? Kerry (talk) 07:48, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
maybe - the canberra times was the sample that I found earlier - also australian playboy - https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/39236612?q=harry+butler&c=article&versionId=52075419 wikipedia is there - abc - wikipedia is there - https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/9583095?q=harry+butler&c=book&versionId=45757438 - very likely there is an issue with smh - well worth a followup with the trove contact point. JarrahTree 08:38, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
Today Wikipedia citations seem to be preset again based on a random check, including on articles which were definitely missing the other day. So hopefully the problem is solved! Kerry (talk) 23:09, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I have now received the following response from the NLA:

We're having an intermittent problem with parts of Trove's infrastructure that we're working hard to resolve. You might have noticed it in the past few days, with newspaper image tiles occasionally taking a long time to load. The problem is infrequent, and won't necessarily occur on the same article.

We've now discovered that the Wikipedia citations are reliant on the same system - I was unaware of that until your report so thank you. When the citations don't appear, it's because of these same issues occurring in the background.

We're hoping to resolve this problem in the near future. In the meantime, as a workaround could you wait a few moments and then refresh the article. The Wikipedia citation will hopefully return.

So, the problem is still with us ... Kerry (talk) 00:57, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

yep, I got the same response it system issue shouldnt take too long for it to be fixed, in the mean time you can also just use the article URL in the cite news auto fill and fill in any blanks that arent picked up Gnangarra 10:36, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
Hopefully not long, and it would be very useful for editors to log their issue about this - to point out how many editors are affected by this, and of course any other aspects of the issues that arise. JarrahTree 00:48, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

I started this in 2016..... can not remember what prompted me. Surely notable..... refs mostly done. Needs expansion. Regards, Ariconte (talk) 03:00, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

It looks to have an adequate collection of references, but needs to be upgraded from bullet points to prose, and spell out in the lead paragraph why he is notable. I'll assume he is, based on the existence of the ADB reference. --Scott Davis Talk 12:10, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Australian handball move/merge proposed

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived.
A discussion has been initiated for Australian handball to be moved to Wall handball and merged with American handball and Gaelic handball. This discussion may be of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. Guliolopez (talk) 23:58, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
 Resolved This merge discussion was closed. In short, there was/is no consensus for the proposed change. Guliolopez (talk) 12:48, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

More eyes on Bill D'Arcy

Maybe a few more folk could add this to their watchlist. The story in brief is this article is about a Qld politician who was later convicted of being a pedophile. There is a user who has made past attempts and is now making new attempts to add content to the article questioning the conviction, mostly citing what appears to be a personal website (not exactly a reliable source) and is now adding links to that website as external links (I have removed them). It's all in the article history if you wish to examine it. Now there's nothing wrong with including concerns about the conviction in the article, and my own recollection is that such concerns were in the mainstream media at the time of the trial, but obviously we need to have reliable sources. Kerry (talk) 07:52, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

new wikidata property proposal: War Memorial collection ID

In case any of you are interested, I've just proposed a new Wikidata property d:Wikidata:Property_proposal/Australian_War_Memorial_ID. --99of9 (talk) 03:22, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your support. Now that it is approved, I've made some Mix'n'match sets for anyone interested in military history, art, people, or places:

I'd appreciate any help from anyone! --99of9 (talk) 00:57, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Notability of Sydney Elliott Napier's poem being read at Sydney Anzac dawn service

Is the reading of Sydney Elliott Napier's poem Salute at the 2019 Sydney Anzac Day dawn service sufficiently notable to include in his article? Castlemate thinks so [3][4] but I disagree [5], on the grounds of WP:RECENTISM. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:38, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, notability applies to artices not to content of articles, so I don't see notability as a grounds for exclusion. But nonethless, I think Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Creative professionals is an argument for inclusion in Napier's article as it relates to notability criteria 4:

The person's work (or works) has: (a) become a significant monument, (b) been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) won significant critical attention, or (d) been represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums.

I would argue that the reading of the poem at such a significant event relates to (b). So adding such information helps to demonstrate the notability of the author. Kerry (talk) 23:20, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Also recentism is related to a couple issues
  • further information may alter our interpretation of current events, which relates to accuracy
  • the passing of time may show the event to not have the significance we initially give it

I don't see either of these apply here. I don't think it likely that the reading of the poem has been misreported (it's not exactly a "breaking news story") so I don't think accuracy is an issue. Anzac Day services at major war memorials are well-established as important events in the Australian calendar. I don't think it likely that the event will lose significance with the passing of a few years (if anything, public enthusiasm is increasing, as we turn Anzac Day into the "religion" of our increasingly secular Australian society). I see no problem adding the information to Napier's article, whereas I would not support its addition to the Anzac Day article as that would be recentism (it's a one-off occurrence). But if the poem were to become a regular feature of Anzac Day ceremonies, then it would warrant inclusion in that article too, but it's too soon to know if this is so. Kerry (talk) 23:33, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

a substantial part of a significant exhibition — I doubt that it was a substantial part. How long was the whole ceremony? How long did it take to read the poem? Mitch Ames (talk) 02:42, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
It would be really good if other editors were able to offer their perspectives as well JarrahTree 00:01, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

To my mind the reading does not belong under "Armed service", because it's not part of Napier's armed service. Is it worth creating a separate section in the article, "Notable use of Napier's works", and listing it under that? (I.e. is it actually "notable use"?) If we did create a new section, are there any other notable uses that we would include under that section? Mitch Ames (talk) 02:42, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Excellent idea. I have spent the day trying to determine if this is in fact now a regular part of the Dawn Service or a one off. Neither the Premier’s Department or the RSL has been able to tell me. I most certainly won’t try to include any further information in the article after the treatment my original good faith edit has received. I hope that instead of just removing this fact one of the editors who have done so already might choose to add to rather than detract from this bio. A positive edit would be appreciated. Castlemate (talk) 05:12, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
I see no problem with a section called "Use of Napier's works", avoids the issue of content notability and leaves the DUE WEIGHT test. I suggest the section has the introduction of "Culturally significant uses of Napier's works include:"... Such content does add encyclopedic value. Aoziwe (talk) 13:36, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
Related discussion - in particular about how often that poem has been read at the Dawn Service - at Talk:Salute (poem). As always, other editors' opinions are sought (on that talk page to avoid fragmentation). Mitch Ames (talk) 11:58, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

What is the Australian English term for what powers a lamp at home?

Mains electricity describes what this is called in the US, UK, and Canada, but not Australia. It would be nice if folks more familiar with Australian English could add a note explaining that. I'm also interested to know if there's a single term that would be intelligible globally, as "mains electricity" is apparently unfamiliar to many Americans. So if it's known by more than one term in Australian English, that would be very helpful to know. Also, is it is the same in New Zealand as Australia? Thanks! -- Beland (talk) 01:11, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

  • @Beland: Mains is the primary supply into the property, power is whats turned on to make a light work. From what is my own unresearched experience. I'll guarantee that that will be different between states and cities in Australia. Gnangarra 01:27, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  • electricity supply is one aspect of common usage in oz - but as always it would be good to see what others say - no one editor is enough for a sense of usage across this wide land :) JarrahTree 01:29, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Off the top of my head, I'd probably say "mains power" to refer specfically to electricity from the grid into a lamp. For what it's worth, Google says it has 467,000 search results for "mains power" australia compared to 97,500 results for "mains electrity" australia'. Kerry (talk) 02:13, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Electric supply in 1940s SA, probably from Adelaide Electric Supply Co., but now I'd agree "mains power". Fewer syllables wins every time (?) Doug butler (talk) 02:41, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
rather than more off the top of various heads (or google) - it would be interesting to hear others variations... JarrahTree 03:05, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  • I call it "mains electricity", marginally ahead of "mains power" or just "the mains". I'm not sure how much store to put in the relative Google hits; some of the "mains power" Australia hits were to a company called "Mains", or to a "mains power cord" (i.e. a "power cord" connected to "the mains"); so do not directly resolve whether it's "mains electricity" or "mains power". I would prefer Wikipedia to use "mains electricity" because it is more accurate, in the sense that electricity is not our only source of power (gas is also a source of power). Adpete (talk) 05:20, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  • We say 'light switch' round my way, where the invisible stuff comes from is only something boffins and tree-huggin' greenies talk about /s Re: gas "You on mains or bottles?" I have also heard the fixed gas supply referred to as 'town gas', and it is a different substance (one is LPG?) cygnis insignis 08:38, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
    • yep used those mains, bottled, lpg, and town for gas, also generator power especially outside of cities as in using the gen set the lines are down again many users refer to power not electricity Gnangarra 10:47, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  • As distinct from bottled gas.Lexysexy (talk) 09:29, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Most people seem to just call it "power", probably because it's shorter and easier to say than "electricity". Last Wednesday evening something caused a HV grid fault in our area so Ausgrid installed a generator in our street on Friday and we ran off that until today. That's not grid power and while it might be mains, most people couldn't care. To further complicate matters, because we were disconnected from the grid for several hours on Friday I ran the house off my generator until the Ausgrid generator was online "permanently". That means that the lamp in my house variously ran off the grid and 2 different generators, one of which wasn't mains. Normally it runs off the grid supplied mains power but during the day it would normally run off solar power. So, we have grid, mains, generator, and solar power. We may as well throw in UPS as many buildings have them. I'm not talking about those tiny ones that keep your PC running for a few minutes, I'm talking about big 19" rack mounted UPS that will keep an entire building running for hours. Regardless of whether it's supplied by a grid, the mains, generators, UPS, solar, wind or a greenie on a pushbike it's still electricity. Interestingly, the letters that Ausgrid has hand-delivered over the past days don't use any of the terms listed in this discussion. Instead it uses "power supply", which is also correct. --AussieLegend () 10:43, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Tasmanians refer to "hydro" and that's the source of their power.Oronsay (talk) 19:48, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

off topic

It could be an interesting Lexicography research topic to see how the use of these terms alters over the coming years as more people are switching to their own renewable supplies Gnangarra 02:37, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Indeed, switching on and 'off the grid', for example. cygnis insignis 08:38, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

RfC with widespread ramifications

Given our past experience of not knowing about RfCs with widespread ramifications, I draw this one to your attention: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RfC: Removing locally-defined links to Commons categories if they match the Wikidata sitelinks Kerry (talk) 23:30, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

thanks for that Kerry - the problem with RFC is that there is no obligation to notify or inform potential affected projects. JarrahTree 04:10, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Australia Community Conference, Sydney, 15 June 2019

Wikimedia Australia Community Conference

Keynote presenter: Ingrid Cumming, City of Canning. Ingrid was one of the key collaborators from Curtin University on the development of the Nyungar language Wikipedia and has brought that experience across to her role in community outreach enabling Wikimedia Australia collaboration with the City of Canning.

Registration: There is no registration cost. Please register via this link (or via email to contact at@ wikimedia.org.au) to facilitate catering and venue setup. If you would like to present a lightning talk please fill in the section during registration

Assistance: A limited grant is available to support travel costs for Wikimedia Australia members thorugh our Volunteer Support Programme. To apply, please check out the Volunteer Support Programme requirements, and email your application before Sat 25 May 2019 to be considered.

Getting there: Buses run regularly from Central railway station along Parramatta Road - alight at Ross St (no stairs) or the Footbridge stop (stairs).

Program: The programme is available here.

Partners: This community conference is made possible through partnership with The University of Sydney and the City of Canning.

Worlds of Wikimedia Conference 2019

The University of Sydney is also holding the Worlds of Wikimedia Conference 2019 from Wed 12 - Fri 14 June 2019. Check out the WOW2019 conference program - and the free registration.

Thanks also to our partners, the City of Canning for supporting our keynote presenter, Ingrid Cumming at both these events.

Pru Mitchell, President of Wikimedia Australia on behalf of the WMAU Committee - who can be reached at contact — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kerry Raymond (talkcontribs) 09:26, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Prod/Merge

The two articles might not be on everyones watch list - however the potential fate of the two articles might be of interest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_immigration_detention_facilities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_immigration_detention_facilities

dont forget to vote! (If you are an Australian registered voter reading this on 18th May) JarrahTree 00:22, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

squatting

Hiya greetings from WikiProject: Squatting! Our two projects intersect mainly on two pages - Squatting in Australia which is mainly about contemporary occupations and the page currently called Squatting (pastoral) Squatting (Australia). The latter page is about the 19th century colonial landgrabs, it used to be called Squatting (pastoral), then Squatting (Australia), then Squattocracy, now Squatting (Australia) again. I think having two pages with such similar names isn't good and I'd be interested to hear some opinions on how to progress if anyone is interested. I put some thoughts at Talk:Squatting_(Australia)#Name_2. Cheers! Mujinga (talk) 09:15, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Historically so different, there is really no problem with the names from a part of Australia that didnt really suffer from the squattocracy JarrahTree 09:21, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
oh gosh apologies I meant the two pages are at the moment called Squatting (Australia) and Squatting in Australia Mujinga (talk) 09:27, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

I guess that both 19th and 21st century "squatting" is "...a person who is not the owner, taking possession of land...". Squattocracy is poor English, and possibly poorly defined. In some parts of Australia, it is possible that 19th-century pastoralists (on leased crown land) were still called "squatters" even when they had legal use of the land. Neither article appears to be in particularly good shape, nor a national perspective - a number of references I checked in Squatting (Australia) did not mention the word "squat" as they are about pastoralists on crown leases and freehold land (the Ellis reference is for the sale of 51,285 acres freehold and 34 square miles leasehold)[6]. Squatting in Australia has a few paragraphs linking to the other article, then talks about squats in Sydney and Melbourne (without defining a squat as anything other than a sitting posture with one's knees bent). --Scott Davis Talk 06:06, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

They're inevitably going to have similar names because they use exactly the same terms in real life. The "squattocracy" was a derogatory label for a particular wealthy subset of squatters, and the enthusiasm for that term purely because of its difference is coming from a couple of people with zero understanding of the subject; if it had an article at all and wasn't just a redirect, it'd be a different topic to Squatting (Australia). Squatter (pastoral) (a variant of where it was at forever to begin with) is the best name for the subject I can think of: if WikiProject Squatting hadn't decided to mess with articles about Australian pastoral history it'd still be there anyway. The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:32, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
if you had only read prior discussions instead of jumping directly to attack mode then we might have been able to have a sensible debate Mujinga (talk) 15:04, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Shorten and Labor.

We need more attention on the Bill Shorten and Australian Labor Party articles. A mobile editor keeps editing in that Shorten is no longer the Labor party leader. GoodDay (talk) 00:02, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Both semi-protected for a week until things settle down. Stephen 00:25, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

The "Assessment" section is both uncited and not NPOV. Paul Benjamin Austin (talk) 11:38, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Post-election

Should there be a change in government following today's election, there will be the usual onslaught of well-meaning but uninformed editors who want to immediately update Wikipedia to reflect a new government or PM, despite any such change requiring swearing-in by the GG. Should there be a new PM evident, he will be prime minister-designate, not prime minister-elect, until sworn-in. WWGB (talk) 06:23, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

People are already updating electoral article infoboxes on the basis of media “looks likely to win” reports We do not a single seat fully counted, yet alone declared by the electoral authorities. I’m rather concerned by this behaviour. We are WP:NOTNEWS. I guess it’s ok to write that someone is in the lead in the vote, citing media, but not to declare a winner.Kerry (talk) 11:23, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
We've always added results when the result is no longer in doubt - PM is from the date they're sworn in, but MP's terms start from the date of election. It's too early to be doing it just yet beyond the extremely obvious results (i.e. Steggall) but once tonight's counting is finished we can comfortably call all but a few lineball seats. Waiting for declarations is a pointless waste of time and invariably leads to out-of-date articles because the day after the election is when the editorial eyes are actually on these articles to do the necessarily million-and-one post-election updates. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:07, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
MPs' terms start from the date of election - yes, but working back from an officially declared result. The Abbott article was being updated from even before results were in from all polling stations in the constituency, based on his own decision to concede - which, as a general rule, could be withdrawn (didn't Al Gore do that?). WP, as an encyclopedia, can report that he conceded, but he does not cease to be the member until a new member is declared. Wikiain (talk) 21:41, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
Here is how votes are counted in an Australian federal election. Even for a single constituency ("division"), the result is never complete on election day. Wikiain (talk) 22:56, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
If the term starts from election day, and the result in that seat is in absolutely no doubt, there is no point delaying the work of updating articles so that editors have to go back and update hundreds of articles weeks later when everyone's moved on. That is a great way to get articles that wind up being years out of date because they got forgotten about after the election fuss had died down. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:12, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
the result in that seat is in absolutely no doubt is a fallacy. Nothing is absolute. There is absolutely no doubt that Heather Hill was elected to the Senate by the people of Queensland at the 1998 election. I saw the results and I even congratulated her personally but her election was overturned by the courts. Wikipedia is not working to a deadline so articles don't have to be updated the instant that you think there is a result. If articles are years out of date, so be it. Look at the number of articles that still haven't been updated since the 2016 census. There are still 2,211 articles using {{Census 2011 AUS}} but it hasn't destroyed the world. --AussieLegend () 03:47, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
That is a nonsensical analogy because Hill was declared elected and then later overturned by the High Court due to s 44: if we were following that logic, we'd just never update articles for elected MPs until their retirement in case someone was invalidated due to s 44 later in their career. Let's not do that and do what we've done for nearly twenty years without major issue. I'd also note that none of the people who've responded apart from Kerry are users who ever actually do any of the work of updating articles post-election, but obviously it's fun for some people to throw their weight around. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:31, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
Whether or not you like the anology, it's absolutely true that nothing is absolute and Wikipedia is not working to a deadline, the latter being my main point. You don't need to rush off immediately to update articles. It's not going to hurt if you wait a while, or even if you never do it. --AussieLegend () 05:08, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
It's equally true that there's no harm in updating things as they happen rather than three years after the fact, with some obvious benefits. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:23, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
If Heather Hill was elected in the House of Representatives rather than the Senate, she would actually have been a sitting member until she was disqualified, and so the election day reporting would have been just as correct. The only thing to note here is that the senators elected yesterday don't take their seats until July, except those from the territories. If the ABC is saying that a certain person has been elected or defeated, we might as well update Wikipedia to reflect that. I would only agree that the margins and swings shouldn't be reported here until the declarations. I agree that it's not necessary to update articles the day after the election like I have done but saying that it's okay if the articles are years out of date is quite bizarre. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:34, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
  • technically noone is elected until the AEC declare results to the GG for the lower house, and to the State Governors for Senate seats all of which must be done by 28th June. At that stage the PM must recall parliament in the case of minority government be able to prove he has the confidence of the parliament. Gnangarra 12:08, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
As a practical way forward, it's clear "official declaration" is probably waiting too long, but if we look at the AEC reporting, they appear to be satisfied with the outcome of all but 3 electorates which they call "close seats" (where the 2 party-preferred difference is less than 1%). I presume for all but the 3 "close" electorates, they know how many postal votes were issued for each electorate and how many are still outstanding and that this number is insufficient to alter the outcome. I think we could use the AEC "not close" electorates as a signal that we can update those articles, but hold off on the "close" ones (except of course to say that they are still undecided). Kerry (talk) 15:24, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
Waiting until the declaration is useless to our readers, and I concur with the points made by The Drover's Wife and Onetwothreeip above. If we were waiting for the declaration, the seat tally would be 0-0-0 on the election page, and I hope we all agree that that is absurd. I would caution against using AEC alone as the deciding factor, since the "close seats" page is determined entirely by mathematics and doesn't take into account a number of things (exclusion order issues being the main one, and also seat-specific issues - remember Flynn in 2016, which had the kind of margin that you'd normally count as settled, but it is known for a particularly strong LNP lean in post-count which indeed changed the result, so the AEC wasn't listing it in doubt while the psephs were). A combination of AEC, ABC and other analysts (Bonham, Raue, Bowe) seems like the sensible way forward. Frickeg (talk) 21:20, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
That alas seems to hang between the devil of WP:NOTNEWS and the deep of WP:OR, and to be liable to produce ephemeral arguments depending on what is taken into account and with what weight etc etc. However, it does seem clear that we must avoid presenting projections as if they were results. Seeing that this was happening in Coalition (Australia), where AEC projected figures were appearing in the infobox as if they were firm results—and then (obscurely) as "TBD" in a table below—I've annotated them in the infobox with the ref for each house: "AEC projection, 20 May 2019". These figures can be updated as they change, together with the date, and then the ref removed when all results for that house have been declared. Wikiain (talk) 23:11, 20 May 2019 (UTC) CORRECTION: I've so annotated the House figure, in the infobox and the table; for the Senate figure in the info box, which could not be left blank (and it isn't given in the table), I've put the ref "media estimate" (unsourced, but very temporary). Wikiain (talk) 22:55, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
Indeed, the object of the exercise is to have a bright line that takes the subjectivity out of it. So, those of us updating articles know when it's probably OK and for those of us on the watchlist, knowing when we should probably revert. Kerry (talk) 06:53, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
Worst example of pre-emptive editing Í've seen so far are the "updates" to Senators who may (but may not) lose their seats such as Fraser Anning to claim they "lost their seat on 18 May", notwithstanding that these Senators' terms will not end until 30 June 2019. --Canley (talk) 00:16, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
Also note that the Second Morrison Ministry is not due to be sworn in until Wednesday 29 May, so don't put the start date of ministerial terms as the announcement date (26 May). --Canley (talk) 22:18, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the right way. There is a user Wikiaus98 who is disruptively editing this page Death of Elijah Doughty and admits as much here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Wikiaus98

Not sure what can be done. The page establishes that Elijah Doughty was killed while riding a stolen motorcycle, however multiple sources confirm there is no evidence that he himself stole the motorcycle. User Wikiaus98 claims Elijah did steal the bike but with no evidence (obviously as it is not proven). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:6B0B:4B00:94FB:609E:97B7:7147 (talk) 10:46, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

An edit that removed apparently sourced has been reverted. I put a response at Talk:Death_of_Elijah_Doughty, where we can start to look at ways improving the article. cygnis insignis 11:57, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

City of Sydney Library hosting an editathon on 15 June

Sharing this link in case anyone is interested. City of Sydney Library are hosting an editathon on 15 June which will focus on topics relevant to the LGBTI community. More info on the project page here, and you can register here. (Yes, unfortunately it is on the same day as the Wikimedia Australia Community Conference which is very unlucky timing!) Please share with anyone you think may be interested. Rubicon49bce (talk) 05:04, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Sydney in June

a reminder of the sequence of events
https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Knowledge_equity_in_the_online_world 12th June
https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Worlds_of_Wikimedia 13th and 14th June
https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Community_Conference_2019 15th June
https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Rainbow_Editathon 15th June
JarrahTree 12:17, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

The tide keeps rolling

Australian editors might not be aware of the tide of Portal removal, the latest is at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Abandoned_micro-portals_for_Australian_state_capitals

It is also quite notable that only one Australian editor has ventured to this item. JarrahTree 09:07, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Meetup 15 June

Following on from the various conferences and workshops taking place this week, a casual Sydney meetup will occur from 17:30 at The Royal Hotel in Darlington on the evening of the 15th June, all the current members of Wikimedia Australia committee will be there. see Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/June 2019 for details everyone is welcome. Gnangarra 04:26, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

RfC of possible interest

A request for comment regarding a rape allegation against Bill Shorten, an Australian politician, may be of interest to editors in this WikiProject. – Teratix 02:30, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Category:Australian anesthesiologists has been nominated for discussion

Category:Australian anesthesiologists, of interest to this project, has been nominated for possible renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Cavalryman V31 (talk) 18:01, 21 June 2019 (UTC).

Waste management in Australia needs eyes

Waste management in Australia is a new article that could do with some more eyes. It was produced as part of an assignment and is rather extensive. I've done a bit of cleanup but it really could do with more input. --AussieLegend () 06:52, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

It is rather large, isn't it?! But still an awesome piece of work for a beginner. It might be at some time that it's worth breaking up into some separate articles, but if it's an assignment, I'd leave it alone for a while in case splitting it up is a problem for any assessment that might be taking place. Kerry (talk) 08:37, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
Pity somehow there isnt a trend/movement for long term editors to offer comment that might encourage shorter articles.
Also, I think the 'length' issue is close to irrelevent when the article is so well referenced - that is what should be encouraged and even rewarded for a first timer - if the average editor had the capacity and persistence to provide sourcing like that, the quality of articles on Australian articles would vastly improve JarrahTree 09:05, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
Will take a peek, thank you for the notice. 124.168.220.200 (talk) 17:55, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

SS South Steyne - uncited info

Hi all - I'm seeking input/advice from editors over at Talk:SS South Steyne. An editor has inserted uncited info a number of times into the article. No communication thru edit summaries etc. I've removed it, with edit summaries explaining why, but he puts it back. Sample diff of info supplied: ...scroll down a bit. It's not in the existing citations. it's essentially claiming arson, without a citation. I'd appreciate any advice, comments - it's probably best to contribute over at the relevant section on talk page: Talk:SS South Steyne thanks --Merbabu (talk) 00:12, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Category:Australian stockmen has been nominated for discussion

Category:Australian stockmen, of interest to this project, has been nominated for possible renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. TSventon (talk) 12:09, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Steve Smith (cricketer) page move discussion

Hi. Please see this. Thanks. ~SS49~ {talk} 13:36, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Template:Aboriginal peoples of Western Australia

Your feedback would be appreciated at Template talk:Aboriginal peoples of Western Australia#Mismatch between nav title and pagename. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 01:41, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Edit a thon underway

Hi Folks just heads up there is an editathon underway focusing on Australian Scientists details are at Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/Franklin Women 2019 with a mixture of experienced and new editors. Gnangarra 04:05, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

There was an interview about this on ABC Radio Adelaide this evening as I was driving home from work (about 10 to 20 past 6 I think). The lady from Franklin Women coordinating the editathon said it gave her a new appreciation of how much work goes on "behind the scenes" to maintain the resource that she had just taken for granted. I think she said they had created ten new articles today, with references and written well enough to ensure the articles won't get "taken down". She acknowledged the 150,000 people who maintain articles around the world. --Scott Davis Talk 11:16, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes 10 were created and another 23 expanded on by 30 odd editors. Yes all the article subjects do meet notability all up a good event, WMAU will organise for it to be written up so others can follow the success. Gnangarra 11:21, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Well done to all those involved, and welcome to any new Wikipedians. My thought as I heard it on the radio was "writing articles about scientists is hard." Politicians and places are much easier to write about. --Scott Davis Talk 13:27, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
And writing about living people is, of course, another challenge. One of the FW team had checked notability prior to the editathon and the links prepared for each bio were very helpful. User:MargaretRDonald and I were Wikimedian helpers on the day. We were impressed by the diligence of the participants and have offered to help at any follow-up events they run. And be editors-on-the-ground in Sydney. Oronsay (talk) 20:34, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
A very impressive event, indeed. (both in terms of organisation, and the enthusiastic participants.) MargaretRDonald (talk) 20:48, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
Combatting gender bias on Wikipedia on RN Drive - "Women in health and medical research hope to improve the gender balance with a Wikipedia 'Edit-a-thon'." Thursday 25th July. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:47, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I'd appreaciate it if any of our Aussie admins could semi-protect this article. There has been a spate of vandalism over a number of days (including today) by a number of anonymous editors (probably the same people though judging from the edits), so much so that people reverting it are often reverting to other vandalised versions. I have rolled it back to what I think is the last good version before the vandalism. Thanks Kerry (talk) 05:38, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

 Done I'd suggest making these requests at WP:RFPP though, as this will usually lead to a faster response. Nick-D (talk) 05:50, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
Not in my experience, which is why I ask here. Kerry (talk) 06:07, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Women in Red - online meetup August

Please join the Women in Red during August and write articles about Indigenous Women, theres plenty of low hanging fruit to pick from there have a lot articles about young women complete law and medical degrees. There are also many Indigenous Academics who are yet to have articles created, there bound to be sports women to write about given the growth in AFL & Cricket and lets not forget the the old folk who stood tall against the colonial system. I'll ask WMAU to give some kind of recognition for those who participate. Gnangarra 14:57, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Sounds like an excellent project. Whilst I am happy to contribute, I will need some guidance, simlar to what happened with the edit-a-thon above, with some suggested people, but probably also with identifying reliable sources. Find bruce (talk) 21:45, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Is there a list of articles to be improved and redlinks? Nick-D (talk) 08:43, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
Women in Red has two crowd-sourced lists that include Australians:
A single source is included for most, but notability will need to be established. You are encouraged to sign up as a participant of Women in Red's Indigenous women — August 2019 and record your contributions there. Oronsay (talk) 21:12, 4 August 2019 (UTC)


New round of RFCs on political position of newspaper

In case anyone is interested, the discussion has flared up again at talk:The Australian. It seems to have some of the "usual suspects" and a few new people too. --Scott Davis Talk 12:30, 11 August 2019 (UTC)


Some Australian editors

May have noticed the demise of capital city portals in the portal removal process on wikipedia recently.

Well, if you thought there was a limit, the process continues unabated...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Portal:Northern_Territory

It is fairly unrepenting, very unppreciative of what and how the portals had functioned, and reducing with no Australian editors actually showing up at the points of departure, and the project itself ignored.

This is a matter of FYI and for the record. RIP.

Also for the usual general disinterest in what the australian editing community might actually know or feel about the process of removing portals, here below is the summary of why portals will probably continue disappearing due to the process that is being sustained and the lack of interest in responses..

Title Portal Page Views Article Page Views Comments Ratio Percent Notes Parent Portal Type Articles
Australia 77 17864 Last maintenance of articles appears to be 2012, but news is current and articles are extensive. 232.00 0.43% Oceania Country 100
Queensland 29 1917 Originator edits sporadically. Last maintenance 2014. 66.10 1.51% Australia State 35
New South Wales 18 2431 Originator inactive since 2018. Last maintenance 2013. 135.06 0.74% Australia State 14
Western Australia 13 1312 Originator last edited in 2012. Last maintenance 2010. 100.92 0.99% Australia State 28
Australian Capital Territory 9 723 Originator edits sporadically. Last maintenance appears to have been 2012. 80.33 1.24% Australia State 11
Northern Territory 9 1194 Originator edits sporadically. Last maintenance appears to have been 2008. Only three articles. Has blank entries for some articles. 132.67 0.75% Australia State 3
Victoria 9 1478 Originator edits sporadically. Last maintenance appears to have been 2013. 164.22 0.61% Has false blank entries for articles and biographies. Australia State 14
South Australia 9 942 Originator edits sporadically. Last maintenance appears to have been 2013. 104.67 0.96% Australia State 17
Tasmania 9 2913 Originator edits sporadically. Last maintenance 2007. 323.67 0.31% Australia State 13

added JarrahTree 00:40, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Mass changes to NSW place articles

A very new user User:Shelati appears to be making high speed mass changes to NSW place articles (all similar to this [7]). There is no evidence of any discussion about these changes. I invite this user to discuss these changes here before continuing. Kerry (talk) 23:03, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

While I am not particularly opposed to the introduction of the new map type, I am concerned that we have lost the overview map and the coords. Kerry (talk) 23:09, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
Hi Kerry, you may have missed that the two things you have identified have the same cause - when coordinates such as | coordinates = {{coord|34|0|27|S|150|48|54|E|display=inline,title}} are included in the info box it automatically includes the overview map. the display setting "inline" includes it in the infobox & "title" includes it on the title row. The change that Shelati made was to move it from the infobox which meant it only displayed on the title row. This edit of Varroville adds the coordinates back in the infobox but retains the new map type. Find bruce (talk) 00:42, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for letting me know about this. I wasn't aware that these were "mass changes". I just find the current maps to be handy and convenient for Sydney suburbs, which intelligibly show where they're situated at in perspective to the other surrounding suburbs. The previous infobox that had the coordinate map pinpointing the relatively small Sydney suburbs in a state as large as NSW was just vague and also irrelevant, because we know that every Sydney suburb will be on the NSW coast, or where Sydney is. They didn't do the suburb location any justice. Mind you, I only did Sydney suburbs, since they're all clustered together (another good reason for the new map type). I have no interest in placing maps for the other, scattered places in NSW. Now about the edit of Varroville, I am a human, I merely forgot to remove the coordinate map on infobox and place it in title (as I did with the rest). For the record, the coordinates are still there, but in the title. So, if any user wants to see where the suburb is, they can click the top right link on the article. Shelati (talk) 01:53, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for your contributions Shelati, there is nothing wrong with making changes - all editors are encouraged to boldly make such changes. Wikipedia is a collaborative project built on consensus in which discussion is a key part of the bold, revert, discuss cycle. One of the goals of the encylcopedia is to keep a similar look and feel to similar articles. Kerry brought the discussion here because this particular noticeboard is a convenient place to discuss formatting for articles that are across Australia so that we can have a single discussion rather than repeating it at every article. When there is consensus to change the style, editors can then flow those changes out to other similar articles. By the way, you did not forget to remove the the coordinate map from the infobox for Varroville, I added it back in & I see you have already reverted my edit, but that's of no great consequence as my purpose was simply so that other editors can quickly see how the page looks with (1) just the state overview map, (2) just the openstreet map and (3) both the open street map and the state overview map. I noticed you have gone on to change other suburbs in a similar way. As we are currently as the discussion point of the cycle, it is appropriate at this point for you to pause & not make changes to other suburbs whilst this discussion takes place.Find bruce (talk) 02:50, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads up. I apologise for reverting your edit as it wasn't my intention. I thought I was "fixing" my own edit where I didn't exclude the coordinates map. So sorry for my little blunder there. At that moment, I was a bit exhausted and caught up in the moment. I have just paused making changing on the suburban maps. Shelati (talk) 03:39, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
we know that every Sydney suburb will be on the NSW coast, or where Sydney is - These articles are not just for Australian editors, they're for people all over the world to read. People outside Sydney, even in Australia, who aren't familiar with the place may not know where in NSW a particular suburb is located, which is why we have the state level overview map and why there is no way to turn the map off without deleting the coordinates. I'm 59, I've had family living in Sydney since the 1800s, I visit a few times a year and, until today, I've never heard of Varroville. The local suburb map in the article doesn't even identify that the suburb is part of Sydney or where in Sydney it is located. Infobox maps are not supposed to be street maps, they're just supposed to identify the location of a particular place. Quite simply, coordinates should stay in the infobox. The local maps should supplement the state map, not replace it. --AussieLegend () 05:35, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
The thing is though, Varrovile and other 'unknowns' still have a description in the lead either way - That they are "suburbs of Sydney" or in "greater western Sydney". I believe people with common sense will get the idea. Although I understand your point, it's about probability here -- I mean, how likely is it that a person from the Ukraine or Tanzania would stumble into Varrovile, Mount Druitt, Punchbowl and other Sydney suburbs? It's just very unlikely, don't you think? Now I wouldn't mind a NSW map on the infobox. It can be returned. But a local suburban map is more important and beneficial for the rather clustered suburban areas of Sydney. As I said, a sole NSW map does no justice for the relatively small and tightly agglomerated Sydney suburbs. Moreover, that map could be pointing anywhere in the Sydney area and we can't even see where it's exactly pinpointing the location in a state as large as NSW. So I don't know. Shelati (talk) 04:04, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
A lot of readers (there are some actual figures on it somewhere, it was raised at some discussions recently), don't read beyond the infobox so it's important that we get things right there. We shouldn't force readers to go elsewhere to get information that they need. A map showing the location within the state is really far more useful than it might seem, especially to readers not from Sydney. It's one of the reasons that we display the coordinates in the infobox and why {{Infobox settlement}} includes the country in the infobox. You could also argue that, because there's a description of where in Sydney a suburb is located, you don't need a detailed map showing the suburb's borders. Infoboxes are supposed to show significant information without going into minutiae, which the borders of a suburb really are. --AussieLegend () 06:44, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
how likely is it that a person from the Ukraine or Tanzania would stumble into Varrovile, Mount Druitt, Punchbowl and other Sydney suburbs? - It's not just people from non-English language countries that look at articles. I've looked at articles of U.S. neighbourhoods and a map showing me where in a city was located would have been useless. It was more important to know where in the US or in the US state that the location was.
that map could be pointing anywhere in the Sydney area - But that's all we need. Why would somebody from the Ukraine, Tanzania or the U.S. need to know that St Andrews Road connects to Spitfrire Drive? --AussieLegend () 06:44, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
If we are going to include Open Street Maps into the article, I wonder if this is the best way to go about it. What we are shown is the suburb in question as a dark blob with the surrounding suburbs in more detail. However, the infobox aready lists the surrounding suburbs so we don't get a lot of extra benefit. I think it would be of more benefit if the OSM would show us something of what is *in* the suburb. Although I did it with screenshots, I have done this on a few occasions to help illustrate an article, e.g. Stones Corner, Queensland. I just did a little tweak of the paramaters on the OSM in Raby, New South Wales. Is this a more helpful OSM map? (I note that Raby seems to be a place with nothing interesting in it, but it's slightly more exciting to experiment with than Varroville which has nothing in it, interesting or otherwise). Kerry (talk) 06:18, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
I agree that the reverse map as used in Raby, New South Wales is more appropriate.Fleet Lists (talk) 06:55, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Varroville
SydneyNew South Wales
Map
Coordinates34°0′27″S 150°48′54″E / 34.00750°S 150.81500°E / -34.00750; 150.81500
We've already tried to incorporate suburb maps into articles using {{Infobox mapframe}} and I believe it produces a result that is better for infoboxes. It was discussed at the infobox talk page. That discussion is now archived here. It uses a much simpler process for adding local maps. The syntax is {{Infobox mapframe|zoom=x}}, where "zoom" simply tweaks the size of the map. This eliminates the issue seen at Varroville where part of the suburb is off-screen. At Raymond Terrace, the result is that the town's location is shown in relation to the two closest cities and surrounding suburbs. We really don't need to go down to street level in an infobox which, as I said, is just supposed to show the location of a place. If it's necessary to show individual streets, that can be done in the body of the article, as at Stones Corner. --AussieLegend () 07:49, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
I also prefer the reverse map used in Raby at the scale at which it is used. If however you follow the link & zoom out, everything else is grey so it looks weird. I am not familiar with the settings, is it possible to just have the red boundary without the grey? Find bruce (talk) 21:45, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Following a little experimentation, it appears to be possible, by using "line" rather than either of the "shape" options. See Raby, New South Wales now. Kerry (talk) 01:51, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
You're a champion thanks Kerry. My thoughts have changed somewhat - I am presently leaning towards just using the line without the shade as per Raby, but perhaps zoomed out slightly, say zoom=8 which will show the suburbs location relative to Sydney which is how it is described in the lead. The real advantage of using the mapframe is that if the user clicks on the map they can decide if they want to zoom in for detail or out to show a wider location. If you click on the coordinates map, all you get is a map of NSW which loses the location completely. As an aside, I was surprised to see that Varoville, which I think we all agree is an obscure suburb of Sydney, still gets ~6 pageviews per day. Sure it's not the 443 of Bondi Beach, but its 5.8 more than I expected. Find bruce (talk) 02:49, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
I think I agree with pretty much everyone so far.
  • State maps are not helpful for locating suburbs
  • Just a boundary is more informative than a solid block for the area of a suburb
  • The scale needs to provide enough context to give most readers a clue of where to find it (given that they know that they are looking at a suburb of <city>)
  • The minimum amount of edit changes and custom code possible is preferred.
The "old" way of providing regional context was |use_lga_map=yes which requires someone to put a lot of effort into creating the LGA maps, and still only provides a dot not an area. I have made a few of these for SA LGAs but got sick of it well before I had made a complete set.
The "new" way seems to be to incorporate {{infobox mapframe}} into the infobox code, and put all the details into wikidata and OpenStreetMap. This raises a new level of collaboration across three projects but also puts the right data in the right places to reuse it (but raises the quality assurance issues). I think this is the direction we should go. The interim solution is much less editing than was done for the Sydney examples. Waterloo Corner, South Australia has one new line |image2={{infobox mapframe}} to add a map using the OSM boundary. The state map can be suppressed with |map_type=nomap. perhaps |map_type= could be exended to have an OSM option (as well or instead) rather than editors invoking mapframe directly. --Scott Davis Talk 03:58, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
I prefer the Rabys approach to the Waterloo Corner, South Australia one. Fleet Lists (talk) 04:39, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
Well done, Kerry. I like your approach. I am on board with that style. So what now? Oh, and what should be done with Oakhurst, New South Wales? Can someone experiment with, or update, its infobox map feature? Shelati (talk) 04:07, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
Why does the line not display in Broughton Vale, which uses the same code as Raby?--Grahame (talk) 02:53, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
Hm. I did notice that some suburbs lacked borders/lines, especially the very obscure or unincorporated ones. I think it's because they are not marked by the users in Wikimaps/Open Street Maps? I am not too certain. Shelati (talk) 04:11, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Coordinates don't need to be removed

An important point that I should have mentioned earlier is that there is absolutely no reason to remove the coordinates from the infobox. If you really want to suppress the map, all you do is add |map_type=nomap. This is explained in the infobox instructions. I had forgotten that until today because I never use it. You can see in the infobox that I added earlier. --AussieLegend () 08:46, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Trying to bring this to a closure/consensus

I'll attempt to formulate a census:

  • We want to retain what we had:
    • coordinates in the infobox with inline & title display
    • the state map with a dot generated from those coordinates
  • We are comfortable with including a maplink/mapframe OSM map as an optional 2nd map
    • with a default preference for a line boundary and not shading
    • but open to variations where article's content would be better illustrated by something different

How does that sound? Kerry (talk) 20:42, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

→Thank you Kerry. I would like to see the "state map with the dot" location retained. International visitors are smart enough to work out where we are, besides, in my suburb North Ryde which has been fragmented into now several suburbs like Macquarie Park, companies like Microsoft still list their address as being in North Ryde. I'm no expert here so I'll have to go with the flow. NorthRyder (talk) 10:48, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

[[file:Map|200px|alt=]]
Parafield, SA
[[file:Map|200px|alt=]]
Clarence Town, NSW
[[file:Map|200px|alt=]]
Broughton Vale, NSW
One of the big problems with the suburb maps at the moment is that many aren't working properly. When you call up a suburb map, even though the coordinates are correct at Wikidata, the map defaults to a point on the equator at the Greenwich meridian. I don't know why this happens, as the maps at Wikidata seem OK. I added some code to the infobox to see how widely this is happening and found quite a lot of places where the map doesn't work. To test if for yourself, just add |local_map=y to the infobox and the map will be enabled. To adjust the size of the suburb map, set |zoom= to a value between 1 & 18. If you want to try it anywhere other than the article itself, you'll need to add |local_map_id=wikidata id where "wikidata id" is the id assigned at Wikidata for the suburb. --AussieLegend () 11:06, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
I agree we should only include them if they actually work! But if we say they are optional, the not-working ones can be left out. Of course in saying this I am assuming that working-vs-not-working is not a random thing but linked to the specific location (for whatever reason). I don't pretend to know how maplink/mapframe work, but to display a boundary, you need a large number of points to make up that boundary. I don't see that info stored anywhere in Wikipedia/Wikidata, so I am assuming it is held in Open Street Map. Now I took a look at OSM for the three places you show not working and they all have a boundary in OSM and the Qnumber above points to a Wikidata entry which links to an OSM ID which displays with a boundary, when you click through. So, it seems they should work, but they obviously don't. I don't have an answer, beyond not using them if they don't work. Kerry (talk) 12:06, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
It seems to me you have accurately gauged the consensus Kerry, including only including the OSM map if it works for that location. Find bruce (talk) 21:47, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
I've tried a few things to see if I could fix this, such as adding the Wikidata Q-number to the boundary relation in OSM—that seems to have worked for Parafield, although it took a while so I guess the Wikimaps service takes a day or so to sync with OSM. --Canley (talk) 02:55, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Clarence Town also works a few days after adding the Wikidata ID to the OSM relation—I'll try and work out if there's some way I can import the Q-numbers into OSM reasonably easily... --Canley (talk) 05:29, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I did notice that Clarence Town was now working. Good work. I tried adding maps to several other articles but none worked. --AussieLegend () 06:05, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
It should be noted that User:Shelati who started all this has been identified as a sockpuppet and banned indefinitely and since then user:‎Berean Hunter has reverted most if not all of his edits relating to this subject.Fleet Lists (talk) 22:43, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
Interesting - a sock of Meganesia, who was sock of someone else who got banned years ago. I tried to find evidence of the link but was never successful and he started editing constructively so I gave up. --AussieLegend () 10:10, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Noticed today that another editor User:Downsize43 who joined in April this year, has started something similar to various Queensland articles including Childers, Queensland but here a Google reference is being added to provide similar maps. Any comments on this? Fleet Lists (talk) 04:59, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
I tried adding maps to the infoboxes of several articles that Downsize43 had edited but none worked while the Google Maps did work, so that seems a reasonable alternative. They're better maps too. --AussieLegend () 06:13, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Honorific prefixes in List of headmasters

(moved from Talk:St Peter's College, Adelaide)

Regarding these edits [8][9], Doug butler says in the edit comment that MOS goes on to say "Except for the initial reference and infobox", however that excerpt is from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography#Knighthoods, lordships, and similar honorific titles, not clergy or doctors, who are covered by:

  • Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography#Honorific prefixes — "... honorific prefixes ... should not be included, but may be discussed in the article. In particular, this applies to: ... styles and honorifics related to ... clergy"
  • MOS:DOCTOR — Academic and professional titles (such as "Dr." or "Professor") ... should be used ... only when the subject is widely known by a pseudonym or stage name containing such a title"

I propose that the honorifics should be removed, per the clearly stated MOS guidelines. If the ecclesiastical vs parochial appointments are significant, perhaps there should be a sentence of two in the section mentioning that significance. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:11, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

A fair summary, except I would not be bold enough to say the ecclesiastical vs parochial appointments were significant, just "nice to see". But is no doctor or clergyman to be introduced as Dr or Rev.? That is a nonsense. Doug butler (talk) 16:26, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
If you consider MOS to be "nonsense", you could propose changing it at WT:Manual of Style/Biography. If you think my interpretation of the guideline is wrong, please say so explicitly. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:24, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
You're misrepresenting my meaning, ie. that blanket omitting the honorific is a nonsense, not that MOS is nonsense. It makes sense to omit the honorific once it has been established for that person (except to avoid ambiguity as in "Dr Smith told Nurse Smith . . . "). Should the ban on honorifics apply equally to ranks in the police and armed forces? Doug butler (talk) 14:54, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
I apologise if I've misrepresented you, but my point remains (with milder words): if you disagree with the parts of MOS that I quoted, consider proposing a change to those guidelines. If you think I've misinterpreted those parts of the guidelines, say so, and explain how you would interpret them. If you think WP:IAR applies here, say so, and why. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:32, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
Per the cited MOS entry, I think the honorifics should be removed. --AussieLegend () 11:50, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

The same would apply to other Australian school articles, e.g. De La Salle College Ashfield#Principals. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:48, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

I think it looks odd to have titles/honorifics for some people in a list but not others. I also think that for lists of officeholders of a position which may be held by lay or ordained people, it is informative (for some readers at least) to indicate whether a person is/was Br., Rev., etc, particularly if the people are unlikely to be notable enough as individuals to have articles that would provide further detail in the roll-over popup box. So for maximum information and consistency, we end up with a list of people with prefixes including some that are Dr., Mr., Mrs. etc. Is there a guideline for lists of occupants of positions that may be lay or ordained? I am aware of a few others like these. --Scott Davis Talk 13:28, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
I agree that it is indeed informative and helpful to include the various significant titles in such a list in such schools. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:56, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

South Australian Chambers of Manufacturers

I have noticed that several articles refer to each of:

should anyone feel inclined to write them, or to add them to wish-lists for editathons, etc. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:14, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

The names, I believe, should be "Chamber of Manufactures". Oronsay (talk) 02:39, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
Clearly you are the person to write these articles then! Nice work, User:Pigsonthewing, to flush out the most knowledgeable contributor with your deliberate error! :-) Kerry (talk) 03:32, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
I have created a short article for the South Australian Employers' Chamber of Commerce and Industry which is the current organisation for the South Australian Chamber of Manufacturers, and made redirects from the predecessor organisations. There seem to be enough links to justify existence of the page, but I'm not sure I have made a good enough article to protect it from deletion without help. --Scott Davis Talk 11:44, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
There is a Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry article, but it does not mention manufactures or manufacturers. The SA reference says "manufacturers", on the current organisation's history page. --Scott Davis Talk 13:06, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Nomenclature of Australian schools

Hi all. This discussion tackles two issues, both raised for discussion in this one comment where your feedback is invited:

1. How should we describe Australian public schools in the lead and infobox of each school article?
Despite its common use in Australia, the term public school is a disambiguated phrase and, when viewed by a user in another country (e.g. UK), may create confusion. While state school provides a rough description, the term state school is not widely used in Australia and may create ambiguity as in which state (the federal state or the regional state) government. The term government school provides global readers with a clear perspective; however, is this acceptable to Australian readers? It is proposed that following the initial introduction, the government agency that operates the school would be listed (e.g. The school is operated by the New South Wales Department of Education ....). Feedback on the preferred term is encouraged; with thanks.
2. Should we use the term day school when describing schools that are not boarding schools?
Or should we generally assume that every school is a day school (by omission) and only include the term boarding school when the school takes boarding students. The two terms would be used together when an (independent or government) school takes both boarding and day students (e.g., at random, St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill and Hurlstone Agricultural High School). Feedback on the inclusion or omission is encouraged; with thanks.

Thank you to @WWGB and Mitch Ames: for your work to date to assist in the standardisation of terminology across jurisdictions that is acceptable to all. Cheers Rangasyd (talk) 13:53, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

"<shool name> is a government-funded co-educational primary day school" covers it all. --AussieLegend () 14:06, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
But on the downside, it is a bit of a WP:SEAOFBLUE Kerry (talk) 23:26, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
Just to say I am watching the debate, about these state funded schools and may join in later,--ClemRutter (talk) 17:17, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
When I write articles about towns/suburbs/localities in Queensland and need to mention the schools, I use the term "government" for the reasons you give above, despite "state school" being the normal terminology in QLD as all such schools include the word State in their name (with a few exceptions for no obvious good reason). Otherwise I use "Catholic" (2nd largest education provider inn QLD), or "Anglican", "Lutheran" etc for the well-known church denominations. Otherwise I say "independent" where I don't know or it's run by an organisation not likely to be well-known (and generally include a extra sentence about it being established/owned/operated by whatever organisation does so). QLD has a growing number of independent Christian churches who operate schools, which can probably be loosely described as Pentacostal but as that isn't an organisation that runs schools, I don't like to say "Pentacostal school", so go with "independent school" with additional explanation based on whatever the school's website tells me. Since day school is the norm, I never mention that explicitly, unless the school takes boarders (which I do mention) and need to make separate commentary on day/boarding students (typically the different entry years as boarders usually arent accepted until secondary school). Kerry (talk) 23:21, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
An example is at Longreach, Queensland#Education. Kerry (talk) 23:24, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
We absolutely shouldn't refer to schools as day schools. "Public" and "state" are both commonly used and known in Australia, and we should use both to remove ambiguity. Wikipedia Primary School is a public state school in Wikipediaville, Wikipia. "Government funded" is far too ambiguous as most private schools are funded by Australian governments. "Catholic private school", "independent private school" are appropriate. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:41, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
(1) By convention, all governments classify schools according to three sectors: Government, Catholic (systemic) and Independent. We should therefore use the term "government" and not public, state or government-funded.
(2) The expression "day school" is not widely used in Australia. As only 1.6% of schools are fully or partially boarding schools, we should only tag such schools as exceptions. The other 98.4% are just "schools". There are many variations on "boarding", including schools with boarders and local students, and weekday boarders. These are best handled in the text of the school article. WWGB (talk) 00:43, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
Yep, government-funded really applies to all schools in Australia -- especially private schools as it turns out -- so is not accurate to describe a government/public school. Donama (talk) 00:48, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
I think there is a difference between who operates a school and how it is funded. Let's stick to describing who runs it, not how it is funded. I don't think we need to be saying "Fiddlebits College is a primary Catholic 32% funded by the Commonwealth Government 12% funded by the Queensland Government 43% funded by parents and the rest funded the annual Hogmanny festival school." By all means, within an article, it may be appropriate to discuss funding sources in detail but not in the first sentence. Kerry (talk) 05:28, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
There is also no need to describe schools as "co-educational" since this is the standard. Instead, single sex schools should be described as such. Describing a school as "government" isn't common and the schools aren't particularly relevant to the government. Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:09, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
I think public high school would be better, with public linked to State school and high school linked to Secondary school which will follow in line with other schools. It will also match the public high school categories. Someone visiting the state school article will see there is a section for Australia with a link to its education page and the first line says "Government schools (also known as public schools)" - there are also multiple news sources that use public high school (e.g. 1 and 2). No need to mention day school unless it needs to be mentioned / per WWGB comment above - I haven't seen this being used in the Australian Government's My School. It's better if there is consistency among all schools on Wikipedia - so for a co-educational school: School name is a public co-educational high school in town/city, state, country. Steven (Editor) (talk) 02:11, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
"Primary" and "secondary" are usually part of the name of the school though, so it's not necessary to use the word again in the lead sentence. I would recommend School is a public state school in Location, State, Australia for the majority of cases. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:23, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
Whereas "primary" and "secondary" are rarely used in Queensland school names. We use "state school" in the name if there is a primary component and "state high school" if they are only secondary. Some schools (mostly rural) which are both primary and secondary are still called "state school". I agree it's probably redundant to say "Darlinghurst Primary School is a primary school" but equally it's important to say "Junction Park State School is a primary school". As people point out, these issues vary between states. We need to find phrases that on reading alone (rather than clicking on links) correctly convey the correct information to readers both in that state, in this country and more widely around the world.
Differences between states is a major issue here. In Victoria, for example, the word "public" is very rarely used to describe a school, in any context. The norms are government, private or Catholic. I would not promote that usage for other states or territories, because I know usage is different there. I guess my point is that an Australia wide standard does not exist. Education is very much a state based thing in Australia, and so is the language around education. This may be an unreachable goal. HiLo48 (talk) 03:14, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
In Victoria it's very common to refer to "public" schools, as most of them are, and is the natural counterpart to "private". The term "private" is not used to exclude Catholic schools, while "independent" is. Onetwothreeip (talk) 03:55, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
My OR disagrees with your OR on this matter. I strongly disagree that "In Victoria it's very common to refer to "public" schools". Maybe we move in different circles. Your point about independent/private/Catholic has some validity. All this seems to emphasise my point that there is no consistency, even within one state. HiLo48 (talk) 10:48, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
Public state school would be a bit strange together because public school and state school are pretty much the same thing, if you look at the state school article, it says "State schools, called public schools...". It may be redundant to say high school again for example if the name has high school, but this is ok for the lead and will follow in line with other schools. School websites about pages tend to do the same, also per the school article guidelines. Steven (Editor) (talk) 18:12, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

I would appreciate what people think of using these conventions as standard:

Type Description Internal link
Government owned state public State school#Australia
Roman Catholic owned Catholic private Catholic education in Australia
Anglican owned Anglican private Anglican education in Australia
Not government, Catholic or Anglican independent private Independent school#Australia
Day school only no description
Boarding school only boarding Boarding school
Mostly day, some boarding day and boarding
Mostly boarding, some day boarding and day
Only if there is a significant amount of both day/boarding, and only "boarding" hyperlinked
Male/female only boys'/girls' Single-sex education
Co-educational no description
Predominantly one gender

Such as Wikipedia Secondary School is an independent private day and boarding borls' school in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:12, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Firstly, thanks to everyone for your input to date. I acknowledge that there is a merge tag on Private schoolIndependent school. One cannot have a private independent school. The sector now uses the term independent; and we should too. I've added my thoughts to the above table, which is quite good. Kerry, I take your point re WP:SOB, however I don't think we can get around it without adding additional sentences that describe the school. My personal preference is to include co-educational; however, I'm happy to defer to consensus and it helps reduce the impact of the SOB. Hence (in this order),
Wikipedia Secondary School is a Catholic independent single-sex day and boarding secondary school for girls, located in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia.
^[note a] : In the next sentence/paragraph detail which government agency has responsibility for operating the school; and in the infobox use educational authority;
^[note b] : When Private school is merged into Independent school, in the section under Australia, the term systemic will be explained;
^[note c] : the ownership here could be another religion (Jewish, Arabic, Lutheran, Baptist, non-denominational Christian), or international, etc., the list goes on). I feel strongly that the ownership/values of the school needs to be listed in the lede and in the infobox;
^[note d] : Not too sure what Onetwothreeip means here..?
Thanks again everyone. Finally, for those who aren't aware, I declare my COI: I work for an independent school. Cheers. Rangasyd (talk) 09:46, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
There are many "private independent" schools, that's simply a matter of repetition. "The sector" uses "independent" to exclude Catholic schools but we are certainly not bound by what the private education institutions want to use, whether that be Catholic schools wanting to seem more prestigious or private schools not wanting to be associated with the word "private". Our articles about schools are already burdened with the problems that come with being almost completely written by people related to these schools.
The main concern is more about unnecessary length than about blue links when it comes to the lead sentence. We certainly don't need to state that the school is single-sex and then to state that sex, and we don't need to state if the school contains both genders in the first sentence. I should also point out that "Arabic" is not a religion, but detailing how these aspects of the schools function is much broader than settling on terminology and can generally be determined for these articles individually. When we list the educational authority, I agree that government schools should be listed as STATE Department of Education, but I don't want to get too off-track here. Onetwothreeip (talk) 11:26, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but here in WA we also have Independent Public Schools [10], ie that are both "independent" and govt owned. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:56, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

I would leave that to the rest of the article, and refer to those schools in the lead sentence simply as public schools. Onetwothreeip (talk) 12:00, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
Rangasyd, you put above "Wikipedia Secondary School is a Catholic independent single-sex day and boarding secondary school for girls, located in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia." I would put it as the following for consistency with other schools - there is no need to say "single-sex", girls can be linked to this and will suffice. No need to say "located in", keep it short and concise; also per the school article guidelines:
Wikipedia Secondary School is an independent, Catholic, day and boarding secondary school for girls in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia. Steven (Editor) (talk) 18:12, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
It's also unnecessary to say a school is both Catholic and independent, especially since independent normally excludes Catholic. Wikipedia Secondary School is a Catholic day and boarding girls' school in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia. Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:22, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
By what definition does "independent" exclude "Catholic"? What is a school independent of? Independent school says "independent in its finances and governance ... not dependent upon ... government ... finance" and (my emphasis) "in Australia ... Catholic schools are usually regarded as a school sector of their own within the broad category of independent schools". So far as I know, Catholic schools tend to be cheaper, and perhaps are "dependent" on the Catholic Church for finance and governance and policy. Anglican schools (as an example of non-govt, non-Catholic) may be self-funded (although, as has been pointed, out still received money from the govt) and less under the control of the church. (Eg, WP:OR based on small sample of Perth schools - Catholic schools require students and parents to be regular church-goers, Anglican schools do not.) Mitch Ames (talk) 01:52, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Most Catholic schools in Australia are very much dependent on the government and also aren't independent of other institutions like independent schools are generally known as, but are certainly private schools. I certainly know people of non-Christian religions to have attended Catholic schools. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:00, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi, this conversation has drifted a little from the initial question regarding the nomenclature of government schools (but perhaps my title should have been more specific). I have sent up a conversation below regarding nomenclature of non-government schools, so that we can focus our energy and efforts on where it is warranted. Thanks Mitch Ames; yes, I'm aware that WA has an usual situation where some government schools are run by a school board; and hence called Independent Public Schools. Rangasyd (talk) 10:35, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Nomenclature of Australian government schools

  1. My thoughts on the table prepared by Onetwothreeip is that the words state public are duplicated. It's either state or public or government; and the one word links to State school#Australia. Can we please get some consensus on this issue?
  2. I think there is consensus that we do not use the term single-sex; yet link boys'/girls' to Single-sex education;
  3. I think there is consensus to not use the term co-educational – please correct me if I'm wrong;
  4. I think there is consensus to not use the term day school where there are no boarding students;
  5. I'm not certain that there is consensus to not use the term day school in cases where a school is both day and boarding. Onetwothreeip has proposed a link solely to boarding school in cases where there are day and boarding students, that, by omission, implies that the school accepts boarding students ONLY. I propose that where both day and boarding students attend the school (irrespective of proportion) both day and boarding school should be used. Rangasyd (talk) 10:35, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
In WA high schools are being renamed as colleges such as Canning Vale College the distinction is that these school which are basically all in the larger centre and the Perth Metro have years 7-12, There is also Senior High School which have years 7 - 12 and High Schools which were 7 - 10, but not sure if this format continues now post mandatory all kids must stay at school until 17. That said there will be schools that have closed which were in this format. And the colleges also offer some of the tertiary courses normally cert 1 or 2 for subject areas. Gnangarra 11:51, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
The naming of government schools as colleges is not unique to WA and has no impact on this discussion. If the school/college provides education beyond a secondary education (e.g. vocational education) the scope of education provided should be included in the description of the lede and infobox. The grades/years covered should also be detailed. In NSW, an example is Bradfield College (Sydney). Quite often there needs to be different legal structure between the secondary and tertiary education institution due to the way they're funded. But that's not worth going into here. Rangasyd (talk) 12:15, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
All colleges do offer more than just secondary/high school education hence the distinction in the naming. They still offer it to the same age group as Secondary high schools but as part of the TAFE system. Gnangarra 12:31, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
I'm still with public - see comment above. The Australian Government's My School and school websites mention co-educational so I think it is best to follow suit. The same approach can be seen with other schools and I agree that if the school is both day and boarding then both should be used - this would also follow in line with other schools. Steven (Editor) (talk) 22:38, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
I agree with most of the table. As said above, "state" and "public" both mean pretty much the same as "government" so only one of the three is needed (and I'd prefer "government", but understand all three, so it's not a strong feeling, but only one is needed). ScottDavis (talk) 22:19, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
@Gnangarra: Simply write as "Wikipedia College is a public co-educational secondary school and vocational college in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia." And then continue to expand on the curriculum in a section in the body of the article that covers the secondary and vocational elements of the college's offering. Rangasyd (talk) 13:43, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
  1. My preference is government, linked to State school#Australia; followed by a sentence in the lede that "Wikipedia High/Primary School/College is operated by the Wikipedia Department of Education." My preference is based on what is detailed in the MySchools website: "On the My School website, school sector is used to differentiate between government, Catholic and independent schools" ...(click on "school sector"). So, do we now have consensus to use government? Rangasyd (talk) 13:43, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Nomenclature of Australian non-government schools

The term independent doesn't relate to funding; it relates to philosophy and administrative control.

  • Sorry Onetwothreeip, my typo regarding Arabic; I meant Islamic. :-)
  • Thanks Steven (Editor); I like your suggestions regarding lede description; however I don't think we need to use the Oxford comma. I'm open to feedback. In the {{Infobox school}}, the religion would not form part of the |type= ; it would be listed under |denomination= ; and, where applicable, |religious_affiliation= would be used to list to religious order(s) that administer the school (see more below in the section titled **Catholic schools**).

All of the above numbered points apply regarding consensus or not. Rangasyd (talk) 10:35, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

  • I suspect that there is enough variation amongst states, governance and ethos that there cannot be a single formula for the structure of the lead of all non-government schools across the country. --Scott Davis Talk 12:19, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Catholic schools

  • Mitch Ames proposes: Catholic schools are usually regarded as a school sector of their own within the broad category of independent schools.
  • Onetwothreeip proposes: It's unnecessary to say a school is both Catholic and independent, especially since independent normally excludes Catholic. And "The sector" uses "independent" to exclude Catholic schools.
  • Both are not quite correct. Firstly, "the sector" uses "independent" to distinguish Catholic independent schools from Catholic systemic schools. Catholic schools are either:
  1. Systemic, that is, operated under the direct authority of a diocese/bishop through a Catholic Schools Commission or Catholic Education Office, or similar central body – essentially run by Catholic bureaucrats; OR
  2. Independent of the control of a diocese and (typically) administered by school council or board, that usually contains representation from a religious order (Dominican, Jesuits, etc.), alumni, parents, community members, etc., and the diocese has little say, as the order reports directly to the pope and not the Church in Australia.

Examples of both are:

State Systemic Independent
ACT John Paul College, Canberra St Edmund's College, Canberra
NSW Mary MacKillop College, Wakeley St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill
NT MacKillop Catholic College, Palmerston none
QLD Ryan Catholic College All Hallows' School
SA Nazareth Catholic College, Adelaide St Dominic's Priory College, Adelaide
TAS Guilford Young College MacKillop College, Mornington
VIC St Kevin's College, Melbourne Xavier College
WA St Mary's Star of the Sea Catholic School Santa Maria College, Perth

The question at stake here is do we include systemic or independent in the first sentence; or does it occur in a subsequent description. That is, does the first sentence read:

Systemic:
  1. Wikipedia Secondary School is a systemic Catholic day and boarding secondary school for girls in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia. The school was established in XXXX and, in 2018, enrolled XXX students from Year 7 to Year 12. The school is administered by the Diocese of Wikipedia. OR
  2. Wikipedia Secondary School is a Catholic day and boarding secondary school for girls in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia. The school was established in XXXX and, in 2018, enrolled XXX students from Year 7 to Year 12. The systemic school is administered by the Diocese of Wikipedia.
Independent:
  1. Wikipedia Secondary School is an independent Catholic day and boarding secondary school for girls in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia, conducted in the Wikipedia tradition. The school was established in XXXX and, in 2018, enrolled XXX students from Year 7 to Year 12. OR
  2. Wikipedia Secondary School is a Catholic day and boarding secondary school for girls in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia. The school was established in XXXX and, in 2018, enrolled XXX students from Year 7 to Year 12. The independent school has a religious affiliation with the Wikipedia tradition.

Or is there an improved way of doing the lede? Rangasyd (talk) 10:35, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

I think first sentence is best and after the country, I would put it as: It was established in XXXX and is located in the Diocese of Wikipedia. Keep it simple and there is no need to say the number of students, especially in the first paragraph as this is covered in the infobox and body of article. Regarding commas and infobox above, I think it looks a bit strange without the commas but I don't know. As for infobox, type parameter should be: Systemic, day and boarding secondary school or Independent, day and boarding secondary school, etc. Religious affiliation parameter is normally used as a generic: Catholic, Christian and so on. The Oversight parameter is then used for the Diocese or any other establishment, trust and so on that manages/oversees the school. All of this would follow in line with other schools, for consistency. Steven (Editor) (talk) 22:38, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
There is no significant difference between what you call systemic Catholic schools and what you call independent Catholic schools, and certainly not in reliable sources. These terms are not used to describe Catholic schools, and any relevant differences would surely be discussed elsewhere in the article. We certainly shouldn't be describing these schools as either systemic or independent anywhere in the article. To maintain an encyclopaedic tone and to simplify the lead sentence, we should not be describing them as either primary or secondary schools in the first line, particularly when those words are used in the name of the school anyway. We should also stick to "boys' school" and "girls' school" rather than "school for boys" or "school for girls". I agree to the second sentence describing the year of establishment, latest enrolment figures, and school year levels. Onetwothreeip (talk) 00:13, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
I prefer the "type 2" introductions. "Systemic" and "Independent" might be an important point for some Catholic readers, but it's more of a red herring for anyone else. The third sentence then naturally leads to a Diocese or some other governance or ethos/tradition. --Scott Davis Talk 11:41, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
@Onetwothreeip: Your claim that "There is no significant difference between what you call systemic Catholic schools and what you call independent Catholic schools, and certainly not in reliable sources" is incorrect. I draw your attention to the National Catholic Education Commission 2001 Submission to the review of funding for schooling, located in the Executive Summary, p1, para 2, here. And I draw your attention to the Independent Schools Council of Australia, as it defines types of independent schools, listing Catholic systemic schools as a "sub-sector" of independent schools. Further, in the MySchools glossary (school sector), it is noted that "Schools may also belong to a school system (e.g. the government school system in each state and territory or the Catholic school system in a particular state) or operate independently of any school system." This essentially provides scope for some Catholic schools to also be independent schools; that is, independent of the church diocese. A more meaty reference that relates to Canon Law and Catholic schools in Australia can be found here (see section 4.2).
@Steven (Editor): It's more than being "... located in the Diocese of Wikipedia." It's what agency/authority administers/operates the school/college. For example, a Catholic school may be located in a particular archdiocese/diocese, but administered by a religious institute (Jesuits, Marist Brothers, etc.). We should capture who administers/operates the school/college. This is of importance in light of issues that were raised in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
So, do we have consensus, Type 1 above or Type 2 above? Many thanks. Rangasyd (talk) 14:17, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
None of those sources reflect the common nomenclature of schools in Australia. They are simply certain examples of how schools refer to themselves. What you are saying is still inconsistent, in that somehow Catholic schools are generally independent schools, but also that some of them are independent schools while others are "systemic", a very narrowly used term to describe certain Catholic schools and is an unimportant distinction to most people. Catholic schools being independent of a certain diocese is a completely separate idea of independent, while all public schools are also independent of Catholic dioceses but aren't described as independent generally. You say you are "drawing my attention" to certain sources but you're not describing at all how I am incorrect, which is your main claim.
Most importantly we clearly aren't discussing the two suggestions you have proposed. This is a discussion involving several participants. I agree with ScottDavis that describing Catholic schools as systemic or independent is only narrowly relevant to a few readers and largely misleading to most readers, but these differences can certainly be described in the body of the text. Onetwothreeip (talk) 09:36, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
I haven't read all of the above, this is just my observation based on the travelling that I've done in the past 59 years and observations in that time. It's rather obvious that, across Australia, schools have changed the way that they traditionally refer to themselves while general opinion on what schools are does not always follow this. Nor does the government always refer to schools in the same way that the schools refer to themselves. For example, the government high school that I went to was a highly selective boys only school. In my last year there, it became co-educational and non-selective in years 7-10. It later became co-ed in all years and to this day it's still the same but is now referred to as one of three campuses of a "college", even though there's nothing really college-like about it. My suggestion would be to look hard at Education in Australia and amend it where necessary (maybe include a "definitions" section?) so that it reflects how schools are referred to in different parts Australia, which it doesn't really do now. That way, leads can be simplified and the wall of blue reduced to something like "Hunter River High School is a [[Education in Australia#New South Wales|state-run co-educational secondary school]] in ...", with the definitions used in the lead pulled from the relevant section in Education in Australia. Note that my suggestion applies to all schools whether they are government or non-government. --AussieLegend () 10:07, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
...Education in Australia ... include a "definitions" section ... how schools are referred to in different parts Australia — Excellent idea. (Now all we have to do is figure out what the "standard" definitions for each state are.) Mitch Ames (talk) 10:17, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
I disagree strongly that "describing Catholic schools as systemic or independent is only narrowly relevant to a few readers". That distinction is at the heart of funding, management and autonomy. Catholic independent schools keep and manage fees paid by parents. They are autonomous. In Catholic systemic schools, fees are paid into a central fund and allocated to individual schools on the basis of need. Blurring the two categories is inappropriate and ignorant. I support the classification system proposed by Rangasyd, other than the superfluous use of "day school". WWGB (talk) 10:29, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks WWGB.
WWGB The discussion is about the first sentence of the lead paragraph, where we agree that the funding models are irrelevant and where it would be superfluous to go into any detail like that there. However, this is most definitely constructive content elsewhere in the article, but calling a Catholic school independent can lead to confusing it with the category of independent schools generally (private schools, generally non-Catholic). Onetwothreeip (talk) 11:13, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
@Onetwothreeip: I'm not saying that "... somehow Catholic schools are generally independent schools..." You stated that "...there is no significant difference between what you call systemic Catholic schools and what you call independent Catholic schools." I believe that this claim is incorrect. The Executive Summary, p1, para 2, here clearly states that 96% of Australian Catholic schools (irrespective of state/territory boundaries) are systemic and the other 4% are independent schools. This reference supports the distinction between systemic Catholic schools and independent Catholic schools. This is my point. To date, you've not been able to provide any reference that supports your statement. Anyway, let's move on.
@AussieLegend and Mitch Ames: Thanks. I support a "definitions" section in Education in Australia, so much that there is consensus on the terms used and the phrasing so that it reduces the WP:SOB. Some of the above is a start to help us define Catholic schools. Rangasyd (talk) 11:09, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Not significant enough to be described in the first sentence of the article. We can discuss the differences further in the article of course. What statement are you talking about that I have not provided a reference for? Onetwothreeip (talk) 11:18, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) WWGB The type-2 form I said I prefer allows for the style of Catholic school to be expressed in the third sentence of the first paragraph. That seems plenty early enough in the article for most readers. The set of people who care whether the school they are reading about is run by the Diocese, an Order, or is independent but still Catholic, but didn't already know the answer before they came to Wikipedia must be vanishingly small. The distinction might be important to the Catholic parents of a prospective student, but how important is it to someone reading about the school because we saw a former student on TV? At least three of the "Systemic" schools in the table above have independent in the first sentence, which demonstrates either confusion or irrelevance on the part of regular editors of those pages. The one I read right through does not mention a diocese or order anywhere in the article. It clearly needs more than two words in the first sentence to explain. --Scott Davis Talk 11:46, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
@ScottDavis: Please don't take the current Wikipedia description of the schools as correct. I started editing school articles and then received feedback to take this to discussion prior to further editing; mainly in relation to government/public/state schools that has now widened its discussion to take in independent/private and Catholic schools. Once we have consensus, I will go back and correct each school article; hopefully with some help .... :-)
@Onetwothreeip: "...there is no significant difference between what you call systemic Catholic schools and what you call independent Catholic schools." Systemic Catholic and independent Catholic has more to do than just funding. As described at the top of this section; in Canon Law, one is administered by a local bishop in Australia; the other is administered by a religious institute that reports to the Church in Rome. Rangasyd (talk) 12:00, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Rangasyd. My point is that it was not important or apparent to the previous editors of those articles. I'm sure it is important to a thorough coverage of the topic. The same as "Islamic" or "Protestant" will be sufficient for some editors and readers, but both terms have layers of detail that matter to some people too, and should be described deeper in the article. I still think that the third sentence of the first paragraph is early enough to clarify which kind of Catholic school is the subject of an article. --Scott Davis Talk 12:08, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Rangasyd, replying to your comment above. If the school is run by the Diocese only then "... located in the Diocese of Wikipedia" will suffice. In cases like your example, I would put it like this: It was established in XXXX and is part of/administered by/operated by the Religious Institute. It is located in the Diocese of Wikipedia. Steven (Editor) (talk) 22:49, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks ScottDavis and Steven (Editor): both good contributions. Along the same line, for most readers "Jewish" or "Islamic" may be enough; for other readers "Orthodox/reform" or "Shiite/Sunni" in, say, the third sentence may be necessary. It think we have consensus regarding Catholic schools. It would be good to close off on government / public / state schools, too. Rangasyd (talk) 09:41, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

It's true that there aren't significant differences between "systemic" and "independent" Catholic schools though, at least significant enough for the first sentence. The different structure of Catholic schools are far more complicated than that as well. Schools can reasonably be described as "Islamic", but "Protestant" would be not specific enough and generally not right. We certainly shouldn't give any significance to the diocese that a Catholic school is located in, as this is generally irrelevant to the school. Onetwothreeip (talk) 10:26, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
When in doubt, look for a relevant government categorisation system as a defensible choice. I know ACARA datasets break schools up into government, Catholic and independent as their only distinction. I see the ABS for Census 2016 give this list of Australian religions for 2016/2011. If we need to describe an independent school's religious affiliation in the first sentence, let's do it at the granularity as they appear on the ABS list Catholic, Baptist, Judiasm (obviously write "Christian" not "Christian not further defined"). Let subsequent phrases/sentences deal with "in the Mercy tradition", "German Baptist", "Modern Orthodox Judaism", "Shiite", etc, what diocese etc, and the reader can skip it if they just don't care to know about the details of that particular faith. While I take on-board that our articles are read by the world, I'm still prepared to bet that school articles are disproportionately read by Australians (and mostly vandalised by their own students). Kerry (talk) 14:02, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Rangasyd, so will the lead be as follows:
Wikipedia Secondary School is a systemic, Catholic, day and boarding secondary school for girls in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia. It was established in XXXX and is part of the Religious Institute. It is located in the Diocese of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Secondary School is an independent, Catholic, day and boarding secondary school for girls in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia. It was established in XXXX and is part of the Religious Institute. It is located in the Diocese of Wikipedia.
If the school is not part of a religious institute, this will be excluded, leaving "... located in the Diocese of Wikipedia" (see comment above). I still think there should be commas after systemic/independent and Catholic, or would it better with one after systemic/independent or none for Australian schools? With or without these commas, the structure follows in line with other schools and it may not be 100% for those in Australia, but we do need to remember about those outside. Steven (Editor) (talk) 22:09, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Note that Systemic Schools, Australia redirects to Private school#Systemic School. However, "Systemic School" is not a valid section in Private school. --AussieLegend () 03:36, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
@Kerry Raymond, Steven (Editor), and AussieLegend: Thanks; all good contributions. The more I look at this, the more we need a definitions section in Education in Australia. See Education in India#Types of schools as a good example of how schools have been defined. We also should consider merging Government and non-government education in Australia into Education in Australia, to help solve some of the definition problem. The most recent (2012) ABS Year Book provides a really good definition of types of primary and secondary school structures and operation as follows:

Schools in Australia may be classified as either government or non-government schools. Government schools are the direct responsibility of the Director-General of Education (or equivalent) in each state or territory and receive funding from the relevant state or territory government. Non-government schools can be further classified, based on self-identification of the school’s affiliation. Non-government schools are grouped for reporting as Catholic (including Catholic affiliated independent schools) or independent (other non-government schools, including Anglican). Non-government schools operate under conditions determined by state and territory government regulatory authorities and receive funding from the Australian Government and relevant state or territory government.

My feedback on Steven (Editor)'s proposals is that systemic needs to be placed after Catholic. That is, in Australia, you cannot have a systemic school without it being Catholic. Further, I propose that the link for systemic schools should be Catholic education in Australia#Administration and funding. Regarding the link to independent school, I suggest Independent school#Australia... with the proviso that this section is edited to include references. Finally, for independent Catholic schools, their location in a particular diocese is not all that important; but don't feel strongly one way or another. Thanks again for the positive feedback. Rangasyd (talk) 09:54, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
Rangasyd, in that case, it makes sense for systemic to be placed after Catholic. I think it would be better if systemic is linked to Education in Australia#Non-government schools as this article is the parent article for education in Australia and this section includes a see also link to Catholic education in Australia. I think linking to independent school will suffice as is done with other schools - the visiting person can see a general overview of an independent school and then click on the relevant country in the contents box. I still think it's a good idea to mention a diocese for a Catholic school, it would also appear last in the first paragraph. Steven (Editor) (talk) 15:47, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
Clearly there's no need to specify any Catholic school as "systemic", and the vast majority of them can simply be described as Catholic schools.
Wikipedia Secondary School is a Catholic day and boarding girls' school in Wikipedia, Wiktoria, Australia. We don't need to state that it's a secondary school if that's part of the name of the school. We also should be avoiding "school for boys/girls" when "boys'/girls' school" is far more common. It's virtually unheard of for these schools to be described individually as systemic schools in any way, so we shouldn't be highlighting that tenuous description. The location within a diocese for any Catholic school in Australia is not particularly important anyway. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:53, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
Onetwothreeip, you say there is no need to mention systemic, but then I could say why are there multiple Wiki pages with definitions for systemic if that's not going to be used? I believe this is just as important as independent and per above. Nothing wrong with saying "for boys/girls", it means the same and in line with other schools - it also helps to split the row of blue. Steven (Editor) (talk) 15:47, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
There aren't multiple Wikipedia articles about "systemic" Catholic schools in Australia though. This is not a meaningful description and is only ever narrowly used if at all. It would be much more useful to describe those Catholic schools which are distinct. The distinctions between different Catholic schools are almost unknown to the public, and can easily be described in the body of the article if necessary.
As for single-sex schools, "boys'/girls' school" is far more common in reliable sources than "school for boys/girls", and much more concise which is certainly an aim we have. There's really no sea of blue problem here since this is at most three blue links together. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:38, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
A "sea of blue" is "links next to each other so that they look like a single link", which only requires two. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:57, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes there are multiple articles; 1, 2, 3. "Systemic" is just one word so it's no big deal with it being in the intro and rather than repeating again, please see my reply above. It doesn't matter if secondary school is part of the school's name, you made the same comment at the start where there was a discussion on this. Regarding boys/girls, again see my reply above. Steven (Editor) (talk) 20:31, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
I have tried to work out whether any of the Catholic schools near me are systemic or independent Catholic schools. None of them say on the front page or "About us"/"Our story" pages of their websites. Two use catholic.edu.au domain names and two use sa.edu.au domains. One was established by the Sisters of Mercy. Another is "a Catholic school in the Salesian Tradition". Another was established by the Catholic and Anglican archbishops of Adelaide. Another is " overseen by a Board of Directors comprising representatives from industry and Catholic Education SA" which includes someone from the Salesian tradition school already mentioned. What else would be good references for what kind of Catholic schools they are? --Scott Davis Talk 02:48, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

I have created an article on the topic of the Biloela asylum seekers - Priya and Nadesalingam. I am conscious fellow editors may have some issues with this article as WP:NOTNEWS (I think it is now clearly notable) and issues with the naming of the article after the people involved rather than the topic (I couldn't think of another natural name) so I am bringing it to your attention. This is probably better discussed at Talk:Priya and Nadesalingam rather than here of course. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 23:51, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments

Australia will be taking part in Wiki Love Monuments again, from 1 September (today) until 30 September. List of Australian heritage sites, Australian Capital Territory list is currently a work in progress. Bidgee (talk) 06:54, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

What's a monument for the purposes of this event? Hack (talk) 08:08, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
What we may consider as a "monument" isn't what the competition sees as a "monument". However if the said monument is on the heritage register, it then meets the definition of "monument" in the WLM context. Examples of a "monument" is the Sydney Opera House and Australian Academy of Science Building. WMAU see Indigenous places that are on the heritage and protection registers as "monument"s but WLM see differently. Bidgee (talk) 23:10, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Would a listed shell midden count as a monument? Hack (talk) 09:59, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
@Bidgee: I think the list on Commonss should have the Australian National Heritage List too. Kerry (talk) 20:32, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Done Bidgee (talk) 23:10, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Would someone from this WikiProject mind taking a look at this article and re-assessing it? The subject might be notable per WP:NACTOR, but someone claiming to be Hutchens edited the article a few months back which might need cleaning up. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:19, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Nothing about this suggests notability to me - not really notable roles and the sourcing is absolute rubbish. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:36, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for taking a look at this The Drover's Wife. Another editor has cleaned up the COI edits; so, that's probably no longer an issue. Notability (or lack thereof) might still be a problem; I did add {{Notability}} to the article, but the editor who removed the COI template also removed it; so, maybe they are intending to further work on the article to better clarify things. FWIW, before I added the notability tag, I did do a fairly cursory WP:BEFORE to see if there were any obvious WP:RSs which might be used to better establish notability; I couldn't, however, really find any WP:SIGCOV and only got primary sources or trivial mentions kinds of things, many which are probably WP:UGC. I can be sure this person exists, and is even an actor; I can't, however, be sure he meets NACTOR or even WP:ANYBIO. So, having said that, you can re-add the "notability" template if you wish, or perhaps take the article to AfD. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:48, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
I did a little more digging and still wasn't able to find anything which looks like SIGCOV; so, I've re-add the "Notability" template myself. There are some non-English sources cited int he article which might mean he's receiving more significant coverage in non-English media. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:31, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Any sources about the Gumaroi people?

Hello everybody,

Interested by the Burning Mountain, I realized that the legend refers to the Gumaroi Aboriginal people.

Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing on Wikipedia or on the Web, after a quick search.

I can see there that there are sources: would you have any recommandation?

Or am I limited to published sources (which could be hard for me to find, as I live in France)?

Thank you, --Daehan (talk) 13:51, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

There is a web page here: Story of Burning Mountain which describes the legend, and refers to the Wonnarua people (on whose lands the mountain sits), and the Gamilaraay people to the north. --Canley (talk) 22:36, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the wonderful world of the first nations people of Australia. First up, on wikipedia information needs a reliable, published source, which can be problematic for a culture based on oral history. Three things should assist you
  1. the spelling of aboriginal words in English is variable, in this case the Gamilaraay people have numerous alternative spellings. You probably came up blank because one alternative is Gummaroi.
  2. the boundaires of aboriginal groups were often not well documented & could be fluid, due to seasonal use, conflict etc. In this case Burning Mountain is at the northern end of the native title claim of the Wonnarua people, with the Gamilaraay to the north of the Liverpool Range.
  3. As Canley says, while the dreamtime story concerns the Gamilaraay, it is actually a Wonnarua story.
That should be enough to get you started. Find bruce (talk) 23:12, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
If only that was as simple as that, a large amount of indigenous material is inadequately maintained or even adequately reviewed where regular editors have not even the interest in improving articles and category areas. JarrahTree 23:40, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Hello everybody and thank you for your constructive answers. I checked Canley's link: and it refers to the "Gummaroi (or Kamilaroi)", the latter being indeed the alternative name of the Gamilaraay people. There are indeed many alternative spellings :)
By the way, of all of these spellings, only Gamilaraay has a reference in the Native Title Register website.
What do you think about having Gumaroi, Gummaroi and Kamilaroi redirecting to Gamilaraay? --Daehan (talk) 08:46, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
Redirects are cheap. Given JarrahTree's comments above, I would suggest tagging Gummaroi as R from alternative name. Gumaroi is a bit more problematic - if you have come across a source with that spelling, I would suggest any redirect be tagged as R from misspelling. Find bruce (talk) 09:57, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
Hello Find bruce and thank you for your message.
We don't have this distinction in wp:fr. Is what I did correct?
FYI I also added the alternative names to the wikidata item.
Thank you all for your collaboration :) --Daehan (talk) 14:31, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

The content of Second Cold War#Sino-Australian tensions is discussed at Talk:Second Cold War. I invite you for input. -- George Ho (talk) 04:22, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

This article was redirected back in July, but the redirect was undone and a {{merge to}} template added instead. However, no discussion was ever started about the merge so basically the article is stuck in limbo. It's also been tagged with {{Alumni}} since August 2007; so either that tag is no longer applicable or cleaning up is still needed. To me it looks like a case of the latter and I've started a discussion about this on the article's talk page, but my guess is that this is not a highly watched article. So, if anyone has a suggestions on ways to improve the article then feel free to post them on the talk page. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:16, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

"The first telegraph office in the Southern Hemisphere" was in Melbourne - possible DYK?

Good evening all,
On or about 9 am Fri 13 Sep 2019 I just happened to be walking past the Supreme Court of Victoria (This treasury of pain, this house of power and grief... long story short: nooo waaaay am I going to change the front disc brake pads on my new bicycle without 100% knowing what to do, that's what your LBS is for) and I noticed a plaque that reads:

The first telegraph office in the Southern Hemisphere
opened for business on this site, 3rd March, 1854, for the
transmission of telegrams to and from Williamstown
Unveiled by
The Hon. Ian Robinson. M.P.
Assistant Minister to the Postmaster-General
22nd August, 1972

I did a little research, and it turns out the person behind that significant event was one Samuel Walker McGowan

Perhaps someone could take on this? "The first telegraph office in the Southern Hemisphere..." would be a good DYK hook — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shirt58 (talkcontribs) 10:43, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

The article Empire of Brazil claims that there was a domestic telegraph in Brazil in 1852. Hack (talk) 11:10, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Has anyone heard of The Australia Times? It's not clear whether it meets either WP:NMEDIA or WP:NORG. It was created in March 2016 as the "wiki site" of the publication (which might indicate a misunderstanding of WP:NOT) and hasn't really been edited since then except for minor cleanup/maintenance. It's described as citizen journalism but seems to be more of a (online) publisher from it's website. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:39, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

If you dig into the content (I looked at Science) it's of extremely sketchy quality and does not appear to be journalism. Sources for information aren't provided. No analysis of bare facts is done. Smells very fishy. Donama (talk) 06:07, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
I've put a speedy deletion request on the page. It was previously deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Australia Times. It doesn't even begin to approach meeting WP:GNG. Hack (talk) 06:22, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
Take care - there was (assume it is defunct) Canberra Chinese Press Pty Ltd (2001), Aozhou shi bao = The Australia times, Canberra Chinese Press Pty Ltd, ISSN 1445-694X - regardless of the fish, there might be a disambig/overview potential as there are also very similar titles - The new Australia times, 1990, retrieved 17 September 2019 - and the 'n' can do marvels - Australian times : news for Aussies living in London, Blue Sky Publications, 2000, ISSN 1752-976X - The Australian times, John Milton for the Australian Newspaper Co, 1902, retrieved 17 September 2019 - The Australian times and Anglo-New Zealander, Published for the proprietors by W.M. Sidman, 1885, retrieved 17 September 2019 - but what is a small 'n' between such items... JarrahTree 06:58, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
I deleted The Australia Times article under the WP:G4 criterion. Confirm the relevant deletion discussion was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Australia Times. Both articles were about the website Marchjuly linked. (And admit I didn't write a particularly good deletion edit summary.) I guess that the Chinese language "The Australia times" JarrahTree mentions might be - going by the pinyin transliteration "Aozhou shi bao", and "Times" being used as a synonym for "newspaper" - might possibly be "澳州報紙" or something along those lines. Please let my know if I can do anything whatsoever to assist with this. Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 10:55, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

A new editor User:Hankeogh19 has been editing this article adding a lot of information which appears to be all advertising and in the process has deleted some of the few references which were there. I believe these articles should be reverted. The previous two edits by User:Hannahrose972019 also appear suspect although the spelling of Umbrella was corrected in one place. Fleet Lists (talk) 04:12, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

It appears as though List of Australian films and various articles linked to from there already cover most of the information added and is inappropriate to have it duplicated here. I have already deleted a section which listed the various movies with directors which had direct external links to both film and director instead of using references. Fleet Lists (talk) 07:07, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
I have deleted a lot more, and reduced the advertising tone enough that I removed that tag. I still don't have evidence of notability though. --Scott Davis Talk 10:25, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
I have added {{PROD}} due to its lack of evidence of notability and that three of the significant contributors have edited no other article. --Scott Davis Talk 13:49, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
@ScottDavis: I didn't a realize a thread about this had already been started here when I posted on your user talk earlier today. I've been looking to see if I could find any WP:CORPDEPTH type coverage which might show that the company meets WP:NCORP, but haven't had a lot of luck. I'm finding official websites, some press releases/interviews and mentions on what appear to be questionable sources (i.e. sites which look to be WP:UGC type of stuff), but mostly these seems to be trivial or about the films the company is releasing. I'm not really finding anything significant about the company itself.
As for the prod tag you added, someone removed it earlier today which means the next step needs to be AfD if you or anyone else feels the article still needs to be deleted. The fact that the editor who de-prodded the article didn't give a reason for doing so isn't helpful for sure, but a reason isn't required per WP:DEPROD; so, PROD no longer is applicable to this article, and trying to re-prod it will almost certainly lead to it being declined by a reviewing admin. FWIW, COI editing, if any, can be cleaned up and is not really going to be considered an acceptable reason for an AfD; a lack of notability, however, is a valid reason for deleting the article. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:21, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
Now at AFD. --Scott Davis Talk 13:10, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
Since its deletion, I've created a small section in the Madman Entertainment article for Umbrella Entertainment, along with a redirect there. Meticulo (talk) 00:18, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Shire names

It seems to me that all LGA articles are at "TYPE of PLACE", like "City of Melbourne" or "Shire of Broome". But I just noticed the presence of Yarra Ranges Shire in Victoria, together with a few other similar names, e.g. Golden Plains Shire. Does this reflect real life (if you live in these places, you say "My LGA is the Whatever Shire"), or is it a matter of a few articles not meeting naming conventions? I'm an American, so aside from centuries-outdated usage, the whole concept of a "shire" is foreign. Thank you. Nyttend (talk) 05:18, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

With your example of Yarra Ranges, the LGA is the "Shire of Yarra Ranges" but the "Yarra Ranges Shire Council" is the name used by the local government organisation that administers the area. Hack (talk) 06:31, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
I concur - the dual terminology is common in most states of Australia, and has to be understood before editing in the area... JarrahTree 06:48, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
It's also not consistent across the country. For example, City of Swan can refer to both to the LGA and the local government agency. Hack (talk) 09:41, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. "has to be understood before editing in the area" — that's why I asked here, rather than moving the "X Shire" pages. Nyttend (talk) 10:46, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
There are probably more examples of inconsistencies to be found, but in general Hack's original statement is a good point to start from. JarrahTree 13:56, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
JarrahTree, you apologised (thank you), but there wasn't anything for which to apologise; I interpreted you as meaning "it's wise that you asked here". The important point is that the two of you gave me a solid answer on my question of whether or not these pagenames need to be standardised. Nyttend (talk) 00:39, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
As a resident of the municipality in question above, I just checked my current rates notice. It is simply headed "Yarra Ranges Council", and has been so going back as far as 2011. The word "shire" doesn't appear at all on the notice. The website is yarraranges.vic.gov.au. Google Maps and signage at the council offices says "Yarra ranges Council". The Annual report says "Yarra ranges Council". I did find one place on the council website where it says "Yarra Ranges Shire Council". I know it is a shire, but the council doesn't seem very proud of the fact. HiLo48 (talk) 23:30, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

the rate they are going

There will probably be no portals left in the Australian project soon - no Australian eds seem the slightest interested

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Portal:Australian_Capital_Territory JarrahTree 13:34, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

I mean - no one has ever used them. Seems fair enough to me. Frickeg (talk) 23:58, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Problem is the average australian editor is incapable of even fulling in the talk pages of their new articles properly, let alone even understand maintenance of the larger project and its components... As for no one has ever used them that is not correct. JarrahTree 00:28, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
JarrahTree could you please provide a link to the Wikipedia guideline that tells us how to "fill in the talk page of a new article properly", so that we all know how to do it. Up until I've been following WP:TALK#CREATE, in particular the sentence that says "This and similar talk-page notice templates should not be added to pages that do not have discussions on them."
Perhaps you could also link to some of your recent edits to maintain the portals, as an example of the things we should be doing. Perhaps the Western Australian portal, or the Australian one.
Mitch Ames (talk) 00:56, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
Mitch it is nothing to do with weird and wonderful rubbish from rules - that is so redundant as to be hideously out of date. In relation to the other material, due to the climate, I make no comment on wiki, you will have to find out other ways JarrahTree 03:41, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
As I suggested earlier today, if you think WP:TALK#CREATE is wrong or needs updating, propose a change to it, e.g. to suggest the inclusion of appropriate project templates. You could then provide a link to the updated guidelines to help the average Australian editor do it "properly", to the net benefit of all concerned. I realise that Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, but we have policies and guidelines for a reason - in this case to help achieve our goals. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:29, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
sorry I have already stated I dont comment re the issue on wiki, and I do not bring personal conversations to the goldfishbowl. sorry. JarrahTree 12:57, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
I rarely put anything on the talk pages of new articles I create, either. It seems self-indulgent to rate an article I wrote myself without independent review, and unhelpful to tag an article with a project that previously had no knowledge of the creation if I don't give it quality etc tags. Someone who cares about project tags usually notices my new pages within a day or so and tags them appropriately.
On the topic of this thread, I have never really worked out the point of portals. WP:PORTAL says they are "enhanced main page"s, but I don't know how a reader is supposed to stumble upon such an alternative. As a result of this conversation, I ran a critical eye over Portal:South Australia, including modifying a did-you-know claim that ceased to be "current" in 2007.--Scott Davis Talk 13:09, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Victorian coal mines

I have stuck verification tags across the coal section of Energy in Victoria. Does anyone know if the Morwell mine is still operating? Both of the power stations that are listed as buying its coal are closed according to their own articles, but I didn't find an authoritative answer to the mine itself, or if the railway just goes the other way now and carries coal from it to a power station somewhere else. Thanks in advance for some help. --Scott Davis Talk 10:40, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

https://www.lvmrc.vic.gov.au/latrobe-valley-mines/ and https://www.lvmrc.vic.gov.au/mine/hazelwood/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station claim 2017 closure of the Morwell mine and Hazelwood power station - Loy Yang and Yallourn power stations remain operating JarrahTree 10:48, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. I've removed the mine from the list of currently operating mines, and dated and cited the mine fire. That just leaves a need for a citation for predicted increases in the cost of electricity. --Scott Davis Talk 15:30, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
As someone who used to live in that neighbourhood, I'd like to point out that closing a coal mine doesn't make it go away, especially if it's an open cut mine like the Latrobe Valley ones. The mine fire, in fact, began in an area of the mine that was already no longer being used. Water systems used to wet the coal in an operating mine so it doesn't catch fire had been removed or were inoperable. There's little in place to stop it happening again. This may be opening a big can of worms, but maybe we need to address the "closed" but non-rehabilitated aspect of the mines. A closed mine is still a mine. HiLo48 (talk) 01:30, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
there is insufficient (as far as I can find) adequate in wiki or in the mining project - that discusses the process of mine rehabilitation and the requirements for the forms of mining. Land_rehabilitation is a poor lead into the issue, and probably Hannan, J. C. (John Crawford); New South Wales. Department of Mineral Resources; New South Wales Coal Association (1995), Mine rehabilitation : a handbook for the coal mining industry (2nd ed.), New South Wales Coal Association, ISBN 978-0-949337-62-7 would be a more likely candidate for the very many issues that arise... JarrahTree 13:04, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
@HiLo48: A closed mine no longer belongs in the table under the lead-in sentence "Coal mines in Victoria operating in 2019 are:". If there was an article about the mine, I'd agree it should be linked from Energy in Victoria, but without a page about the mine, I'm not sure that rehabilitation of a closed mine belongs in that article. Perhaps you could add it to Latrobe Valley or Gippsland if it fits there, or Engie? The equivalent information for South Australia is in Telford Cut (the mine), Leigh Creek, South Australia and Northern Power Station (South Australia) (the last power station to use coal from that mine) but only in passing at Energy in South Australia. --Scott Davis Talk 13:29, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
Mine maintenance of former mines is in many situations in most states more of a problem than the actual open/active mine, I do hope someone at some stage picks the subject to improve coverage here in the oz project. JarrahTree 13:33, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
Yes. I shall just re-emphasise my point that we mention the fire. The fire began in an already closed portion of the open-cut mine. Then we say it's closed, and we stop, as if that somehow is the end. It's obviously not. Closure actually makes the fire risk worse. We are writing as if the closure is a good thing on it's own. It's not, and we must not give that impression. HiLo48 (talk) 22:28, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
The fire still has the same mention in Energy in Victoria that it had, but now has a date and a reference. If there have been more fires, only one was mentioned before, and still is. I removed the row from the table about currently operating coal mines. Putting in a new table about former coal mines would need more research to identify if there have been others in Victoria. --Scott Davis Talk 22:57, 22 September 2019 (UTC)