Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian places

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Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:50, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Cadastral divisions

I just noticed someone has added information and a few articles about the cadastral (property/allotment) divisions in Australia. See Cadastral divisions of Australia. I think this falls under the scope of this project and probably should be mentioned here. Also, it would be nice to see project members have a look at these articles in an effort to standardise them and make them more accessible/useful (I never knew they existed).

This came about because a guy in the army was shot in the head last night in a training exercise at a place called Cultana and I couldn't find it on Wikipedia. Finally I found it is the name of a hundred (parish) in South Australia. There is an airstrip and army base of some sort there apparently. Consequently I created Cultana,_South_Australia] (which, on reflection, is probably misnamed but that was what the link from Cadastral divisions of South Australia prescribed to turn the red link blue). Feel free to edit/move/merge to other.

What do you think about these hundreds. Do we need an article on each hundred/parish? Each county? Donama (talk) 05:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

(Centralised discussion on the same topic at WP:AWNB#Cadastral_divisions) Orderinchaos 04:56, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

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Australian places articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

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Two places with the same name in the same state

I don't understand the policy for when there's two places in the same state with the same name: what does "the same method of disambiguation that is used in that state" mean?

Concrete example. In Victoria, there's two Bellfields: Bellfield 3081 in the City of Banyule in Melbourne which is what Bellfield, Victoria currently talks about, and Bellfield 3381 split between the Northern and Southern Grampians Shires, in the state's west. Google Maps for the Grampian Bellfield and the Melburnian Bellfield; search for similar information in VicNames and Australia Post.

So what does the policy say for this? I guess the Grampian Bellfield is not notable enough to get an article—it doesn't look like there's any development there and it's surrounded by a national park. And no-one's tried writing about it yet. But perhaps having a name clash is enough to warrant discussion.

The example given, about Kingston, South Australia, seems to be completely irrelevant, because no such place exists; instead, there's Kingston SE, South Australia and Kingston-on-Murray, South Australia, and "Kingston" is just a historical/local name.

—Felix the Cassowary 19:47, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Fwiw, the ABS distinguishes "Bellfield (Grampians)" and "Bellfield (Greater Melbourne)", which seems to be consistent with what we do with rivers like Avon River (Gippsland) and Avon River (Western Victoria). Note that the ABS does not create official names; it just needs unique ones. —Felix the Cassowary 20:21, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Yup, on the basis of Springfield, Victoria up in Mildura and Springfield, Victoria (Macedon Ranges) this is approximately the right solution. Obviously the idea of using LGAs won't work in all cases—as many localities are split—but the general idea of a mid-level disambiguator is useful. I'm going to update the article page with a practical example, instead of the current irrelevant one. —Felix the Cassowary 20:49, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Merge to WikiProject Australia?

WikiProject Australian places is looking a bit too quiet these days. The last talk page activity was in November 2010. What's more, a lot of what should be discussed at this project is being discussed at WikiProject Australia. What do others think of a merger of some sort? ClaretAsh 23:00, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Requested moves of 30+ Melbourne street names

Editors here may be interested in this multiple RM that I have initiated. My preamble:

These articles are all concerned with street names in Melbourne. (I would have include another 17, but the template has a limit of 30.) I do not support these moves; but I know that some very active editors do. It is time to air the matter, once and for all. Is it better to have an article on Collins Street in Melbourne called simply Collins Street, or to have it called Collins Street, Melbourne as at present? Which option serves the needs of Wikipedia's worldwide readership better? In almost all cases that I list there is no content in the destination article, just a redirect. And in almost all cases there is no Wikipedia article that very closely resembles the Melbourne-oriented one. There are, for example, no other Collins Streets with their own articles.

Your vote ("Support" or "Oppose") would be welcome, along with your reasons.

Noetica^Tea? 12:35, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Lake Tabourie or Tabourie Lake?

I have just returned from the lower Shoalhaven in NSW and noticed a lack of coverage on some of the villages down that way so I am endeavouring to add some content (starting with a few photos). The existing stub for Tabourie Lake, New South Wales seems to be incorrectly named. The Shoalhaven City Council refers to it as Tabourie Lake, but the Geographical Names Board website and ABS Statistical divisions list the current naming of the village as "Lake Tabourie". I propose the article title is changed to Lake Tabourie (there is already a redirect from here) and the redirect on Tabourie Lake, unless anybody can provide a definitive answer? I know it is a minor stub, but as someone who grew up in the area calling it Lake Tabourie, it is irritating and incorrect! Dfadden (talk) 11:22, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

The Geographical Names Board lists "Lake Tabourie" as the suburb's name on the Geographical Names Register.[1] The ABS uses Lake Tabourie as well. "Tabourie Lake" is the name of a village in the suburb.[2] There is also a rural place and a lagoon called Tabourie Lake. --AussieLegend (✉) 08:19, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Redlinked place names in Winton Branch Railway (Queensland)

I noticed that some of the station names in Winton Branch Railway (Queensland) are redlinks. Perhaps someone familiar with Queensland geography could start articles on them. I created Prubi, but it's just a stub. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 06:52, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Perth example

Perth is no longer a disambiguation page. Also there can be ambiguity between, for instance, the name of a place and the name of a person. I suggest changing

:*Where the town/city name has or is likely to have other uses somewhere else on earth, a link from the appropriate disambiguation page should be made (eg. [[Perth]] contains a link to [[Perth, Western Australia]], and [[Kingston]] contains links to several Australian towns).

to

:*Where the town/city name has or is likely to have other uses, a link from the appropriate disambiguation page should be made (eg. [[Darwin]] contains a link to [[Darwin, Northern Territory]], and [[Kingston]] contains links to several Australian towns). —rybec 00:20, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Sigh. No problems with your change (WP:JUSTFIXIT applies surely?) but why are participants in the US Placenames discussion all of a sudden interested in changing the Australian naming guideline - especially ones who have never shown any interest in Australian topics ever. The Australian project is not a place to fight proxy battles over US placenames. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 00:51, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I've changed it. Cheers. —rybec 01:17, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

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Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

What are the Good Articles?

Trying to improve my articles, I thought I would look at the GAs in this field. I see from this page that there are three of them. But I cannot see any way to find out what those articles are, so I can read them. At first I naively thought I could just click on the number "3" in the table and it might show me what made up that count, but no such luck. Can anybody suggest how to find these GAs? If not, are there any generally agreed guidelines, or some known good examples I can look at? --Gronk Oz (talk) 01:09, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

try Category:GA-Class Australian places articles and its subcategories. --Scott Davis ^Talk 05:38, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Muchas gracias - just what I wanted, thanks! --Gronk Oz (talk) 08:07, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiConfererence Australia 2015 - Save the date 3-5 October 2015

Our first Australian conference for Wikipedians/Wikimedians will be held 3-5 October 2015. Organised by Wikimedia Australia, there will be a 2-day conference (Saturday 3 October and Sunday 4 October) with an optional 3rd day (Monday 5 October) for specialist topics (unconference discussions, training sessions, etc). The venue is the State Library of Queensland in Brisbane. So put those dates in your diary! Note: Monday is a public holiday is some states but not others. Read about it here: WikiConference Australia 2015

As part of that page, there are now sections for you to:

• indicate your interest in possibly attending the conference (this is not a binding commitment, of course)
• add suggestions for topics to include in the conference: what you would like to hear/discuss (again, there is no commit to you presenting/organising that topic, although it’s great if you are willing to do so), or indicate your enthusiasm for any existing topic on the list by adding a note of support underneath it

It would really help our planning if you could let us know about possible attendance and the kind of topics that would make you want to come. If you don’t want to express your views on-wiki, please email me at kerry.raymond@wikimedia.org.au or committee@wikimedia.org.au

We are hoping to have travel subsidies available to assist active Australasian Wikipedians to attend the conference, although we are not currently in a position to provide details, but be assured we are doing everything we can to make it possible for active Australian Wikipedians to come to the conference. Kerry (talk) 00:15, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Folks, just letting you know we will not be proceeding with Wikiconference Australia 2015 originally proposed for 3-5 October 2015. Thanks to those of you who expressed your support. You are free to attend the football finals instead :-) Kerry (talk) 07:47, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Comleroy, New South Wales

Hi! Is Comleroy, New South Wales a (notable) place? - Nabla (talk) 01:17, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi, You might get more of a response at WP:AWNB - this project is dormant and used mainly for record keeping and a repository of links. A search of Geoscience Australia show "Comleroy" listed as an "unofficial" locality. I don't know the place, however. Wikipedia:GEOLAND may be useful. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 04:23, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

How to deal with repeated changes that contradict sources

I hope you can help me to avoid an edit war. The question concerns Epping, New South Wales, specifically which region of Sydney it is in. The sources are quite clear that Epping is in Parramatta LGA, which means it is included in Greater Western Sydney. However, Spp908 has persistently removed this from the article. On his/her User Talk page (here), I tried to explain the need for sources to support such a change. I asked him/her to take the issue to the Talk page before making a change. However, the reply consisted of personal opinions only, and the change was made again. This cycle repeated, me asking for sources and Spp908 giving only opinions and personal insults. He/she refuses to provide any sources and refuses to discuss on the Talk page. He/she is a new editor so I don't want to escalate too fast, but I don't want to compromise the article either. I am not sure what more I can do to stabilize the article - can somebody offer a suggestion? --Gronk Oz (talk) 14:53, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Gronk Oz: I took a look at the article and I see the edit war. But what I don't see is the citation in the article that says anything about what region it is in. I assumed that Spp908 had removed the citation but I don't see it in the last version as edited by you either. So I thought maybe the source is in Greater Western Sydney and just needs to be added into the Epping article. But when I look at Greater Western Sydney, I see "Greater Western Sydney (GWS) is the region of the metropolitan area of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia that is generally accepted to ..." and I feel a little worried at the weasel words and the the citation is from University of Western Sydney. Now I am full of respect for universities but they don't determine geographic regions (that the NSW Govt's job).

What exactly are these "regions"? They don't appear to be mentioned on the NSW Geographic Place Names Board website. The article Regions of New South Wales makes clear that the situation in NSW is the same as we have in Qld, different government departments dividing up NSW into smaller chunks based on criteria that make sense to them. The only mention of Greater Western Sydney there relates to it being one of the regions used by the Department of State and Regional Development (which no longer exists but appears, as far as I can tell to have become the NSW Department of Industry) but having searched the Department of Industry website, I came up empty-handed on finding a map of the regions in general or a map of Greater Western Sydney in particular. Nor does the ABS recognise Greater Western Sydney for census purposes. Is there any reliable source on the regions and their boundaries, because I'm not finding one? Kerry (talk) 23:45, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into that, Kerry Raymond. I hate it when government departments change - it makes it so hard to keep things up to date. On my PC I have a copy of a document called "A PLAN FOR GROWING SYDNEY" from the NSW Department of Planning dated December 2014. I must have taken a copy at some earlier stage of the development of this topic. It uses slightly different terminology, calling that area (including Parramatta LGA) the "West Central Subregion". However, that's all pretty moot now since they seem to have rearranged departments so I will need to do some more research to find where the equivalent is now... please bear with me. --Gronk Oz (talk) 03:23, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

@Kerry Raymond: I have added a couple of references, but they are not great (yet). There is the archived Metropolitan Plan from the old NSW Department of Planning (before reorganization) and the Western Sydney Regional Organization of Councils. I will keep looking, but I had to spend today in hospital due to a family emergency, and that will continue, so I won't be able to watch this much for a while... --Gronk Oz (talk) 14:28, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikimedia Australia Community Conference, Sydney, 15 June 2019

For more information, please see Wikimedia Australia Community Conference, Sydney, 15 June 2019 via Kerry (talk) 10:18, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Discussion on photomontage for Sydney

Hey there! A discussion on what to illustrate, and which images to include, in a potential {{Photo montage}} for the Sydney article is currently taking place at Talk:Sydney#Selection of images for a photomontage. Feel free to join in on the discussion and share your thoughts on the matter! – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 22:30, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Category:South Australia articles missing geocoordinate data

Hi everyone,

I just discovered that Category:South Australia articles missing geocoordinate data has been deleted. It was deleted because it was an Empty category. It now contains two pages. Should this type of category be protected against deletion?

Regards Cowdy001 (talk) 23:43, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I think so. Kerry (talk) 13:07, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Request for input: Region(s) of Sydney for Epping

I have kicked off a discussion of which region(s) apply for the suburb of Epping at Talk:Epping, New South Wales#Region(s) of Sydney for Epping, because there have been a lot of back-and-forth changes about whether it should be described as being in Western Sydney. For transparency, I am proposing that it is categorized as being in both the Western and the Northern suburbs (some sources say one, some say the other). But it is just a two-party debate, which is getting nowhere, and some more contributions would be very helpful. Please contribute if you have an opinion, or better still, relevant sources.--Gronk Oz (talk) 23:40, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

I just noticed that this topic was raised here several years ago at #How to deal with repeated changes that contradict sources. That conversation died for wont of sources. If you check the current Talk page though, I have put together a collection of sources that should help.--Gronk Oz (talk) 23:48, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

It seems Regions of Sydney is almost entirely uncited, probably because as it says in the lede that these regions are mostly unofficial. I have a similar problem with Regions of Queensland which is based on the view of one Qld you Govt Dept at one point in time despite the fact that other Qld Govt Dept's also divide the state into a various other sets of regions. The problem is that some region names have long-standing *usage* (e.g. Northern Beaches, the subject of previous arguments here in Wikipedia) but have no precise definitions. This then leads people to think everywhere must be in some kind of region and that there is some precise test to identify the region. Personally I think we would be better to back away from using regions for categories or in definitions in the lede para. I believe we should use LGAs for such purposes as these do have precise boundaries. I think with these ill-defined regions, we should follow the guidance of WP:NPOV and say (not in the lede para, but the geography section) something like "Smallville is sometimes described as being in the Nasty Region [1][2] and sometimes in the Nice Region [3]." In my experience these disputes tend to follow the pattern of places in Nasty Region being redefined as being in the Nice Region rather than vice versa, which I presume is because it suits the real estate agents and residents to affiliate the suburb with the nicer region. Kerry (talk) 03:51, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Regions, Sub-regions, & Districts of Victoria

I have updated the list of regions and sub-regions on Template:Victoria to reflect those listed on the Victorian Government sites. See discussion Template talk:Victoria#Sub regions. -- ThylacineHunter (talk) 04:10, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Peer review

Kardinya, Western Australia is at peer review as a potential WP:FAC. Any and all comments would be welcome. Steelkamp (talk) 06:14, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

"Nearest neighbours" or "suburbs around" in Infobox

Opinions are sought at Template_talk:Infobox_Australian_place#Nearest_neighbours as to how to handle boundary cases - eg what is displayed for "suburbs around ..." when the suburb is on the coast and there isn't another suburb on one side of the suburb. Mitch Ames (talk) 05:31, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

User script to detect unreliable sources

Main page: User:Headbomb/unreliable

I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Wikipedia. The idea is that it takes something like

• John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14. (John Smith "[https://www.deprecated.com/article Article of things]" ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.)

and turns it into something like

• John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.

It will work on a variety of links, including those from {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{doi}}.

The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.

Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.

- Headbomb {t · c · p · b}

This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Williamsdale Wikidata links

Williamsdale Wikidata links should link to Williamsdale, New South Wales, not Williamsdale, Australian Capital Territory. Willimsdale was split in 1913 and now Williamsdale, NSW has some population as a rural commuter area while Williamsdale, ACT is effectively greenbelt. The ABS links in particular are a concern with the automatic linking of population figures, but others such as Allhomes, GeoNames and theOpenStreetMap also link to the wrong Willimsdale. Could somebody who knows how to chnage these links please fix this.--Grahame (talk) 02:28, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

GAR Notice

Bayswater, Western Australia has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Onegreatjoke (talk) 01:38, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Victorian Localities & Suburbs

This is in relation to the undoing of recent updates to locations listed on templates in Category:Victoria (Australia) local government area templates...
After updating locations in Victorian Local Government Areas (LGA's), a question has been asked of me as to what is defined as "Town", "Locality", "City", "Suburb", etc.? I haven't been able to find a proper definition for "Town", "Locality", "City", "Suburb".
Technically according to Data set for localities accessed via Mapshare, all 4 of these are listed as "Localities".
For some places, calling it a "Town" sounded a lot better than calling it a "Locality". What makes a "City" different from a "Town"? possibly it's size? And as for "Suburbs", they are a bit confusing as whether it is a "Suburb" or "Town" (While metro areas are suburbs yet in regional Vic they are towns, unless they are part of a bigger city area like Bendigo where they are suburbs, and when the population is under 10 they are a locality).
I would like to get some clarification on this as I have spent around 2 weeks going through and checking all 2,978 localities that belong in the 79 LGA's in Victoria only to have those in the metropolitan area reverted to their old lists. -- ThylacineHunter (talk) 10:56, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I defined them as:

• City - population over 10000
• Town - population between 10000 & 200
• Locality - population under 200 (there are a few "ghost towns" with little or no population)
• Suburb - ignored as it wasn't clearly defined

I'm happy to redefine the population values if needed. As I did this using an excel table with formulas, I will easily be able to recreate all relevant page. If on the other hand it is decided to define them not using population values, this will be a lot harder to update.

Also, not sure if others are aware of this useful template, Template:VICcity. -- ThylacineHunter (talk) 10:59, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

There is a little problem with your definition of a city with the City of Latrobe. With a population of 75,000, it definitely fits, but within it are the "towns" of Moe, Morwell and Traralgon, each of which has more than 10,000 people. They were once, in fact, all officially individual cities, but the Kennett municipal mergers of the 1990s removed that status. In the same region too is Sale, with a population of 15,000, again, once a city, but now part of the Shire of Wellington. It's hard to create rigid rules on these matters. HiLo48 (talk) 00:12, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

You are more or less talking to yourself here...

https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&range=latest-90&pages=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Australian_places

it might help to go to the oz noticeboard - but the people who were involved

in nutting it all out probably over 10 years ago... and probably not still around...

JarrahTree 11:13, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I had commented on the user talk pages with a link to this topic for those involved with reverting recent updates involving this issue, I have also added a link to both the WP:VIC and WP:AUS talk pages. -- ThylacineHunter (talk) 11:19, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I think that defining places based solely on their population can be problematic. In the past what I've done to determine the difference between a town and a locality is to drop myself into the place on google maps. If there's a township there, it's probably a town, if its just a few farmhouses and fields then a locality. I live in a locality myself, it has a population of 600 but the closest thing we have to a "township" is a single hall and a tennis court. Obviously it takes much longer to research but it's more accurate.

As for what constitutes a suburb, Suburbs_and_localities_(Australia) is what I've been going by. But I would agree that a suburb is a type of a locality that is an extension of a city.

Template:VICcity, its useful but very prone to creating redlinks in my experience. Viatori (talk) 11:52, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

All of habitable Australia is divided into localities. These are officially bounded areas. The term "suburb" is often used when a locality is part of an urban area. Towns and cities are normally defined as centrepoints of urban areas (they are not bounded as the extent of them varies over time) and there are no particular population thresholds involved. Local government areas are defined with boundaries and represent a different overlay to localities (indeed, local government boundaries sometimes split a locality -- this occurs more in rural areas than in urban areas); sometimes local government area names use terms like "town" or "city" but their use is generally historic. Historically, there were distinctions between towns and cities based on things like "has a cathedral" (I think that was a UK definition that we inherited) or based on a population theshold (which each state determined and which changed over time as the population grew). Because our urban populations are growing so much in Australia, in most states we have seen the major capital cities grow to encompass what were once independent towns or cities into vast urban areas, making it difficult to ambiguously identify individual cities or towns any more. This is why we have stopped using towns and cities for addressing in favour of localities/suburbs and why towns and cities are now just points on the map to denote the centre points of those places. Because being a city rather than a town was once a source of great local pride, people are still obsessed with calling a place a city if they can. The term that now seems to be preferred is "population centre", but it's not a term that necessarily resonates with the Wikipedia readers I suspect. When I write about Queensland (where we have "population centres" and no cities/towns in the official place names database), I tend to use the term "city" (as in "The city was founded in 1845 ...") where the place was historically a city but use "town" otherwise. We are not here to do original research. So I think if an argument breaks out over whether something is a "city" or not, then the person making that claim it's a city needs to present a reliable citation that it was at some time officially a city. Kerry (talk) 21:38, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Because I have similar issues with Qld geography, I have an ongoing correspondence with the QLD Place Names Database team about some of these things. They have been very helpful. So you might find it helpful to talk to the equivalent VIC Govt people to get their understanding of the situation. Kerry (talk) 22:01, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

This document (which is referenced from the Gazetteer of Australia) contains the comprehensive list of geographical feature types. In terms of this discussion, the ones worth noting are below (direct quotes):

• LOCALITY: An administrative bounded area distinguished for its community and/or landscape characteristics: in metropolitan areas it is commonly referred to as a ‘suburb’; it provides an official reference point for addressing purposes (page 41)
• TOWN SITE: An original crown subdivision of land within a PARISH or HUNDRED which has officially recognised and gazetted boundaries. (page 39)
• POPULATED PLACE (pages 41-42)
  • NEIGHBOURHOOD: Does not have officially recognised and registered boundaries hence an unbounded locality: for this reason a neighbourhood name cannot be used for addressing purposes (GNR)
  • OUTCAMP: Small Aboriginal community outside of the main community
  • POPULATION CENTRE: A significant place where there is permanent human habitation, infrastructure and services.
  • SETTLEMENT: A small rural community, typically outside a larger urban area.

But it is important to note what is not mentioned at all is a definition for TOWN or CITY (TOWN SITE being a historical term) to support my claim that these are no longer officially-used terminology. Nor does this document define URBAN AREA even though they use it in their own definitions; I guess our intuitive understanding of that term applies. Kerry (talk) 22:32, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks to kerry and hilo for their views on the issue. Very careful examination of archives in a this project and some select Australian talk page archives will show the issue has been bashed around for some considerable time by now, but in most cases most of the participants in the earlier conversations have moved on in one way or other.

Usage and discussion about 'city' and 'suburb' and 'town' have wasted vast amounts of time in this project and other talk pages, and locality is preferred in many state projects. Determining anything by 'size' of population has the wrong leg being tackled, it is always a variable, as opposed to a name which is a constant.

Exceptionalism - where the terminology or usage in a state is isolated and separated from other parts of Australia, is something that should be discouraged, consistency and uniformity I would hope is a more positive affirmation for the larger project. JarrahTree 01:33, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

I like the discussion this has produced. I'm happy to go with what is defined under LOCALITY above, and using just one undivided list in the navbox and changing the navbox titles to "Localities and suburbs in ..." or "Suburbs and localities in ..." for each of the LGA's. -- ThylacineHunter (talk) 05:40, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Stony Head, 41°00'00.0"S, 147°00'00.0"E

Editors are asked to contribute to a discussion at Talk:Stony Head, Tasmania § 41°00'00.0"S, 147°00'00.0"E, as to whether:

• It's worth mentioning that an arbitrary non-notable geographic point is within Stony Head
• If it is worth mentioning, whether a citation is required to verify that fact

Mitch Ames (talk) 11:45, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Infobox montage -- new design

I have noticed that cities such as São Paulo, New York, Mexico City, Los Angeles and Boston are utilising a new style for their infobox montages. Instead of having the caption below the montage, the captions are underneath each individual image making it easier for the reader. Would this be acceptable for our cities' infobox montages? Ashton 29 (talk) 02:18, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments are used by Wikipedia editors to rate the quality of articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project decides to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:32, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Official renaming of Fraser Island to K'gari

As of 7 June 2023, both the geographical feature and locality Fraser Island are officially renamed K'gari.[3]. Comments sought on:

• Talk:Fraser Island#Requested move 7 June 2023 (geographical feature)
• Talk:Fraser Island, Queensland#Requested move 7 June 2023 (locality)
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 June 7#Category:Fraser Island (category)

203.8.131.32 (talk) 05:52, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Australian Statistical Geography Standard - draft page

I'm working on a draft of a page (here) about the standard, as with the arrival of Module:PopulationFromWikidata I thought an introduction to its data source structure would be useful. However I don't want to go too far until others agree it's worth it. Please let me know on the talk page for it. Innesw (talk) 07:26, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Towns and related Localities

User:Wikibility has over the past few days started making a considerable number of edits to the infoboxes of articles on (particularly Victorian) places. A look at at least some of these edits - adding areas, adding lists of adjacent localities, adding local_map=yes - seems to be equating 'towns' (for want of a potentially less divisive term - this is not the place for that discussion!) to SALs with the same name. Especially in rural areas, I'm not convinced this equivalance is valid. The articles are generally about the towns, not the SALs which can have much larger geographic areas. The added areas, local maps and lists of adjacent localities are for the SALs.

This process may appear valid when the population figures (especially those shown due to Module:PopulationFromWikidata) are for the SALs, but when the UCL population figures are eventually loaded into Wikidata they will not be for the area in the infobox or the area shown on the local map, and any calculation of population density will also become innacurate.

I have left a message on User:Wikibility's talk page asking them to pause their editing process and join the discussion here. Innesw (talk) 11:30, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Innesw, I had a look over the last few to figure out if there was a miss-match. Correct me if I'm wrong but you're saying the Wikipedia page for the town should only represent the town centre and not the locality but has the locality population listed as the population?

Here's the method I used.

I cross referenced the population from Wikipedia which corresponds to its underlying Wikidata item, this also matched the linked ABS stats. The ABS map boundary data also matches that of OpenStreetMap and GeoNames which corresponds to vicmap, the latter being where the area can be extracted. The linked OpenStreetMap entity in Wikidata also produces the same boundary in the tWikimedia commons infobox automatically. Wikibility (talk) 08:00, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm pretty much saying exactly that: the articles are usually about the town - the built-up area - while the census data currently in Wikidata, and the boundaries in vicmap and from there presumably into OSM and the infobox local_map maps, is about a Locality that (a) has the same name as the town, but (b) can have a much larger area and an additional (rural) population. The existing data seems to be about the Localities that are designed to cover the whole of Australia without gaps or overlaps, they are not designed to represent towns. They are referred to by the ABS as 'Suburbs and Localities' (SAL), but they are specified by the state/territory governments, not the ABS. What does better represent a 'town' is the ABS-defined 'Urban Centres and Localities' (UCL). Unfortunately no census data for these has yet been imported into Wikidata.

From what you say about the map sources, no map data for UCLs exists either (except on the ABS website). You know the map sources better than me - all I'm going on is what local_map=yes produces in the infobox.

PS: I do wish the term 'locality' was used with only one meaning when talking geographical statistics etc., but unfortunately it has two that can be quite different, and it can make things confused. Innesw (talk) 13:04, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Wikibility I've just re-read your first reply, and my apologies - you asked if the WP articles should only be about the town, not the formal locality with its larger area. No I'm not insisting on that, but observing that articles usually are about the urban town, and therefore the stats and maps should reflect that - but often don't at the moment. Admittedly there are articles about the localities (eg: Limestone), but particularly when the existence of the locality is the only reason for an article that is likely to stay a forever-stub, I wonder whether if they really meet notability requirements. Innesw (talk) 23:35, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

As this conversation appears to be between two recent editors, I do hope you realise that aspects of this conversation have been gone through a few times in the last 15 years or so - the full range of the points - the problem is that most of the discussants from the past have either left wikipedia or whatever. The question is whether anyone is prepared to find the historic precedent points - where the abs 'suburb' (a perennial trap) or the town/locality problems - were established by earlier generation editors. It appears that wikipedia in general has not got a good mechanism for clarifying where and how decisions within a particular subject area can be established and left in a point where later editors do not have to re invent things... or for that matter go on goose chases where things already have been established. JarrahTree 00:48, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

So it seems newish editors have little choice at the moment, if they want to find out what established good practice might be in this space, but to trawl through the talk-page archives of (a) this project and (b) perhaps WP:WikiProject_Australia and determine for themselves what proposed practices have been accepted. As you say, not the best way to avoid re-invention or unnecessary discussion.

And by 'this space' I mean something fairly limited: the relationship between WP articles on Australian places and ABS / ASGS information. At the moment this is primarily about the contents of the infobox, but I could see it being wider. Innesw (talk) 13:56, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply - all it needs someone generous with time to trawl through the archive to find the earlier discussions, and offer the diffs. to either clarify if whether they are still relevant (or not), in the knowledge that more recent developments might require careful re-statements. However it is very possible that abs changes over time might well establish newer standards that have altered the criterion from ten years ago or whatever. There are also now indeed correlations with wikidata (less than ten years) - that actually render parts of the infoboxes redundant, however the changes that involve wikidata and external data changes with abs or other bodies - probably need to be re-stated at some stage.

The great thing is to see newish editors attempting to develop a consensus on found info - maybe in the end the earlier discussions are found to be redundant! You never know... JarrahTree 14:10, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

It's a project I'm going to have a go at, though it will probably take a while just to establish the process and format, let alone gather the information and get new consensus.

A couple of questions:

• are there any other forums (apart from the two talk archives mentioned above) I should be looking at?
• I'm thinking of (a) an information-gathering (and presumably discussion) page leading to (b) an essay, with the drafts in my userspace. Is this the best way to go, or are there better places to create these things?

Innesw (talk) 23:19, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

In answer to your questions, this is it. It might seem a bit like an echo chamber.

Well up until a day or so go this was, in a literal sense, the isolated outlier of the known universe - see https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&range=latest-90&pages=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Australian_places

Whether any of the watchers might even choose to venture to comment, then that is the old problem of lurking versus the actual silence that usually follows.

There are significant carry over issues between wikidata and this set of problems. Well worth exploring whether the australian project participants inside wikidata might want to join in here as well. JarrahTree 01:06, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm, we are in a bit of a backwater, aren't we (I)! Still, I'll pull together the history of the issues in a userspace page (here), to avoid clogging up the history of the backwater with lots of changes, and present a coherent result when I'm done. Hopefully we can get a wider interest after that. Innesw (talk) 23:37, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

WikiProject Bendigo needs you!

WikiProject Bendigo is currently seeking interested editors to join the project. If interested, please add your name to the project's participants list and start editing! Lotsw73 (talk) 05:17, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in infobox discussion

Hi everyone. I invite you all to participate in the discussion on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#City related articles infoboxes to come to a common interpretation about the infobox image format for the city related articles. It would be of a great help. 456legendtalk 16:52, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Inconsistencies in Distances Given Between Locations

I have noticed that the infoboxes for many Australian places are inconsistent in whether they measure distances between places by road or as the crow flies. For example, the pages of many smaller cities such as Sale, Victoria often give the distances by road whereas pages for larger cities such as Perth tend to show direct distances, typically citing https://geodesyapps.ga.gov.au/distance. Template:Infobox Australian place states that distances should be by road, though I am unsure how strictly the template needs to be adhered to.

I have even noticed such an inconsistency within a single article: The page for Melbourne gave the distance from Canberra as 659 km (the distance by road), while giving the direct distances to other cities - erroneously implying that Melbourne is closer to Adelaide than it is to Canberra. For now I have changed the distance to be the direct figure of 466 km to match the other distances in the article, but I am wondering if going forward my future edits should adhere strictly to the infobox template and always give the distance by road. Timbrhoggvandi (talk) 08:42, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

If the template says road distances, then it should be road distances, which is easy enough to do with Google Maps (or similar tool). The only real problem I find is with islands without bridges, where clearly there cannot be road distances. But, like any infobox field, if the situation is more complex than the capacity of the infobox to represent, don't put a value in the infobox but explain the more complex situation in the article body, where you are free to use any kind of distance (although I would suggest making clear whether you are using road distances or direct distances). Kerry (talk) 22:46, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I have notice this too. I have fixed this on many articles of places around Melbourne's south-east but I can not fix all of the Australian places Infoboxes. I was just wandering where I would be able to post this issue so that other people in this project could help address this issue and fix it. Zakary2012 (talk) 09:36, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Module (Lua) version of Infobox Australian place

There is now a Lua version of the whole of Template:Infobox Australian place, open for testing. The Module (lua) code is at Module:Sandbox/Innesw/Infobox Australian place, the template to call to test the module is {{Sandbox/Innesw/Infobox Australian place}}. There is a testcases page, based on the testcases for the original template. Please put comments and (especially negative) test results either here or on the module talk page. Innesw (talk) 06:38, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

What is it supposed to be doing that's new, different, better? Kerry (talk) 02:31, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Nothing much - yet. It's the first stage in a two stage process. I do have a number of ideas for changes to the template, but changes will be much easier to implement in a module rather than in template code.

If people are happy with the module version, ie: that it doesn't produce output importantly different from the original, I'll start putting up proposals for changes. Some of these will be pretty minor, others will likely need more lengthy discussion. Innesw (talk) 00:00, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but why did you make the change? What is the benefit? If it is part of a larger plan, please disclose it. This is an infobox used in many articles. Kerry (talk) 22:52, 10 June 2024 (UTC)