I have nominated Kylie Minogue for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.Cirt (talk) 11:26, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
Add the term walkabout
Add the term "walkabout" or "gone walkabout" to the language collected from Aboriginal Australians. While it isn't an Aboriginal word the concept is definitely drawn from Aboriginal culture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.210.12.49 (talk) 01:17, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Rannes, Queensland
Would anyone be able to tell me what the postcode is for Rannes, Queensland? Australia Post, the ABS and the AEC all refuse to acknowledge the town's existence. This is quite strange as while it is small, it is more than a mere crossroads. Very strange. -- Mattinbgn\talk09:58, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Hey Matt, for what it's worth Wowan 10-12kms to the north and Woolein 10-12 kms to the south are both post coded as 4702. (see here --VStalk10:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
4702 according to DEST (and some other lesser sources). It seems a whole lot of places come under the one postcode, as per VirtualSteve. - Bilby (talk) 10:19, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
I have tagged Walhallow for speedy deletion as an unambiguous copyright infringement. However, the topic is clearly of encyclopedic value and of no little interest, IMO. Anyone who wishes to rescue it would be quite welcome. It may need deletion however before this can happen to remove the copyright infringing versions. Cheers, Mattinbgn\talk22:34, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
There seems to have been a long-term edit war at Ugg boots, and I see signs of impending intensification. I've occasionally been there over the months to help the article along a bit, but somebody might claim that I've been a participant rather than dispassionate observer. (Odd how much [under-/non-sourced] passion such boots can bring; I've never even thought of buying a pair myself.) I'm mightily tempted to revert the latest, sweeping set of edits; but instead could one or two others look over the article, its history, and its talk page? -- Hoary (talk) 03:23, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
They got rid of all mention of Smiggin Holes 2010 and of The Ice Dream. What spoilsports! (Only kidding - I'm sad to see it go but I don't strongly object) Andjam (talk) 04:19, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
While clening up some of my watchlist articles after a month's holiday, I discovered that a couple of articles had been created in this time that I feel may be vanity pieces and part of a walled garden. Captain Trevor Jackson and Simon Mitchell are articles on a pair of wreck divers, whose major "claim to fame" appears to be a dive on the shipwreck believed to be the hospital ship AHS Centaur but later proven (partly by these diver's efforts) to be the lime freighter MV Kyogle. Other articles include OZTek Technical Diver of the Year (an award won by Jackson whose article was created around the same time), and Esperance Star (Jackson's ship, created back in 2006 but more-or-less untouched since).
The main source cited for these articles is a Lulu-published book by Jackson; a book co-authored by Mitchell is also cited in his article, and both diver articles use a selection of sources either authored by Jackson, or describing Centaur and not mentioning either of the divers by name. The only wikilinks into these articles appear to be from other articles in the set, AHS Centaur, and false positives due to common names.
Yes, especially as it consists solely of an infobox containing information already found in the articles listed above. The edit summary at its creation notes more detail will follow, though if so it might have been preferable for this to have been created in userspace first.
I've invited the article creator to comment on what the upcoming content might be, to help determine how unique a resource this article could be compared to the existing ones. Otherwise, it might more usefully be a redirect to History of Tasmania, with an expanded section there on the colonial period. Euryalus (talk) 23:04, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Firstly, I apologise for leaving the article with just the infobox - I had something else urgent to attend to, and didn't think anybody would be onto it so quickly! My intent here is fairly simple. I have created the Colony of Tasmania article to create a seperate article about the political state that was the self-governing British Colony from 1856-1901. I intended for the current Tasmania article, to then be soley about the Australian state of Tasmania, and the Van Diemen's Land article to be about the colony from invasion in 1803 until it gains responsible self-government in 1856. History of Tasmania should cover all three of these periods and Tasmanian pre-history. I also created Tasmania (disambiguation) to discuss the different uses more clearly. I intend to do a Tasmania (island) article as well, to discuss purely the geographic feature that is the 334 islands of Tasmania. Some editors may feel this might be overkill and the whole topic could be covered within the Tasmania article. However I would point out the precedence in other places such as the different articles on Britain. Great Britain is an article about the single island that is Great Britain. British Isles is about the archipelago of islands. United Kingdom is about the modern political state (further complicated by Home Nations issue, but that is not relevant here). Then you have: Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Scotland, Kingdom of Ireland, Kingdom of Great Britain, and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to discuss previous political states that no longer exist is greater detail relevant to that period. As a historian, I feel it is important to differentiate these periods clearly here, and I think there is a large unawareness of the previous political independence of the six Australian colonies that would be well-served by having individual articles for the colonies that currently do not exist. Whilst I realise there is some editing to do here, I think this is a worthwhile project. I am starting with Tasmania, as it is where i am from, and I have a strong knowledge of the Colony of Tasmania - will look at the other five Australian colonies, unless there are any strong objections? 42° South (talk) 08:46, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
Should just be a redirect imho despite the pleadings and explanation above - it should have gone - first - to this space and the tasmania project noticeboard for the record - (indeed one of australia's quiter news boards) despite the good intentions) - it is going well out of what the Australian project has for other states - and really - unless somebody out there really still believes the adage 'be bold' - should have been explained before rather than after the fact - there are ramifications for all australian state projects - and their potential for each state project capacity or editors willing to join in to follow or be different - I suspect thwe imbalance is gonna show up very quick. This is in no way reflecting on the editor who has started the new arts - but whether the australian notice board should be the place that such an issue us brought up and whether the process that used to occur in the past is still a viable way for the creation of new ranges of articles can actually be considered here - or if enough participating editors are prepared to chip in and offer insight into the issues of multiple articles where up until now one had existed for most states SatuSuro11:00, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
End of transportation, Withdrawal of British forces, Boer War, Federation, Government, Economy and Demographics still don't have text. Why can't we just merge them all together and have a well referenced B-class article? Let's focus on developing Tasmania, Launceston, Tasmania and Hobart articles and get them to GA before worrying about all other jargon. 42° South idea would be a good one but the Tasmanian article isn't great yet. His time and effort would be better spent helping out the history sections in the Tasmanian article. BTW this editor has done some fantastic work on City of Clarence and I'm not sure why he doesn't ref the article and go for GAN but anyway. Aaroncrick (talk) 06:32, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
A POV pusher is working very hard at the above article. If his version of the article was to stand you would think there were troops lined on the borders! Is there some source of balancing material for inclusion available? -- Mattinbgn\talk04:09, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
Made a comment on the talk page, although this thing is very common on Wikipedia. In that part of Wikipedia, some admins are total POV pushers. One even encouraged extremists to RV for them because they didn't have the balls to do their own dirty work and later tried started moralising about behaviour to have the guy banned for bad conduct even though they had praised them and gave them barnstars, and consorted with socks. Same for posting unsourced allegations of war crimes on BLP. And pruned some rubbish. The among Gangulyisms that occurs there is astounding, frankly. YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV04:03, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
As many of you are aware Wikimedia-au is running a Challenge as part of the up coming GLAM Wiki in Canberra at the Australian War Memorial on the 6-7 th August, the AWM has just provided WM-au with further prizes to hand out as part of the Challenge.
Since we are nearing the end of the challenge 31st July, we'll extend the challenge until 5 August to get these prizes preference will be given to an article that has a connection with AWM collection Gnangarra06:24, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
I assume it means the challenge submission must have as its theme the Australian War Memorial or object(s) in the museum's collection. -- saberwyn00:00, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Even if it gets blocked it is notable anyway, as more uranium affects the military balance to say the least. I would put it at the same level as a arms deal or defence white paper whether it ends up digging anything or not YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV01:49, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
Article now created. Does anyone have any ideas about how to find coordinates for the project? All I can find is lot and plan details. Reaction to the approval of the mine also needs adding. -- Mattinbgn\talk01:02, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
I've added the coordinates for the midpoint between the Four Mile East and Four Mile West deposits by visual reference to Figure 1 of this report. Melburnian (talk) 04:08, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. I was trying to do something similar myself but I am a little geographically challenged at the best of times. -- Mattinbgn\talk04:17, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
Not sure where this should go - but I've noticed that a number of WWII battle infoboxes use the anachronistic Australian White Ensign to represent the Royal Australian Navy, despite the fact that the flag was not in use at that time. How can this be fixed? Slacspeak up!02:20, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Might not hurt to watchlist this - I notice it's the 15th most accessed article in the entire Australia project for the month to date. Orderinchaos00:15, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Looks like the Northern Territory could see an early election[2] but I feel that some article may need some watching for vandalism, POV editing or attacks. Bidgee (talk) 02:11, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
The whole topic is probably worth including in the events section of 2009 in Australia, although as the implications are still playing out, writing a brief item is a little awkward without indulging in speculation. -- Mattinbgn\talk03:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Canberra Meetup
I thought this was going to be spammed earlier by someone else, so apologies for the late notice. As well as a meetup in Sydney tonight, there will be a number of Australian and international Wikimedians, along with possibly some other guests, meeting at King O'Malley's pub tomorrow night (August 5th) at 6pm, as a precursor to the GLAM-WIKI conference later in the week. Details here. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 06:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
August Melbourne Meetup
A new Melbourne Meetup is being organised for Sunday 9 August, 2009. The chief programs officer for the Wikimedia Foundation, Jennifer Riggs will be in town and is looking forward to meeting some of the local wikipedians. So, please check out Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne 14 and sign up if you can make it. Cuddy Wifter (talk) 07:13, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Some sources say the stadium cost $460 million ([3], [4], [5]), while others say $450 million including the website ([6], [7], [8], [9]. I'd usually take the website word but not sure now as many other articles and even a book says $460 million. Does any Melbournian know the exact figure? Or anyone have a suggestion on which one I use. Aaroncrick (talk) 11:37, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Do any Victorian editors know anything about the topic of this article, which is claimed to be a "a planned metropolitan rail tunnel travelling from South Kensington (north west of the Melbourne CBD) to Caulfield (in the south east)" and announced in "December 2009"? The article is unsourced and appears speculative. I suspect that it may have also been copied and pasted from somewhere. Nick-D (talk) 08:35, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. I have found some concerns with the article which does not currently meet the GA criteria, which you can see at Talk:Arthur Upfield/GA1. There appear to be no active editors associated with this article so I am posting this here as the project template appears on the talk page. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 12:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
In case you missed it the The West Australian has moved from thewest,com,au to au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/ after a quick check it appears that all links to stories are now broken. Gnangarra13:11, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
This may be a little obscure but does anyone know what the old Sunday Adelaide newspaper (prior to the Sunday Mail in 1953) was called? Cheers. --Roisterer (talk) 13:06, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
I don't see why. Unless the dog has received substantial coverage from sources other than the radio show he's not notable. Nick-D (talk) 04:18, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
I'll would hold off until a little more details about the plot are released, I know that some of it has been released but I'm not going to stop you. Bidgee (talk) 02:39, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
The second one seems like an informal place of religious worship, like a house temple by people who don't have enough supporters and therefore funding to build. The latter is the largest in Melbourne I think, and would be notable. YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV01:06, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
Joining Scenic Rim (formerly Beaudesert) and Maranoa (formerly Roma) is Dalby Regional Council, which appears according to its website to now be known as Western Downs Regional Council. This new name seems to me to be a little strange as Dalby and most of the LGA is on the Darling Downs rather than the Western Downs, which to me has always meant Roma and surrounds.
Anyway, can Queenslanders shed any light on this name change so we can reference the change and then move the article> Thanks, Mattinbgn\talk00:08, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
We'll all be rooned, said Hanrahan ...
I have written an article on the poem "Said Hanrahan" which includes the above line. As most here will know, this line is commonly used to gently mock pessimists and pessimistic thought. While I can find plenty of online material that include the phrase (and even a reference to the poem), it is much more difficult to find sources that actually discuss the poem in its own right. Can anyone help at all? -- Mattinbgn\talk05:21, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
Considering announcements by Rupert Murdoch that he intends to place numerous news websites behind a paid firewall, should we now avoid using online newspapers owned by his company as references when others are available? Or should we continue to use them anyway and wait to see if websites hide articles and charge for viewing them. - Shiftchange (talk) 14:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
It would be a good idea at this point to make sure that any references to Murdoch papers include a full cite, and not just a weblink, since if we have that, we can easily verify them through paid databases. Apart from that, no need to stop using them - we cite a lot of sources that aren't freely available online. Rebecca (talk) 02:45, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
There was talk of using webcitation.org, and such like, and having a bot convert links for sources that were about to disappear, such as geocities. This might fall in the same camp. --Stephen01:39, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
Issue by "archiving" as such would be that citied news articles (Whether you use www.webcitation.org or any other free citation sites) could become a copyright violation and linking to copyvio's is a no no per WP:EXTERNAL and reliability could be questioned (If the article no longer exists on the News Corps News Network's website(s)). Bidgee (talk) 07:19, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Rebecca - News Corp sources are still OK, but the full citations need to be given as it can't be assumed that the URLs will be around for ever (the same applies to all news websites, of course). Nick-D (talk) 07:32, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
New subscription-based statistics product - TableBuilder
Just a heads-up that the Australian Bureau of Statistics is about to roll out TableBuilder, which is basically a more powerful subscription-based version of the currently free CDATA Online. With TableBuilder you can create a large number of different tables of data from the Census of Population and Housing at several geographic levels. A subscription costs $1,655 which covers only 2006 Census data (and a future release might incorporate previous Censuses as well) but remains valid for the life of the product, and is a single-user only service, so it's *probably* not going to be massively useful for most WP editors but if you're planning on updating a lot of geographic/demographic info in articles and have a huge pile of loose change it could be worth a look. And, if you only use it as a way of extracting data that is available in a less accessible form on CDATA, then it should all be CC-BY and therefore distributable. This is the kind of thing I think it would be nifty to have a grant for, but I'm not sure how that would best be accomplished. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 02:24, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
I don't think having an AM automatically grants one notability for inclusion, but I do think Banton is notable enough as an asbestosis campaigner. He is mentioned in quite a number of sources, and is well known for his role in campaigning for recognition and compensation for asbestosis related diseases. Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 07:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Well it was really a question about procedure in how to deal with attempted AfDs. I've no doubt he is notable.--Grahame (talk) 08:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Bizarre. There's about three million sources on him, he had TV programs dedicated especially to him, and Kevin Rudd all but dedicated his 2007 election win to Banton on election night. Rebecca (talk) 08:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Indeed! He is widely notable with his campaign for compensation and his fight with Hardy's CEO along with him being part of the Labor election campaigns. Bidgee (talk) 08:35, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
YouTube confirms that at one ad used On the wallaby track. I seem to recall one using The Pioneer, but that was a long time ago. :) - Bilby (talk) 11:24, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Hmm, I was off by just a little bit, it was nearly 30 years ago! The pioneer would be a good fit as the subjects in the centre panel are in the process of "having a break". -- Mattinbgn\talk12:22, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
It would be appreciated if people could keep an eye on this article, which has been the target of quite a bit of anon vandalism lately. Of particular concern is that some of it has targeted Clive Palmer, who I understand has a reputation of being somewhat litigious; this is a man we don't want to get annoyed at us. Lankiveil(speak to me)11:56, 30 August 2009 (UTC).
This is actually not true, most certainly not adding LGA data (!), but the above comment represents what is wrong with Bidgee's approach. I don't wish to presume the above comment was a deliberate error on Bidgee's part. Please see the discussion page first. Bidgee and I have both been warned today, and yet Bidgee continued to flaunt the three revert rule. [12].
"and yet Bidgee continued to flaunt the three revert rule." I suggest that you get your facts right, You kept moving my comments (Never move someone's comments if it's in replies to their previous edit but you continued) however you were the one who flaunted the 3RR[13].
I also suggest that you read up on the WP:MOS as you edits failed (in the Townsville article). For those who would like to know though I have retried as I'm sick of having to deal with editors such as ROxBo who continue to push their view. Hell my view has been we should use the SD or LGA population for Wagga but after doing so once and being told thats not what we use, I began using the (Urban Centre/Locality) populations were possible but I also know it has been discussed no doubt on this notice broad many times (Though I'm not going to be looking thought the archive).
Problem is we have editors wanting to use the bigger populations so they can make there home town/city look bigger then it's neighbours, add promo type content to promote the location, add negativity (such as pointless or in some cases removing balanced content) in neighbouring or in other cities but I could go on. People need to let go over there state or location pride and contribute neutral, balanced and cited content for the project to work smoothly saddly I do not see that happening in the near future. I am retiring from Wikipedia as I've began to lose interest with all the pointless dramas started by other users thats over completely nothing. In the my comment here I've not check the spelling as I'm speaking my mind. Bidgee (talk) 23:25, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
Just a further note. ROxBo changed Wagga's Poprank[14] from 28 to 29 however it depends on what list you look at as Urban (Which the editor is unwilling to use in the Townsville article) it's 29th but if you look at the SD it has 28th (which should remain until it has been sorted). Bidgee (talk) 23:38, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
No (whether it uses SD, LGA or UCL) if ROxBo says that Townsville should use SD population then every other location in Australia should be the same. Seems rather silly to have article's having mixed populations and statistics. Point is I'm sure it was agreed in the Anb (this noticeboard) that we should use UCL but if unavailable use SD or LGA. Bidgee (talk) 00:44, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
What ROxBo says about Townsville is irrelevant to which ranking should be used for Wagga, or anywhere else for that matter. If the article uses the UCL population it should use the UCL ranking. If it uses the SD population it should use the SD ranking. Figures need to be consistent with each other in the same article. --AussieLegend (talk) 01:03, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree with AussieLegend. I have written several times to you that each article should use what makes most sense/logical/applicable for the particular page. Hence Perth, Western Australia or Hobart, Tasmania, and Sydney, New South Wales use SD. But not Wagga Wagga - and that's fine. There is not logic in saying (I quote you) : "No ... if ROxBo says that Townsville should use SD population then every other location in Australia should be the same". (Firstly, no need to put words in my mouth please - if you want a blanket rule then say, I think we should use....). Many editors have found either method is acceptable to use. I would suggest it is better not to be so proscriptive. Please, other editors, see Talk:Townsville, Queensland for rationale for SD for Townsville if you can bear it.ROxBo (talk) 01:32, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
I think there's no problem in having different measures so long as it's clear. The sad fact is our main source is an agency (ABS) which is itself internally inconsistent in terms of its application of SD and UCL to different metropolitan areas. What works perfectly for Newcastle or Mandurah doesn't work at all for Townsville or Cairns. Exactly the reverse is true too. Bunbury's strange as the UCL and SD are very similar in shape. Like I've said elsewhere the capital cities are a unique exception as their MSR's are not defined by the ABS but by the state governments (except Sydney which I think remains defined in a number of conflicting ways). Orderinchaos17:30, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
Afro Australian sportspeople
Category:Afro Australian sportspeople was recently created. Just wondering if, one, this is appropriate and two, if there was a better title.The Hack13:25, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
After a recent request, I added WikiProject Australia to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Popular pages.
The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man02:04, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
The article now reflects the citation. I am a bit puzzled about this edit though. I can't believe I just edited a Home and Away article. I feel so dirty. I need a shower. Of course, if anyone ever needs proof of my ability to remain neutral..... --AussieLegend (talk) 12:31, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Haha :) Yeah I'm puzzled as well. :S I was intending to remove her H&W site profile as it was quick to be deleted once she left. But obviously I deleted more than that.. Aaroncrick (talk) 23:44, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
For Hydroelectric power stations I've put in the geogrouptemplate so anyone browsing that category can see a map of the power stations automatically. I've also done it for all the other power station categories. However is there a way to see a map of all power stations - that is it would recurse down the subcategories and grab the coordinates for each page?
If anyone can decipher the grounds on which deletion is being proposed, please feel free to let me know. It is stream of consciousness stuff. Orderinchaos18:46, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
This shouldn't be seen as some sort of attack on your project. The proposal is to convert to standard like on the right in which people unfamiliar with your templates can freely operate them and understand how they work...Himalayan19:00, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
I really don't see why people would find this an easier template to use. The existing template has unique names that anyone editing the articles should be able to understand and the template is well documented. Of course you can't do anything about people who completely miss the pin location map instructions. The existing template has fixed field names which enforces standardisation between articles. People don't have to make up things as they go along. This proposed template seems very limited in its scope where it needs to be flexible and too flexible where it needs to be limited. Where is the surrounding suburbs map and the inbuilt automatic temperature and distance conversions? What field do I use to put in distances and directions to nearby places? Does "image_skyline" mean I have to hire a plane so I can get an image of the skyline for One Mile, New South Wales? If not, why is the field called "image_skyline"? These are all issues that don't exist in the existing template. That's the problem with making a "one size fits all" template. --AussieLegend (talk) 19:52, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
I should probably also point out that the proposed template isn't as simple as you've shown here. {{Infobox settlement}} has an enormous number of fields that are completely redundant to Australia. That just adds complexity and makes standardisation across Australia articles much harder to enforce. --AussieLegend (talk) 20:36, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
The template as it used here is misleading. The locality of Alice Springs is not necessarily the same as the City of Alice Springs local government area and thus use of fields such as Mayor, area etc. can be misleading. This becomes more clear when you look at cities like Melbourne or Sydney. IAP takes this into account, Infobox Settlement does not. Trying to impose a North American model where it does not fit is quite frankly bizarre, but sadly not unusual nowadays. -- Mattinbgn\talk20:51, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
From Template talk:Infobox settlement, it is quite clear that there is an organised campaign to remove all region-specific locality infoboxes and replace them with the bloated {{infobox settlement}} regardless of whether it is an improvement or otherwise. There does not seem to have been any attempt to determine if the move to one template is supported by consensus (or indeed, if IS works better than IAP or other regional infoboxes). I suggest that those pushing for standardisation have put the cart in front of the horse. They would be better off firstly determining consensus, then if consensus is for a move arranging a migration program and only then deleting the deprecated template. This method of seeking deletion will cause chaos in the short term as over 6,000 articles will lose their infoboxes until such time as someone gets around to putting IS on them (It is most definitely a job I would not want to leave to a bot). -- Mattinbgn\talk01:33, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree. This is hubris. A few self-appointed template bullies have a cozy little meeting on Template talk:Infobox settlement, decide what is best for the rest of us, and how best to ram it down our throats. The answer to the latter, apparently, is to go straight to TfD, without entering into any discussion whatsoever. After all, what could we possible have to offer? The bullies have already figured out exactly what must be done, and how best to do it. Whatever we have to say will merely waste their precious time. Hesperian12:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Utter FUD,. There is absolutely no way that articles will loose their infoboxes; that is not what is proposed, and not what happens when similar infoboxes have been deprecated in favour of {{Infobox settlement}}. And, once again, please do not fragment discussion; make your points on the TfD page. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits11:31, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Don't worry I've withdrawn the nomination and I now hope we can work together to sort the mapping issue out. Sorry for not posting here first, see my comments to User:Orderinchaos for what my intentions actually are/were.Himalayan14:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
You should not have closed the nomination yourself (as a related party) and you certainly should hot have closed it as "non consensus". My reading of the debate was a clear "keep". I suggest reopening the debate and allowing an uninvolved editor to make the close. -- Mattinbgn\talk23:37, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Around the same time you were writing the above, I was modifying the closure. I don't have a problem with someone withdrawing their nomination, but declaring a bogus result that flatters your position is not on. Hesperian23:44, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Extremely disappointed with Hesperian's response over this, I did the decent thing and withdrew my nomination and withdraw my comments to avoid conflict and then I find Hesperian overided what I had done and reported me at ANI for trying to end the conflict and work with you. I think it demonstrated clear bad faith and lack of understanding and was completely unnecessary given that I had withdrawn my nomination and cited the reasons why. I believe "no consensus to delete" was the correct way of saying keep. I'd have been completely happy to change to strong keep. Obviously I wasn't trying to be flattering, I genuinely wanted to end the conflict but Hesperian's response and shown clear lack of good faith and understanding and has inflamed ill feeling further when it had been settled yesterday. I had intended to withdraw my nomination, as a the result was clearly strong keep. Himalayan08:35, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
Just a couple of points on this. Firstly, you shouldn't have deleted all of your comments as you did. After having made comments in a discussion you shouldn't change or delete them after people have replied to you (See WP:REDACT) Secondly, as a participant you shouldn't have closed the debate. Thirdly, you're continuing to do the wrong thing by deleting the comments of other editors, in ths case a sysop who closed the debate properly.[15] And, to top that off, your edit summary summary claims that you didn't close the debate when, in fact, that's exactly what you did. It's therefore more than a little hypocritical to express disappointment about Hesperian's response when you've made so many mistakes yourself, all of which could have been avoided simply by opening a discussion here instead of heading straight to TfD. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
No, I've acknowledged that the right thing to do was to come here, please see my posts to Orderinchaos. I've apologised for not respecting more of your concerns earlier, but at least I had the ability to apologise and try to resurrect the situation. I tried to close the nomination by myself yesertday to avoid a prolonged heated discussiion and the very reaosn I withdrew all my comments was precisely because a lot of them wer enot heloping the situation and detracted from my good faith intentions which I'm now discussing rationally with Orderinchaos. I have a right to withdraw my own nomination which is what I actually tried to do initially. The actions since has inflmaed what I had tried to put to rest myself yesterday and I was overidden on a closed debate that I started and I had ended. You just misinterpreted my closure. What I emant to say with Nomination withdrawn. Resounding strong keep I tried hard to appease the situation yesterday and end the conflict but this has further stirred up trouble unnecessarily. I actually wasn't aware with how many people were happy or connected with the template otherwise I would have spoken here first. Again I have apologised for not consulting you first but please assume good faith. This ongoing ill feeling is not helping anybody, despite the fact I respected your concerns by swiftly trying to withdraw my nomination. I don't know what I have to say for you to understand I actually mean well and would actually simply like to see good quality maps in your articles and actually try to help improve things rather than degrade them. Orderinchaos can see that actually I would like to move on discuss things constructively as I should have done initially and I've acknowledged this, why can't you? Please just accept that I withdrew my nomination with an obvious strong keep in the debate and would now like to work and discuss things with you without conflict. The template was swiftly kept, now we should discuss what should have been discussed before the antagonizing TFD.Himalayan10:05, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
Just incase there might not be a lot of viewers over at the history wikiproject:
I think there's a clause in WP:BLP which says 3RR doesn't apply when you're reverting BLP crap like labelling someone a "Traitor". Rolled back and semi-protected for a week. Hesperian04:45, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Geo-coding Australian electoral divisions - controversial?
I'd be interested in reader's thoughts on whether or not it is reasonable to add geographic coordinates to Australian electoral divisions, so as to provide a link on the page enabling users to traverse to a map centred on the Division,and so that the division turns up on maps which have a Wikipedia layer, such as google.
Elsewhere, User:Orderinchaos has asserted that there is something unreliable about pointing to the location of a Division, and that doing so somehow "erodes the credibility of Wikipedia in the wider world". She/he cites the changing boundaries of Divisions over time; the fact that some are now historic.
Australian electoral divisions can cover a wide area (mostly in the rural and regional areas) and having Geo-coding would be inaccurate as it only shows a location not an area. Bidgee (talk) 10:53, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
There's also the rather significant fact that electoral redistributions occur on a regular basis and there can be significant movement of electoral boundaries, especially in regional areas. This makes any coordinate data suspect. --AussieLegend (talk) 11:07, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
The same arguments apply to most areas. Cities grow. Lakes shrink. Are you suggesting that coding of anything other than a point source is sufficiently unreliable that we should not be doing it? Are we better just leaving users to guess these things? --Tagishsimon(talk)11:31, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
Cities, towns and lakes don't shrink as much as an Australian electoral division which covers a much larger area then a city in a rural and regional area and then in most capitals covers a suburb or three. An area/district is total different to a city or a lake. Bidgee (talk) 11:36, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
How would this work in effect? To use the most extreme example, how would the Division of Kalgoorlie (map) be handled? Moreover, this would need to be maintained as the boundaries of electoral divisions are reviewed every few years and can be tweaked a bit even when the changes aren't huge. Nick-D (talk) 11:43, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
I must admit I don't see the same problems with geocoding electorates, local government areas etc. as some of the other contributors here and I can see some benefits. Will it be perfect, no, but I don't think that is not able to be overcome. -- Mattinbgn\talk11:42, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
I don't understand why size is important. Maps can scale. Is Division of Kalgoorlie more useful with or without the coord I've added? One click takes you to a rough location. It does not seek to define the boundaries, it merely gives you the general area. Absent that coord, at best, you have to traverse to some other page, such as Kalgoorlie, Western Australia or Western Australia (which oddly does have a coordinate). It still makes no sense to me. What is so special about these Divisions that they behave differently to every other large area coorded in wikipedia? --Tagishsimon(talk)11:44, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
Boundary changes are more pronounced in Australia because of our low population outside of the capital cities and major regional centres, which is most of Australia. I don't see any real benefit in providing coordinate data without knowing the electorate boundaries. All that coordinate data is going to tell you is that particular point was within the electorate at the time the data was added. Maps are more useful. As an example here are the coordinates of the office of the member for Port Stephens:32°45.7922′S151°44.4032′E / 32.7632033°S 151.7400533°E / -32.7632033; 151.7400533 Now, tell me which of the following coordinates are in the electorate:
Picking up on AussieLegend's point, I concur that coordinates are more useful when accompanied by boundary maps, such as we see in the Berwick-upon-Tweed (UK Parliament constituency) article. But for me, in the absence of a map, coordinates are helpful. (Meanwhile, I haven't a clue which of the example coords is in the division - that's the whole point of getting a reliable set of coordinates added, so that I don't have to endure such guessing games. Clearly part of the solution is to get maps on the division articles. Why, though, would we wait to add coordinates? One or other will come first, but I see no argument for decrying the good in the hope that the best will come along. --Tagishsimon(talk)02:41, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
Having done a trawl of a half dozen or more Division articles ... some have maps, many do not. Of the maps, there are at least three different styles from three distinct authors. Would some concerted action to standardise maps and ensure every article has one be out of the question? If maps are provided, does the utility of a coordinate taking the user to the rough centre point of a division make any more sense to you? --Tagishsimon(talk)02:52, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
I think the fact that you were unable to determine which of the coordinates was in the electorate demonstrates the pointlessness of providing coordinate data without maps. For the record, all four of the coordinates provided were in a straight line with the endpoints less than 1.6km from each other. The description of the electorate at Electoral district of Port Stephens should have allowed you to determine, with reference to the electorate information (including a map) that's linked from within the article, that one of the coordinates provided is not in the electorate. It's not one of the endpoints by the way. Clearly the coordinates weren't as helpful as you indicate.
The big problem with providing maps is that most are copyrighted. As the boundaries are subject to periodic change, sometimes within a short period (Division of Newcastle changed before the last election and is likely to change again before the next!) the most practical solution is to provide a link to the official website, as that always contains the most current information. I concede this isn't done in a lot of electorates. Adding the links should be a priority over adding coordinate data as referring to the official website is normally the first step in determining appropriate coordinate information, which isn't always a simple thing to do. Of course, all this depends on the availability and willingness of editors to do so. --AussieLegend (talk) 04:41, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
Actually, as Frickeg and I have already discussed seperately, all of Adam Carr's images are public domain. He has individual electorate maps up. It's just uploading them one by one would take a while and nobody seems too interested in doing it. Timeshift (talk) 04:46, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
I wouldn't use those maps as some are not correct. For example, the Paterson and Newcastle maps yjay are labelled as 2004 maps actually show the boundaries established for the 2007 election. --AussieLegend (talk) 05:05, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
Just to generally concur with the consensus, the geodata adds little if anything to the pages, and maps would be fantastic - if anyone has the time to upload all 150. Anyone know the copyright status of the AEC maps? Frickeg (talk) 04:36, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I don't think that the AEC maps are usable for copyright reasons, but I think the best solution would be to put together SVG maps instead (based on Adam Carr's images, perhaps). That way they can be adjusted easily enough when boundary changes do occur. Lankiveil(speak to me)09:41, 12 September 2009 (UTC).
I should make it clear to AussieLegend that I did not humour his guessing game enough to play it. His aha! conclusions are thus void.
It is a nonsense on stilts to suggest that here is an article on a geographic area (and sorry guys, that is what it is), which usefully supports a map or two of the boundaries of the area, a link to the canonical source of information about the entity, but that we would deny users the ability to click through to a commonplace map to enable them to relate their understanding of the area gleaned from the article to the features displayed on the map. We do not purport with a single coordinate to define the boundaries of the area. Which of our users, do you think, is stupid enough to think we would, and so misconstrue such a link?
Wikipedia has just slightly more than 500,000 coordinates. I give you my assurance that a good half of them relate to areas, some smaller than your districts, some larger, but all areas, having boundaries, which are as often as not subject to change. What on earth is so different about these areas that they be treated differently?
And to the other weak argument: we more than have the capacity to change the link after a boundary change. A maximum frequency of once every five years is not exactly challenging. --Tagishsimon(talk)01:26, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
The point of what you frivolously call a guessing game was to demonstrate how useless coordinate data is without maps. That you decided not to take the example seriously does not negate the fact that the example was a valid demonstration. It does, however, demonstrate your fixed mindset on this issue. --AussieLegend (talk) 02:41, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
One point you failed to address is not how we change the coordinates (mind you - who is going to do it? the AusPol project is understaffed and overworked already) but which ones we should use. Simply using the last or most current ones is chronically misleading to readers if the major events in that seat relate to a different incarnation of it which may have been in quite a different location. Orderinchaos08:50, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Verifiability is what matters here. Cities have an official, gazetted, nominal location, irrespective of their sprawl. Electoral divisions do not. You can verify these two facts, and many more, at the Gazetteer of Australia Online. The inevitable conclusion: if an areal geographic feature has a nominal position according to the Gazetteer of Australia, you may give that position; if it doesn't, you may not, per WP:OR. Hesperian03:04, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Of course such areas should be geocoded, as should any other area or point which can be shown on a map. There is clearly consensus across Wikipedia to do this (over half-a-million instances; including electoral districts of one sort or another in many different countries), and a single local project cannot override such consensus. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits13:03, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure verifiability trumps the lot. If it has a gazetted position, I agree it should be geocoded. But if no reliable source gives a nominal point position for an areal feature, how are we to decide upon one. I'm absolutely certain that any attempt by us to arbitrarily boil an areal feature down to a point position suitable for geocoding, would have us running afoul of WP:OR. Hesperian13:08, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Side note, since a couple of people have asked the question: the standard for geocoding areas to a nominal point is to give the centroid. Not that it especially matters for WP purposes, since calculating the centroid would still be OR, but just in case anybody was curious. --GenericBob (talk) 14:13, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Firstly, the centroid changes every few years with electorates - in fact some have changed as many as 20 times - which one do we use? Secondly, how would said centroid be calculated from the electoral maps provided by the various Electoral Commissions? They don't give latitude coordinates for points. Orderinchaos08:36, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
No, they don't. If you want to calculate the centroid of an electorate, you need more precise information (which does exist, it just isn't as readily accessible or user-friendly), and you need to do a bit of calculation (unless your geo software is nice enough to do it for you). As I've already noted, this certainly wouldn't meet WP sourcing standards - I mentioned it because commenters above seemed to be confused by the idea of assigning a point identifier to an area.
While lack of sourcing is a reasonable objection to geocoding electorates here, changeability doesn't hold water. After all, the incumbent for the Division of Swan has changed (or changed parties) 19 times since the seat was created, but nobody seems to view that as a reason not to list them. It's not that hard to put an "as of $DATE" note next to such information and let readers form their own judgements. --GenericBob (talk) 14:14, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
I know that these are available in past parliamentary handbooks; I've been through some of the ones at the National Library to find designations for some of the micro-parties that Psephos omits. So my guess is that's where they're from. Frickeg (talk) 02:30, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Most are from Parliamentary Handbooks and the rest are from the publication series "Election statistics" and its predecessors (see eg [16], [17]), which is calculated to booth level back to 1984, and "subdivision" level prior to that time. 1993 onwards are available on CD-ROM free from the AEC, though 2004 and 2007 are basically the website on CD and not useful for bulk analytical purposes. Orderinchaos08:52, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Adelaide get-together with GLAM sector; Wikimedians invited
Hi all,
Jessica Coates and Brian Fitzgerald from Creative Commons Australia will be in Adelaide for an Opening Australia's Archives workshop event this Thursday (ie. 17 September). I'm going to have drinks and dinner with them in the evening after their event is finished, along with other members of the GLAM sector. If any Wikimedians from Adelaide would be interested in coming, please feel free to join me - it will certainly be an interesting series of discussions and more opinions are always good.
Pru and myself were planning on organising a meetup for when they were here, but unfortunately we only got the notice that they were coming late last week, and it was far too late to organise anything of substance. My apologies for the lack of notice with regards to this, and hopefully we can organise a meetup-proper for sometime in October.
Details
SA meetup with Jessica and Brian from Creative Commons Australia
Date: Thursday 17 September 2009
TIme: 5.30pm for drinks; stay on for a meal after 6pm
Given the obscenely short notice, the turn-out was fantastic; Jessica in particular was most impressed. A lot of good came out of it :) Thanks to everyone who came. Daniel (talk) 20:55, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
It looks like there is a POV pusher on the David Tweed article. If any Australians would like to review the changes (see here) and note if there are any badly POV bits, that would be great. However, I reverted as I cannot see what they are specifically objecting to. The editor in question made his wholesale changes some time ago (made changes like altering the section title "Investment history" to "Investment strategy"), and is trying to revert back to them without any discussion. - Tbsdy lives (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) talk21:54, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Moa is the largest island in its group, and may have the largest population as a whole, but PoW Island is the largest in terms of area. I've updated the article to reflect this. Of a little more concern to me is that some of the sentences in the article are very similar to those found on this page: http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/info/ind/footprints/community/missions/tsi/i-m#moa], could be a copyvio, but which way? The possibly infringing text has been a part of the article since its creation in 2006, whereas the SLQ page only has a 2009 copyright on it. Lankiveil(speak to me)02:58, 19 September 2009 (UTC).
Stimulus package?
This school has been brought to you by the Rudd Government ...
I went looking for an article on the stimulus package and could not find one. The Americans have an article and so do the European Union but we seem to have been overlooked (except for a small mention here.)
Well, he's moved back into Wikipedia. I've recreated the Dennis Ferguson article, which has previously been created and deleted many times before. Despite what we may think of Ferguson, I think I'm on solid ground to say that he's notable and an article is warranted. Previous articles, over many years, have been moved away from the 'Dennis Ferguson' title, as it was said that other articles about persons by the same name were about to be created. After many years, those other articles never materialised. Therefore, this article should not be moved, until sometime in the future when an article about a different Dennis Ferguson materialises, and a disambiguation page can be created.
On previous times when this article was created, those articles descended into chaos after they got filled with uncited and legally libellous claims about Ferguson, and slanderous opinion. I think a close eye needs to be kept on this article to stop the same thing occurring. It is currently fully referenced, and I propose that any unreferenced material that gets inserted into the article should be reverted. --Lester06:59, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I'll keep an eye on it, as per before. It will be messy, though, as it will be heavily targeted over time. It is good to see that the recreation was done well. - Bilby (talk) 07:22, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Template:Australia state or territory up for deletion
Out with the dust it seems. I'm getting rather sick of the deletion listings going behind our back! The only way I knew about the deletion was when I was undoing an edit on the NSW article! Bidgee (talk) 11:53, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
No doubt the cries of CANVASS will be heard, but you wont hear a mention of the organised campaign at IS to get rid of these templates. -- Mattinbgn\talk12:06, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
It was lovely of them to consult with us or at least let us know that this nomination was going to be made, especially after the fiasco last time! Lankiveil(speak to me)13:01, 23 September 2009 (UTC).
I want access to his source there's what a couple of thousand Australian service personnel and Police officers in Timor Leste and the Solomons that could come home given the nominator is able to assert that there is no more provinces/states/regions envisaged, gee it could solve a lot the tension in these countries and possibly many others. Maybe we should raising him and his source a pedestal rather then questioning his nominations. Gnangarra13:30, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that this is a subject deserving an article, although the term does appear to have been used in one book.--Grahame (talk) 01:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Yuk - that is like suggesting we all go back to those old arguments about keeping in popular culture sections in scientific articles -
I would suggest it is better to keep it separate from the main article - and it has been mentione in more than just one book as a mention - also because there are nautical conservation zones that use the terms and names of features around Tasmania including bass strait - I would argue strongly to keep the article separate, rather than cluttering other articles with the content of the article being referred to SatuSuro21:32, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi all,
I first edit the Australian state/territory infobox on 25/09 (that is, today) thinking that, in the same way for the many others I edited (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Austria) my changes were going to be uncontroversial. It was then that an user reverted the template to the previous version, pointing me to this page for further discussion. I can only say in my defence that I didn't think a simple template could engender such heated debate…
you can see my revision of the template as it would normally appear here.
My reasons to prefer the new revision:
it's undoubtedly easier to edit
allows for more precision when dealing with time zones, especially useful considering their variety within Australia (some states use DST, some don't, etc...)
automatically generates figures for density, based on area and population data
plainly states, just below the name, whether the subdivision is a state or a territory
nicknames and mottos are somewhat readable again
automatically fills the ISO 3166-2 and the "website" field using the postal abbreviation
Unfortunately, after a couple of unpleasant incidences, the idea of changing these templates is a bit touchy at the moment. With that said, at a glance, I like the way yours looks, and it addresses many of the serious problems that using infobox settlement directly has. Lankiveil(speak to me)07:23, 27 September 2009 (UTC).
Lee Kernaghan is in desperate need of expansion. I just jettisoned a ton of poorly formatted copyvio, and it's now a two sentence stub without sources. He has two notable awards, so there must be sources. Anyone wanna take it? Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Many otters • One bat • One hammer)03:10, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
The Gazetteer of Australia Online has changed its format, making it difficult to link to individual records. The old ?rec= format used by {{Gazetteer of Australia}} is still working, but it is no longer possible to obtain a "rec" value from a record URL. Furthermore, the search page links to records using the POST request method, meaning that once one has found the desired page, one cannot even copy and paste the URL. After fiddling around for a while, I figured out that the GET method is also supported, so URLs of the form http://www.ga.gov.au/place-name/PlaceDetails.jsp?submit1=WA100032232 work, where "WA100032232" is whatever is listed as the "Feature Number" of the record.
The main issue that arises from this is the necessity of updating the citation template so that new citations can be made; and this implies updating all the template instantiations to use the new URL format.
Also the web pages called up by our old links are slightly different from the web pages called up by a new search, the latter have greater precision in the coordinates. Melburnian (talk) 14:20, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Someone stated in this AFD that the AFL draft is coming up soon. Since every year this ends up leading to massive amounts of unpleasant drama with articles on new draftees being created, only to be deleted a couple of months later for failing WP:ATHLETE because they don't get a game, I thought we might be a bit proactive this year and try to come to some sort of arrangement before the deletion requests are filed. I know that there may be people who create these articles anyway, but hopefully with a bit of forward planning we can minimise the amount of ill feeling that is generated by the creation/cleanup process. Lankiveil(speak to me)05:50, 11 October 2009 (UTC).
The idea that springs to my mind is a single list for all draftees (List of draftees for the 2010 Australian Football League season or a more appropriate title). I assume that anybody drafted will have enough content about them generated by the newspapers' sports sections to support a paragraph or two in a list-type article. Any new articles on draftees can be merged/redirected here.
Once it is established who is playing and who isn't, the players can be split out and {{main}}-linked to form their own Notability:Athelete-compliant articles, while the rest remain in the list (which is kept or deleted as verifiability and the general notability guideline demand). -- saberwyn06:01, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
That somebody was me, the list already exists at 2009 AFL Draft#2009 National Draft and the table could be expanded to add a notes or comments column to house some description of the player - not that I think you need to do so. The main thing that EVERYONE needs to realise and ACCCEPT is that non-WP:ATHLETE guideline players can still exist if there are sufficient significant, reliable, third party sources for their article to exist - ie they satisfy the general notability guidelines. Look at last years bunch - Watts, Natainui, Hill, Rich etc survived their AFDs, the lower draft picks didn't. A feature article in The Age is reliable and significant, a mention on the club webpage as a new draftee is not. I agree we don't want a hundred "Bill Smith rocks and is gonna be the next Chris Judd" type of stubs, but you shouldn't rule out the rest if they have suitable references and are well written. The other thing that the WP:AFL project sort of agreed on is that players who are delisted without playing a game would be redirected to their club's "list of all players" article... but only Freo, Geelong, Port and Brisbane (I think) really have those articles up and running to date. This idea seems to have been ignored in the latest AFD listed above.The-Pope (talk) 07:34, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Soapy article which probably needs a rewrite from the ground up. I gave it a major prune several months ago but many of the deleted paragraphs have since worked their way back in. I have no interest in this whatever except wanting to see a balanced and factual article. Some more eyes would be appreciated. –Moondyne10:00, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Cadastral divisions
I added this comment over at WP:AUSTPLACES but there's not a very big audience there so...
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 ("Commando shot dead before third Afghan tour". ABC News Online. 2009-10-21.) 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? I would like to be able to make some consensus-based decisions on these. Or please point me to the spot, if already done. Donama (talk) 05:49, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
My personal opinion is (noting the differences in uses between states) the counties should have articles generally but the parishes only should if a specific use can be found for them (this one being a very good example). The great majority of parishes/hundreds are utterly non-notable. A good example of a county article can be found at Camden County, New South Wales which includes Camden plus the Illawarra and Southern Highlands regions. A few parish articles are linked from there, but not many. Parishes are strange as they take no account of population, so in very remote areas there may be just as many of them as in an urban area. Orderinchaos19:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Second what OIC says above - the unofficial consensus so far seems to have been that counties are inherently notable, but parishes/hundreds only so when there's actually something notable about them. Some parishes in Western Queensland, for instance, have populations of zero; it's hard to see how we could justify an article for them. Lankiveil(speak to me)21:34, 22 October 2009 (UTC).
Speciesist issue arises from the titles of the articles - there is a whole extensive category tree that specifically deals with Human Death- as I will perhaps not be online for a while, I trust the more experienced and knowledgable editors might offer their insights on category and article title issues where the ambiguity of animal attack might be considered with some carefull deliberation SatuSuro07:18, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
Point taken. The vast majority of snake bites occur because the human harassed the snake. Snake "attacks"? "Spider attacks" is even worse. I never heard of a spider attacking a human before. People get bitten by spiders because they accidentally put their hand, or their backside, on one. Hesperian12:13, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
I generally ignore the anthropocentric bias found in our articles, I've assumed that our audience only belong to that species, but these examples may be cause for greater concern. Without looking at the pages (which would be cheating) I immediately recall those sensationalist TV pseudo-documentaries with close-ups of 'attacking' spiders leaping toward camera. The word attack is entirely subjective:
sharks and crocs are usually trying to eat 'us' (though this is usually tourists, not Australians), the same may be said of those packs of mongrel dingoes;
for spiders and snakes it is as H has described;
the roos would usually be defending themselves, a fact I recently saw noted in a pamphlet from 1834;
proffering a view on humans and stingrays is possibly distasteful and leaves the utterers, no matter how germane the comment, open to attack.
This leaves our erstwhile adversaries, the Magpies, which I must concede do have some grounds for maintaining a grudge; there is some bad blood there! Whilst relations between the species are now generally civil, 'some of my friends' are magpies, I still find myself being subjected to an unprovoked attack by those who are strangers to me. What's up with that! ... their eggs don't even taste very nice, nobody ever goes back for seconds. cygnis insignis13:26, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
My other concern is that these articles are pretty much just lists of attacks. It's hard to see stuff like Stingray_attacks_in_Australia#Non-fatal_attacks as tremendously notable. There are also citation issues where they're described as 'unprovoked' attacks; a lot of the cases listed don't have enough information available to confirm that. (And honestly, IMHO, swimming in croc waters while being made of meat is provocation in my book.) --GenericBob (talk) 13:40, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
What is most concerning is that the creator has admitted to have created truncated titles to the articles. The potential for the project to carry out of context articles that are not tied in with articles in other projects with adequate context - is to make the Australian project look like a bunch of bloody idiots - I strongly suggest changing all the articles to what they should be so that we dont get ourselves into knots trying to explain away such stupid titles or to try to understand what we are trying to improve SatuSuro19:00, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
Deaths due to animal attacks appears to be part of the villain - of which it really should be - Human deaths due to animal attacks - lets not get shy - someone who has access to internet that doesnt cost a euro every x minutes - should go ahead and change them with no embarrassment - it will be embarrassing if we leave them as they are!SatuSuro19:07, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
I think 'attack' is particularly inappropriate where referring to stonefish or jellies. The only harm done by these creatures is to people who run into them; we might as well talk about 'rusty nail attacks in Australia'. I've moved the jellyfish/man-o-war articles from 'attack' to 'sting', but the category still needs to be fixed. --GenericBob (talk) 01:24, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
OK I have not seen other comments arrive - this exercise should be a very good one in illustrating why shortening titles for no apparently really good reason, and placing ambiguous titles is simply more problematic than just not creating the articles in the first place. The context and clarification of what is attacking what (if they are indeed attacking) is all important - the photos are the last thing you need. SatuSuro06:47, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
Interesting choice of titles, maybe they could be included with Terrorist attacks in Australia :) the government could even run a new version of "be alert not alarmed" watch out for "Kanga's with cameras". Enough joking the ABS uses the term Causes of Deaths that is at least the only reliable source so far that covers the topics, suggest Deaths caused by Crocodiles in Australia though clearly this is more likely to be the saltwater rather than the freshwater crocs. The ABS also doesnt destinguish between specific non domestic species of mamals, it refers to Snakes and Lizards as a group it does separate spiders from other bug like crawlies. It doesnt distinguish marine creatures other than sharks. In effect we dont have accurate data source to refer to. for exact numbers of these subjects we only have anitdotal newspaper reports. All of the article look like they have WP:SYNTH concerns I'd suggest they all get merged back into to terrorist article. Gnangarra15:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Got to watch those damn stingrays sneaking into our country, they look harmless but they could be carrying weapons of mass destruction. :) Orderinchaos19:43, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Ah, but Remember, it's all about those vile stingray smugglers, not illegal sting rays trying to jump the queue to rest on the sandbar. But, if we lock the sting rays up in holding pens away from the sandbar, other potential illegal sandbar sitting sting rays will take note that we are tough on sand bar control and will chose not to make the perilous journey to the sandbar with those vile stingray smugglers. --Merbabu (talk) 11:33, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Jokes aside the additions continue so when is somebody going to bight the bullet and suggest the whole attack collection will end up making the Australian project the laughing stock project for carrying such ridiculous speciesist and absurd titles SatuSuro21:42, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
There's a pattern establishing itself on wikipedia lately. I've found most annoying, however, is "-subject a- in -subject b-" appearing more and more in catagories. "21st-century heads of government in Oceania" in Kevin Rudd is one of my pet peeves. Timeshift (talk) 01:38, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
Let me make it very clear I have nothing against the editor as such or most of the subject(s) being collectively dealt with in an article somewhere - it is the ambiguity issue - such titles were deliberate (as admitted by the creator - who made no apologies for creating the short titles) - my understanding is the specific issues might be dealt with where (1) the creator of the articles is led (again) through what wikipedia is about - and how one article with a better title might serve the purpose. (2) I am concerned that the editor has an idea that a few photographs and an odd reference might seem to look like a valid article - even worse might consistute a defendable article. (3) Moving component parts of a larger issue into smaller articles work perhaps where there is already a well documented and referenced over sized larger article - this seems a reverse logic working - small lighty referenced phenomenon that should be in one article that has a different title.
All this reminds me of the old joke from very long time ago during the cold war - if a tree falls will the CIA or NSA know about it? Every animal "attacking another" is a gross global phenomenon that happens billions of times every day - to be fixated upon the very isolated other end of the food chain or statistical scale to do with humans is a fundamental error to justify articles in wikipedia - one article better titled perhaps would be sufficient.SatuSuro (cannot find the damned thingos on this turkish kezboard) 25 October 2009 (UTC)
I think the best thing is to take on a case-by-case basis with merge templates, for ones with some possibility of notability. They should be listed here. Casliber (talk·contribs) 12:47, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
I held off proposing Magpie attacks in Australia be merged back into Australian Magpie, but the removal of text did (I feel) changed the meaning of segments of text in the parent article, so I have reverted the subtraction back. There is a whole book on the subject of magpie attacks (and many studies), so the daughter article could feasibly be expanded. Casliber (talk·contribs) 13:21, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't known exactly how native Australians feel about the racial controversy, so I would love to see outside perspectives on on the article to make sure that I presented this fairly and neutrally. The Squicks (talk) 04:03, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
Looks alright to me at first glance, but I think you need to put a little more emphasis (probably best in the "The Sketch" section) that the Hey Hey episode was the second of two reunion specials after being off the air for ten years, and that the Jackson Jive had performed on Red Faces during the show's original run (although I don't know when off the top of my head). It may also be worth emphasising that Connick was a recurring guest during the show's original run and was brought back for the special because of this. For completeness, it might be worth adding Red Symons's score and reaction, with the disclaimer that Red was the recurring judge for the segment (the other two were usually guests) and was infamous for low scores. -- saberwyn05:51, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
Re the "At one point, a cartoon suddenly flashes on screen with the words "Where's Kamahl?"" - it isn't clear from the wording that this form of random cartoon commentary was the norm for Hey Hey. Orderinchaos10:58, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
Hello there. I wondered if anyone here could access this document, and email it to me? It would be a big help in improving Dick Turpin, an article on which I started work today. If its of any help, I have full access to all these services, and don't mind returning the favour. Parrotof Doom21:35, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Nick-D is the man. Thank-you very much, this user's help has made an invaluable addition to the article. Have a virtual cup of tea :) Parrotof Doom18:27, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, there was a mistake in the date. [21] confirms 4 April 1992 was the date. I'd actually like to fill these out properly (they were on my list to create but someone beat me to it) but I'm buried in full time studies until probably mid-December. Orderinchaos22:30, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
No. Students of that age do inane things all the time and very, very few of them are notable. If (trying to think of a case where it might work) the principal was promoting it and signing up the students in newsletters, that might be a different story. Orderinchaos00:52, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
One must then ask the question, by what measure is an inane act notable or non-notable? Is it decided by what a Wikipedian thinks, or do we look outside of Wikipedia at the outside media to define what is or isn't notable? Look at the following facts, and let us know the criteria for which they are notable:
Sundays and Wednesdays are the busiest nights at the St Paul's college drinking bar.
The St Paul's wine cellar stocks a large collection of stored vintages
At the St Paul's end-of-year formal, attendees enjoying a 3 course feast
Sometimes at the St Paul's formal, men take motorbike rides around the oval
In November, 2009, St Paul's College was involved in a national scandal, with students running a pro-rape group and website. The group was part of a broader culture that demeans women in a sexist and often sexually violent way, according to experts.
So are we saying that the first 4 points are notable, while the 5th point is non-notable and therefore cannot be included in the article? What is the criteria for this assessment? --Lester04:30, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
None are notable, in fact, most educational institution articles are stupid. Uni articles tend not to be, but residential colleges and high schools are invariably filled with nn patter since how many 3rd party historians or journos write about them, with proper investigation? Because they are small fry, teh journos just trust the official school material that is fed to them, eg, that the fee is only the $200 odd baseline from teh state goverment, among other things YellowMonkey (bananabucket) (help the Invincibles Featured topic drive)04:41, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Agreed with YellowMonkey. Having actually worked on a number of articles related to educational institutions, they often contain much that is truly bizarre. WP:SCFT makes interesting reading here. Orderinchaos04:47, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I fully agree with YellowMonkey and Orderinchaos here - none of those are notable in terms of St Paul's. I had wondered if the website should be included when the news broke, and the thing is that the news isn't about St Paul's college. It is simply that some people who go to St Paul's have created a rather nasty facebook group - unless something emerges that strongly connects it to the college, such as something about the college that promotes this culture, or if it has a significant impact on the college in some way, (which I guess is possible, but there's nothing demonstrating that this will happen yet), I don't see how it would warrant mention in the college article. - Bilby (talk) 07:59, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
If we're going to have a story about the college (and we're probably stuck with it) this should definitely be included - it is a widely reported scandal involving the college. Nick-D (talk) 08:06, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Actually, the SMF article points to a wider context more related to St Pauls - but I'm still inclined to tread carefully. - Bilby (talk) 08:16, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Still, nobody has given any reasonable explanation as to why the utter trivia that makes up the bulk of the St Pauls article should remain, while the college's history of violence towards women should be deleted. The current news of the pro-rape group is not the first time that the issue of misogamy and violence against women has been raised in the media in relation to the culture at St Pauls college. It also surprises me that some people here interpret it as inane, non-notable patter, or just actions by students not noted for their maturity.--Lester22:17, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree with Lester's take on this. A pro-rape group is hardly an inane prank. It's much more serious. Having read all the comments here, I would support adding a comment about the pro-rape news items connected with St Paul's to the article. Donama (talk) 01:43, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Any objective historian writing a history of the college two decades from now would spend a paragraph on it, surely. Hesperian01:51, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, Donama, though I'd support its expansion. There's a lot of material to support it, dating back over a decade.--Lester08:30, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Dispute
There's an edit war going on at Australian federal election, 2007 - apart from the fact I'm just about to head out, I'm an involved editor, so am not the one to be brokering the peace on this. Some assistance would be great. My personal opinion is that it's "retrofitting" an article about a 2007 election with comments and events that occurred or were alleged to have occurred much later and bear little relevance to the campaign, but I'm happy to go with consensus if it contradicts me on that. Orderinchaos05:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
There are occasions when one has to stand back, look at what is in dispute, and think, "Is a civil, friendly discussion on a talk page likely to resolve this or is this a case of OR vs Wikipedia policy doing clear-cut battle with only one logical outcome?" Orderinchaos14:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
I started this article ages ago but like the records system itself it hasn't gone far. It has hardly been edited and not once in the last 18 months. It was basically a few limited hospital trials. Finding sources is problematic, official government websites are marked as archived and are not being updated. The system has been superseded or plans have changed by the Rudd Government. Should it be deleted or maybe merged into Health care in Australia under an electronic records section with updated information? - Shiftchange (talk) 10:29, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I know it's a bit of a trivial topic, but I was amazed to discover last night (after it being pointed out by a non-wiki Canadian friend of mine) that neither the Spears article nor the tour article made any mention of the massive controversy currently being played out in national and international media over her Australian performances. I've done a Factiva search and the level of coverage of these aspects, while not new, is certainly unprecedented in its scale. Is this something we should address? Orderinchaos02:46, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
For some reason portions of the media are shocked she is miming or using recorded music at concerts. Personally I'd be shocked if she played completely live - it would be a very poor outcome for listeners. It seems to have attracted enough attention for notice on at least the tour article though (I am assuming there is one on the current tour). - Peripitus(Talk)03:31, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Haha, same. The tour article is at The Circus Starring: Britney Spears. The friends I have who went (strangely enough, I was at the $49 Birds of Tokyo gig about 200m away at Burswood Theatre at the time) agreed more with the "boring and stiff" / "dot on the screen" / "lacklustre" descriptions that appeared in places like The Age, Sunday Times and, of all places, CNN. Orderinchaos04:05, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
My daughter has several Britney DVDs that she got around the time we got a new, super-dooper surround sound DVD player back in 2000. We noticed then that she mimed at a lot of her concerts and the claim that it would be a very poor outcome if she didn't mime is an understatement. A lot of singers mime at least some of their songs during concerts so I don't see what the fuss is. That said, there has been some controversy, with people selling their tickets for a substantial loss on eBay. (Maybe they had a WWE match to go to?) I'm not sure it's encyclopaedic though, unless it's in Britney fan attacks in Australia. --AussieLegend (talk) 04:14, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
It definitely belongs in the article on the tour. Some media reports are claiming that large numbers of people are leaving the concerts early due to their low quality. I'd add something, but I don't want to mess up my edit history with changes to Britney-related articles ;) Nick-D (talk) 05:13, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps though though we are afflicted by recent–ism. I can't see any period in her career without news articles talking about/criticizing her miming. - Peripitus(Talk)05:18, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
If Wikipedia is doomed to have an article on her tour (which I guess meets WP:N, though routine tours by musicians hardly seem encyclopedic), it may as well include that her performances got bad reviews. Nick-D (talk) 22:21, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
I think most of these ratings are excessively high - Magpie attacks in Australia gets C/Mid and Animal attacks in Australia got B/Top, although I've changed that one. I've suggested to the editor that he might want to look at existing articles to get a better feel for how the ratings work; additional feedback would be welcome. I'm not sure whether a lot of them should be classified as 'start' or 'C'; while some have a fair bit of material, I don't think they have nearly enough structure or sourcing (other than documentation of specific incidents). --GenericBob (talk) 23:23, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Btw, I note a great deal of latitude away from otherwise largely consistent community opinion has been given to this editor. --Merbabu (talk) 01:54, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I redeleted the kangaroo one and rerated what articles had not already been rated to Start/Low. Agreed with Merbabu - I think it's a case of one gets a couple of chances, one blows them, then one gets dealt with - this guy is rapidly approaching that point. Orderinchaos03:14, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm not even sure if Animal attacks in Australia ought to be kept. I've held off from nominating it for deletion because I think it's a topic that could be the subject of a worthwhile (if minor) WP article, but I haven't seen it moving in that direction. At present it just reads like a scrapbook, which seems to me like the sort of thing WP:INDISCRIMINATE attempts to discourage. --GenericBob (talk) 13:44, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm personally of the view it should go, as should most (if not all) of the others, and would support a collective AfD but I'd rather hear what other editors have to say first. Orderinchaos13:59, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. My instinct was this should be kept as notable, and the easiest way to demonstrate notability would be to demonstrate the existence of a book on the subject. To that end I searched Libraries Australia, and came up with absolutely nothing. My instinct was wrong then. Hesperian14:51, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I've let the article creator know that these articles are headed for AFD if nothing improves. I'll give it a few days and see what happens before posting an AFD. --GenericBob (talk) 21:46, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Help Needed!
I am working on a project with my AP Biology class. Our assignment is to take a stub article and transform it into a FA. My group is actively working on perfecting the pudu deer article, and I noticed this project organization has pudu deer on its list of articles to improve. We would greatly appreciate additions/critiques to the article. Thanks!
Lisa Anne893 (talk) 03:33, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Hello Australian Wikipedians. I just wanted to let you all know that a university handled by WikiProject Australia, James Cook University, has been nominated for next month's WikiProject Universities Collaboration of the Month. If you'd like to take advantage of this opportunity, be sure to vote for the university. While you're there, consider helping improve one of our current Collaborations of the Month.
http://queenslandplaces.com.au/ - it "contains a record of all places in Queensland. It has over 1100 entries, 5000 illustrations, and 500,000 words on Queensland towns researched over the last seven years. It was developed by a team led by Professor Peter Spearritt at the Centre for the Government of Queensland at the University of Queensland." (from the Slattery's Watch newsletter)
Awesome! Thanks for bringing that to our attention. It even includes areas in metropolitan Brisbane - reminds me a lot of the old Australian Places site at Monash which covered Victoria and was taken down a few years back. Orderinchaos07:37, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Hi all. I've been looking through the flickr collection of the state library of south australia. They are doing the usual library thing and claiming copyright over all images in their collection, really regardless of the age. I want to use some of the images but am avoiding just grabbing them and slapping the legitimate PD tag on them; keeping someone who controls such a collection onside is a good thing. Has anyone been through this and has some advice on the best way forwards ?. From what I can see the library is not seeking any revenue but just wants recognition. - Peripitus(Talk)11:52, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
There have been some approaches made to the Library, but I don't know the results. As I understand it they don't claim copyright of the image, but ownership of the scan and physical photos. My attitude has been not to use the library's scans, but to make my own, as many of the images come from postcards and similar which I've been able to track down when needed. Admittedly, though, some can't be found elsewhere, and that's always disappointing, so a better solution would be great, and maybe that will be possible with the Flickr images. I'll ask around at my end and see if anyone knows how to proceed. - Bilby (talk) 12:03, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The approach I've taken with the Queensland Museum with my discussions with them, is to get them to release the "scan" portion under CC-BY-SA or similar. They're usually happy to acknowledge that the original is public domain, and usually all they're after is enforced recognition, which the licencing gives them. It's not the best solution, but it has worked in my case. Lankiveil(speak to me)21:39, 1 December 2009 (UTC).
Thanks folks, I might go and talk to them as email is a bit impersonal. Will see if I can convince them that their collection will get more recognition (and use) if they give permission to use the images. Without access to good copies of the originals we unfortunately end up with poor quality reproductions like File:First tramrun adelaide nov1908.jpg - Peripitus(Talk)21:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Does anybody here speak Norwegian? I think the creator of this article might need some help - Norwegian_Australian#History in particular looks like it's been created by running a Norwegian version through Google Translate. The editor also seems to have misinterpreted a couple of sources, possibly due to language problems. --GenericBob (talk) 11:11, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
Barricade your windows... they're coming to get you.
Looks like User:James4750 has been reading up on referencing. Kangaroo attack in Canberra 2009 and Kangaroo attacks appeared yesterday. The Canberra one to me borders on WP:NOTNEWS territory, but he'll counter that with the effect on the cull. But 800 words of prose in 13 sections and with 25 references is a bit of overkill. I'll leave it to others if you want to return to AFD territory. The talk page on the general attacks page has the following comment from him (unsigned):
This article is greatly improved from when it was first nominated for deletion when it was little more than a short list:6k with 13 references, now it has more than 80 references. Since the last discussion there was another kangaroo attack reported in Victoria. [23]
Clearly a case of trying to take the Australian project to the limits of WP:NOT and back - just waiting for camel attacks, bee attacks and fly attacks at any moment SatuSuro00:10, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
I've AfDed the Canberra article (the claim that the 'attack' lead to a cull is not supported by the reference given) and I think that the Kangaroo attacks article may be speedy deletable by an uninvolved admin per CSD G4 as it appears to be nothing more than an enlarged version of the article which was deleted. I think that editing restrictions on this editor may be long overdue. Nick-D (talk) 03:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
I've now nominated Kangaroo attacks for speedy deletion as per GSD G4 as suggested. While there are extra references and some expansion, a review of the AFD shows the article still fails for most of the reasons listed there. --AussieLegend (talk) 04:26, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
and deleted - there was no substantive difference between this and the version of the deleted article, just prior to closure of the Afd - Peripitus(Talk)06:25, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Magpie attacks in Australia should be deleted as it is a misleading article (Majority swoop not attack [I've explained below], there are other species of birds that use the work Magpie and I could go on) and most relevant content already (or did) exist in the Australian Magpie article. Only a very small percentage (1 - 5% [depending on what figures you look at with different Gov Depts]) of swooping magpies attack where as the rest just swoop to scare rather than attack. Bidgee (talk) 14:45, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
No strong opinion on the dingo and shark articles (I think those could be turned into worthwhile articles, if they can get away from the 'list of incidents' format). All the rest ought to be deleted. --GenericBob (talk) 01:31, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Deletion sorting list
My bot has stopped functioning at the moment, sorry about that. I cannot fix it right now but hopefully will soon. This means that the list of AfDs on this page is no longer updated and will need updating manually. I can send you my code if you want to fix it and run it yourself. -- maelgwn - talk11:01, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
The country, not the movie or geographic feature (at least for now). I think that this is a hopelessly vague topic for an article, as demonstrated by the first example actually being a criticism of the Howard Government. The intended scope of the article "criticism or sentiment against the history, people or government polices of Australia") is extraordinarily broad. Thoughts? Nick-D (talk) 07:07, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
If such pages exist, then it can stay, assuming it meets all wikipedia guidelines. However, when I look for "Criticism of -country-", I can't find any except for Criticism of the United States which redirects to anti-americanism, something rather different. Can anyone find Criticism of -country- articles? If not, then no it shouldn't stay. Timeshift (talk) 07:21, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
It's pure original research. An inherently POV laundry list in NPOV clothes. Like Criticism of Islam, for example, it's just a convenient place for people to dump criticism without limit and pretend to be NPOV. For notability, an article topic must have been written on previously as a coherent topic. There is no coherency between "East Timor's oil" and Taj El-Din Hilaly's comparisons on convicts have no link that is not OR. Topic is WP:SYN. The article (and Criticism of Islam for that matter), needs binning straight away. --Merbabu (talk) 10:42, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean. I use the botlist as filtered down new articles patrol list. Each day you get 20-50 new articles that the bot thinks are Australia related (unless someone's gone crazy and bulk uploaded a bunch of ship/location/plant articles), of which 5 or so are probable completely unrelated to Australia (the bot gets tricked by any mention of Australia in the intro, including in references), a few have probably already been CSDed/prodded/AFDed by the other new page patrol methods and a few are decent articles. The rest I review and tag as appropriate. Probably takes 10-20 minutes each day. I probably should add the WP:Aus tag to their talk pages more often... is that what you are concerned about? Otherwise, the bot removes the page from the list after about 4 or 5 days (seems to add to page in the morning Aust time and remove the old pages in the afternoon. Watchlist the User page list linked above directly and you can see when it is updated, rather than having to look at the new articles page. The-Pope (talk) 05:26, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for going to the trouble to explain - the tag issue seems to be an acquired taste around here :) - It is reassuring to think that someone in the project is in fact checking SatuSuro05:44, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
I see this legislation, if passed, having a real impact on Wikimedia projects given their core philosophy of avoiding censorship of material. Perhaps a topic to raise with Wikimedia Australia? -- Mattinbgn\talk03:58, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
It's horrible legislation, but I can't see it having too much effect on Wikipedia itself. There's only the one page on the blacklist that I know of, and presumably any block will just affect that page. If it ever hit the project as a whole, I suspect the resulting media outcry would have Conroy running for the hills in quite the hurry... Rebecca (talk) 07:56, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
It depends on the architecture they employ: as I recall, in the UK example, one page on WP was blacklisted. As a result, all requests for Wikipedia URLs from the UK were routed through a particular proxy, and therefore seemed to share the same IP for our purposes. So when that IP was blocked due to vandalism, a good chunk of the UK was blocked as well. :) In this case I'm still not inclined to panic over the legislation, as I don't think they'll have the support in the senate, but I'm still worried. - Bilby (talk) 08:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
The Government is hugely unlikely to block Wikipedia (can you imagine the public outcry?) - the fact that an individual user page rather than Wikipedia itself is/was on the blacklist should be enough to lay those concerns to rest. That said, this is an awful proposal. I rather like this suggestion of how to cause the government the most grief over the issue though. Nick-D (talk) 09:09, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Neverthesless I do hope someone on wikimedia australia is keeping tabs of the issue and has some means of informing australian editors of the issue from the perspective of the wikipedian australian editors SatuSuro09:36, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
(To Nick-D) The problem is that some filtering models (eg the UK) will only block one page in Wikipedia. But for the block to work, they isolate all requests for en.wikipedia.org and send them to a proxy, which then determines whether or not the specific request is for the blocked page, or for a page which isn't on the black list. If the latter, the proxy requests the page, meaning that the one URL handles the request. That said, I have no diea if that's the model proposed here - I should learn more about this. :) - 12:07, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Surely any due diligence assessment of mandatory filtering will already have identified the Internet Watch Foundation incident as a key case study.... not that I see any evidence of due diligence here. :-( Hesperian13:11, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
However, in situations where there is a potential for very high traffic sites, such as YouTube, to have pages on the filtering list, this could result in significantly higher traffic rates passing through the filter, even though the specific pages being accessed are not those on the blacklist. This could cause additional load on the filtering infrastructure and subsequent performance bottlenecks.
To support peaks in traffic, vendors recommend allowing additional network capacity of approximately four times the estimated traffic at the filter.
It's only one user page at the moment, but you can bet if this passed Bondage (sexual) will be added, as bondage is not suitable for X18+ hence is RC: "Fetishes such as body piercing, application of substances such as candle wax, ‘golden showers’, bondage, spanking or fisting are not permitted." These are the video guidelines, but Internet pages are classified with them. TRS-80 (talk) 06:20, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Candle wax? Even soft-core faux-porn like Basic Instinct gets away with candle-wax. There must be more to it than this quote. Hesperian06:36, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Apparently R18+ faux-porn can include things not allowed in X18+ real porn. Yeah, it makes no sense to me either. TRS-80 (talk) 17:34, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
I see this legislation, if passed, having a real impact on Wikimedia projects given their core philosophy of avoiding censorship of material. Perhaps a topic to raise with Wikimedia Australia? -- Mattinbgn\talk03:58, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
It's horrible legislation, but I can't see it having too much effect on Wikipedia itself. There's only the one page on the blacklist that I know of, and presumably any block will just affect that page. If it ever hit the project as a whole, I suspect the resulting media outcry would have Conroy running for the hills in quite the hurry... Rebecca (talk) 07:56, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
It depends on the architecture they employ: as I recall, in the UK example, one page on WP was blacklisted. As a result, all requests for Wikipedia URLs from the UK were routed through a particular proxy, and therefore seemed to share the same IP for our purposes. So when that IP was blocked due to vandalism, a good chunk of the UK was blocked as well. :) In this case I'm still not inclined to panic over the legislation, as I don't think they'll have the support in the senate, but I'm still worried. - Bilby (talk) 08:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
The Government is hugely unlikely to block Wikipedia (can you imagine the public outcry?) - the fact that an individual user page rather than Wikipedia itself is/was on the blacklist should be enough to lay those concerns to rest. That said, this is an awful proposal. I rather like this suggestion of how to cause the government the most grief over the issue though. Nick-D (talk) 09:09, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Neverthesless I do hope someone on wikimedia australia is keeping tabs of the issue and has some means of informing australian editors of the issue from the perspective of the wikipedian australian editors SatuSuro09:36, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
(To Nick-D) The problem is that some filtering models (eg the UK) will only block one page in Wikipedia. But for the block to work, they isolate all requests for en.wikipedia.org and send them to a proxy, which then determines whether or not the specific request is for the blocked page, or for a page which isn't on the black list. If the latter, the proxy requests the page, meaning that the one URL handles the request. That said, I have no diea if that's the model proposed here - I should learn more about this. :) - 12:07, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Surely any due diligence assessment of mandatory filtering will already have identified the Internet Watch Foundation incident as a key case study.... not that I see any evidence of due diligence here. :-( Hesperian13:11, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
However, in situations where there is a potential for very high traffic sites, such as YouTube, to have pages on the filtering list, this could result in significantly higher traffic rates passing through the filter, even though the specific pages being accessed are not those on the blacklist. This could cause additional load on the filtering infrastructure and subsequent performance bottlenecks.
To support peaks in traffic, vendors recommend allowing additional network capacity of approximately four times the estimated traffic at the filter.
It's only one user page at the moment, but you can bet if this passed Bondage (sexual) will be added, as bondage is not suitable for X18+ hence is RC: "Fetishes such as body piercing, application of substances such as candle wax, ‘golden showers’, bondage, spanking or fisting are not permitted." These are the video guidelines, but Internet pages are classified with them. TRS-80 (talk) 06:20, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Candle wax? Even soft-core faux-porn like Basic Instinct gets away with candle-wax. There must be more to it than this quote. Hesperian06:36, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Apparently R18+ faux-porn can include things not allowed in X18+ real porn. Yeah, it makes no sense to me either. TRS-80 (talk) 17:34, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Sorry for delay in responding - not sure of the outcome yet - or the elements of the debate there - as to which way we should go here on the Australian project SatuSuro03:29, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm of the opinion that these are just a form of trivia section, because there is often little intersection between where a person lives and their claim to fame (and if there was, it should be mentioned in the prose describing the location's history). That said, I rarely involve myself in location articles, and probably wouldn't go around removing such lists if I did (I leave the regular editors of those subjects to sort out the status quo). -- saberwyn04:36, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
There are hundeds of articles which contain a section on Notable Citizens. This would suggest that many editors find the section to be relevant. I find the information in these sections to can be very interesting, which is why I have contributed a section to to many of my local articles. If you do not have a good reason for deletion I suggest you do not impose your view on the work of other editors. Cuddy Wifter (talk) 07:08, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
I think it can be important enough to include when a particular town has poor/low demographic values associated with it. The Queensland town of Cherbourg is a good example. I would not support a blanket removal of notable people from city/town articles. - Shiftchange (talk) 08:32, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
I believe it should be done on the basis of sourcing. If it can be proven, I have no problem with it. If (as is far more often the case) no reliable source states it, we should remove it per WP:V/WP:OR. Orderinchaos09:56, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
I think it is appropriate to list notable people from a small country town, as small country towns hang their hat on that sort of thing. But it is mostly silly to list notable people from Sydney, Melbourne, etc.
I agree with Orderinchaos about sourcing, with the proviso that the sources should be locality-oriented. An reliable source about Heath Ledger that says he was born in Perth is justification for adding this information to Heath Ledger, but not to Perth, Western Australia. In order to add it to the latter article you would have to show me a reliable source about Perth, which lists Ledger as a "favourite son" or whatnot. Hesperian14:23, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
I would say don't remove lists of notable people unless the list becomes a ridiculous size. In Tasmania you could expect that Hobart would have too many to mention, but a suburb may not. Of course as Orderinchaos says it must be supportable by a reference. You will notice that there will be a serious bias to the present with current sporting personalities and actors being mentioned, but hardly any from 30 years ago. It would be even better to have them appearing in a sentence to say how they contribute to the history of the place. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:17, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Such lists are very crufty. A notable person living in a suburb is really of no consequence or import to the suburb. What about people who have died 50, 100 years ago? Thus, it's also very recentish. --Merbabu (talk) 01:41, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Depends on the source for notability. If you read a book on a place/suburb and a person is discussed as a resident, in context, then there is a good case for inclusion. Just including someone because they lived there is a bit original-researchy as it lends importance to the relationship that is unsupported. - Peripitus(Talk)03:04, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I have no great objection to such lists, and have added to them where they exist, but in my opinion one of the problems with these lists and categories is how do you define where the subjects are "from"? Born there, lived there as a child, live there now? Particularly when it gets down to the suburb level, the listed place of birth may refer to the hospital where they were born, or their childhood home. On the other hand, the advantage of such a list over a category or infobox listing is that the list can define how the subject is from that place (born there, educated there, etc.) --Canley (talk) 03:10, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
This section began with a question about the relevance of a section on Notable people in a town article. After one reply (implying it was trivia) the editor decided to remove the section from Tasmanian articles. I reverted his edits, but another regular member of the Noticeboard cabal reverted my edit. A couple of other regular members of this Board have made generalised statements that it is cruft and recentish.. It is also history. Here is a section I wrote for Prahran. See any recentism here, or a list of historical and notable citizens.
Is it any wonder that Wikipedia has a problem retaining editors when their work is dismissed on the opinion of a couple of editors. What happened to the idea of improving an article rather than just deleting. I sometimes wonder why I bother editing. Cuddy Wifter (talk) 04:44, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I see two problems with the Prahan list. Were those listed as being born in Prahan actually delivered in a home/hospital there and lived there or somewhere else? Are you a notable citizen of a place if you lived a good deal of your life elsewhere? Is it really encyclopaedic to know where Medhurst/Judd/Boyle/Safran/BT/Taylor-Cotter live/worked? How do you know if they move? And if it is all such a good and notable section, why are there no references. I think that if someone is notable enough to have been strongly associated with a place, then it should be written in prose, not a list, such as Rolf Harris in Bassendean, or the Boon/Ponting examples above. It's the same as trivia lists - if you can't work it into the prose then it probably isn't worth including. The-Pope (talk) 05:31, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I did not claim that it was a good example of a notable section, only that it was an example which did not suffer from the critism of recentism. Cuddy Wifter (talk) 06:18, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Should we have an article on this guy? I was doing some reading of 1974 newspapers for an unrelated purpose and Ermolenko, a young Russian violinist who attempted to defect at Perth Airport in that year, was major news. Orderinchaos23:17, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Here's what Political Chronicle had to say about it: "The International Society of Music Education Conference held in Perth in August concluded with a request by the Russian cellist Georgi Ermolenko (18) to take up residence in Australia. The request was initially made to Commonwealth police at the airport shortly before the Russians were due to depart. After four days of diplomatic and other bungling Ermolenko, who had been handed back to the Russians only 24 hours after his request to remain in Australia, was flown out of Australia by the RAAF together with seven other members of the Russian party. In the meantime, various attempts had been made by legal, student and union groups to prevent Ermolenko being taken back to Russia against his will. All that is clear is that it is not possible to know whether or not Ermolenko finally wished to remain in Australia nor what kinds of pressures were exerted on him and that the responsibility for his uncertainty lies with the Foreign Affairs Department's inept handling of the situation." There's almost half a page about it in the same edition of the AJPH under their regular foreign policy review. Orderinchaos02:00, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Interestingly it seems that despite the trouble of 1974, he emigrated in 1975 with his family and returned several times in the late 70s to perform at the Perth Festival[24][[25]] Hack (talk) 03:45, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
South Australian towns
A friendly and well meaning Canadian editor Kyle1278 (talk·contribs) has created a plethora of South Australian town articles, all of which look exactly like Yeelanna, South Australia.
I am not sure how helpful these articles really are but given they exist they probably should be improved a little - infobox, population, LGA and distance to Adelaide added to at least give the article some depth. Any willing assistance would be welcome. Some resources can be found at User:Mattinbgn/Resources#Places links. A list of the articles requiring expanding is here and working backward through his/her edit history. Cheers, Mattinbgn\talk11:56, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
I love filling out these details from the ABS, BoM, AEC, etc. so I'll do as many as I can. I'm working on Yahl at the moment in case anyone else is interested. --Canley (talk) 00:22, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
I've gone through and deleted a whole bunch that didn't appear anywhere (ABS, AEC, looked carefully on Google Maps to gauge the likely scope for an article and isolated if I was unsure). There'll be a few misfires here and there, as Mattinbgn has pointed out to me (I restored two, Yeelanna and Corny Point). I also have a list I wasn't sure about but kept anyway - it is as follows. Most of these didn't appear anywhere either, but at least looked like they were or might have been something on Google Maps.
Sorry about creating any that were not notable i really did mean well i will be sure that id I create more I will make sure to find more sources. I admit i was rushing through creating a lot without properly looking at the reference. I just have one request is that if you delete anymore just to notify me because it was a surprise going through my list and seeing a lot of red links. Cheers. Kyle127804:30, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
Some help from a friendly administrator please ...
Can a friendly admin please move the following, unnecessary disambiguated, articles to their correct article names please:
Our (unnecessary IMO) policy of compulsory disambiguation for settlement names sometimes (mis)leads editors into believing that all Australian geographical names need disambiguating. See here for another, now fixed, example. -- Mattinbgn\talk20:02, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
If and when articles are created, then it will be necessary to disambiguate. I am pretty sure there is more than person called Ian Thorpe in the world but until another article is created, it seems pointless to me to disambiguate. -- Mattinbgn\talk23:53, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
No GA drive this year! Just when I join the party ... always next year :( Aaroncrick (talk) Review me!
I'm far too busy at the moment and seems to that my break will be short lived meaning I'll have little or no time or Wiki and Commons in the coming weeks, so that rules out the rest of 2009 (whats left of it) and also 2010. :( Bidgee (talk) 10:47, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm also pretty busy, and my four or five logical choices of article to get there are require a lot of work and are actually quite low priorities. I contributed two to the last one. Orderinchaos11:31, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to see a snowball effect - many hands make light work. I bet Frickeg would join in. Others please apply! By-elections are already done up to 1981 and about a dozen more scattered previous to then. Depending on the response i'm in :) Timeshift (talk) 10:55, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Absolutely. It'd be great to finally get these done. Some of the results tables (for NSW and some of Victoria) may already be in the election results pages, so that could make it easier too. Frickeg (talk) 23:50, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Depends how comprehensive the articles would be. Werriwa by-election, 2005 is a great example, but I very much doubt that anything like that much information would be available for most of them. The basic structure is intro, results, references; it's handy to have a candidates list describing anything notable about them somewhere too. Frickeg (talk) 00:16, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Ok, i'm in. That makes 4 so far! I've added a note to wikiproject ozpol to get more attention here. I assume we'll just see what the response is and then divvy them up equally? As for which is a good page to follow, the remaining by-elections are all pre-1981, so just follow any basic by-election page, ie: Boothby by-election, 1981. Timeshift (talk) 06:31, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Count me in, I started a few of the federal by-election articles so I'm certainly interested in doing further research to bring the existing ones up to GA standard and fill out the older ones which don't have the results on the AEC website. --Canley (talk) 02:57, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Just in passing, a move discussion has started on an iconic topic, here. Posting this to the noticeboard as we don't seem to have a listing in the page header for move discussions, and there'll no doubt be Australian and Kiwi editors with opinions to share. Euryalus (talk) 20:54, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
I've added a section for the Toodyay, Western Australia bushfire in the Toodyay article. Have left all the sources I can find there... there'll be one more when Climate Data Online updates for Tue 29th, the relevant BOM location is Northam. For the most part I've simply summarised what is known (I have ABC local radio on at the moment but it stops updating in 8 minutes) and found articles which give more detail, but I'd appreciate it if our regular editors familiar with disaster reporting could help out. Orderinchaos01:52, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
I think it'd be better to either give its own article, or create an article for the 2009-10 fire season - it's undue weight in the Toodyay article. Rebecca (talk) 04:18, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Agreed - I only put it there as there isn't presently a container, nor is there yet quite enough information to get a new article in place. Probably by later today that situation will have changed. However, this fire may prove to be to Toodyay what Black Saturday was to Kinglake and Marysville, so it would also belong in Toodyay to the extent that it affects the town and its residents. Orderinchaos04:29, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Huh? 2009–10 Australian bushfire season has existed for ages, and the entry at Toodyay is not undue weight - also Toodyay has had some devastating fires in the last decade - the fires there need a section. As for a separate article - disagree as well - the season and Toodyay articles are fine for the moment SatuSuro04:32, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Indeed. I think he is acting in bad faith - there's a pattern of waiting a couple of weeks until the dust "blows over", then coming back and trying to sneak in an article under a new name. As it seems this is the sole purpose of his account, I have blocked him. Orderinchaos04:11, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
I agree with this block - the editor has been given a large number of chances and yet has kept recreating these articles. I'd also support an unblock on the strict condition that they con't create further articles on animal attacks. Nick-D (talk) 04:23, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
Yep, clearly a SPA. IMO for an unblocking there should be strict rules and conditions set and ban them from creating any article relating to animal attacks. Bidgee (talk) 04:28, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
Category:Animal_attacks - exists - maybe there should be more thought if this continues in some way - what is the Australian project going to do with line in the sand demarcation? - the deleted articles have existed - and there are many other life forms out there that have nuisance value - (1 billion billion australian flies cannot be wrong... or something) - one thing to try to eduate a SPA - but what is the project going to come up with to cope with this in the future? SatuSuro04:35, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
Beans attacks - complete with picture of Heinz baked beans in a shopping aisle falling on someone with caption "Beans attack in Australia? Yes they can." Orderinchaos07:18, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
My first reaction when I saw this in the watchlist was that it couldn't possibly have anything to do with James4750 and must actually be something serious. Well, there's my mistake for 2010 out of the way fairly early. --AussieLegend (talk) 10:23, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
Australia
