Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Canberra/Archive 2

Suburb Infobox (again)

I would like to propose Garglebutt's suburb infobox (see above) as a standard for Canberra suburb articles and add it to the instructions at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Canberra/Suburbs. I would suggest it should probably be setup as a template so that we can make styling changes at a later point and facilitate easier management.

Are there any objections/suggestions about this? --Martyman-(talk) 04:19, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

• I think it's a great idea, but can we make it a nicer colour? It'll need a field for the addition on a map. One last idea, it'd probably be a complete pain, but mabye the suburb nav box could be added to this template. --nixie 04:25, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

• • Not a bad idea about adding a map to it. I might have to have a go at producing a more simplified Canberra map that would work better in the infobox. Not sure how you would go about cleanly incorporating the suburb nav box info into the info box, might be worth thinking about though. --Martyman-(talk) 04:35, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I have the current version and a mocked up version based off the Australian City info box online at User:Martyman/Sandbox2. It obviously needs a different map but I think the overall design is an improvment. --Martyman-(talk) 06:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

And I stuck up a version with the nav box included to see if it would fit.. Might be doable but would make the template a pain to fill in. --Martyman-(talk) 06:15, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

It looks good, though the map makes it massive. Do you know if there's anything like Allhomes.com for the rest of Australia?--Cyberjunkie | Talk 11:19, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I like the three in one version, to reduce the size of map one option would be to have a cut out of the large map that just shows the location within the district - I've uploaded a cropped version to Martyman's sandbox. It makes sense just to have a North Canberra and a South Canberra locator - so the map still has some context, but it could proabably be divided further. Any changes that stop the cells from wrapping will also reduce the length of the table.--nixie 12:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure I like the cropped map that doesn't include all of canberra, but I do much prefer the map being that size... If only Canberra was wide and short. Hey, maybe no one will notice if we put it on it's side. ;) Anyway I will try to see if I can make a working map tomorrow that will fit all of Canberra into the smaller size. I am not holding my breath though. Oh and I think if we can make the whole thing compact enough teh three in one box is a great idea. --Martyman-(talk) 13:00, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

OK. Next question. What do people think the template should be called? Something like {{Infobox Canberra Suburb}} ? --Martyman-(talk) 13:19, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

What about {{Infobox Australian Suburb}}? I don't see anything that would make it have to be Canberra-specific. Ambi 13:53, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking about that, but I thought suburbs in other cities may want to include local government information that isn't relavant for Canberra. Also some stats (like those available from allhomes) aren't necessarily easy to find for other cities. --Martyman-(talk) 22:01, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and created the template at {{Infobox Canberra Suburb}} for development and testing. I guess we can always move it to somewhere else. --Martyman-(talk) 00:24, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

• I don't like including median property value in the info box. While thanks to allhomes it is a statistic readily available, it would require updating regularly and it is a "so-what" statistic to my mind. If you need to know these things because you are in the market for a house you go to all-homes not wikipedia. More interesting on housing might be some census data - eg mean household size, percentage separate houses, percentage fully owned houses, percentage indigenous or migrant population, average age, change in population numbers or age, .... - all these stats tell me more than real estate values - particulalry if I was not from Australia and did not know how many loaves of bread or pints of milk the house might be worth.--AYArktos (Talk) 20:27, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

The median property value gives you an easy method of comparing the desirability of a suburb with any other Canberra suburb. This info isn't available from any of the census data you mention, and personally I find it more interesting too. That's not to say I wouldn't be willing to comprimise though. It is a shame we can't set up a template to pull values like this out of a table including suburbs and data so that they are easily updatable at one place, but I don't see the property value data needing to be updated much more often than the census data anyway. --Martyman-(talk) 22:01, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I really like having the median property value for the reason Martyman states, and would find it personally the most interesting item in this template. Ambi 05:00, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Added to Yarralumla Article

I have added the test version of {{Infobox Canberra Suburb}} to Yarralumla, Australian Capital Territory along with a test version of a smaller map to suit. Comments? --Martyman-(talk) 02:06, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not really a fan of having the adjacent suburbs box as part of the infobox. It's useful information, but it often looks quite ugly, and I don't think it complements the infobox much - I'd rather see it stay at the bottom as a seperate template. Ambi 05:00, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know. I think it is neater having it all parceled up in one part of the page. I find things that are meant to live at the bottom of the page annoying to find sometimes, as they aren't always right at the bottom. But on the other hand if we leave it out of the infobox we could include a larger map or more details (maybe some other census data) without blowing the size out too far.

Another point is that most of the suburbs should probably have their adjacent suburb boxes replaced anyway, as they are in html rather than wikimarkup. Does anyone else have any opinions on the adjacent suburbs box? --Martyman-(talk) 05:23, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

It does look neat as one template, but it does make the infobox large. While that isn't necessarily a major problem, it can cause formatting issues for smaller articles.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 05:32, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it looks great as is, since it is long- I would suggest it isn't added to articles that are really stubby. Is the location field really useful? --nixie 00:14, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I am feeling more and more strongly that the adjacent suburbs box should be incorporated into the infobox. It is very easy to find there, and will being exactly the same spot in each article. That makes surfing around Canberra suburb articles much easier, and for the same reason I think it should be added to even the stubs.

The Country infobox is much bigger (though would normally be used on much longer articles), the Australian State Infobox is around 1.5 times as big (though again on bigger articles). The US State infobox seems to be much bigger as seen at New York.

I don't think the size of the infobox with nav included is aover the top. If it causes formating problems in shorter articles we will just have to have a drive to expand the stubs. I will add the existing template to a short article as a test. --Martyman-(talk) 00:20, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't asking about the locator - I think its really useful in the template, rather I was asking about the field that says Location:Canbera, Australia.--nixie 00:25, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Ah, that makes more sense. I was wondering that myself when I put it in. But I gues sif you came accross teh article not knowing it is a suburb of Canberra it would be useful. But then again the intro to teh article will normally also say this in the first line or two. We could get rid of it if it would save space. --Martyman-(talk) 00:48, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh and I added the infobox to Curtin as a test of a short article. I don't think it is too bad. --Martyman-(talk) 00:48, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Looks reasonable enough to me. It might spur us on to add some material to a lot of these stubs, too. Ambi 04:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

With regards to the maps, apart from wanting cut down versions for other suburbs too, how about including the suburbs from the navigator shaded in a lighter colour? Garglebutt / (talk) 22:05, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Implementation?

OK, I am pretty happy with the way the infobox is looking. I notice it is already seeing some use on some Adelaide suburb articles thanks to Cyberjunkie (though in a modified form). A couple of questions:

• Does anyone know how to force the included sub-table for adjacent suburb to 260px? This would probably look neater than letting shrink inwards when the suburb names are short, like it does now. I gave it a try and couldn't seem to get it to work at all.
• Also are people happy with the new smaller maps for the infobox? I have removed the major roads made the text bigger and changed the crop area to better suit the available space. I am just a little worried about the brighter colours (compared to the older maps) and if smaller suburbs are going to be properly visable, especially if they fall behind text.

If people are happy with stuff I will go ahead and start churning out new maps tomorrow after work. --Martyman-(talk) 11:29, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

• In response to the first question, it should be possible to set column width using !width="260" in the Canberra suburbs field. I think the colouring on the new map is ok- I'll check with someone colour blind since that is the only problem that I can forsee. I think the location field can definately go, if the opening paragraph fails to mention that X is a suburb in Canberra then there is a problem.--nixie 23:43, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I tried to highlight the surrounding suburbs in the map as was suggested a few posts up by Garglebutt, but couldn't get it to look right. Instead I am working on a version of the map that has all teh suburbs outlined and only the highlited suburb filled in. Unfortunatly it means I can't start producing maps until I have finished drawing in every suburb. I have uploaded a test version at Image:Yarralumla IBMap-TEST-MJC.png.

I am not sure about the location field. --Martyman-(talk) 00:32, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

The sample looks good. Garglebutt / (talk) 04:44, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I have gotten a lot further in outlining the suburbs but am unable to re-upload the image for some reason. I get an "error already exists please choose another name" error meesage. --Martyman-(talk) 04:49, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Won't it allow you to overwrite the existing image? You should be able to "save anyway".--Cyberjunkie | Talk 04:55, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

There is a little check box on the upload page now that allows you to ignore any warnings- try selecting that and see if the problem continues.--nixie 04:59, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunatly I have already tried that, the same thing happens. It used to come up with a page asking if you really want to overwrit this file, and now it doesn't. I have posted to both village pump (tech) and the helpdesk but noone seems to know what is happening. --Martyman-(talk) 05:11, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, I have now added the latest version of the map to both Deakin and Macquarie. Let me know what people think. --Martyman-(talk) 06:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC) Actually looking at them myself I think I am going to go back to the lighter coloured urban areas like on the earlier maps. --Martyman-(talk) 06:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I like the lighter version better too.--nixie 06:03, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Weston Is now updated with the infobox and a better looking map. I will have to go back and update the other maps when they lift the block on replacing images. --Martyman-(talk) 06:24, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

You need to be careful when adding the infobox to articles not to create white space at the top. I think its the HTML comments doing it. See Deakin, Australian Capital Territory for an example.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 06:59, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

You are right.. I wonder if it does it if you use wikimarkup comments. Does anyone know how to do them? --Martyman-(talk) 07:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

In case anyon was wondering, colour blind person is ok with the colour scheme on the most up to date maps.--nixie 07:00, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I just ran it through vischeck here. Looks fine. --Martyman-(talk) 07:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Maps

I will add the maps as I create them at User:Martyman/My Images/Suburb Infobox Maps. --Martyman-(talk) 06:50, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

There are some basic rules about maps - they should show scale; where north is (I know it is implied); they should show date (the map after all is relevant to 2005 not 1945 and will probably not be accurate in 2065. Maps should probably give the source of the underlying data - no wikipedian carried out the survey locating rivers and suburbs. Should probably also provide some coordinate reference - latitude and longitude. The source info could be included on the summary page.--A Y Arktos (Talk) 20:42, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, two points here, you could have suggetsed this before I generated them all, you where involved in the discussion about the development of the infoboxes over a week ago. Also these are small maps inteded to display in an infobox. I don't believe they require all this info. The date can be derived by looking at the contribution page, north is assumed in a simplified map like this and no coordinate system is used because I am not claiming these are 100% accurate they are illustrative not authorative. If this is a retaliation for me questioning your copyright claims get over it. --Martyman-(talk) 21:13, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I made the same comments yesterday in relation to Astrokey44's map of Yarralumla. I bowed out of the infobox discussion after the dismissive comments about demographic data being shown other than median house price.--A Y Arktos (Talk) 07:14, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Martyman. Changes now, particularly those noted by AYArktos, are unnecessary. The maps fulfil their purpose, and are as good as any on Wikipedia. Ambi 08:13, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

It has been suggested at Yarralumla's FAC that the infobox map should have a scale. I guess I could look into adding one and re-uploading all of them again. I can probably also add a date and a north indicator as per AYArktos's suggestion above. Is there anything else that people think should be changed on the infobox maps? Get in quick or you will be ignored... --Martyman-(talk) 23:44, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I have uploaded a new version of the infobox map to Yarralumla and Kingston including a scale. Unless there are some fairly imediate objections I will start uploading the Tuggeranong maps with this new format as well. --Martyman-(talk) 09:08, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Canberra on FAC

I have put Canberra on FAC. I'd appreciate help addressing comments as they arise.--nixie 23:31, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

The article has just been tagged as featured - congratulations!--A Y Arktos (Talk) 08:30, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

old photos

I have a pictorial history of canberra book with heaps (maybe 100 or so) of pre-1955 photos of Canberra (although its copyright 2000 the photos themselves are public domain according to the PD-Australia template) and I've scanned in a couple and thinking of doing some more, are there any photos that anyone is particularly after? Astrokey44 11:46, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Hard to say what we would need without seeign the actual photos first. One comment though, could you possibly try some sort of de-screening filter on the images. The diagonal lines that appear on the Kingston image are a bit distracting. --Martyman-(talk) 02:51, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah I wondered about those. What exactly is de-screening?? Astrokey44 03:47, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

The images printed in the book are made up of a fixed pattern of diffrent sized dots. Larger dots in the dark areas and smaller dots in the light areas. This pattern will show up as stripes in the images when you try to scan them in. Some scanner software ahs a descreen option that will automatically try to reduce this effect.

Otherwise The way I deal with it is to scan in at a very high resolution so that you can see the individual dots (around 600dpi should do). Then use something like photoshop's "gausian blur" filter to blur just enough to hide the idividual dots. Then reduce the image resolution to an acceptable size and output for the web. --Martyman-(talk) 04:01, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I noticed it did have a descreening thing in the scanner program - never took any notice of it before. I put some of Yarralumla up because you mentioned it below. There was another one of 'Stanly melbourne bruces cabinet on the steps of yarralumla in 1924' but the faces were really blurry so I thought not worth loading Astrokey44 09:09, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

They look good, the descreening thingy must have done the trick. Thanks, --Martyman-(talk) 09:39, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

• It would be really useful, as well as more professional, to give the source of the photos. "Scanned from book" is not sufficient information really. Perhaps you could use the book reference template. Giving the date is very useful. However, if known who took the photo would be really useful information, for example there is a very large collection of photos taken by Mildenhall. They are available from the National Library web site.--A Y Arktos (Talk) 10:28, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

another thought - it would be really good if images were uploaded to Commons as then they are available to other language wikipedias. They should be categorised on Commons as Category:Canberra. The Yarralumla nursery and woolshed images are on commons!--A Y Arktos (Talk) 10:38, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Of course once anything is in the public domain you can do pretty much whatever you want with it. Legally no attribution is required. --Martyman-(talk) 10:48, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

• I am not talking legalisms, I am talking professional research, writing, verifiability and usefulness. In the case of old Canberra photos it is really useful and interesting to know if the photo was taken by Mildenhall. A photo by Cecil Beaton might be immediately recognisable as such, or perhaps only to the cognoscenti, but its provenance helps to interpret the image. If the information is not stored with the image at the time of upload, it is very hard to retro fit. The wikipedian policy of cite your sources also applies.--A Y Arktos (Talk) 11:07, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

ok the book is Machen, Mary (2000). Pictorial History Canberra. Kingsclear Books. p. 140. ISBN 0-908272-65-0. might add it a bit later. by the way did this image [1] work? It didnt work for me when I tried putting on commons so I put it on wiki instead. It doesnt mention who took the photos. Speaking of Mildenhall I noticed one photo said it was of aborigines doing traditional fishing on the Murrumbidgee from the Mildenhall collection, but I thought it might have been staged cuase Mildenhall was around well after the last Ngunnawal person died. There was also a photo of the Campbell family from 1862 I thought about putting up, but wondered if that was the right year - did they even have cameras in Australia back then? Astrokey44 11:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I could view the image of Yarralumla nursery uploaded to Commons. At the top of the Commons page is a note: "Warning! We have switched file servers for Commons' upload storage. You might encounter temporary problems deleting or updating some files, but hopefully not." It may account for your problems. FYI the Yarralumla nursery picture is a Mildenhall picture and is available through the NLA at http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an11030057-79 .

The "last" Ngunnawal person has not died. Our wikipedia entry says: "Some histories of Australia record the last full blooded Ngunnawal person, Nellie Hamilton, dying in 1897. However, it has been regarded by some indigenous Australians as a biased attempt to claim that they were wiped out when there are many Ngunnawal people still around today." At the opening of the provisional Parliament House in 1927 there were aborigines present for the ceremony as onlookers, including Jimmy Clements. Clements was said to be from Gundagai but not sure whether he was Ngunnawal or not - Ngunnawal extended to Tumut.

As with many other technologies, Australians were relatively early adopters of the camera. First photo anywhere was taken in 1826 by Nicéphore Niépce. Daguerreotypes were patented in 1839. The first Australian photograph was reported to be taken in 1841 by a visiting Frenchman in Sydney. The first professional studio in Australia was set up by George Barron Goodman [2] in 1843. There are some wikipedia articles obviously waiting to be written :-) When looking around, I found that History of the camera wasn't categorised and the wikipedia write ups on Australian photography are decidedly patchy.--A Y Arktos (Talk) 19:55, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Mildenhall photographic collection

I have created two new stubs: William James Mildenhall and Mildenhall photographic collection. The National Archives (NAA) factsheet has a link where you can search for digitised images from the collection. Note, notwithstanding copyright issues the NAA states: If you use a digital image, the National Archives must be acknowledged as the source and the image must be identified by its item or image number. Money is not an object: There is no permissions fee or charge for downloading, using or reproducing digital copies obtained from RecordSearch or PhotoSearch. If we are planning to use a significant number of these images I might set up a template, can you please let me know if there is any interest?--A Y Arktos (Talk) 21:27, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

the recent discussion on the Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board has me worried about copyright. I'm thinking of changing the images I've put up to smaller versions. Perhaps if youre going to use an image, you should resize it to not larger than the size of the image which will appear on the page - 200 px or so? The sites you mentioned say that you have to complete permission forms. Astrokey44 23:25, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Hold up here. As far as I know, the size has nothing to do with whether we can use these images or not; for what reason would you be decreasing the quality? However, if we're supposed to be asking for permission - and those images are not PD - then they have no place on Wikipedia. Ambi 23:58, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

They are PD but they still say to ask permission. Maybe reduce it as sort of like a fair use thing. Astrokey44 00:11, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

• I have created a Mildenhall template at commons. See commons:Template_talk:Mildenhall for discussion and further information. We don't need to ask permission from the NAA (National Archives of Australia) but we should cite them as a source - though free of copyright does not require us to do so, if we are using the digital image, .... it might start to get complicated. It is good practice to cite your sources anyway - it makes it so much easier for other editors and for researchers and geneeral readers. Feel free to edit and improve the template! --A Y Arktos (Talk) 01:45, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I have sought and gained permission from the National Library of Australia (NLA) to upload to wikipedia.org historical photos of Australia made before 1955, in particular photos from the Mildenhall collection. The reference number of the permission is NLA 05/1532. Further information is at: commons:Template_talk:Mildenhall--A Y Arktos (Talk) 22:55, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

• Is that permission written in such a way that it has automatically updated to now include images from 1955? In any case, my reading of the relevant pages would indicate that photos in which copyright was held by the Commonwealth which were taken more than 50 years ago are in the public domain and therefore do not need permission. Listing the National Archives as source is a good idea, but we don't need permission. If copyright was held with the individual, then only images more than 70 years old are in PD. --Myk 05:48, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Featured Articles

It looks as though Canberra is on track to being accepted as a featured article. My question is, what other articles do we have that we can finish off and put up for FAC? Personaly, I would like to try putting Yarralumla up again, and Waramanga is probably getting close.

Maybe other options would be Australian War Memorial, Suburbs of Canberra and Parliament House, Canberra. --Martyman-(talk) 06:31, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually I notice that only Yarralumla and Waramanga have references, that is a bit of a stumbling block for Featured Articles. --Martyman-(talk)

Yarralumla is the obvious candidate, as it's been fairly close to featured standard for a long time. I suggest using Waterfall Gully, South Australia as a template; that article looks on track to being the first featured suburb article on Wikipedia, and looks utterly excellent. It wouldn't take much work; more a matter of fine-tuning, I think. Australian War Memorial, though not nominated before, really isn't far away either - might be worth comparing it with the already-featured Shrine of Remembrance article. Though the other three are of reasonable length, I think that all would require quite substantial work to get to featured status. Ambi 07:50, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I would actually like to see some of the district articles filled out moreso than some of the suburbs (with the exception of Yarralumla which I think is so close that it would be worth putting up for peer review and finishing off). I have started on Belconnen (district), and have created a to do list on the talk page as a guide for people who want to keep going, however with the exception of today, I haven't been able to contribute much to wiki articles. The Belco article doesn't have many (any?) references thought. I also wonder about the value of a Belconnen District article to people in the rest of the world and think that we should probably focus on something like the War Memorial, Parl House, or maybe even ANU. If we put Parl House up for Aust colaboration of the fortnight I reckon we could make a bit of progress. It was amazing how much Canebrra improved when nixie got us all worked up on it! Adz 08:52, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I've been chosing articles to work up to FA, like Australia and Canberra, with an Australian Wikireader in the back of my mind. I'd make time to work on anything that is pretty relevant to Australia, like Parl House, AWM, the ACT, ANU; and I'm happy to review just about anything else. ACOTF is set up to improve stubs, so it may not be the best place to nomiate anything that is close to done. Wikiproject Canberra could set up its own collaboration, in a formal (with voting) or an informal (like Canberra was organised) way aiming for a ~feature a month --nixie 00:13, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I like keeping things informal; I think it's worked well so far. It'd be nice to note it somewhere once it's been agreed upon, though, so that it can be linked from WP:GO. The idea of having either the ACT or ANU as our next one is growing on me, though - anyone have any other preferences? Ambi 00:20, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Personally I would be hessitant to attempt the parliament house article because it is a widely watched article from users outside the Canberra Wikiproject. I would hate to end up in an edit war when we could be improving articles instead. I would see the war memorial or the ACT article as better choices for the Canberra Wikiproject to tackle. --Martyman-(talk) 02:19, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Parilament House doesn't need much work - expanded lead, some detail about the public and non-public areas, some more details on the design, how much it cost to build and so on, and some general fact checking. I dobut general improvement of this nature would cause any kind of fuss. The War Memorial is a good choice too, the majority of the changes would be cosmetic, but a decent section on the collections and their work in preservation needs to be added. I'll leave it up to someone else to decide this time.--nixie 03:12, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Whilst I know many Australian Wikipedians prefer things to be informal, it might be worthwhile setting up an Australian "feature-article drive" or "polishing service" to help get Australia-related FAC's through the process. When the ACOTF looked dead earlier this year, I thought about proposing its conversion to something like that. --Cyberjunkie | Talk 03:09, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

History of Canberra is probably another good candidate.--nixie 05:00, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Or should that be renamed to History of the Australian Capital Territory? ;-) --Martyman-(talk) 05:30, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I had considered that, I think its better as History of the ACT.--nixie 07:46, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, I am going to be bold and move it to History of the Australian Capital Territory . If anyone doesn't like it it can always be moved back. --Martyman-(talk) 21:17, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Category:Canberra

This category is getting quite large, I've added the subcategory Category:Canberra parks and gardens, but it could probably use a few moew subcats.--nixie 03:25, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I am not too happy with the state of Canberra/ACT categories. It is a shame to duplicate things like Category:Education in the Australian Capital Territory and Category:Education in Canberra etc. It just makes everything harder to find and harder to manage. It also makes it hard when you start writing a new article to decide if you should limit it's scope to Canberra itself to fit into the Canberra categories. Though I can't think of a solution to this myself. --Martyman-(talk) 03:58, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually now I think about it maybe I should for example make Education in Canberra a redirect to the Education in the Australian Capital Territory article and then list the redirect in the Category:Education in Canberra. --Martyman-(talk) 04:01, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good plan, category:education in the ACT can always be a subcat in both Cat:Canberra and Cat:ACT.--nixie 04:08, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I have just created a [Category:Sport in Canberra] category, which got rid of a few articles. A category 'military monuments and facilities' (or something similar) would take care of a great many. 'Events in Canberra' would be another useful one. it would also be useful if people agreed that town centres, districts and croup centres can be included in 'suburbs of canberra' category. Some of them fell in some time ago and were later taken out in the flurry of activity that occured around Canberra Suburbs a couple of months ago.

Having had a look at the category:Australian Capital Territory sub-categories, I'm inclined to think that we should make all of the Canberra sub-categories ACT sub-cats. unlike in other larger states I don't think that having the city (Canberra) and the Territory as two separate catagories is very workable here. One way or the other I think we should work towards having just one category. (I think to most people outside the ACT, Canberra and the ACT are synonymous anyway). Adz 04:42, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

You've made alot of points, (1) there is already Category:Australian military memorials and cemeteries. (2)There could be a subcategory for districts, and then categories for suburbs in X. (3) I agree with your point on duplication between ACT and Canberra, its a problem with articles too.--nixie 04:58, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

So there would be no complaints if I went ahead and merged Category:Education in Canberra into Category:Education in the Australian Capital Territory and and placed the resulting category as a sub category of both Canberra and ACT? The only problem then is the lack of Canberra Specific categories which people might expect to find. Can these be redirects or something? --Martyman-(talk) 05:27, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

None from me, to make a category redirect empty the category that is going to be a redirect and add {{categoryredirect|target category}} (you just need to included the name of the category, you don't need Category:) to the category page.--nixie 05:34, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I was going to do the same for People of Canberra, so I say go ahead Marty. Adz 05:38, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

In relation to nixie's (2.) above, I do not support splitting up the suburbs category. suggest creating either urban areas of ACT cat or Geog of ACT cat and locating suburbs of canberra and Districts of ACT below that. Would also allow villages and other geographical features (rivers/lakes) to be located there. Adz 05:47, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

OK I merged the Education Categories. What other categories do you think should be re-arranged? One that stands out to me is the new Category:Canberra parks and gardens which could be changed to include the whole ACT. I would lean towards Adz's suggestion of Category:Geography of the Australian Capital Territory with Category:Suburbs of Canberra and Category:Districts of Canberra etc. under that. --Martyman-(talk) 06:13, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the parks change and I also think the geography cat is a good idea, we could probably make the subcats, Rivers of the ACT and Lakes of the ACT too.--nixie 06:35, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking that Category:Geography of the Australian Capital Territory would be added as a sub-cat of Category:Canberra and then all geographic categories would be under it. Is that right? --Martyman-(talk) 07:42, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

So we're on the same page, I was thinking that cats Category:Rivers of the Australian Capital Territory and Category:Lakes of the Australian Capital Territory would be subcats of Category:Geography of the Australian Capital Territory, which in turn would be a subcategory of both category:Australian Capital Territory and Category:Canberra.--nixie 07:49, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Now should Category:Canberra parks and gardens, Category:Canberra urban places, Category:Streets in Canberra, Category:Suburbs of Canberra and Category:Districts of Canberra be removed from Category:Canberra and listed only under Category:Geography of the Australian Capital Territory? Also should some of these be blah of Canberra while others are Canberra blah? --Martyman-(talk) 08:54, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Looking at Category:Adelaide and Category:Sydney, most of the mentioned cats seem to just be subcats of the cities article.--nixie 09:52, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Marty, I think it doesn't hurt to leave them as subcategories of both. I think it solves the issue you raised before of things being located at ACT when people expect to find them at Cat:Canberra. Particularly as suburbs and urban places etc. are part of the city itself, as well as the ACT. Good Job on all the re-arranging though. you deserve a pat on the back. Adz 10:21, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Should we also rename and redirect Category:History of Canberra to category:History of the Australian Capital Territory?--nixie 10:07, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Why not? I will do it. --Martyman-(talk) 10:29, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

History of the ACT as distinct from History of Canberra

• I can undertstand and live with the rationale for category:ACT rather than category:Canberra for most topics; similarly the renaming of articles such as History of Canberra with an associated redirect. It may be that someone might want to break out an article on the History of the ACT separate to the history of the dominant city. Some of the articles though I cannot see a rationale for a Canberra article and an ACT article, for example list of schools - just keep the ACT article or category. --A Y Arktos (Talk) 22:21, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

If I thought it was possible to write a decent History of the ACt article without including Canberra then I might agree, bu there really isn't thta much else to cover. A couple of small towns and the creation of the ACT, that's about it. --Martyman-(talk) 22:35, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

That sounds awfully like a challenge :-). I suspect there is quite a lot in those small towns, Picadilly circus, grazing leases, forests, national park creation, .... there is an awful lot of the ACT that is not Canberra (I wonder what the percentage land area is?). For the moment though I had better get on with my non-Wikipedia life --A Y Arktos (Talk) 22:44, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually lookign through the list of articles now linking to the redirect page for History of Canberra I am thinking maybe it was not too much of a good idea after all. If you are feeling inspired to try and scrape up a decent article on ACT History it would be most appreciated. --Martyman-(talk) 22:48, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I've been reading up on the legal side of the creation of the ACT- and there probably is enough information for a stand alone ACT article, the tricky part will be separating Canberra from the ACT. But I think a Category:History of Canberra is superfluous, and we should maintain the ACT history cat for historical articles. --nixie 23:27, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Yep, sounds good. For now did you want to revert my edits to History of the Australian Capital Territory and move it back to History of Canberra and make History of the Australian Capital Territory the redirect for now until it has it's own article. I would do this myself but don't have access to delete the redirect at History of Canberra. --Martyman-(talk) 23:33, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

(Edit conflict!)

• Agree wholeheatrtedly Category:History of Canberra is superfluous. Could someone please revert the page move of History of Canberra to History of ACT but leave the History of the ACT article to allow a fork?.--A Y Arktos (Talk) 23:36, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

There's a thought. Though I am not sure if it is possible to duplicate an article without losing the edit history on one of them. --Martyman-(talk) 23:40, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I have moved it back. I once worked out how to duplicate histories, but I've since forgotten. I think cutting and pasting the history section from the ACT article to history of the ACT should suffice for a start, most of the Canberra article is specifically about Canberra anyway.--nixie 23:52, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Yarralumla FAC and Suburb Infoboxes

I have spent a bit of time fixing up the Yarralumla, Australian Capital Territory article again and want to put it up as a FAC again. I would appreciate it if people could proof read it and make any suggestions for changes before I do that. Thanks. --Martyman-(talk) 12:00, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Now I am done doing that I should get back to cranking out maps for suburb infoboxes. I was hoping once I have all the maps up I could put up a list of districts and people could put their names down next to one to save me having to add the infoboxes to every suburb myself. Does that sound like a reasonable idea? --Martyman-(talk) 12:00, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I want to apologise in advance if any of my comments seem harsh; I'm notoriously picky about wanting featured articles to be as good as they can be, and this is a great article anyway. Firstly, it could really do with a lot of attention to the prose - particularly in the earlier parts of the article (I can't see much wrong at all with the new additions). Waterfall Gully had the same problem before Cyberjunkie and Michaelgabrielsen gave this a lot of work - and it came out looking a very great deal better. Secondly, there's a big area of white space beneath the table of contents; would it be possible to get rid of this somehow? Thirdly, the demographics section could do with a bit more detail (c.f. Waterfall Gully). Fourthly, it'd be nice to see booth results for territory elections in the politics section, as well as some information about how the area usually votes; it'd be nice to prosify the issues section too. Finally, I'm not sure that the table is necessary - I think a paragraph or two would better convey embassy information; does anyone else have any thoughts on this? Ambi 13:00, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that showing the international flags is really good if you want to get it featured. It should be emphasised about the embassies in the intro - the most interesting thing to someone reading from America/UK/Germany/Canada etc is probably that their embassy to Australia is located there. Astrokey44 14:02, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

• I will see what I can do about fixing up some of the prose today. Do any sections in particular stand out as needing attention?
• On most resolutions I have tried it on the white space below the TOC isn't too bad. It did look better before I got rid of the sub-heading in notable places. The reason I have forced it to leave that clear is I didn't like what the Infobox did to the formating at some resoltutions without it.
  • I have reverted this change. --Martyman-(talk) 00:19, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
• I have tried to expand the demographics section a bit more.
• OK I just found the polling place info for the ACT election, I will see what I can do.
  • The article now includes ACT voting results in table and prose. --Martyman-(talk) 00:19, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
• I agree I quite like the embassy flag table now that it isn't interupting the flow of the article. I agree to people outside Australia yarralumla's biggest claim to fame is proabbly it's embassies. I think any attempt to lpace all those embassy names in a couple of paragraphs is goign to result in something that reads like a list. --Martyman-(talk) 23:13, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

List of suburbs template

I've created this Belconnen Suburbs template and was wondering whether people thought it would be of any use. I think it would clutter things a little too much if it were to be used on short stub pages, but it could be used on longer stubs and articles. I have placed it on the Aranda and Belconnen Town Centre pages to test run. It could also be used on the Belconnen (district) page instead of the long list of suburbs that is there at the moment. I got the text from that list, so it didn't take long to create and I won't be the least bit offended if people think that it is a waste of space. If you like it, it wouldn't be hard to whip up others for the other districts Adz 06:46, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I would see this template as being useful to replace the awful list of suburbs on the district pages. Not too sure about on suburb pages though. I think it might be pointless clutter realy. We have a link to the district and all surounding suburbs already in the new infobox. Also seems a bit irrelavent for the town centre/group centre pages. PS. It would probably be best not to roll out the infobox until I have uploaded the smaller maps for all of the suburbs, otherwise we will ahve to go through them twice. --Martyman-(talk) 07:04, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Looks good, might be better with commas separating the suburbs? Astrokey44 08:27, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Something seperating the suburbs probably would look better. Also I probably wouldn't list the town centre in the same line as the suburbs, maybe a second line listing the group centres and town centre of the district? --Martyman-(talk) 08:32, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

What he said. Using | characters as dividers would work, and I think there needs to be a second line linking to Belconnen, Jamison and Kippax centres. Ambi 11:57, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I tried that but it all went pear shaped. I think the coding is all wrong because when I tried creating new rows for town centres and group centres, they turned into collumns. I didn't get time to sort it out. I'll have a bit more of a play with it when I get some time. (I'll be away for the next few days, but might be online at my brother's house).

I like it, but I think it'd be overkill on the individual suburb pages, especially as the infoboxes are introduced. | is probably a better than a comma to separate the names.--nixie 09:35, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it. Adz 14:36, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I like the way it looks now. Divided up (with |) and the extra information split out to seperate lines. --Martyman-(talk) 21:14, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

The new table is excellent - thank you. :) I wouldn't mind seeing it on individual suburb pages; I think it could be a useful means of navigation. Ambi 08:13, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

District volunteer list

As mentioned above volunteers are required to make the new infoboxes as the maps become available. List yourself and a district:

• Peta- North Canberra Done
• Martyman- South Canberra Done
• Adz - I'm happy to help, but as noted above, will be away for a while, so realistically, won't get around to it until the weekend after this weekend. That said, I'd be happy to split Belconnen with someone and do half. Or I could do a smaller district like Gungahlin. ... I really don;t mind what I do, so how about I just work on whatever still needs working on by the end of next week.
• Ambi - North Canberra and/or Belconnen, as long as someone else can do the maps
• Gimboid13 - Weston Creek - Done.
• Garglebutt - Suburbs at random. Done so far: Macquarie, Bruce. Garglebutt / (talk) 23:20, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
• Astrokey44 - Tuggeranong - Done perhaps or random ones, just figuring out how to do it now, Ive just done Duffy

Thanks for this. I should be able to get the next lot of maps online tonight. --Martyman-(talk) 09:45, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Let's not start rolling these out until we are absolutly certain about the excact way it should be done. Notice there has been suggetsion below to add area to the infobox, also what do people think is the best way to put references into the infobox. I think we need to reference allhomes, the census is less important becasue any high quality suburb article will already have a reference to it. --Martyman-(talk) 00:03, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

The maps are already online for North Canberra, Gungahlin and Belconnen, I should have the rest up some time soon. --Martyman-(talk) 07:15, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

• I think we are away, "Area" seems to have missed the boat. I guess it can always be revisited at a later stage, maybe wikipedia will implement a usable system for optional template values. Go forth a spread the word. ;-)
• Oh and hopefully I will get the last of the infobox maps up tonight for Tuggeranong. --Martyman-(talk) 23:33, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
• InfoBox maps for all Canberra suburbs should now be online. --Martyman-(talk) 09:57, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Information about are of suburbs and dates settled

I've created User:Adz/CanberraSuburbsInfo where I am creating a list of suburbs containing area and date settled. The info is obtained from an ACT Gov't publication of suburb maps. (source provided at user page). I thought that putting them all in the one place in simple format would be the quickest way to get them up. Then people can access the info as they work on suburbs. Adding the info to each suburb would take a long time. I hope it is helpful. Martyman, would it take much to change the info box to include area info? Adz 14:53, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Looks good. I wonder how much work it would be to add population figures from the 2001 census to the list. It is easy to add extra fields to infoboxes as long as it isn't in wide use yet, though even that can be worked around by using {{if}} and making the field optional. The question is does everyone agree that the extra information is worth increasing the size of the infobox further. Personaly I think adding area is probably a worthwhile addition. --Martyman-(talk) 21:25, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I have made a template to use google to find the 2001 census data for a given suburb name, I think it should be fairly reliable. I will add it to your list of suburbs, hopefully you don't mind. --Martyman-(talk) 21:44, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

It turns out for some reason google doesn't appear to have a full index of the ABS census pages. So the template fails to work for some suburbs. I will continue adding it anyway and hopefully figure out a different way to get the backend of the template to work. --Martyman-(talk) 22:13, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Would this be difficult to do manually? Ambi 23:39, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Not particularly. I just didn't feel like putting in the effort and thought I would see if it was possible with a template. It is not like this is a page for public display anyway. --Martyman-(talk) 00:04, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Wow! That's great Marty, I don't mind at all. I'll keep adding the area for the rest of the suburbs. If I suddenly stop its because my partner (who isn't a wiki-fan (mainly because it takes up so much of my time)) has threatened to throw my lap top out the window. We'll see how I go. -- Adz 01:10, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Final Implementation of Infoboxes

OK guys, should we add area to the infobox before we roll out? Any other last minute changes? --Martyman-(talk) 07:17, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not fussed over area in the infobox, it's not essential or really useful information unless it's put in context. I think refs in the infobox should probably just be sourced in the article, so we don't need to worry about including links in the infobox.--nixie 08:44, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I think including the area gives some context to the suburb. area gives the suburb. It demonstrates that Canberra suburbs are small, but it also allows comparison between suburbs. - I'm not precious about it but I don't think it would hurt. I think it is the sort of information that it encyclopedic and that you would expect to be able to find in an encyclopedia. If the majority thinks differently then I can live with that too. -- Adz 13:05, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it should be in the article, just not in the infobox.--nixie 13:11, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I think I lean more towards including it than not. We will see what everyone else thinks. --Martyman-(talk) 13:15, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm happy either way; it's usually in the lead section of most articles and thus fairly prominent anyway, but wouldn't necessarily hurt to have it in the infobox either. Ambi 00:39, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

It's a kind of interesting stat but I don't think it belongs in the body of the article. In the infobox is a good place. Garglebutt / (talk) 22:40, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, in order to remove the restriction to rolling out these infoboxes I am going to make area an optional field, editors can take it or leave it as they want. --Martyman-(talk) 08:38, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Right, that doesn't work as well as I thought it would. Will someone just be authoritarian and and decide if this should be in or not. I am leaning back towards leaving it out again. --Martyman-(talk) 08:52, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that the infoboxes should be rolled out now as they are. We can always look at changing them later if people think they are lacking anything. --Martyman-(talk) 23:38, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I have a question about the locator- should suburbs adjacent to a Lake- have the lake in the locator fields rather than the suburb across the lake?--nixie 03:08, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I have been including places on the far side of the lake. Though there may be some cases where the lake could be mentioned instead... --Martyman-(talk) 03:19, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Suggested New Collaboration

Congratulations to everyone on Canberra getting featured. I am going to suggest we make the newly forked History of the Australian Capital Territory article our next collaboration. Let's see if we can get it up to featured article standard as well. --Martyman-(talk) 13:15, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Is the intention to merge this article with History of Canberra or to run it as a separate article? In which case, I think we might be better off trying to bring Australian Capital Territory up to scratch first. Also, shouldn't we wait for concensus before we change the 'FA effort notice' on the project page? -- Adz 13:48, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

(1) Separate article. (2) Martyman and I sort of decided that someone should just choose so we didn't get bogged down by nobody making a decision. I don't think it matters whether the ACT or ACT history article gets done first, more that likely they will both get worked on over the course of the month. (3) Another Wikiproject Canberra participant can pick next time.--nixie 13:53, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't care, if the majority would rather work on the ACT article then we can do that. We just thought we would skip the whole time wasting voting thing and just nominate an article. --Martyman-(talk) 21:25, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm fine with this, though it would be appreciated if someone could set out a structure we could use; the current one seems inadequate if this is ever to become long enough to be featured. Ambi 00:35, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

In an effort to make the Canberra wikiproject featured article drive a more defined thing I have created it's own page Wikipedia:WikiProject Canberra/Featured workup and added it to the Canberra tasks template. I am happy to continue with one Canberran nominating a new article each time we need a new one. Though this seems to already be causing friction. Alternatively we could add a nomination list like the Australian Collaboration of the Week Fortnight but this may bog things down. Comments? --Martyman-(talk) 00:37, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

If my comment above is what you were referring to when saying that there seems to be friction then perhaps i should clarify. I don't really mind an unstructured approach as long as everybody else is happy with it. My thinking was that a more inclusive process might result in more people participating in the projects. If however, its a matter of needing to get the ball rolling in order for people to hop on board rather than waiting for people to suggest ideas - as seemed to be the case - then I don't have a problem with it. I guess the nature of collaborative exercises is that they either happen or they don't. - the reason I haven't been contributing a great deal to the history article incidentally doesn't have anything to do with the process but has more to do with a) not having a great deal of time a.t.m., and b) not having a great deal of interest in the subject matter. (I've been thinking about trying to create some activity on the Brisbane project for a while and expanding some of the stubs there - although I need to find the time). Anyway, the point was that I'm willing to take a relaxed approach to it if others are, and please don't read any 'friction' into my comment above. Cheers. -- Adz 07:03, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Yarralumla up at FAC

I have nominated Yarralumla at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates, hopefully it gets up this time around. --Martyman-(talk) 10:26, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

• Success. We now have a featured Canberra suburb article. --Martyman-(talk) 07:57, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

List of historic buildings

After woking on History of the ACT article, I think that we should compile a list of the historic/heritage buildings in the ACT- with the goal of writing articles for some of the more significant homesteads and so on. It'd probably be named List of historic buildings and structues in the Australian Capital Territory. There are good resources here [3], here- this list is also very good if you want to know the heritage places in a suburb for a suburb article and here, if anyone wants to help put the list together or to write articles on any of the buildings.--nixie 01:39, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikiproject Notice

I have created a wikiproject notice template {{WPCanberraNotice}}. I copied it off of wikiproject Melbourne. It can be placed on the talk-pages of pages associated with the Canberra wikiproject. --Martyman-(talk) 10:42, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I also have created a list of Canberra wikiproject articles at Wikipedia:WikiProject Canberra/Articles. --Martyman-(talk) 00:22, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

allhomes

I saw an ad on tv last night from allhomes where they said they had the highest traffic for any real estate website. I wonder if the links from the suburb articles have anything to do with it?! Astrokey44 05:41, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I think allhomes rates in the top few websites accessed from most government departments. --Martyman-(talk) 05:55, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

• I doubt whether the links from the suburb articles would have more than a minor impact on allhomes traffic.

There is a ranking for popularity called the Alexa ranking. There are significant caveats on that ranking as per the discussion at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_is_more_popular_than...

The Alexa ranking for allhomes can be viewed at http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=www.allhomes.com.au . When I viewed it the site was number 51,491 in traffic rank, down by 18,559, whatever that means but sounds pretty volatile and low end.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=www.allhomes.com.au shows traffic volume have not changed much over the year but in fact are down over the last three months. I suspect their statement would need to be qualified as real estate website for the ACT or something. (Haven't seen the ad.) Traffic is almost certainly in part linked to the heat of the local real estate market.

Since our linking suburb pages to allhomes has increased in the last three months perhaps there is an inverse correlation between the linking and allhomes traffic ;-)

For interest wikipedia is growing according to Alexa [4] (in case we didn't realise anyway).--A Y Arktos 21:07, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

• Domain.com.au [5] 1,935
• realestate.com.au [6] 810

Both of these are a lot higher traffic than allhomes. But I would be surprised if they could match it for ACT traffic. --Martyman-(talk) 21:41, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

• Alexa allows all three sites to be compared (hope the link works and isn't a temporary search). The issue is that allhomes is pretty local to the ACT so it isn't a very meaningful comparison. Domain.com.au and realestate.com.au have grown over the year it seems but allhomes hasn't - perhaps that is why they are advertising.--A Y Arktos 22:41, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

New Article Suggestion

I can see the need for a Natural History of the Australian Capital Territory article. This could probably be kicked off with some copy and pasting from a few different places. What do people think? --Martyman-(talk) 06:10, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

• Sounds like a good idea, I'll chip in with some flora and fauna details when I get back from a conference I'm going to next week.--nixie 06:39, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Pls keep an eye on Tuggeranong Town Centre. 3R rule

I've twice reverted an edit at Tuggeranong Town Centre where an annon user has added what I consider to be unencyclopedic and unsubstantiated comments about the security guards. I can't revert again without breaking the 3 reverts rule. Could people please keep an eye on it. (I suspect that the user is a young person who have been picked on by the security guards - whose attitude towards young people I suspect is no different to other security guards in shopping centres all over the country - and possibly the rest of the western world). -- Adz 09:21, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

New featured work up article

History of the Australian Capital Territory is appraoching completion, there are suggestions for the next featured workup more a welcome, it'd be good if we could choose a new one by the end of the week.--nixie 03:54, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Does someone want to put their hand up to nominate an article, either from the list of suggestions or a choice of their own, or do people feel more comfortable and included if we implement some kind of informal voting system? --Martyman-(talk) 10:52, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I haven't been very active on the wiki lately and am not nominate anything because I'm not going to get much chance to contribute much this side of the New Year. I'd be happy with a consensus/discussion method of chosing something rather than necessarilly voting. I have thought about what I would nominate if I were nominating, and would probably nominate Walter Burley Griffin or suggest that we create an article about the Griffin Plan. That said, I still haven't done what I set out to do with Belconnen (district), or the other districts, or suburbs or... so I don't know if I should be suggesting new projects at all.

... as an aside, perhaps we should think about merging National Capital Development Commission, the Federal Capital Commission and possibly National Capital Authority into one article. -- Adz 11:36, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm fine with just coming to a general consensus about it; I'm prepared to let Petaholmes and Martyman take the lead though, considering as they've been doing a significant proportion of the work, it would be rather silly to pick something that either of them wasn't interested in. Griffin may be a decent idea, though, as Adz says. Though for the record, I'm against merging the articles on the development bodies, as they're three distinct organisations. Ambi 13:57, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Griffin discussion

• Griffin would be an interesting one, most of the current article has been cribbed from the Dictionary of Australian Biography without acknowledgement. There is certainly room for expansion on his works in the US, Australia and India, and there is a lot of info on the internet and in print sources, and Wikiproject Sydney and Melbourne may be able to help out with images. Otherwise ANU might be a good one, using the recently featured University of Michigan as a model.--nixie 23:45, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

• I don't support the merger of National Capital Development Commission with the Federal Capital Commission. Not just different eras applied but very different agendas and legacy. Most of the 1920s architecture around is FCC. There are some books. I just am not quite game to start yet - it isn't just about architecture it is also about the politicking with Griffin, the setting up of a city in the middle of the bush and making it attractive to new residents, mainly from Melbourne who would have had a hard time adjusting to what was not even a country town ....

For the moment I think going with Griffin would be good, especially if a lot of the material is just from one source. I was fascinated when doing some research for General Bridge's grave that it is "the only built structure in Canberra that was designed directly by Griffin and built according to his specifications" - lot of qualifications in there though - quote from Sites of Significance in the ACT. --A Y Arktos 00:11, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I notice a copy of his Canberra plan is on the Giffin article. Does anyone know if these are actually still under copyright? I have resisted putting any plans up because I am not sure of their copyright expirey period. One point though is that Canberra is not the only work Walter Burley Griffin did, it would be nice if we could get some more info up for some of his other projects (but this may be outside the Canberra wikiproject). The inside of the Capitol Theatre in Melbourne is pretty impressive. --Martyman-(talk) 02:19, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I asked someone about this recently, apparently the copyright on the plans (all plans submitted to competition) was surrendered to the government. Now whether they were then works covered by crown copyright- or if there is some other rules covering them is unclear to me. My guess would be that crown copyright may apply in this case, and if thats true they should be in the PD. The pic of the plan currently in the article is horrible.--nixie 03:23, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes a terrible quality questionable picture, just what wikipedia needs more of. Anyway I am not sure that the image in question is actually even from teh competition stage of the design it may be a leter one during the construction. It is definatly diferent to the one show at [7] which is incidently a great recsource about the design competition. I wonder if the information's inclusion there can be taken as proof it is in the public domain? --Martyman-(talk) 04:14, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Other good references for the design are [8] and this image which I found at the NAA [9] really, really good copy of the design. --Martyman-(talk) 04:22, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh and this one too [10]. --Martyman-(talk) 04:25, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Does the NAA site give any indication of the copyright?--nixie 04:34, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Not really, it does mention as you said the top few entries where kept by the government and the rest where sent back (though photos of some of them where kept). I don't know if that means that the kept ones copyright transfered to the government or not.. If it did then Crown Copyright for artistic works is 50 years from creation, otherwise artistic works are still under copyright if the creator died before 1955. This is again changed I believe if the creator was not Australian... I am thinking that as the Australian Government owns the originals it is a safe bet to say that we would get away with claiming crown copyright. --Martyman-(talk) 05:00, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Claus 18 of the Rules of the competition see [11] and [12] reads:

18. The premiated Designs shall become the property of the Government for
it's unrestricted use, either in whole or in part. Any claim for further remuneration
by one or all of the authors or their assignors or legal representatives will not, under
any circumstance, be recognised.

PS. Other good references at NAA canberra plan, plan restoration and fedoration info, old parliament house info --Martyman-(talk) 05:12, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I am going to go ahead and upload some better versions of the plans as I a pretty sure the statement above is suficient proof of the plans crown copyright. --Martyman-(talk) 05:25, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

New copies of the plans are available at Image:Canberra plan view-WBG.jpg Image:Canberra plan-WBG.jpg Image:Canberra plan shaded-WBG.jpg. I don't have time to include them in the relavent articles at the moment. --Martyman-(talk) 05:39, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Back to featured article selection

OK, after hijacking this thread for a bit, I should try to bring it back on track. Now that History of the Australian Capital Territory has been put up as a featured article candidate (let's keep our finger crossed there aren't any huge objections), we should try to pick a new wikiproject focus article. There seems to be a few votes for Walter Burley Griffin and I think that also trying to create an accompanying Griffin Plan (or something equivalent) would be a good idea. What do people think? --Martyman-(talk) 12:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, Griffin would be a good choice. I think it might be a good idea to hold off on the spin off article until we see how much room discussion of the plan takes up in the Griffin article - we can always move it out of there subsequently.--nixie 12:29, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I also agree. We can start with Walter Burley Griffin, with Griffin Plan being a likely spinoff article (just as there were umpteen spinoff articles from history of the Australian Capital Territory). Ambi 12:32, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

• I support the nomination, with the support of 4 editors and no conflicts, I think we have concensus. I have tagged the talk page with the template WPCanberraNotice--A Y Arktos 19:27, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Maps of the ACT

The ACT Government has a site at http://www.gim.act.gov.au/actLocate/index.dwt where you can create maps of the ACT with a number of layers, customising the view and the area. It thereby gives you information about land use, distances between features ... The maps are copyright so you would be using it for research purposes unless you sought permission:

Copyright of material contained on this site is owned by the Australian Capital Territory.

You may download, display, print and copy, any material at this website, in unaltered form only, for your personal use or for non-commercial use within your organisation.

Except as permitted above you must not copy, adapt, publish, distribute or commercialise any material contained on this site without the ACT Government's permission.

Requests for further authorisation should be directed to Customer Services and Information. Email address: copyright@act.gov.au

Notwithstanding the restriction, it still seems to me an exciting resource--A Y Arktos 19:24, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Image additions

Does anyone else think the recent image additions by User:Fir0002 are a bit over the top? A lot of these articles have gone through a careful proccess of selecting a limited number of photos to properly display the subject. --Martyman-(talk) 01:16, 2 December 2005 (UTC) See: Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Lake Burley Griffin, Commonwealth Avenue, Canberra, Walter Burley Griffin and National Carillon. Still going: Parliamentary Triangle, Canberra, Old Parliament House, Canberra, Mount Ainslie, Australian Capital Territory

I very much agree. Can we trim these down to only the most important ones? Ambi 08:43, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I've removed a few- these articles aren't galleries- so if they're obtrusive remove them.--nixie 08:45, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

yep. some of the night photos arent necessary, unless theres something like spectacular lights you wouldnt need a night photo Astrokey44 10:52, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your complaints I'll take them on board and steer clear of taking photos of Canberra again. Not really, because I'm passionate about illustrating wikipedia to the best it can be. The text found on all the articles are great, but it can be found in numerous other resources. Free high res images however are much hard to find. IMO, all wiki articles should look kind of like Shrine of Remembrance, text on the left and a strip of uniform sized images on the right.
Anyway it has come to my attention that Martyman has not only a problem with my contributions, but more specifically the Parliamentery Triangle photo. I would like to put to the vote which of the following two photos better illustrates the article on the Parliamentary Triangle.

No. 1

No. 2

I am quite happy to remove my photo, but I would like to make sure this is the opinion of the majority, not just one individual. --Fir0002 01:51, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I stand by my opinion that the first photo is a perfectly suitable illustration that was already in the article (and a nicer looking photo) and that replacing it with yours is pointless. --Martyman-(talk) 06:57, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think either adds significantly to the article which is well illustrated by the map, and is far too short to need 4 images illustrating the same thing.--nixie 09:14, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I am surprised anyone could think that a photo that does not mark out the triangle is a superior pic to one that does have the triangle overlaid. What sort of logic is that! Let's have both, perhaps with one of them in a Gallery. I am also puzzled by Petaholmes idea that a map somehow tells me (12000 miles away in Bristol, England) what the area really looks like. How am I to visualise the place from a map?

I am also disturbed (as a person who only works with pictures) that pics are being viewed in this discussion almost as a "nuisance" addition to the articles. Firstly, the reader often enjoys the pics more than the text. Secondly, I understand server space for pics is no problem. Thirdly, pics are often much more illustrative of the article's subject than thousands of word of text. So please treat Fir0002 much more thoughtfully or we could lose a highly valued Wikipedian. The solution is just to put any extra pics in a gallery (yes, WP is a Gallery as well as a text depository). Please don't suggest they could be in a Commons Gallery because our readers will surely never see them.

Unless already suggested, pics could be spun off into a separate article "Images of Canberra " or wherever. This is is not as good as having them all in the original article but might satisfy both parties - Adrian Pingstone 09:38, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

To cut to the point, there is an abundance of photos of Canberra, Fir002 took more and stuck them into articles, with existing illustations. With an active Wikiproject in the area it would have been considerate to say,

Hello- these are my photos, they are all on the commons, are any of them useful?

Adding links to the images in galleries on the commons to the relevant articles, would have also been a good way to go about it. Fir002 takes some good pics, but these articles aren't galleries which is a point he seems to have missed.--nixie 09:47, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

• In chosing between the two photos of the Parliamentary triangle, I prefer the second one taken by Fir0002. I find the angle of the picture allows the concept to better illustrate the point. I think in this case the part of the design concept of Canberra is well illustrated by a picture. I have already explained to Fir0002 why I preferred the existing picture of Old Parliament House - not least because it was of the front of the house. I can imagine that someone might take a better picture of the front of the house, or the image being used might be cropped and thus improved. Unfortunately Fir0002 did not get to visit OPH when he was here (maybe next time). I support the use of pictures in articles, I think illustration supplements the text usefully as per Arpingstone's comments above. We will get to Tilba Tilba and add some text, and I have some pictures of the village taken in the sunshine :-)--A Y Arktos 10:57, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

• • Personally, I think I'd go with the first one. It conveys the point without resorting to hand-drawn lines and is a more professional-looking image. Ambi 13:08, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

• • • Um excuse me? Hand drawn lines? Have you even been to the exhibit? They are lasers which are there for exactly that purpose --Fir0002 08:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
• Either creating a gallery on Wikipedia or linking from here to a gallery on Commons seem like the best initial solution, and then image additions/replacements can be suggested on the articles' individual talk pages. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-4 13:26
  • Of course; we have tags for precisely this purpose, and that would be perfect. The issue is that Fir is trying to use the Wikipedia articles themselves as galleries for his images. Ambi 13:41, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Im not sure; The first one has nicer lighting, though the second one shows the triangle better. In any case I made a new article on commons [13] which is now linked from the parliamentary triangle canberra. What is going on with that Tilba Tilba page? Did it get put up for AfD?? Astrokey44 13:57, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Having seen Fir0002 around FPC in the past, I'm a little more sympathetic to his images. However, unfortunately, Wikipedia is not an image gallery. When we get a proliferation of high quality images, by all means, they should be uploaded to the Commons, where they may be displayed in galleries. The articles themselves should contain sufficient images to accompany and explain the text, but no more; I think the best solution here would be to link to a gallery on the Commons. And just to be fair, if the plethora of images that we have are all of equivalent worth and technical quality, perhaps the only fair way is to rotate them every now and then.

As for the two images above, I don't quite like either of them - ideally, we'd have a photo of the real thing from a plane. But in the absense of that, I'd prefer Fir0002's one; without the lines drawn in, for me, it's just a photo of a model of Canberra. Enochlau 15:10, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I just noticed that User:Fir0002 has spammed at least eight user talk pages with the same message: Hi xxxxx, I would very much appreciate your input in the following argument. There seems to be a gang of users unwilling to allow anyone to interfere with there Canberra project without invitation. It was risky to take my camera on our school excursion to Canberra, but I did for the sake of the photos I could upload to Wiki. Needless to say, I'm deeply distressed over the reaction that has taken place. In particular, I would like to ask if the removal of all my photos off the Lake Burley Griffin article was a step forward in the usefullness of the page. Please either voice your opinion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Canberra or write back to me. Thanks for your time (and I hope) support. --- this isnt the right way to go about getting comments, you should have put a notice up at Wikipedia:Requests for comment --- Astrokey44 15:14, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't quite understand the recent trend towards being against those who drop messages on others' user pages when they need some support on an issue (see RfA for instance). Sometimes, the people who work with him may understand the situation a little better than someone else who drops by RfC. He hasn't contacted me in person, but I wouldn't have minded if he had; it was only by chance that I dropped by the Canberra project page and saw this. Enochlau 15:46, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

And I thank you for your input Enochlau, I will contact you in the future since you seem agreeable to pur your perspective on things. --Fir0002 08:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Contacting in person is fine. Merely writing some text and then copy+paste-ing it all over user pages is spam Astrokey44 23:02, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

First, like Enochalu, I don't consider Fir0002 actions spamming and I am getting tired of hearing this argument used to restrict free speech. So for the record I want to strongly thank Fir for dropping me a message and I hope he does so again if he thinks my input is needed. Second, the existence of a WikiProject does not mean that its members have more right then others to determine the content of any article, so I see no reason for Fir to ask you for permission before editing the article. Third, as long as photos don't interfere with the text, the more - the merrier. I have reviewed the Fir additions here and I see no reason for removal of his images: they are pretty and article has lots of space. Fourth: it is true that excessive galleries should be moved to Commons, but small ones never hurt anybody.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 20:15, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. I like fir's photos a lot. I also think we have a long history of textual articles on WP. It might be interesting to see what a different kind of image-heavy article could look like; but so far this has not been the dominant WP style. At any rate, this isn't worth being impolite over; please be respectful of both sides of this discussion. Everyone involved is trying to make these articles great. +sj + 20:30, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I have not chosen one photo over the other above because one is hugely better than the other. I removed fir0002's one because it was redundant and it was pretty obvious he is not interested in whether his photos are surplus to the article's needs or not. Two photos of the same model in an article about a real place (not a model) is just stupid. Optimally as mentioned above the article should have an aerial photo of the real thing.

I also resent the suggestion that I am a text person, having contributed many photos and illustrations to wikipedia myself (I generally choose subjects that are short on illustrations before uploading any photos). I feel strongly that the number and subject of images in an article should be chosen to properly compliment the text. As there is no shortage of photos of Canberra (at least in the popular subjects fir0002 contributed to) many of these articles have already gone through a proccess of carefully sellecting the best layout and selection of photos. Several of the articles he added photos to are Featured articles and need to be held to a higher standard. Over illustrated images do not make it through the featured article proccess. Fir's example of Shrine of Remembrance above would not have become featured if it looked like it currently does. I, and many others find solid blocks of images ugly. --Martyman-(talk) 20:49, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Well in that case, since I think the majority favours my photo, would you be so kind as the bring back my photo? I would like to make a similar appeal on the photo on the Captain Cook Memorial Fountain. I feel mine not only is of higher quality, but displays the fountain with more landmarks.

The best layout? It suprises me to hear you say that a nice even strip of photos is ugly, because looking at the hapzardly placed images not keeping to one side (left and right) doesn't give a particularly good impression. --Fir0002 08:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I am not going to put your photo back, I removed it because it is no better than the original photo and was added to the article with no thought as to whether it was needed or not. It is unfair to the previous photographer to remove their photo, just because you want your photo there. In future a philosophy of only uploading photos that are actually needed by articles would be much less likely to offend others.

As to layout, I just went through and selected 10 random Featured articles. All but one of them included images both right and left aligned and not one of them had a solid block of images down the right hand side. I think you will find the majority is definately against you on that one. --Martyman-(talk) 10:03, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

The whole reason I started this discussion was to determine which of the two images were better for the article, and I thought that it had been established that the consensus was for my photo? It's all very well to say that its unfair to the previous photographer, but you have to remember that what you want out of an article is the best on offer. I mean if someone wrote in the Burley Griffin article In 1914, Griffin moved to Australia., it would be fair to change the sentence to In 1914, Griffin and his wife Marion moved to Australia, where they stayed for the next 21 years. I'm not necessarily saying that this to images are so different, but I think you can see what I mean.

The usual convention as I understand it is to have them alternate between left and right sides of the page. Enochlau 13:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Another thing, I don't know what the usual procedure is when we get too many pictures of a subject, but I think it is manifestly unfair for it to be first come best dressed. What's wrong with changing the photos around once in a while? Enochlau 13:26, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

It's not first in best dressed. We use the best photos. The problem in the past has been that Fir0002 has been taking photos and putting them in regardless of what was already there. However, this issue seems to be in the past now (c.f. his excellent additions to Australian National Botanic Gardens, and his addition of the spare pictures to Commons), so I think we should just drop it now. Ambi 14:01, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Just for the record, I took the other picture of the model and I won't be offended if it gets replaced with Fir's picture. (To be honest, i wasn't happy with it at the time I took it but my battery died after I took it, so I had no choice but to call it a day). I agree with Adrian's comment above that a model gives a better impression than a map, which was the reason why I added the picture in the first place. It's not an arial shot, but without an aeroplane, its the next best thing. I also agree with Ambi, it's not 'first in best dressed'. I think we should use the best photos. My photos have been used to replace other poorer photos in the past (eg Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly), and similarly, I have refrained from uploading pictures when there have already been better pics in the system.

I think the main issue here is whether there is such a thing as 'too many pictures in an article', and whether there should be a process for determining whether to add pictures. There is no hard and fast rule. Having pictures is good as long as they add value, and as long as there is sufficeint text so that the article is not cluttered. I do agree with Martyman that having two pictures of the same model doesn't add value. In cases like these it would be best to use the talk page if in doubt about adding a pic or if you're not happy with what somebody has done. Galleries can add value to an article and they have been employed in the past. I see no reason for not continuing this. (See for example: Parkes, Australian Capital Territory, Mount Ainslie, Australian Capital Territory. In the case of Queenslander (architecture), adding large pictures would have made the article cluttered, so I made them smaller. This might be a solution in some instances).

In terms of the pictures above, I won't be offended if it is replaced. I think the first pic has better lighting but the lasers in the second pic highlight the triangle better. I'll let the majority decide. - Adz 04:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

That was my whole request - I felt that my photo illustrated the triangle better. --Fir0002 05:13, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

If Fir0002 respects my opinion enough to ask me to participate in this discussion then I have no problem with him doing so. As for the images themselves, I'll take a look at them and comment on the talk pages of the respective articles. As for the Parliamentary Triangle images, I feel that both of them illustrate the Triangle quite well, although Fir's version is more clear. Raven4x4x 06:24, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Raven! I would like to thank everyone else you contributed as well. --Fir0002 08:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• Regarding image location: Having all of the images along one side of the screen is certainly not appropriate on Wikipedia. The primary focus of articles on Wikipedia is the text; the images serve to support what is written. When the images are all in a column along the side, it becomes very difficult to connect the image with the paragraph or sentence that it is related to, and therefore clouds their purpose for being there. Secondly, an article only needs one image per subject, any more should go into a gallery about that subject. Most people want concise information; the few that need more than one view of the wall of a building should be willing to look through a gallery. ~MDD4696 (talk • contribs) 00:33, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • OK, I can live with that, although personally I still strongly prefer the strip of photos. It's nice to see this argument finishing up. --Fir0002 05:13, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Storm

Started this Canberra storms December 2 2005 about Friday's storms. Does anyone have a photo of the dark clouds on that day, or of some of the damage? Astrokey44 14:07, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I really don't think the storm was that notable. There are some trees down in Commonwealth Park - very few - even more left standing. If anything I think it was more an article for wikinews. Will anyone remember in a few week's time? Of course the family of the man who was killed by a tree will. More than 20 people have died on Canbera's roads this year and we don't have an article on each incident or other incients with premature loss of life - for example the house fire in Canowindra, New South Wales. Similarly three Piper Chieftens have crashed this year (with loss of life)...--A Y Arktos 19:23, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't want to be disparaging, and I don't particularly object if it stays, but even though I wasn't in Canberra that day (left to head back to Victoria that morning), I'd be inclined to agree with AYArktos. Ambi 22:34, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Well it did affect quite alot of the city rather than road incidents which affect individuals. They also said it was the worst disaster to hit the city since the bushfires, and I think I heard damage estimates in the $10m-$20m range Astrokey44 22:59, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I was in the City at the time (was being battered by wind and rain on my bicycle) and I don't think the storm was notable enough to be included in an encyclopedia. Since there hasn't been a significant disaster of any kind since the bushfires, any disaster would have be 'the worst', so that description doesn't really count for much. There was a bit of damage, and one person was killed, but the storm was no more significant than the storms that hit Sydney every summer, or the floods that hit the northern rivers of NSW/Gold Coast every other year. Those incidents don't all have individual articles. A storm of the magnitude that damaged just about every roof in Sydney may be significant, but even then, it would be difficult to write an article aout it. In the case of the Canberra storm on Friday, what is there of encyclopedic value to write? You're not going to catalogue every street on which a tree fell and every location where a house was damaged. ... I'm not convinced that it adds anything of value to Wikipedia. -- Adz 04:15, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Fine. I suggested on the talk page there that an article Severe storms in Australia should be created which would cover it, and Ive copied most of it across there, as well as the talk page. Astrokey44 10:09, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

More Images

Hi,

To comply with the correct protocol I'll come aroudn here first. I;ve got a stack of photos a friend of mine took on the Floriade:

, and I think this photos: Image:Telstra tower and flags.jpg could be used somewhere? Thanks --Fir0002 09:41, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Nice photo! I reckon it would go well in the Commonwealth Place, Canberra article with a caption explaining that it is the international flag display looking towards Black Mountain and the Telstra Tower. -- Adz 09:58, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

.... actually, I tried adding it to the article and it doesn't quite work. Telstra Tower gets lost when it is reduced to a thumb. Let's see what others think.

You wouldn't happen to have a picture to replace the one that is already there would you? I took it on an overcast day and it looks a bit dull. -- Adz 10:02, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem I see with a lot of these images is that they are very artistic and nice, but aren't particularly encyclopedic. A photo that shows both banks of flag for example would be more illustrative of commonwealth place. --Martyman-(talk) 10:05, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Suburb Infoboxes

How are we going on the suburb infoboxes? I have got to get around to re-doing most of the maps in the new format with scale bar, etc. I think from looking at the list further up the page we still have a couple of districts left to do. Anyone feel like jumping in and lending a hand?

Still left to do are:

• Woden - partially done
• Belconnen - partially done
• Gungahlin - not done

The advantage of getting all of these done is that then even our stub articles will contain a useful infobox with easy navigation etc. (which puts us way in front of the other AU wikiprojects). --Martyman-(talk) 01:55, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

What's the plan for the unbuilt suburbs, do they get a box too? Also I started checking to see if all the suburbs were in category:Suburbs of Canberra, I think that there are some that are still missing from the cat, if somone wants to chase up the stragglers that would be really good.--nixie 02:34, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I've gone through the whole list and categorised all the stragglers - there were about seven or so. I left the unbuilt suburbs, though, as it looked like they'd been deliberately left alone by whoever categorised Gungahlin originally - perhaps there could be a subcat for them? Ambi 08:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

My map doesn't include any unbuilt suburbs, I would suggest not bothering with the infobox for them yet. --Martyman-(talk) 09:25, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

History of the Australian Capital Territory

Congratulations to everyone involved, History of the Australian Capital Territory was just featured. Lets see if we can get Walter Burley Griffin there too. --Martyman-(talk) 05:02, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

District Names

I propose moving all of the Canberra districts back to their proper names rather than their disambiguated +(district) names. Off the top of my head Belconnen and Gungahlin have suburbs by the same name. I would suggest using disambugation text at the top of the district page for these two cases linking to the respective suburbs. Comments? --Martyman-(talk) 00:17, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

No objections here. There's really not a whole lot of need to have the district tag. Unlike the towns and suburbs, I think more confusion amounts from having the district disambiguator. Ambi 01:03, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I concur with the proposal--A Y Arktos 01:27, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I have moved these now, (except Tuggeranong which needs a admin) now I have the fun job of going through all the articles and fixing all the links so they don't go to the redirects. fun, fun, fun --Martyman-(talk) 10:16, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I've fixed up Tuggeranong. :) Ambi 10:39, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

New Cite Style

I have switched Lake Burley Griffin over to the latest cite style as a test. I am not convinced it is the ultimate solution but it does have a few advantages over the current ref3 system we have been using. The biggest advantage is the auto generated references section which will automatically re-order when the text is moved around. --Martyman-(talk) 00:12, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

New workup

Walter Burley Griffin has improved significantly from a short article with at least 5 factual inaccuracies (by my recollection) to a good article - but it still needs polishing and some more research to be ready for FAC. In the interest of maintaining momentum and to correspond with the new year I think we should pick a new workup article. Suggestions?--nixie 14:04, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

current suggestions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Canberra/Featured workup are: Parliament House, Canberra / Australian Capital Territory / 2003 Canberra bushfires (This would be a good one for around next March, that's when the Coroner's final findings are due, which should wrap up any potential loose ends.--nixie 05:28, 24 November 2005 (UTC)) / History of Canberra / Australian National University / Australian War Memorial / John Smith Murdoch - architect that designed most of Canberra's first big buildings / Federal Capital Commission (Murdoch worked for this organisation) / National Capital Authority / Namadgi National Park / Gus Petersilka

I personally am in favour of working on the FCC, or we could work on the 2003 bushfire as there will be a fair amount of coverage for the third anniversary on the 18th of this month with the new memorial and I think a planned boycott by affected residents --A Y Arktos 19:43, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Do you know where I could find out more details about the fire anniversary activites, it might be good to get some photos. I'd prefer to leave any attempt at FA on the fire article until after the coroners report is out. I'm in favour of working on something that we have a good chance of finishing - I think Parlimant House would be a good choice - and we could have it ready to appear on the anniversary of the openening on May 9.--nixie 10:30, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd personally go for the bushfires, which certainly needs it (one of the worst articles I ever wrote, though it didn't help that I never finished it). That said, does this mean that we're giving up on getting Walter Burley Griffin featured? Ambi 10:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

WBG needs someone to go and sit and the NLA and do a day or two of research, I don't think it could be described as comprehensive as is. I will elaborate on the talk page if anyone wants to follow it up in the near future, also some pics from the US would be a nice addition and there haven't been any advances on that front.--nixie 11:20, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

If you can point me in the right direction on the talk page, I'll be back in Canberra in a fortnight, after which time I'll have a month or so of sitting around with not much to do, so I'll be happy to spend as long as is necessary at the NLA. If you know what specific things in the US we need images of, we may be able to get in touch with individual photographer Wikipedians in that area and see if they can help. Ambi 11:35, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

It is a shame to leave the WBG article unfinished, but it seems to have come to a halt barring further in depth research. I agree with nixie that in choosing the next article, it might be best to choose one that looks easier to get to featured. The bushfire article will have a dangling ending until the coroners report is out in March (the report should also be a very useful reference for finishing the article). That leaves room for probably one more article before we do the bushfire one. I would be happy to do Parliament House, Canberra or maybe we could do Australian Capital Territory which has been a bit left behind by Canberra and History of the Australian Capital Territory, it would have the advantage that we could use a large amount of info pinched from those two articles. --Martyman-(talk) 12:00, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I like that idea. Australian Capital Territory shouldn't be too hard, would kind of complete things, and would provide a good template for the other states to work from later. Ambi 13:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

It would be good to have an example for the other states to follow. Also, at present I don't think there are any FA's on subnational entities, although I saw California on peer-review a week ago.--cj | talk 14:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

ACT will have alot of overlap with Canberra, which may hinder things at FAC, but I'm willing to give it a go.--nixie 18:02, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

bushfire anniversary

You might find this site useful: http://www.bushfirerecovery.act.gov.au/ There will be a memorial unveiled at the new Stromlo Forest Park (Deek's Drive as was) on the 18th. Here's the invite - 10am for 10.30am [14].--A Y Arktos 11:10, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

• Its a Wednesday, so I won't be able to make the opening, will anyone else be able to attend?--nixie 11:22, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • No luck on my end. I won't be back in Canberra until a couple of days later. Ambi 11:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I am back at work on the 16th, so probably can't make it. I might be able to send my girlfriend down with my camera though, have to see what she thinks. It is walking distance from out house in Duffy, we walk down and looked at it under construction a month or two ago, it is now looking pretty complete from the road, I might be able to drop past on the weekend and take some photos. --Martyman-(talk) 22:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Casino Canberra page rename

Hi, could an admin please help with renaming Canberra Casino to Casino Canberra, the latter being its correct name, see article illustration. I believe I can't move it because there is a redirect in place. Thanks--A Y Arktos 19:33, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

• Done.--nixie 21:36, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you :-) --A Y Arktos 23:52, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Nightclubs

Ive been trying to find information on the history of nightclubs/pubs for Nightlife in Canberra but it has been difficult as most of their sites dont have much history information and theres not much info on places which used to exist. Anyone know information on old clubs/pubs or when current places opened - what was canberra's first nightclub or pub for instance? -- Astrokey44|talk 03:32, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Comments sought - commercial article?

Could people please take a look at Brand Depot and Canberra International Airport#Recent expansion. I have two concerns. The first is that that article reads as if the place is already open - which it isn't - and secondly, it reads to me a little too much like advertising. I think its only marginaly notable in any case and tend to think that it is advertising disguised as an encyclopedic entry. (I tend to think that articles about shopping centres should only refer to shops in the general sense without naming brands - so 'fast food outlet' instead of 'KFC' and Supermarket instead on 'Woolworths' so perhaps I'm biased - which is why I'm asking for other people's opinions.

User:Webfive who created the Brand Depot article and linked to it from Canberra International Airport and Outlet mall (as an external commercial link) also appears to have written the entire Snow Foundation article which reads like a promotional brochure. While Terry Snow may have set up a charitable foundation, he is also running a commercial enterprise (the Airport) and I'm concerned about WP being used as a means of promoting it.

Do others share the same concern? and if so, what should we do about it? I'm inclined to put Brand Depot up for AfD, and remove reference to its name (although not the fact that the development is occurring itself) from Canberra Airport. Snow Foundation should probably be cleaned up. -- Adz|talk 23:41, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Snow Foundation certainly does warrant cleaning up - perhaps it might be an idea to write an article on Terry Snow (who is notable), and merge the information about his organisation (which IMHO isn't notable) into that article. I think Brand Depot could be merged into Canberra International Airport, and should be delinked from everyone it's been spammed to. I don't think its name needs to removed from the airport article, though. Ambi 23:51, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I've cut most of the unencyclopedic content from the Snow Foundation article. The Brand depot article should be redirected to the airport article, and if anyone wants to rewrite it when it is actually complete they can then do so.--nixie 00:16, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Another contributor

Hi

I have been encouraged to announce myself here. I am willing to put insome work on upgrading the Canberra suburb pages. I will have a go at adding Geology information. Do people agree that Yarralumla is a good example to folloow? GB 09:37, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi again Graeme, welcome to the Canberra Wikiproject. The Yarralumla, Australian Capital Territory article is one of two wikipedia featured articles about suburbs (the other is Waterfall Gully, South Australia). Both of these suburbs have a lot of history and details that make it much easier to create a decent length article. I wouldn't expect too many other articles on Canberra suburbs would be able to approach the same level of detail, though please feel free to prove me wrong. There has been the feeling recently that it would be a good idea to start by fleshing out our articles about Canberra's districts before attempting the multitude of suburbs articles, of course what you choose to work on is always up to you. --Martyman-(talk) 10:31, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Stub switch

I've changed the ACT related stubs to use this picture, since there are probably copyright issues with the flag and so it is consistent with the other states. It looks OK, but if anyone can think of a better free illustration they should go ahead and change it.--nixie 03:38, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Jerrabomberra

Jerrabomberra has recently been created. I moved it to Jerrabomberra, New South Wales as per other locations in NSW. The Canberra infobox doesnt really suit it because of the district heading and the 'canberra suburbs near' -- Astrokey44|talk 13:04, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I guess there are three ways around that. Either we could make a generic suburb infobox, which is not very likely to be acceptable to all australian contributors, or we could make a Queanbeyan suburb infobox, or we could modify the Canberra infobox with optional parameters so that it is better suited to other cities. --Martyman-(talk) 21:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Maybe there should be a generic one. Are there any other suburb infoboxes currently on suburbs for other cities? -- Astrokey44|talk 14:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Waterfall Gully, South Australia uses one based on our one (though it is hard coded, not using a template). Not sure if there are any others. --Martyman-(talk) 08:33, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Ngambri

It looks like the author whose book had been used as a reference on Ngambri and mentioned in the history of canberra talk page has responded to these pages herself. See [15] and Talk:Ngambri -- Astrokey44|talk 14:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Ainslie Article

I notice that User:Pennbradly has added the name of the graphiti artist to Ainslie, Australian Capital Territory. This seems a little tasteless to me and if not then maybe a little un-encyclopedic. What do other people think? --Martyman-(talk) 08:30, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree. I'm not even sure that the incident itself was notable enough to include in an encyclopedia. It made news for a couple of days but I don't think it is the sort of thing that is significant in the history of the suburb. I'd be interested to hear if others have an opinion. I'm inclined to delete the whole paragraph, but at the very least, his name should be de-wikified, and 'embarassingly' should be deleted as it is POV. -- Adz|talk 22:53, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I would agree to completly removing the mention of it. Doesn't seem like a very historic event. If the person involved was notable enough to have his own page then maybe it could be included there, but I don't think he is. --Martyman-(talk) 23:32, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

My reaction also was that his name should not be included, it is enough to say a Government official etc - there is a link to the Canberra Times article. I was waiting to see if there was any other reaction, as there was, and the response similar to mine. I would not object of the paragraph was deleted. If the fact belongs anywhere, it is in a political article, not an article about the suburb.--A Y Arktos 23:37, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree, it's not relvant in the suburb article.--nixie 23:56, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

The person and incident were significant in that it wasn't simply a case of a grafitti artist having being caught red handed but that the perpetrator was an environmental advisor to the ACT Chief Minister. I can accept it may simply be recentism and not add value to an article on Ainslie. Naming the individual wasn't at all meant in bad taste. His name is already quite publicly well known and discussed on blogs etc. -- Pennbradly 06:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

The question though isn't whether the incident was in itself significant (and I'm not convinced that it was), but whether it was significant to the history of the suburb, and on that point I would argue that it wasn't. The graffiti could have happened in any suburb, or any bus stop or at any local shops. The fact that it happend in Ainslie doesn't impact on the event the event, and doesn't change the character, demographics, lifestyle, or any other aspect of the suburb.

If everybody else agrees, i think this discussion should be moved to the Ainslie talk page. -- Adz|talk 07:03, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd remove it as well. It's not relevant to the suburb. It might warrant the tiniest of mentions if we ever get Jon Stanhope up near featured status, but otherwise I doubt it is encyclopedic at all. Ambi 09:23, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

template edit

I am not exactly happy about this edit. Shoul dwe revert it? --Martyman-(talk) 13:21, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I think so. Perhaps put a note on the talk page asking editors to discuss further edits on the talk page. Either that, or drop the editor a note on their talk page. -- Adz|talk 13:34, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

• I did revert this and another similar edit. The only guideline that I have come across is this oneWikipedia:Spam#Internal_spamming and it does not seem to fall foul of that. I would like to see a policy, but would settle for a guideline, before such an edit removing the link to the project is made again. Incidentally in my early days of editing such a footer is how I found the project!--A Y Arktos 19:06, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I could see there may be a problem with internal spamming by a wikiproject that overlaps a lot of other areas, but the Canberra wikiproject includes almost all the editors who work on articles about Canberra and the stub templates are not on the more popular articles anyway. Thanks for reverting the changes. --Martyman-(talk) 23:20, 3 February 2006 (UTC)