Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 44

Locality population figures and the ABS

One headache I've been repeatedly coming across while working on town and locality articles is how to update or add population figures in regard to the ABS's entirely random census districts for things below LGA-level and general decision to ignore town boundaries. I've generally been going with the State Suburb data, but this gets difficult when the ABS either amalgamates up to six towns or has census districts accumulating random bits of a bunch of towns. I've tried some of the other classifications where State Suburb data clearly doesn't work, but even then I'm often choosing between figures that only include a town centre, or else just include random bits of that place and random bits of a few other places as well. Of all the organisations I'd expect to cause problems from just making shit up, the last of them I would have expected would be the ABS.

With that in mind, I'd really see what others suggestions for addressing this are and how others have dealt with this headache. Population information is something that's a bit of an outdated and badly sourced hodgepodge as it is across Australian Wikipedia, so it'd be good if we could somehow sort a way of working through this. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:20, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

In updating the figures for my LGA I've found it necessary to add a "Notes" section to most articles to compensate for the same sort of thing that you've found. Generally the ABS data is way off. When using {{Census 2011 AUS}}, using the "gazetted locality" code gives the reader a border of the locality in red, which is usually different from the census district, which is presented in blue. --AussieLegend (✉) 13:37, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been using the gazetted locality code, which is useful for knowing how badly the ABS has stuffed it. I can often explain it away in notes or in-text if what they've done with the State Suburb boundaries is relatively simple, but if it includes too many towns or they've just mangled local borders completely that gets a bit hard. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:05, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

I share your pain on this. I too use SSC when it's available. If it's not, sometimes I try to explain in the text that for census purposes, Smallville has been aggregated with Biggerville whose population is 321. sometimes I just don't bother with a population because it's all too hard to explain, especially when there are multiple localities or parts thereof being aggregated. It would be nice if we could find something from the ABS that explained why some places don't get an SSC. I suspect it is because their populations are so low that to reveal them would potentially compromise the privacy of households/individuals, hence the need to aggregate them. If we could get this confirmed and ideally know what the threshold value is (eg 50) then we could say that the population of Smallville was < 50. I can't think of too many practical purposes for which Wikipedia readers would need overly precise population data, given how naturally fluid it is. I suspect most people are just using the order of magnitude 10, 100, 1K, 10K, 100K, 1M etc to get a sense of how big a place it is. if we say the population is negligible, that's probably sufficient. Kerry (talk) 21:18, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

This document gives an overview but doesn't answer my question of the exact criteria. Kerry (talk) 21:23, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Maybe we should just say "In the 2011 census, the population of Smallville was too low to be separately reported" and cite the ABS Quickstat for that GL which will be the SSC for Bigville whose map should show Smallville. For the purpose of the Census citation template, we would put the Bigville SSC as the ID and Smallville (GL) as the name field. And put "too low" or "-" in the info box? Kerry (talk) 21:45, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

I have experimented with Yarrabilba, Queensland, let me know what you think? I think we need something on the Census in Australia page to explain this "too low" stuff which could then be linked from the articles with the "too low" problem for people who want more explanation. Kerry (talk) 21:59, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

This ABS document seems to be saying that an SSC (which is an SA1 or so I believe) needs 180 people, unless it's an indigenous community in which case it's only 90. so this suggests GLs without SSCs have < 180 people. Kerry (talk) 22:09, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

I think that's a really good way of handling this in a lot of cases, and that's the sort of solution I was hoping for when I brought this up here. I think the whole phrase is a bit too big for the infobox, and that I might be inclined to leave them out of the infobox in these cases but mention it in the lede. I also wonder if it might work to go "X was too small to be reported separately in the 2011 census; T, U, V, W, and X combined had a total of Z." Doing it this way around feels a bit less clunky than reporting a figure and trying to explain where in the heck the ABS found those people from. I think what you've come up with is better than "negligible" - that doesn't translate too well to a town of 175 people.

The only situations this wouldn't solve are ones like Cressy, Victoria or Birregurra, Victoria, where all relevant ABS districts are cracked, not only because of what they've thrown in with Cressy, but because of how they've randomly chopped up the named district as well in a way that gets very confusing to explain.

Also seconding having a bit in Census of Australia about the "too low" issues - that would be very helpful. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:48, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

"the population of Smallville was too low to be separately reported" is OR without a source. We really have no idea why the ABS has decided to not to provide separate data for some suburbs and the reason is not always because a suburb population is too small. For example, according to the ABS my town has a population of 12,725 but, for reasons known only to the ABS, doesn't include the whole town in the CCD.[1] While it includes the partially rural and mostly unpopulated southern part of the town in the figures, a similar area to the north is included in an adjacent suburb.[2] Together the population of the suburb and the northern part of the town is only 234. It would have made more sense to include all of the town of the town population in the town data and include Eagleton's population with Balickera and East Seaham to the north.[3] It's far more neutral to say something like, "The ABS does not report the population of Smallville separately. Instead, its population is include with that of adjacent Bigville." --AussieLegend (✉) 09:23, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Just to show the silliness of the ABS districts, note that the Raymond Terrace south-western border is the shoreline of the Hunter River,[4] but the ABS CCD extents into the river. I'm not sure who they're counting out there.... --AussieLegend (✉) 09:28, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Unnghh. *headdesk* It's pretty likely that they took out that section of your town to make up the numbers in the adjacent one and just took it from an illogical source. But if they're doing that kind of stuff as well, it does make it hard to go with the clearer formulation that Kerry suggested, and yours sounds like a decent alternative. The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:55, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

... the ABS CCD extents into the river. I'm not sure who they're counting out there....
The people who live in houseboats, which are "treated as occupied private dwellings regardless of location". Mitch Ames (talk) 12:18, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, if we had any houseboats..... --AussieLegend (✉) 13:15, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

AussieLegend suggested "The ABS does not report the population of Smallville separately. Instead, its population is include with that of adjacent Bigville", which is fine as far as it goes but I think a corresponding note would also be required for Bigville, so its population is not overstated. Especially in country areas where Bigville may not be any bigger than Smallville, and a couple of other Villes all in the Census area which is arbitrarily named after Bigville.--Gronk Oz (talk) 18:59, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I think this important, especially where "Bigville" is a small country town. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:01, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I've changed my mind about how we should word this again after seeing Kerry put her suggestions into action above. We have a reliable source about the ABS's cutoff for having a separate state suburb, and especially where they've accumulated multiple small districts together but haven't done anything else stupid (as they had in AussieLegend's example) I think it's reasonable to explain the situation. One of my next projects is articles on a bunch of small ex-sawmilling and now rural tourist-based settlements with very low populations, about six of which have been accumulated together (without any other silliness) by the ABS; I think it makes a lot more sense to the reader if we explain why the ABS merged them (which we know for a fact in cases like this) rather than just stating that they did it. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:01, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I've begun work on a 'Smallville' where the ABS Locality and State Suburb boundaries make no sense, but the local council quotes population figures for the settlement. It's based these on the mesh block, which is the smallest geographic region in the Australian Statistical Geography Standard.

All the files mentioned below are available from a single download page at the ABS.

The only figures the ABS publishes at the mesh block level are the total population and number of dwellings, in a single file for the whole of Australia. Mesh blocks are in effect 'level zero' of a hierarchy. They don't have names, only numbers. Key maps down to level 2 of the hierarchy are available as PDF files, as are a land use category and area for the mesh blocks in CSV files for each state. The mesh block maps (for each state) are available, but they are in Mapinfo or ESRI Shapefile formats, neither of which (as far as I know) I have the software to view, so I have not downloaded any of them.

'The majority of populated Mesh Blocks contain between 30 and 60 dwellings', so figures for multiple blocks would need to be added together for most settlements. How to refer to such accumulated data in an article I haven't really thought about yet. Hope the rest helps though. Innesw (talk) 23:47, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

This is an interesting idea - but how well do these correlate with locality boundaries, and how much work would it do to cobble them together? I get mindful of the original research policy in these situations. The Drover's Wife (talk) 19:12, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

The ABS description page on mesh blocks says 'Where possible, Mesh Blocks are designed to contain or aggregate to whole suburbs or rural localities.' It also says 'Mesh Blocks reflect land use boundaries. For example, residential areas are separated from commercial or agricultural areas', so it shouldn't be a huge problem (in an individual case) to total the figures for adjacent 'residential' mesh blocks. The NOR problem had occurred to me, but maybe it's allowed under What SYNTH is not. I stress maybe, I'm no expert on NOR. Does adding A + B + C (individual figures from a sourced database, and possibly individually identified in the reference) to get D (the figure used in the article text) constitute original research? Innesw (talk) 23:55, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

I see where you're going with this. How would I actually find the population figures? I got a bit confused looking at the documents linked above. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:36, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

It's possible the mesh-block digital boundaries files (especially the Mapinfo ones) contain the data about individual mesh blocks within them, but if not it would take the following steps. (I'll give example descriptions from the download page in [].)

• View the boundaries file [state Mesh Blocks ASGS Ed 2011 Digital Boundaries] for the area of interest. It may only show the ID numbers for the mesh blocks.
• Find in the mesh blocks data file [state Mesh Blocks ASGS Edition 2011 in .csv Format] the mesh block numbers of interest, and confirm they are of land-use category 'residential' (or similar 'built up' uses like hospital/medical)
• Find the mesh block numbers in the census data file, and total the population and dwellings numbers. Very sorry, I didn't give the link to the download page for this before. It's a single file for the whole of Australia.

Now I've laid it out in detail I can see why it may be considered original research to get the numbers required. The step from map to mesh-block number(s) is probably unavoidable, but if someone put the land-use categories and census data in the one file ... Innesw (talk) 00:13, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I've now actually done what I suggested, and joined the mesh-block and census data in a single data file (for Victoria), which is linked to the shapefile. With (newly downloaded) software I can now click on mesh blocks, see their land-use category, and total the dwellings and population for a group of residential (and similar) mesh-blocks.

I have tried to match a set of mesh blocks with an ABS 'locality', and no matter which mesh blocks I pick I can't get the 2011 census totals to match. This is almost certainly due to the 'random adjustment' the ABS applies to the mesh block data for confidentiality reasons. So if the ABS locality boundaries make sense, use that data; if they don't, there is an alternative in the mesh-block data if we can overcome the issues of (a) original research and (b) referencing the data source.Innesw (talk) 23:05, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

One solution which I've been using, after a discussion with Kerry, is using Victorian Electoral Commission data for cases where Smallville is merged with Bigville in a way that makes the Smallville figures totally useless. The electoral commission has counts for electors in every single locality in the state using the actual boundaries, and if you're looking for a "basically how many people live here" guide, it's a bloody lot more useful than saying "The AEC didn't actually release data on this page, but merged it in with this other place that is thirty times its size". The Drover's Wife (talk) 19:12, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

How do you get a population figure from electors? Not everyone is enrolled to vote. The number of electors excludes everyone below the age of 18 and people who aren't enrolled. --AussieLegend (✉) 19:32, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

It isn't a population figure, but it's the best substitute I've found for population data where the ABS is completely useless. This means it doesn't go in the population field in the textbook; rather, it gets explained in the lede that the ABS doesn't release population data, but that the number of enrolled voters is X. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:36, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

infobox for Queensland Heritage Register articles

Now that the Queensland Heritage Register is partially available under CC-BY license, I am looking to create quite a number of articles from it. I was thinking an infobox might be useful. Having looked around, Template:Infobox historic site seems the most appropriate. Has anyone used this for other heritage registers? Or can point to something else that might be better? Or has any other feedback? Thanks Kerry (talk) 03:37, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

I probably should add that one of the attractions of the above template is that it is designed to accommodate multiple heritage listings on different registers, which is a consideration as Queensland requires all local councils to maintain local heritage registers plus there are other orgs like National Trust, Institute of Engineers etc with their own registers, so many of the QHR sites will also turn up on other heritage registers.Kerry (talk) 03:43, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

I like this a lot and would be happy working with it on my own articles. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:50, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Some articles may be better off with a subject-specific infobox, eg {{infobox bridge}}, {{infobox building}}, {{Infobox monument}}, etc. - Evad37 [talk] 06:16, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I failed to explain that I would be generating the articles from XML, so the information I have at my disposal to create infoboxes are the heritage-data fields in the XML (like registration date, registration category, registration criteria), so it's not possible for me to automate subject-specific infoboxes (e.g. spans of bridges). Once the articles are created, there would nothing to stop anyone creating a subject-specific infobox for a particular article in the usual way. According to Template:Infobox, it's possible to embed or combine two infoboxes, which would be a neat solution if it works (I've never tried)! Kerry (talk) 07:36, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Correction of a Reef Name near Cairns

In the third paragraph, last sentence of the Wikipedia article "Endeavour Reef", I believe the name of the reef just north of Endeavour Reef should be "Cairns Reef" and not "Claims Reef" as indicated and shown on the map. But I am not entirely sure of this, and I don't know how to change the map, even if I was sure. Does anyone know for sure ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.159.113.191 (talk) 07:34, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

I think you are right. Firstly, there is no Claims Reef listed in the Queensland Place Names register but there is a Cairns Reef whose coordinates 15°41′59″S 145°33′59″E take us to a curved reef just north of Endeavour Reef which is called Claims Reef in the map article. I've had a go at fixing Endeavour Reef; let me know what you think or undo it if you don't think it's right.Kerry (talk) 07:54, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Kerry, it looks right to me now. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 07:55, 27 July 2014 (UTC).

Languages in censuses and Race and ethnicity in censuses

Pleas add information about this country to this articles.--Kaiyr (talk) 14:38, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Murray-Darling steamboats and Murray-Darling steamboat people

I'm really concerned about the sourcing of Murray-Darling steamboats and Murray-Darling steamboat people. These very long articles are pretty much entirely based on primarily sources including insanely vague references to people. While most of those people are probably dead, there are plenty of things still happening in the 1920s and 1930s, meaning people could still be alive. Stuartyeates (talk) 01:34, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

I've been watching the progression of these articles and was afraid that it would wind up in tears, but I think they're actually quite different cases. You've also got the wrong policy: these are entirely cited to secondary, not primary sources, which is perfectly valid (see Wikipedia:PSTS for the explanation); the problem here (especially with the latter) is potentially delving into Wikipedia:Original research.

Murray-Darling steamboats is something that should be fine in my book; there are numerous pretty comprehensive books on the subject (my father had a good one in his library that I could probably get sent over if I had to which would back up most of this article alone), and while the authors have clearly gone towards online sources, they could be replaced with book sources relatively easily as long as someone's got access to a decent library. The book sources are actually quite good on this subject; I'm pretty sure, if I cared enough, I could write individual articles that passed WP:RS with little trouble on most of the boats on that list.

Murray-Darling steamboat people, on the other hand, has always felt like original research and something that seems like a good project *somewhere* but doesn't fit under the Wikipedia banner. I just really didn't want to bring it up considering the epic amount of work that has gone into it. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:53, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree. The boats list is also much more encyclopedic than "people who have some sort of connection with M-D steamboats" - if they're notable, give 'em articles, and if not, well, that's that. I wonder if the people list could be userfied, at least temporarily until a better home for it is found, because it would be a shame for all that work to go to waste. Frickeg (talk) 11:45, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

The question is really whether the people article is notable on its own. If it's not, just move the contents into a new bottom section of the boats article. I am not so worried about BLP as I think this is all long enough ago that they are probably all dead. But this appears to be an experienced editor who is developing this pair of article, so a *friendly* chat on their user talk page might be the best way to proceed. I certainly don't think we want to propose to throw it all away (certainly let's not drive away another Australian editor, thinking of the recent "going postal" experience - double meaning intended). We have few enough of us as it is. Now all sing along with me! "Ol' man river, Dat ol' man river, He mus'know sumpin', But don't say nuthin', He jes' keeps rollin', He keeps on rollin' along." Kerry (talk) 21:02, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

FWIW every piece of information in these articles comes from Australian newspapers (via NLA Trove) and each can be verified with a little patience and knowledge of Trove search syntax (it helps that I've done my share of corrections) or from Ian Mudie's book on the subject. Most of the people in the list are not notable except as being part of the list, many are at present just surnames of which several have dubious spellings, but the list would be the lesser for their exclusion. But some have turned out to be surprisingly notable (see Augustus Baker Peirce). As for the value of the lists themselves, as the primary author I'm not one to judge, but I went looking for such a list, found similar ones in other countries but not the one on our doorstep. Doug butler (talk) 02:13, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

{{Lang-en-AU}}

Template:Lang-en-AU (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 08:07, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Disruptive editing

Could I please have some help with Oxley, Queensland‎. An IP editor is insisting on adding a sentence on other suburbs sharing the same postcode to the lead (and is doing the same with Graceville, Queensland and Corinda, Queensland, claims the suburb has two halves - a Lower and Upper without a source as I have requested, and keeps removing a suburb to the south from the infobox. - Shiftchange (talk) 06:38, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

A review of the IPs edits indicates that the above is an understatement regarding problems with this IP. --AussieLegend (✉) 10:20, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Flyer22, NQ and I have all reverted edits by this IP. The IP, who is edit warring himself, has reverted edits with the edit summary, "Reinstated Geographical information. No warring please",[5][6][7][8] and then, despite having made no edits outside of related areas in Queensland, decided to delete the geography section of Raymond Terrace (where I live).[9] This is clearly vandalism. --AussieLegend (✉) 09:54, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

I've just blocked them Nick-D (talk) 10:13, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm pretty sure the IP had breached 3RR on Corinda,Queensland at least, so a block was certainly warranted. --AussieLegend (✉) 10:35, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

And the IP has returned and yet again edited Oxley, Queensland and yet again removed the fact that Inala, Queensland is one of the suburbs to the south from the infobox (feel free to check on any current map that they are adjoining). Sigh! Kerry (talk) 21:03, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Blocked them again. Euryalus (talk) 21:53, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Kerry (talk) 07:30, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Our serial IP pest is back again. Again, removing an adjacent suburb (Inala) and adding a not-adjacent suburb (Sherwood). Does not respond on Talk or User Talk, so difficult to try to find out what is driving this obsession (a very old street directory, maybe? - not that I can think of any time when Oxley and Sherwood would have been adjacent, Corinda has always been in between throughout my lifetime at least). Kerry (talk) 06:21, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Blocked again. Am cautious about long-term block of IPs, though this one has clearly been assigned to the same user since July. Let's see what happens in mid-September. Euryalus (talk) 06:48, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

List of massacres of Indigenous Australians

FYI, the meaning and scope of "List of massacres of Indigenous Australians" is under discussion, see talk:List of massacres of Indigenous Australians -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 07:05, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Australian Sport

I think WikiProject Australian sport could do with a Yobot tagging drive. I had a quick look through some aussie sport categories and found a lot aren't tagged with the WP:AUSSPORT template. What does everyone else think? NickGibson3900 - Talk - Sign my Guestbook 00:28, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

We probably should clearly define what the project scope is. It's it sports people or just sports, venues etc? Should it duplicate tagging articles already in the sub projects, Australian rules football, rugby league, soccer, motor sports etc? I've never really been sure. The-Pope (talk) 05:10, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Agree with The Pope - the scope need to be clarified before anything further. The sub projects should have their scope defined as to whether they cover their subject areas only. It needs careful discussion before proceeding imho. satusuro 10:46, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I've generally avoided doing automated project tags, unless you very carefully review the category list. I prefer to use WP:AWB. For my preferred project, AFL, there are a few categories under Category:Australian rules football that aren't really appropriate in the WikiProject, mainly Irish international rules players, winners of the Douglas Wilkie Medal and people notable for other things (mainly politicians or cricketers) who played a game or few of football at some lower level. You wouldn't want a recursive Category list from Sport in Australia to say include every world wide athlete who competed at the Sydney or Melbourne Olympic Games (don't know if it does, just an example of what can happen with recursive Category trees). The-Pope (talk) 14:51, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Women of Science Wikibomb event in Canberra

The Australian Academy of Science is running an edit-a-thon in Canberra on August 14, to improve the coverage of female Australian Scientists on Wikipedia. For those not in Canberra, it looks like you can participate online as well. It was covered in The Age on Sunday, and registrations close at the end of this week. I'm not involved in organising this, but I'm posting it here as I know many on this board will be interested. --Michael Billington (talk) 08:06, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Reminder. Wikibomb is on today (Thursday 14 August). I understand around 150 people are registered for the event (either at the Academy of Science or virtually); while they are probably all well-intentioned, many will be new to Wikipedia editing. Your patience and friendly assistance is requested in relation to the development of new articles and with linking to existing articles. I will be at the event physically so say Hello if you are there too. Thanks Kerry (talk) 17:49, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to anyone who helped. Over 80 articles are known to have been created but we are unsure of the output of many of the online participants. We are trying to gather the articles into a hidden category

If you want to help tidy up any of them. Most participants were new to Wikipedia editing so the articles aren't likely to confirm to the MoS. Kerry (talk) 08:12, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

It looks like it has been a successful event. Thanks for lending your expertise. Articles seem to be well-sourced with some categories, link rot and incoming links to be sorted. Before reading them I couldn't name a female Australian scientist off the top of my head. - Shiftchange (talk) 12:10, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Not sure how well sourced some are, but given the mass media's preoccupation with sport, celebrity and politics, it's always hard to find truly independent refs for academics. How do you tell someone that a list of 50 peer review papers might not prove notability as easily as a single article in the Herald Sun? We want/need some references about the scientist, not just evidence that they write papers. Given the metadata debate happening at the moment, would have been nice for them to be told about our desired metadata - infoboxes, defaultsort, persondata etc. And the ABC has an article on the event. Not sure that the category is ideally named, bomb isn't always taken the way we mean it, and it's just a bit generic for my liking. The-Pope (talk) 15:26, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

I'd like to say that the event might have gone better if the participants had been provided with a template such as this one that also included the Category:Australian women academics, Category:Australian women scientists and/or Category:Indigenous Australian women academics. These kinds of categories are insanely useful for this kind of activism. Also note that off-wiki coordination is in danger of crossing into meat puppetry as soon as the first article is up for deletion. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:10, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

A little good faith here wouldnt hurt, this wasnt an editor or WMAU organised event this was done by an outside group who saw a void and chose to fill it. Their inexperience is showing in a number of ways so instead of biting how about offering positive assistance and praise in what they achieved, everything being complained of is fixable Gnangarra 13:06, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

And they are starting to be challenged for deletion. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australia/Article_alerts. At least one is at AFD, 2 have been prodded. As much as I'd love to help out and give good faith to the editors and organisers, this is exactly the problem that happens if editors aren't instructed correctly, and can/will be demoralising to the editor. The need for significant coverage in independent references should have been made absolute and non negotiable, regardless of the scientists position, number of papers written or reputation in their field. I don't understand H-scores or whatever metric academics use to justify their importance, but we either need to step in and help out, or the wikibomb might bomb out big time. The-Pope (talk) 15:05, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I have dePROD'd several and will continue to work on any that look questionable. I suspect that several of the articles (mainly for scientists in government roles) are going to be deleted. Stuartyeates (talk) 18:34, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikiproject AusRoads

First of all, Is the wikiproject Australian roads still running?

Secondly, do we need an article on smaller roads such as the strzlecki highway or the Great Alpine Road? NMFCFan113 (talk) 03:06, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

1) Yes, it is still running, there just hasn't been much collaborative work or discussion or people asking questions lately

2) Whether or not we have articles – for any topic, not just roads – is based on notability. Length/usage alone isn't a reliable measure/estimate of notability: A road that is a significant part of a state highway/route would usually be notable per WP:GEOROAD, or a road could also be notable for historical reasons (notability isn't temporary), or as a significant scenic route, etc. Also, don't forget that per the WP:FIVEPILLARS, Wikipedia does/should include features of a gazetteer. - Evad37 [talk] 03:30, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

And short/stub articles can undergo significant improvement, if someone (or more likley, a group of someone's) put in the effort to research, rewrite, and expand them. E.g., Forrest Highway used to look like this - Evad37 [talk] 03:44, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Turns out the great alpine road is already done, what about the Old melbourne Road (Old Princess Highway) I am trying to discuss whether my ideas are considered noteable — Preceding unsigned comment added by NMFCFan113 (talk • contribs) 03:48, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Oh, sorry (I misinterpreted your question as asking about possible deletion of the existing articles) . Obviously, you should check to see whether an article already exists, as that will save you some hassle if it does, because then you can just expand it – for example, Old Princes Highway, Victoria has already been created, but could be expanded. We do already have a lot of articles started, eg see List of highways in Victoria and List of road routes in Victoria, and similar lists for other states. If you want some rough guidance, major highways are usually notable, but most of them have already been created. Roads that make up M, A, and B road routes would probably be notable, major urban arterial roads are probably notable, more local roads are usually not notable (but may be notable as a tourist road or historically). Ultimately, it comes down to whether you have WP:reliable sources to support claim of notability (if you don't, any new article you create is likely to be deleted). Feel free to post more ideas here or at WT:AURD, and if do find you want to create an article, I would suggest starting a draft version in a sandbox (see WP:USERSUBPAGE). Anyway, I'm glad you want to contribute! - Evad37 [talk] 04:23, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

User:Tango_Mike_Bravo/Walsh_Report_(cryptography)

I originally posted this request on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cryptography but that project is described as "semi-active".

I have drafted an article on the Walsh Report more correctly titled Review of Policy relating to Encryption Technologies that was conducted for the Australian government in 1996. Having founded and been a board member of Electronic Frontiers Australia who played a major role in the Walsh Report I have a potential conflict of interest in this article.

Could one or more editors here please review my draft, edit it if you want to, and—if you then consider it sufficiently neutral and meeting other criteria for Wikipedia articles—move it to mainspace. Tango Mike Bravo (talk) 07:46, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I suggest that you submit to the (currently very backlogged) WP:AfC system. I don't foresee any serious issues. Stuartyeates (talk) 08:26, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I've done some copy-editing of the draft. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:39, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I moved it to an article, the AFC is already heavily backlogged, and this is already better than most of the stuff they deal with. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:45, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

British Empire in World War II

See talk:British Empire in World War II on whether this should cover Australia, and what the proper name is, if it does cover Australia -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 03:41, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Australia at the team sports international competitions

The article Australia at the team sports international competitions has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Not notable and not referenced

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

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

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Gibson Flying V (talk) 02:14, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Prod removed from this and three similar articles as they have had prior discussion and should go through the AFD process, note that they do contain references so its likely that different admins will choose different outcomes which is why they should be considered as a group. Feel free to start an afd. Gnangarra 08:17, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

It should be deleted because the name is grammatically gruesome. Can anyone here imagine a casual reader ever searching for an article of this name? Seriously? How on earth do people ever come up with such crap, and what is so wrong with our systems that it is allowed to remain as long as it has? Saying that because there's three more with such horrible names makes them harder to delete just shows how stupid our policies are. When someone makes a bigger mess than average, we should remove it more quickly, not slower. HiLo48 (talk) 08:39, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

This article contains no references. They're only internal links to other wikipedia articles. I'm sorry if this was the wrong process, I didn't know "the AFD process" was something different.--Gibson Flying V (talk) 08:51, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

there are a lot of problems with the articles, yes if they were new they'd would probably be nuked without issue but we have policies to provides checks and balances which hopefully ensure that random articles arent subject to the whim of admins regardless of prior discussion decisions. Gnangarra 08:53, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

They were new once. Why do they still exist? They are a blight on Wikipedia. Don't tell me it's because of our policies. All that leads to is the question of why our policies are so bad. HiLo48 (talk) 08:55, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Today I learnt that the US has won more continental gold medals in men's cricket than Australia. Hack (talk) 09:03, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Bahaha. These all need to be torched, and while I don't know how to create group AfDs I'll be there cheering it on if someone does the deed. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:52, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Hack has kindly obliged us at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Australia at the team sports international competitions, The Drover's Wife.--Gibson Flying V (talk) 21:39, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Australian gold rushes

Hi folks, somebody with a little knowledge should probably check the Australian gold rushes article over—it's been subject to a lot of vandalism lately, some of which hasn't been caught by ClueBot/Huggle/etc. It would probably also be a good idea for a few more people ot add it to their watchlists, but I've semi-protected it for the time being. Thanks, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:57, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Little Athletics

Could a few editors please comment on this GA's peer review. Review page: Wikipedia:Peer review/Little Athletics/archive1. Thanks -- NickGibson3900 ^Talk 06:43, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I've made a few edits to the article. Some specific reasons are shown in individual edit summaries. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:51, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Queensland Place Name citations are all broken :-(

The Queensland Place Names website has been changed. It no longer returns individual pages for individual entries in the gazetteer, meaning all the citations now fail (it is not just a case of changing the start of the URL but the fundamental approach to providing information). Despite the Qld Govt commitment to open data, masses of information has actually been taken away. A search for a place name now does not provide the Local Government Area, the latitude/longitude, nor any indication of the type of the place (town, locality, suburb, neighbourhood, railway station, mountain, sandbar, etc). So a search on Babinda (say) returns 4 Babinda entries (one is probably for the town, one for the locality, and one for the railway station, and goodness knows what the other one might be) but you have NO way of telling which is which or of telling them apart. Even aside from breaking all our Wikipedia citations, it is an appalling unusable interface. Please try it yourselves at:

http://www.dnrm.qld.gov.au/land/place-names/search/queensland-place-names-search

and please use the "Was this page useful?" (lower right of screen) and tell them it's awful! Kerry (talk) 08:25, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I also note that there was no indication that the site was changing, nor was there any user input solicited. Kerry (talk) 08:29, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Yuck, it looks like they're completely unlinkable too, so it's not even a matter of sending a bot through to fix everything. Dislike. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:38, 10 September 2014 (UTC).

Following a number of emails with the relevant Department, it seems we are seeing a partial implementation of a new system. The indications seem to be that we will get back the capabilities we had before but the URLs will be different. I guess we wait and see (no idea how long we have to wait). If it is just the URLs that are different, a lot can be fixed by a single change to the cite QPN template and hopefully AWB may be able to help mop up the rest. Fingers crossed. Kerry (talk) 12:51, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguation style for Australian roads

Note: There is a proposal at WT:AURD#Move_articles_to_bracket_disambiguation to rename Australian road articles to conform to the WP:AURDNAME guideline – specifically, using brackets instead of a comma for disambiguation. - Evad37 [talk] 02:41, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Whitewashing at Sunland Group

We have an IP editor section-blanking at Sunland Group. Given the content being removed, it appears to be whitewashing. As you can see here at their contributions, we have 4 identical attempts to remove it. I have put an unexplained-content removal tag on their talk page but guessing that won't slow them down. Kerry (talk) 21:54, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Their determination was inspiring. I've given it a brief spit and polish. - Shiftchange (talk) 07:28, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Independent Labour

I am updating Electoral district of Bundaberg and have one chap, Frank Barnes, who is Independent Labor for a number of years. What party colour do I use? He's not the only Independent Labor member listed here. While I presume it was not a political party as such, I would have thought one of the off-red colours as used for Frank Barnes Labor would be appropriate, rather than the grey for Independents more generally. I think calling yourself Independent Labor is definitely throwing your hat in the bed with the reds (so to speak). Kerry (talk) 07:34, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Not that it should be binding on us, but the UK pages use a washed out version of the colour for such candidates, see United Kingdom general election, 1906 for an example. Also paging User:Orderinchaos to this discussion. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:18, 16 September 2014 (UTC).

I've always gone with the grey. Independent Labor (or Ind Lib, or any other kind of Ind) is still more Independent than Labor. I did try the washed-out colours but they all gave the misleading impression of party-hood (and there was an Independent Labor Group that was an actual party-ish type thing). I think it's best that we keep it as the grey, because we're still making the distinction but that way we're also making it clear that they are not members of a political party. Frickeg (talk) 09:51, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

It wasn't a political party, it was a designation. I personally used light red for them when in doubt. Essentially Ind. Lab. means "I'm Labor but not bound by the party whip / policy decisions" (or at least that's what they're trying to say to voters). Orderinchaos 10:57, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

What? I can't believe there's disagreement over this! Colour is to signify party, not ideological leaning. Party affiliation is objective and backed up by WP:RS, ideological leaning is subjective - we shouldn't be arbitrarily colouring MPs that don't belong to a political party/colour with a shade we "think" is correct. As soon as they leave the party, they should be coloured gray. Anything else is WP:OR. Not to mention, it's easy to identify party affiliation by the briefest of glances in a list. Once you start getting in to shades, it's less easy to glance at. Red, blue, gray, etc. Please, no shades. Timeshift (talk) 04:11, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with the OR assertion, given at least half of the colours we give parties are at least partly OR anyway. Everything else, though, I agree with entirely. Frickeg (talk) 05:13, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Well that's true. I actually don't agree with choosing a colour based on their website. It's up to interpretation. Gamers 4 Croydon... four colours in the logo so it got assigned gray - ha. Perhaps we should re-review the arbitrary assigning of colours to minor parties? It's very much bordering on WP:OR. Timeshift (talk) 05:25, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

That's true but we do want a way to identify them. If all the ones without verifiable colours were grey, we would have ... a LOT of grey. Frickeg (talk) 05:27, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Depends on the seat/article. I dare say gray would still be in the clear minority. Many seats only have red and blue. Timeshift (talk) 05:32, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

I was more thinking in the results boxes. Anything that isn't Labor, Liberal, Nationals, Greens, PUP or Democrats would pretty much have to be grey. Frickeg (talk) 05:58, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. Well, there is merit to having grey. It indicates they're different. A colour means nothing next to another colour except interpretation. Timeshift (talk) 06:04, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

We used to do that, and it really didn't work very well. Everything sort of blurs together when half of most election boxes are grey. The colours are usually picked with some sort of eye to both ideological position (the socialist ones all get something reddish, for instance) and any colours they might have used (the Climate Sceptics used green, so they got a shade of green). Frickeg (talk) 06:15, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I just don't think the arbitrary WP:OR selection of a colour is a road we should go down. Timeshift (talk) 06:31, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

I remember discussing it at the time, and that was also the conclusion, but nobody could think of an alternative. I think it's ended up being a bit of a WP:IAR situation, since there's no question that colours for political parties have helped from a readability and instant-information standpoint. Frickeg (talk) 06:33, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

I loathe to take precedent from them, but what do the other countries of wikipedia do? Also, at what point is the line drawn and the colour too arbitrary? Not all minor parties are socialist or green. It's a slippery road to go down. Once arbitary colour selection begins, where does it end and what is too WP:OR? Timeshift (talk) 06:34, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

I've never seen grey assigned to a registered political party. And we have actually consciously gone down a semi-OR road with certain parties - we give the Country Liberal Party blue, for instance, even though it uses orange, because the orange was seen to associate it with the Democrats, whereas by giving it blue we clearly associated it with the Libs (although its infobox still uses orange). Likewise some of the early parties have been given colours more about identifying them in modern terms - the Free Traders used blue and the Protectionists red, but that last is obviously problematic given the emergence of Labor. (I'm not entirely sure our current solution - blue for Protectionists and a kind of yellowish green for the Free Traders - is the best in this case, though.) And it seems obvious that in some cases - the Labor/Lang Labor splits, for instance - we're going to have to make choices at our discretion to differentiate them by shade, which is probably the primary purpose of party colours on Wikipedia. I think our primary goal in this case has to be conveying information to readers rather than necessarily approximating some sort of "official" colour where very few parties have one, although ideally they should coincide to some degree. (I am positive there was a conversation about this at one point where we pretty much ended up going "well, I guess we have to pick at random for the super-micro parties", but I can't find it for the life of me. I assume it must be somewhere in either the archives for this page or WT:AUP.) The thing is, if we leave them as grey or white, we are assigning them to some sort of "less-important" status, or so it seems to me, whereas we should as far as possible be treating parties equally in these situations. I fully appreciate your concerns about OR, and to a degree I even sympathise, but it's a case of the lesser of two evils, and I think easy identification trumps OR in this case. Frickeg (talk) 07:53, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

The way I see it, there are two scenarios. The more common one these days is where a former party member leaves the party (either by resigning or being kicked out) to sit as an Independent. In these cases, I absolutely agree that they get the grey colour and the generic "Independent" description. We wouldn't describe Mal Colston as "Independent Labor", or Geoff Shaw as "Independent Liberal", for instance. The other scenario, which doesn't happen now but may have happened back in the day, is where someone was actually elected with such a label. It was reasonably common for people to run with that sort of affiliation in the UK, because you could put anything you liked in the "Affiliation" box on the nomination form. I don't know if this ever happened in Australia, but if such a phrase appeared on a ballot paper it seems reasonable to label them as such here, and give them a colour that is related but obviously different to the main party colour. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:42, 20 September 2014 (UTC).

Well, it still happens in SA. And the parliamentary handbooks use "Independent Labor", "Independent Liberal" etc. for the period before party labels appeared on the ballot at all (i.e. pre-1984). Newspapers and such like routinely distinguished "Independent" candidates from "Independent Labor", etc. - Antony Green even separates them in the whole election vote totals for New South Wales elections on his database. I am all for labelling them as "Independent Labor", etc., and as you say in the early days they are often officially given that term (including some of the splitters), but I still think giving them anything other than the independent grey implies that they are some sort of party or had some sort of organisation. Of course, some of them did have some sort of organisation, but it wasn't a political party, and even a washed-out colour gives that impression quite strongly. If we were to go with the washed-out colours, I would suggest we would need a change in the independent colour too, to a much paler grey. If you look at the UK table, the independent colour is very pale grey which gets across the association when the Ind Lab and Ind Con and Ind Lib are also very pale. However, the grey we currently use is much more in line with what is generally used in the media and in election maps (or at least those that don't take their lead from the US, where yellow seems to be the default independent colour). Frickeg (talk) 09:11, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm weighing into this discussion really late as I've been unavailable for a few days, but I agree with Frickeg's last comment. Lankiveil's Colston analogy doesn't apply because Colston was always formally considered just an independent, rather than those who have formally sat as "Independent Liberal" (i.e. Janet Woollard; this practice does still happen): it's generally a designation based on reliable sources, and I think in these cases (Woollard, who functioned no different to any other conservative independent, being again an example) it's not appropriate to mark them in anything other than independent grey. Historically, the Lang Labor splits were formal parties, so would warrant some shade of red (I think what we do now is a good approach there); groups like Frank Barnes Labor I'd have to recheck the sources as it's been half a decade. The Drover's Wife (talk) 15:46, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Frank Barnes Labor was an actual party back in the days when there were very few rules about starting new parties... I looked into it some time back and other candidates ran under the label in neighbouring seats. I agree broadly with Craig that running as "Independent Labor" (or equiv for other parties) is a very different deal to someone who is a member of a party then becomes an independent. There isn't any WP:OR about that, as that's exactly what they ran as. So marking the same as an independent who was differently designated doesn't make much sense, especially in close contests or in cases where they actually won. Of course you get strange cases like Lionel Kelly who actually won as an Independent Country candidate then joined the *Labor* party midway through his first term, but yeah. Orderinchaos 17:37, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

But the colour we would choose for them is certainly WP:OR wouldn't you agree? Timeshift (talk) 01:23, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

I think marking, say, Woollard differently colour-wise from, say, Tony Mulder, is getting firmly into the realms of making-shit-up. They're both conservative independents, one of who has a vaguely different independent label on the ballot; they're both functionally the same in every other way. Colouring Woollard in Liberal-blue (or any shade of it) is marking a distinction that's inappropriate. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:15, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Yep. Timeshift (talk) 04:42, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

I definitely agree with that. Frickeg (talk) 05:00, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Better Than Today#Requested move

Discussion still ongoing. --George Ho (talk) 16:52, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Some help needed at Battle of Broken Hill please

An editor is edit warring over describing the incident as terrorism. Attempts to discuss on the article's talk page and on his User talk page have been to no avail. HiLo48 (talk) 03:24, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

He has actually turned up at the article Talk page now, but won't discuss the issue at hand, only that I apparently threatened him. Certainly wasn't my intention. I did try to warn him about breaking the rules here. HiLo48 (talk) 07:12, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

South East Queensland places progress map

Map of South East Queensland localities and suburbs showing article progress.

For those interested in Australian places I have created a map showing the article progress of localities and suburbs in South East Queensland. The map shows for each place whether we have an article or not as well as whether the Commons has a photo or not. I decided not include the progress through class because more than 95% of the articles were either stubs or start class. I plan to do the same survey in about four years when the next census data is available. Hopefully by then more than one or two articles per local government area will be C class or better and patches of green will appear. For those unfamiliar with the local government areas in the region see this map (the Shire of Noosa has since reformed).

I got the data from here and used MapWindow GIS, Paint.net and Microsoft Paint. The main purpose was to provide a visualisation of areas to be targetted for article creation and drives to collect photos. Any feedback on how I could improve it would be appreciated. - Shiftchange (talk) 12:23, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

My only suggestion, and I don't know how you'd do this, would be to somehow label the ones that still need work; I'm spending a fair bit of my time in the Blackall ranges lately and I could do some of those tan-coloured ones, but working out what they are is tricky. Otherwise, this is a handy resource for planning weekend drives, thanks! Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:42, 30 September 2014 (UTC).

I use the Queensland Globe layer in Google Earth. Check Boundaries > Localities and they shown in purple with labels. I kept names off the map to reduce clutter. - Shiftchange (talk) 08:28, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Portal

Helo all. I have started creating a Australian sports portal in my userspace. However I am unsure what to call it. Possibilities

1. Australian Sport
2. Australian Sports
3. Sport in Australia
4. Sports in Australia

- What does everyone think? -NickGibson3900 ^Talk 07:11, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

If you want to look at what others have done, the Canadians have Portal:Sport in Canada. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:26, 30 September 2014 (UTC).

Consistency across projects is always a sign of some care in creation of new items - Sport in Australia. satusuro 14:17, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Also if anyone has the portal creation skill fresh in their mind - an IP has just tried to resurrect the Portal:Sydney, one small problem the Sydney project redirects to this page suggesting the Sydney Project is no longer operational. I leave it up to perhaps some NSW editors to consider the issues. satusuro 14:27, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

@SatuSuro: I did a few quick fixes to Portal:Sydney to make it conform to correct portal formatting. But of course, it needs all those red links fixed. A few editors are going to have to work together on it. BTW all that text that the IP put their was formatted at all and isn't what a portal should be -NickGibson3900 ^Talk 07:07, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

If you were to use Australian Sport or Australian Sports, it should be sentence case ie Australian sport or Australian sports, per MOS, WT:Portal/Archive 5#Capitalisation of portal names and WP:Village pump (policy)/Archive 112#Proposal: MOS should apply to portals. Happily Sport[s] in Australia won't have this problem. (If anyone feels like resurrecting "Proposal: MOS should apply to portals"... ) Mitch Ames (talk) 10:14, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

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

"Australian White"

FYI, the usage of "Australian White" is up for discussion, see Talk:Anglo-Nubian -- 65.94.171.225 (talk) 05:22, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Murder of Leigh Leigh FAC

The article Murder of Leigh Leigh, which is listed under the scope of this project, is currently nominated for featured status. See Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Murder of Leigh Leigh/archive1. It currently has two people supporting it, but more reviews are needed. For those unfamiliar with FAC, reviews most be reasonably thorough; one line reviews are not very helpful. I would be ever so grateful if someone could review my nomination. Thanks. Freikorp (talk) 13:43, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

The article now has enough reviews to pass per se, though as one of the FAC coordinators has noted, none of the reviewers did a source check for accuracy and/or close paraphrasing. This is now needed in order for the article to pass. If someone could spare the time to do some source checks I would appreciate it. The article uses many offline newspaper and journal sources; I can email pdf copies of these to anyone on request, though there are plenty of online source which can be used for source checks as well. Thanks. Freikorp (talk) 03:08, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Serial IP vandal returns

Our serial IP vandal Special:Contributions/58.174.148.126 is back with a new IP address Special:Contributions/58.161.227.114 but doing the same old edits on Oxley, Queensland deleting the adjacent suburb of Inala etc. Kerry (talk) 22:12, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Blocked again. Euryalus (talk) 20:07, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Talk:PM (ABC Radio)

Page move is proposed; join in discussion before it closes. --George Ho (talk) 00:32, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification - it is a pity a literate australian didnt go there - the rename is not what it is known by, and is wrong, in effect. satusuro 08:59, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

There's no reason a new discussion can't be opened. As a result of this, AM (ABC Radio) has been moved to AM (Australian radio series), which is also wrong. --AussieLegend (✉) 11:41, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Forgive me for being dense, but what's wrong with it? Frickeg (talk) 11:44, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Neither programme is a radio series. --AussieLegend (✉) 13:04, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

US centric editors get nervous about the use of ABC lest it get confused with their similar media name/acronym of ABC, AM (ABC Radio) Australia might be a possible variation, I dont know. satusuro 13:27, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

As evidenced by @Peterkingiron:'s (perfectly reasonable) comment at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_September_30#Category:Australian_Broadcasting_Corporation_television - more comments as to if/how/which way we should merge are, of course, welcome there. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:51, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

How about (radio program) then? Frickeg (talk) 19:36, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Lorenzo Fillipe IV ... well known Lando Calrissian impersonator

 Done

Editors' comments are requested on whether "Lorenzo Fillipe IV ... well known Lando Calrissian impersonator" ought to be mentioned on Bundanoon, New South Wales. Discussion at Talk:Bundanoon, New South Wales#Lando Calrissian impersonator. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:54, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

thanks. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:09, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Queensland Heritage Register

As I have previously mentioned, I have arranged for the Queensland Heritage Register to be available under a CC-BY license. It's in an XML format which is not directly suitable for use in Wikipedia. So I have written a number of programs to manipulate the information to create Wikipedia articles. Here are three of the 1692 articles I have generated (a church, a mine and a farm in the Toowoomba Region):

• User:Kerry Raymond/sandbox/All Saints Anglican Church, Yandilla
• User:Kerry Raymond/sandbox/Acland No. 2 Colliery
• User:Kerry Raymond/sandbox/Jondaryan Woolshed

I am interested in any feedback about the generation of these articles. Do you see any "pattern of problems" in them or "patterns of potential improvement"? I am not asking whether the articles can be individually improved; I am sure any one of them can be. But I am looking for pointers to anything I can fix/improve through automated means. For example, I have just noticed that "queensland" appears in lower case in some of the heritage-listing criteria; that's something I can fix in the generator. You will notice that the generator tries to add in wikilinks within the text; this can be a bit hit-and-miss but overall it gets a lot more right than it does wrong. It's pretty good on linking place names and architectural elements but people's names are rather more problematic especially if they are also place names. This is an area where I don't think I can get too much better through automated means. Obviously I'd like to start rolling out these articles (probably a bunch each day over a number of weeks/months), but thought it would be worthwhile to let more people look over them to try to eliminate any problems in advance rather than afterwards. Thanks Kerry (talk) 06:28, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Some comments and suggestions:

• Each paragraph should end with a inline citation – much easier to see what is referenced and what isn't, especially after an article develops
• Suggest putting the CC-BY-3.0-AU notice at the bottom of the References section, under an "===Attribution===" heading (per this guideline (but noting that pseudo-headings shouldn't be used per this guideline))
• Give an archive url for the webpage with the CC-BY-3.0-AU notice, in case it is removed in the future (I just submitted it to the Wayback Machine, so you can use http://web.archive.org/web/20141008094804/https://data.qld.gov.au/dataset/the-queensland-heritage-register )
• It would be good if the references could include an archive urls, if possible.
• Will you being creating talk pages as you go, with project tags and {{text release}} (or something similar)?
• Categories shouldn't be red-linked
• Suggest displaying coords as "inline,title" so they also appear in the usual position at the top-right
• Coordinates seem overly precise, suggest cutting down to MOS:COORD's suggestion of 4 decimal places, which gives an accuracy of ~5.6 m to 10 m
• MOS:INFOBOX says "Do not include links to sections within the article; the table of contents provides that function." – I would suggest including the criteria on the Queensland Heritage Register article, and linking the criteria listed in infoboxes to that article (or just listing the letters without linking them)
• Include {{Use Australian English}} and {{Use dmy dates}} at the top of articles
• The leads seem really short, perhaps you could include something to the effect of "It was built in YEAR(s), and included on the Queensland Heritage Register on DATE. Significant components include LIST OF COMPONENTS."

Otherwise looking quite good, especially as automatically generated articles – well done - Evad37 [talk] 10:07, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Looks as though Evad has captured the range of issues, and well, I would suggest that red categories and talk pages would be a major concern. satusuro 10:29, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Some suggestions that for things that might be fixable by automation:

• All three articles include WP:SEAOFBLUE overlinking (in both the lead paragraph and the infobox). Eg in Jondaryan Woolshed:
  • "a heritage-listed shearing shed". (It's not always obvious which of the two links should be removed. For "heritage-listed church" (in All Saints Anglican Church, Yandilla), "church" is the obvious one to unlink, but it's less obvious for "heritage-listed shearing shed".)
  • "Jondaryan, Queensland" should be "Jondaryan, Queensland".
• Single quotes should be converted to double - MOS:QUOTEMARKS
• "c1913" (any year, obviously) could use {{Circa}}.
• There are some MOS:CAPS issues in the info boxes, eg "Significant Period" should be "Significant period", "Store/s / Storeroom / Storehouse, Pit - machinery, Hut/Shack ..." should be "Store/s / storeroom / storehouse, pit - machinery, hut/shack ..."
• Acland No. 2 Colliery's Description section includes several non-sentence noun phrases, eg "Ancillary buildings", "Workshops The workshops are located...". I didn't notice this in the other two articles, but there are enough in the one article to suggest a potential problem.
• This formatting strikes me as a bit odd:

Criterion A

The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of queensland's history.

Jondaryan station, established in the early 1840s, ...

Possibly the italics text (the criterion) should be part of the section heading, eg,

Criterion A: The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of queensland's history.
Jondaryan station, established in the early 1840s, ...

although it seems a bit long for a heading (appearing in the TOC). Perhaps this would be better, with "Criteria" as a heading (which it is not in my marked up text here) and criteria listed as definitions lists per H:DL:

Criterion

A – The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of queensland's history

Jondaryan station, established in the early 1840s, ...

Or maybe a table...

• Other things being equal, use <br /> instead of <br>. I believe that they are both valid, but the latter confuses the syntax highlighter (Enabled from Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, Editing).
• Consider removing the empty entries from the infobox - they take up unnecessary space in the editor window
• It might be feasible to insert {{convert}} where appropriate, eg scan the text for nnn acres, nnn feet, nnn other_units, etc

Mitch Ames (talk) 13:21, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for these suggestions. Things that I have now automate or am in the process of doing are:

• each para should end with an inline citation
• CC-BY notice is now in an Attribution section with an archive url and archive date
• Coords are now 4 decimal points, displayed inline and title
• Now has "Use Australian English" and "Use dmy dates" at the top
• Removed excessive capitalisation from the infobox
• Replaced br with br/
• Longer lede para. Some generated articles do have longer leads already (just not these 3 examples) but I will add in a bit more along the lines suggested. The limitation here is what fields are present in the input data which vary between register entries, so some ledes will always be longer than others.
• Circa templates. Should be do-able but needs careful pattern matching to avoid false positives. In particular what characters can precede the "c" in the circa and non-circa cases?

Things I don't think I can automate are:

• references in general having an archive url - I can only find a manual way to do this a single URL at a time, so if anyhow knows how to automate this, please share!
• Overlinking in the first sentence (SeaOfBlue). It is not easily automatable to decide that "church" is a common term but "shearing shed" isn't. Similarly the address component is an amalgmation of separate pieces of information (which may or may not be present in individual entries); it is feasible to link the individual pieces but less so to try to link them in combination. It would be easy to not link "heritage-listed" if that would help.

Things that are not automatable but might be semi-automatable with AWB (where you can check each change before Saving):

• Convert templates. I have had a certain amount of experience with adding convert templates using AWB and it's a very messy business and too high risk to automate. There are too many "special cases" where the automated approach would get it wrong and insert convert templates where it shouldn't.
• Single quotes to double quotes. Most single quotes in the input are apostrophes (which should not become double-quotes) and there is no easy way to tell them apart (people do it much better than machines).
• adding the text template on the talk page - this should be possible using AWB as the text template is always the same, but probably requires the generated articles were all in a hidden category (which might useful for other maintenance reasons)
• project tags - again, if the articles are in a category, it should be possible using AWB to add project tags but I think this is for the projects to undertake as their tags are usually parameterised according to their own criteria of importance, quality, and other parameters meaningful to them. Similarly AWB is probably the tool of choice if they want to add infoboxes relating to their own interests to the article itself, as the articles will all be in a category of "type of thing", e.g. "Schools in Queensland".

Things that I think are non-problems:

• red-linked categories. This is just a Wikipedia chicken-and-egg problem. You aren't supposed to have red-linked categories so you should create the categories first, but you aren't supposed to have empty categories so you should create the articles first. My plan is to create the articles and any required categories in parallel.
• the non-sentence noun phrases in the Ackand entry appear to be a problem specific to this entry (certainly it does not seem to be present in a selection of other entries I've inspected. It was just unlucky it occurred in my random selection of Toowoomba Region articles (they weren't carefully chosen). Stuff like this just has to be tidied up manually and individually (garbage-in garbage-out). I note that while I intend to automate the creation of the article text, I intend to upload them manually, precisely to try to spot anything that has obvious problems as I go. Tedious, but I think it's for the best.

Still in the category of "open questions":

• how to deal with the presentation of the criteria for heritage listing? Prior to this, I've tried a number of approaches and none is completely satisfactory. Generally for the rationales for heritage listing to make sense, you need to display the criteria first. However, if you display the criteria as part of a section heading, the table of contents becomes ridiculously wide because the criteria are so long. The infobox has a section for the criteria but the QHR's A/B/C/etc ways of naming the criteria aren't at all helpful to the reader (which is why I added the links down to the criteria within the article - I don't think linking off to the QHR article at that point is helpful to the reader and in any case that would require the criteria in the QHR article to be section headers, which has the ToC problem). The simplest solution is just to drop the criteria from the infobox and remove the sub-section headers from the Heritage Listing section. I have implemented this change manually on User:Kerry Raymond/sandbox/Acland No. 2 Colliery. Do you like this any better? No more "A", "B" and "C"s.
• how many blank fields should you leave in an infobox? The MoS has no guidance on that point. Currently I think I have every field in the infobox present in the article whether I use it or not (with the exception of the UK Grid Reference -- truly meaningless in Queensland). But I can automate it so that each individual article has absolutely no empty fields. But some of the of the other fields are quite relevant to a QHR site and could easily be filled in by a person (just as we normally do with any infobox). Some fields are of marginal relevance (does anyone really care about the altitude of a QHR site?) and the foreign language name fields are probably irrelevant for an en.WP article. So the trade-off is between leaving a lot of empty fields vs not having the empty fields available for the person who wants to fill them in. Where does the right balance lie? Kerry (talk) 05:30, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

It would be easy to not link "heritage-listed" ... - that's probably the simplest approach. (The specific register gets linked elsewhere anyway, and/or you could link "State heritage" in the infobox)

Most single quotes in the input are apostrophes (which should not become double-quotes) and there is no easy way to tell them apart - Apostrophes almost always (in a formal context) follow a letter or digit, so any single quote that does not is probably an opening quote. The next single quote that does not have a letter after it is probably the closing quote. Ignore single quote followed by letter - that is probably an apostrophe. I'm not sure if this is reliable enough (or how feasible it is to code).

how to deal with the presentation of the criteria for heritage listing? - the newer version certainly looks better.

Mitch Ames (talk) 13:27, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Re: single quotes. It's the "almost always" that creates the grief. Oh, and the original source also has backquotes floating through it which are opening quotes. Could it be done automatically? Maybe, but not easily. Human readers will not be confused by single quote being used both for quotation and as apostrophes. So I think the implementation effort outweighs the benefit here (conforming to MoS). ATM I am having grief trying to get circa templates to work and they should be easier. Again, I might decide that the benefit to the reader isn't worth the increasing complexity of the implementation. Kerry (talk) 21:57, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

I did a broadly similar project at for the DNZB a couple of years ago, see [[10]]. My advice is:

• a wikified list of all the articles to be created is very useful
• automated disambiguation is your enemy, since the small number you get wrong is insanely confusing; better to have few or no links.
• I did a bunch into main space, let knowledgeable people pick them over and them saw what of that I could automate. This seemed very useful, but you need to notify widely to get diverse feedback (think, Wikipedia:WikiProject Architecture, Wikipedia:WikiProject Architecture)
• Even with 1692 articles, I'd be included to do them and then point everyone who's expressed an interest to look over them and knock any rough edges off.

Stuartyeates (talk) 22:43, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

I think these are pretty good for the most part. I'm still a bit iffy about the "criterion" sections fitting the Wikipedia format but I don't have a better alternative. My two bits of feedback: these articles are really under-linked in terms of internal links, with key events and organisations, etc. not being linked;, and as someone noted above, the ledes are very short and not very helpful. I'm aware that these are not automatable, and I'm quite prepared to help out with them because this stuff is crazy interesting, but I'd be uncomfortable with dropping 1000+ articles with these issues. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:20, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

"... uncomfortable with dropping 1000+ articles with these issues"
We could probably mitigate the "risk" by creating a page somewhere (eg subpage of Category talk:Queensland Heritage Register) and adding the auto-created articles to a list on that page. Advertise the existence of that list and invite editors to review the articles – at least for major problems caused by the auto-create – and cross them off the list (eg strike-through) as each is done. It might take a while to review them all, but there's no deadline, and the benefits of having the material probably outweigh the potentially lower quality of the auto-generated articles. (Most of those articles are probably still going to be better quality than a lot of the stuff that turns up in Special:NewPagesFeed.) Mitch Ames (talk) 13:49, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea, as long as Kerry was okay with the extra leg-work (I can live with it as it is if she isn't). The Drover's Wife (talk) 17:09, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Also the outbuildings section of the Acland Colliery article hasn't gone across properly - what were clearly meant to be subheadings has come out as plain unformatted text. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:24, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Firstly, good work on getting these created, I know you had a big hand in getting the data released in the first place and it'll be good to have more complete information on Queensland heritage places. My only 2c would be to omit the "Criterion" section, which I don't think adds that much to the articles and which I don't think is particularly encyclopædic. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 12:05, 10 October 2014 (UTC).

Stylistically I feel like you're right, and it's something I've noticed with these from the get-go, but that section generally contains a lot of really important information about why the place is significant, rather than just what happened there. I wonder if it would be possible to rewrite these sections in a more encyclopedic style - maybe "significance" instead of what's effectively "heritage criteria"? I look at an article like the Acland Colliery and I don't know how I'd do that but it'd be good to be able to rework this somehow. The Drover's Wife (talk) 17:09, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Alternatively, what if we just renamed the criterion headings? It might be a bit more encyclopedic to have a "cultural significance" section than a "this is how it complies with criterion Z" section, while not really having to change the content at all (again, looking at the Acland Colliery example). The Drover's Wife (talk) 17:21, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

OK, here they are again (these are all straight out of the generator, no manual improvement):

• User:Kerry Raymond/sandbox/All Saints Anglican Church, Yandilla
• User:Kerry Raymond/sandbox/Acland No. 2 Colliery
• User:Kerry Raymond/sandbox/Jondaryan Woolshed

Compared to the previous ones and following your feedback

• each para has an inline citation
• CC-BY notice is now in an Attribution section with an archive url and archive date
• Coords are now 4 decimal points, displayed inline and title
• Now has "Use Australian English" and "Use dmy dates" at the top
• Removed excessive capitalisation from the infobox (headings and content)
• No longer use <br> anywhere
• Longer lede para. It now mentions the architect, the date of construction and the builder (to the extent can extract those bits of information) and that is an entry on the Queensland Heritage Register. I didn't include the place components, they were too messy to present as sentences.
• Circa templates have been added where it was safe to do (there was no immediately adjacent text that could place a different interpretation on the "c" and there had to be exactly 4 digits that looked like a year in the 19th/20th/21st century).
• completely dropped the use of the A/B/C criteria names in the infobox and "Heritage listing" section

Additional changes:

• citation for the coords (they don't come from the QHR file, which annoyingly did not include them but are generated from a government SHAPE file of the boundaries)
• a category Articles incorporating text from the Queensland Heritage Register which will be a hidden category within Category:Wikipedia sources to make finding and maintaining these articles (e.g. post-AWB-ing) much easier

My thoughts on recent comments:

• I think it is important to include the criteria for heritage listing because that is (indirectly) the basis of the notability of subject matter. I think we need to include the precise criteria text as some of the responses don't make so much sense if you don't know the criteria (in some cases, the responses are much shorter). I also think I would be "losing faith" with what the QHR people might be expecting, which arguely is not a consideration from a Wikipedia point-of-view but if we want to encourage organisation to release information under CC-BY license, it's part of the bigger picture.
• This automation is something I've worked on for some weeks and it's about as good as it can get I think. I've worked with cross-compiling (with more structured text) for many years, so I don't come to this as an amateur although I don't have a lot of natural language processing experience (which is generally a much harder problem). There will be things (like the linking) when it gets something wrong sometimes but it seems to mostly be getting them right. However, I note that all of the mistakes it makes are all made by human editors too. In addition to offers in this discussion, I have also had an offer from User:Shiftchange to assist with any manual cleaning up and project tagging.
• I won't be "dumping" 1000+ articles quickly. I intend to upload them manually precisely so I can look for glaring problems. It will take months I suspect. I note that there are around 150 existing articles in relation to the QHR, so merging with existing content will be very time-consuming. For that reason, I'll probably work on the "red link" ones first.
• As an aside, many of these QHR entries contain local history information (people, organisations and places) that could be used in other articles. Kerry (talk) 23:01, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm pretty happy with that. One thing I noticed with the new version - where did it get the "alternate name" for the Jondaryan article? It's on Jondaryan Station (which also has an article), but it's not another name for the woolshed. The outbuildings section of the Acland Colliery article is still unformatted - is this the sort of thing we'd just need to fix manually? Also, getting down to the really tiny, there's a formatting error in the "significant period" infobox section of the Yandilla article. Again, easily fixable if it can't be automated. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:40, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Comments on the current versions:

• The reference ("[1]") for the location appears before the coords, but it should be after the coords. The reference appears with both the title and the info box copies of the coords, but it should probably only be in the info box.
• There are still some capitalisation issues, eg:
  • (infobox Type) "State Heritage (Built, Landscape)" should be "State heritage (built, landscape)"
  • (Design period) "1840s - 1860s Mid-19th century)" should be "1840s - 1860s mid-19th century", possibly with a comma

Mitch Ames (talk) 09:39, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Both versions of User:Kerry Raymond/sandbox/All Saints Anglican Church, Yandilla have a bad wikilink for 'Moore' (person vs place). I would include the date of listing in the lede. Stuartyeates (talk) 09:51, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Regarding the Heritage listing section and criteria. Their inclusion has been justified on the basic of notability. Considering that notability should be established in the lead wouldn't it be better to reduce why each criteria is met into a sentence or sentence fragment and use them as a second paragraph in the lead? So for Acland No. 2 Colliery it might read "The site was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register because it demonstrates the evolution of Queensland's coal mining industry, has a high degree of intactness as an early small underground coalmine and demonstrates the principal characteristics of small underground coalmines of the early to mid-20th Century." - Shiftchange (talk) 05:42, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Not a fan of this. To use the examples here, the Jondaryan and Acland articles both map out the significance of the places in considerable detail, important pieces of which would be lost if we took this approach. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:34, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

OK, once more with feeling:

• User:Kerry Raymond/sandbox/All Saints Anglican Church, Yandilla
• User:Kerry Raymond/sandbox/Acland No. 2 Colliery
• User:Kerry Raymond/sandbox/Jondaryan Woolshed

I believe I have now addressed the remaining concerns (to the extent that I think is possible). Details below:

• Jondaryan Station is the alternate name for Jondaryan Woolshed. That factoid comes from the QHR itself. I am just passing on the information.
• subheadings present in the Acland entry. It is not generally possible to distinguish a heading from a short paragraph (the QHR has both), so it is not possible to automatically add in the syntax for subheadings. However, the generator software reports the presence of short paras to me, so I will be aware that subheadings may be present and can correct them manually if required. I have a number of these little warning messages to alert me to anything "unexpected" in the input data that may require manual attention.
• I have fixed the presentation of the significant period and the design period in the infobox; both in terms of capitalisation and formatting. They should present better now but of course on particular screen widths they may not break nicely (that's a general problem with infoboxes).
• The presence of reference [1] in the geo-coords in the title. I have experimented with all permutations and combinations and I have concluded that the designers of the infobox did not consider the possibility of providing a citation for the geo-coordinates and therefore didn't handle this well. I gave up and replaced the citation in the infobox with additional information in the attribution (the geo-coords are generated from the QHR Shapefile acquired under CC-BY license).
• I have added the date of listing on the heritage register to the lede para.
• The bad link in the Yandilla articles are fixed. This is the main error that the automatic link generator suffers from, finding a place name inside a person's name. For example, we have the towns of Gerard, Howard and Moore in Queensland, but all of these can be part of people's names. My generator cannot tell people from places. So if it sees "Howard Town Hall", it will be keen to link Howard to the place which is OK, but if it sees "Howard John Hall" it will be just as keen to link to the place which is not OK. Of course, if there was article called "Howard Town Hall" or "Howard John Hall", it would always prefer to link to those articles (it favours multi-word links over single word links, which is almost always correct). Wikifying is a "dark art"; it will not be perfect, but if people report any of these people/place confusions to me, I will instruct the generator that this name is too ambiguous to link to in the generation of further articles.
• Re: criteria. The QHR input is sequenced History, Description, Criteria. To alter that order runs the risk of foward referencing (disussing something before it's been properly introduced). I would prefer to maintain the original sequence of presentation for that reason. The lede's notability claim is its inclusion in the Queensland Heritage Register. The final section provides the detail to back up that claim. I think that's OK as is.
• Finally, double quotes. I said I could not do it, but I have. However, I have taken a somewhat conservative approach to the task but nonetheless it appears to be correctly replacing *most* (but not all) single quotes with double quotes in appropriate circumstances. However, the generator backs away if it sees too many single quotes in close proximity in a single paragraph as it cannot decide what is the right thing to do. So text like 'The Good Ol' Boys' Grocery Store' is the kind of thing it leaves for a human to deal with.
• As I have previously said, automatic generation isn't perfect, but I think it is producing articles at least as well as average human editors could (the readers of this noticeboard being in the category of above-average editors to which the generator bows its head in deep respect).Kerry (talk) 06:46, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

This all sounds pretty fair. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to get started at this point, and I'm looking forward to helping out! The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:56, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

The presence of reference [1] in the geo-coords in the title. ...
Try using coordinates={{coord}} in the infobox. It worked for me in Canberra Centenary Column. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:20, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

No joy. Take a look at the Yandilla church where I manually experimented. I get no coords displayed at all and no map. Although 'coordinates' is one of the fields of the Template:Infobox historic site according to its documentation, when I look at the template code, what I see is the construction of a Coord template using the infobox fields like latitude, longitude, coord_params etc but making no use whatsoever of the coordinates field. I don't pretend to be an expert in template writing (who designed the syntax?! ugh!) but I think we are seeing a bug, a deficiency, or a documentation error in relation to this template. If the location citation is placed on any of the template fields that the template does use, it gets hoovered up inside the body of the coord template in an inappropriate place which explains its strange appearance both inline and in the title. The template writers do not appear to have considered the possibility that coords would have a citation. Indeed, I would go far as to say that most citations in infoboxes work "by accident" rather than "by design". That is, the field with the citation is simply rendered as presented and so the citation survives. However, when the template fiddles with the fields (in this case to construct the coord template), the citation is likely to end up where it doesn't belong. Kerry (talk) 20:12, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Discussion of this problem is at Template talk:Infobox historic site#Coordinates. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:31, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, given I previously had not response from that project in relation to another matter, I had thought it was probably moribund, so I was pleasantly surprised at the rapid response to my question about the coord parameters. I just need some spare time to test their changes, but I think the signs are positive. Kerry (talk) 13:01, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

OK, I am starting to roll out the first few. See Jondaryan Woolshed as the first one. If you have hidden categories displayed, you will see that the articles will be rolled out in the Category:Articles incorporating text from the Queensland Heritage Register (please review) which is a subcategory of Category:Articles incorporating text from the Queensland Heritage Register. So if you want to assist, please bookmark the "please review" category where you will see those articles needing a "second set of eyes" (obviously I will look at them, but I may have passed the stage of being able to see my own mistakes). If you don't see anything terrible, please move the article into the parent category (without "please review"). If you do see something terrible, talk to me. Finally, thank you for all the feedback I have received. And a very big thank you to those who have offered to do reviewing. Kerry (talk) 21:38, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Oh, this is awesome. I can't believe I was away from the noticeboard so long that I almost missed it. Fantastic work User:Kerry Raymond. --99of9 (talk) 12:32, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

The Code (ABC)

Kind of off-topic question: Have viewers of The Code on ABC noticed references to a Wikipedia-like website called Cypedia? In an episode a few weeks ago, a character vandalised a page about an Australian government department, waited for it to be reverted, then (assuming the reversion was done by the government department themselves) used the IP of the editor to break into the systems of that department. In last night’s episode, another character uses it to look up information on a chemical compound. Just curious - I’m assuming they just decided to go with a fictional name and didn't think that actually asking WMF if the name could be used was worth their time! -- Chuq (talk) 01:18, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

I noticed it. I've no idea why they did it - perhaps someone thought that "cypedia" sounded more "technical" (eg from cyber). Mitch Ames (talk) 12:06, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

It would almost certainly link to a concern about either misuse of trade mark or presenting Wikipedia in a negative light leading to complaints. Generally it's easier to pick a fake name (but close enough so everyone knows what you are talking about) and avoid the hassles. This behaviour gets parodied on Top Gear frequently when they talk about the Interweb and FaceTube. Kerry (talk) 21:36, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Plus any conversation that starts with "I guess our lawyers will have to talk to your lawyers" signals the start of a long-running and expensive activity that usually ends nowhere useful for anybody. Kerry (talk) 21:42, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

It's the ABC, perhaps they can't mention specific products and services? Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 13:10, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Given how often they promote Facebook and Twitter by asking us to like them or follow them, and pop up hashtags in the middle of the program or put the stupid bird icon next to every news presenter's name.... (in blatant violation of section 31 of the ABC Act, which clearly says "The Corporation shall not broadcast advertisements ..." ... Grrr, must be about time for me to send them another complaint), I doubt that mentioning Wikipedia would be a problem. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:28, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Big Bash

For all you Big Bash League fans out there, I have created userboxes and user categories for you! The userboxes will automatically list you in the category. The user boxes are listed here but for your convenience I'll put them here:

Code	Result
{{User:NickGibson3900/UBX/Adelaide Strikers}}	ASThis user is a fan of the Adelaide Strikers	Usage
{{User:NickGibson3900/UBX/Brisbane Heat}}	BHThis user is a fan of the Brisbane Heat	Usage
{{User:NickGibson3900/UBX/Hobart Hurricanes}}	HHThis user is a fan of the Hobart Hurricanes	Usage
{{User:NickGibson3900/UBX/Melbourne Renegades}}	MRThis user is a fan of the Melbourne Renegades	Usage
{{User:NickGibson3900/UBX/Melbourne Stars}}	MSThis user is a fan of the Melbourne Stars	Usage
{{User:NickGibson3900/UBX/Perth Scorchers}}	PSThis user is a fan of the Perth Scorchers	Usage
{{User:NickGibson3900/UBX/Sydney Sixers}}	SSThis user is a fan of the Sydney Sixers	Usage
{{User:NickGibson3900/UBX/Sydney Thunder}}	STThis user is a fan of the Sydney Thunder	Usage

If you don't want a userbox, you can choose a category from Category:Wikipedian Big Bash League fans if you support a team, or, if you just enjoy the league, put [[Category:Wikipedian Big Bash League fans]] on your userpage. - NickGibson3900 ^Talk 08:34, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

It's a shame, as a Heat fan, that their colour is too eye-meltingly bright to be displayed in all it's glory on a computer screen! Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 00:35, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Ask A Librarian on Talk page of Australian articles

It has been a few months now since we started putting “Ask a Librarian” links to the National Library of Australia (and as applicable State Libraries) in the Talk page of Wikipedia articles with Australian content. I'll be meeting with the National Library on Friday to discuss this (amongst other things) and would be interested in your feedback. Have you:

• noticed these Ask A Librarian links
• considered using the service but haven’t done so yet
• used the service. If so,
  • roughly how many times to NLA or the various State Libraries
  • did you get a response, was it timely? helpful? etc

Please email me at kerry.raymond@wikimedia.org.au noting that your responses to me will be confidential. I will present an aggregate view of any responses without identifying details. Thanks Kerry (talk) 08:01, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Creating a biography page for Rose Ann McGreevy

Hi all, I am very very new to creating and editing Wikipedia content. Yesterday I joined a group at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney with the goal of editing and creating content about Australian art, artists and feminism. I have taken on a task to created a biography of Rose Ann McGreevy who died last week and with the permission of those close to her have started this process. I really appreciate the support and assistance that has already appeared in getting this content into an acceptable form. My first attempt has been sanctioned. Also if anyone can change the title of the page and drop the "e" from her middle name that would be much appreciated. Rose's funeral is this Wednesday and I am hoping that this page can be public by then so that folks attending can start contributing as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zaftiglet (talk • contribs) 01:15, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Yet again we have a very well-meaning event, but one that allows single line articles to be created. Please, to anyone who's planning on running an event like this, emphasize that references aren't optional, notability and verification must be proven, and if in doubt, then use the AFC process, Draft namespace or Userspace sandboxes until the articles can be checked for appropriateness. Zaftiglet, sorry that you were not instructed better. Everything is salvageable, but given you used terms like "with the permission", "has been sanctioned" and "be public", it shows that you haven't been taught, and don't understand how things actually work around here. Your article is live to the world, but because it started off in such a minimal way, someone has nominated it for deletion. For 7 days it can be discussed as to whether the topic is notable enough for an article, and then an independent trusted editor will decide to keep or delete it. The more significant coverage in independent reliable sources that you can find, the more chance it has to being kept. Regards, The-Pope (talk) 03:58, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

The-Pope, please restrain the blaming language. This happened due to my misunderstanding about what I had left in the sandbox and what was published. Other members of Wikipedia have been very generous content editors and esponded with assistance and understanding. Already it has become that, as I thought, other people who are part of this community see "worth" regarding this biographical article I have made it clear that I am VERY new to creating content for Wikipedia. The term "permission" is regarding respecting the widow of the subject of this article and my use of "sanctioned" is a misunderstanding of the "nomination for deletion" process Zaftiglet (talk) 04:32, 27 October 2014 (UTC)zaftiglet

To be clear, I am in no way blaming you, I'm blaming the well meaning event organisers for not making it very clear that articles are live as soon as you hit save, and that there aren't various draft areas where you can work on the article before publishing. When you learn to drive we don't give you the car keys and point you towards the freeway. This isn't the first event where results like this have happened, either. The-Pope (talk) 04:55, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Folks, it seems that Wikipedia edit-a-thons are flavour of the month at the moment. The people organising them as well as the people attending them do so with the best of intentions, but they are often not Wikipedians and do not understand Wikipedia policies etc. At Wikimedia Australia, we do try to reach out to such events and offer our help (once we hear about them) but it can be very last minute, limiting the extent to which we can assist in making the event successful both from the point of the view of the organisers and from Wikipedia. We had only a few days of notice of this particular event and are grateful that at least one Sydney-based Wikipedian has volunteered to go along to help. However, there are many registrations for the event and there are limits to which one Wikipedian can assist so many people (the Wikimedia Foundation's recommendation is one experienced editor per 5 newbies -- unlikely to happen!). If you are in Sydney and can go along and help on Sunday, it would be much appreciated. For those online on Sunday, please bear in mind that, no matter what is happening contrary to Wikipedia policies, it will be in good faith (I have yet to see anyone turn up to an edit-a-thon or edit training to deliberately abuse Wikipedia). New editors might need a little more than one minute after their first Save to work out how to add a citation, so could you curb your immediate enthusiasm to delete the article in favour of maybe searching for a citation instead to provide the notability and verifiability etc. AFC is not a process that can work in a one-day edit-a-thon because the reviews will generally come back after the event and the article remains in review limbo indefinitely (the participants are generally committing to one day of their time to create one short article, and do not tend to engage beyond that point unfortunately). Being as tolerant and helpful as we can be with these newbies will get the best outcomes all round, as we will get some new articles on Australian content from the event and we might even get a few of the participants hooked and come back for more editing. Being unfriendly to them on day one does not help to persuade them to stay involved (and I note that we have a continued downward trend on active editor over a number of years so we do need to recruit new editors both here in Australia and worldwide). And, having had the experience myself, please don't bite the poor Wikipedian trying to help out -- it's not their event and it is not reasonable to expect them to be able to control 100+ people editing. They will be running around doing their best but will often getting tied up with people who need basic IT literacy help ("you need to position your cursor in the text box before you type", "you copy using Control-C and paste using Control-V") as well as basic Wikipedia markup advice; they probably won't even see your message until after the event in any case. If you see a problem, my best advice is doing what you can to try to fix problem in the article itself (noting that newbies probably don't know about Talk and User Talk so trying to talk to them to get them to fix it may be a waste of time). And finally please remember that it says on the Main Page "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and the policy WP:BITE. Kerry (talk) 07:56, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

If they are becoming more common, it may be in everyone's interest for instructors to have a standard checklist to run through. Hack (talk) 08:27, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Indeed - this missive is probably well intentioned but seriously misplaced (the actual numbers of editors who do not read this noticeboard for instance) - the potential for editors un-associated with the Australian project will be more likely to cause issues as they will not have seen this unnecessarily long explanation - the imperitave is for trainers/introducers to teach new editors the range of hang-on tags or similar devices to alert outsiders as to what is going on. It would be well worth the time (and space) to consider a template new editor in L plates rather than try to reach to a larger editing field through very small range noticeboard. satusuro 12:59, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Please contact the organisers of the event directly with suggestions on how to run their event, as I am not involved with it. I raised the matter in this forum because the event was already under discussion here. What would be a better forum? Kerry (talk) 02:17, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the constructive feedback and suggestions about ways to assist and join in discussions regarding the editorial process. I have received some very generous assistance from another member of Wikipedia and I hope that what is now in the article meets with community standards. I will be attending this artists funeral on Wednesday and will encourage their participation, not only in this article but other topics that they may have an interest in expanding Zaftiglet (talk) 00:03, 28 October 2014 (UTC)zaftiglet

Turriff West vic

Someone made a clumsy attempt to create an article for Turriff West, Victoria; I attempted to improve it. See my comment at Talk:Turriff West vic if anyone wants to salvage it. —teb728 t c 10:07, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this. It's now at Turriff, Victoria which is the name of the town. Have moved the article and rewritten it a little to include the usual depressing school closure and the 1994 meteorite. -- Euryalus (talk) 12:25, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I tried to add coordinates to the infobox but I'm seeing something peculiar. Can somebody please have a look at User:AussieLegend/sandbox and tell me if you see anything strange? --AussieLegend (✉) 14:32, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I can see the template being dumped after the coordinates, but it doesn't show up in the preview, only the live page. There was an edit made to the template in February adding an absolute value function to allow it to accept negative coordinates, that's the only change I could see to the coordinates part of the template. --Canley (talk) 23:00, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Same here - visible in final version but not in preview. Pardon my ignorance - is it the same issue as is being raised here? -- Euryalus (talk) 23:20, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

When I posted here, the problem was appearing in the preview as well, but only on some pages. That has now changed. It does appear to be the same problem being discussed at the Village pump. --AussieLegend (✉) 00:39, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Looks good now, thanks for adding the co-ords and map. -- Euryalus (talk) 03:14, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

persistent vandal at Mackay, Queensland

An IP editor (IP address changes but most recently User talk:174.98.8.173) is persistently adding the nickname "D-Cord" to the mayor's name (Deidre Comerford). No citation is provided. While it is a plausible nickname (given her name), a google search does not reveal any use of this nickname, nor does a search of the Mackay local newspaper The Daily Mercury. Edits to other articles by this IP are also being reverted as being vandalism and the IP has already been blocked previously. Thanks in advance if any admin can help here. Kerry (talk) 01:25, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Kerry Raymond, thanks for raising this, have blocked one of the IPs for 2 weeks and the other (which I reckon is a work account) for 1 day. Hopeful that helps. -- Euryalus (talk) 03:09, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Kerry (talk) 20:39, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

2014 G-20 Brisbane summit

As most readers of this notice board will probably be aware, in just over two weeks Australia is hosting the 2014 G-20 Brisbane summit. Since it is possibly the highest profile international event to be held in the country since Wikipedia was established it would be good if the article was improved. - Shiftchange (talk) 12:11, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

What changes do you think would be helpful? The article doesn't look too bad to me - the main thing missing is what's going to be on the agenda, and who will be representing each country (which I don't think has been confirmed yet). Nick-D (talk) 10:51, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I think you nailed it. The agenda and attendance sections need expanding. I would like to see more foreign press reports, particularly what the expected achievements or stated outcomes of the meeting were beforehand. The references need a minor cleanup, a few photos would be good, if protests grab the headlines that should be covered and shortly after its over an outcome section can be started. - Shiftchange (talk) 21:43, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Online reference resource

Just a reminder that there is a list of resources available online at Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Help. Feel free to add to this. Hack (talk) 07:34, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Wikibomb (Sydney University) is armed for detonation

The University of Sydney is hosting a gender diversity editathon on Friday October 31st about women currently or historically connected with the university. The project page is at Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/University of Sydney Wikibomb. Any Wikipedians who can attend on the day would be much appreciated (sign up now!) to help train newcomers. If you would like to contribute online (sign up now!), pick a subject and start your research. 10, 9, 8, 7... --99of9 (talk) 03:19, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I cannot attend but wish you all the best with it! Have fun! Kerry (talk) 07:19, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

HELP!

Just a quick update on this... it is going to be the biggest editathon I have ever attended, and possibly the biggest ever on-site editathon in Australia. (Does anyone know?) There are already 36 signups on the project page, and we are expecting somewhere nearer to 100 on the day!? We will have a decent number of experienced editors on site (@99of9: @Whiteghost.ink: @Ariconte: @M.O.X: @97198: @Fcia0423: ~@Casliber:), but we will be stretched. Anyone who can provide online support 2-6pm tomorrow (Friday) would be much appreciated. Please add your name to the project page so that I know who we can call on. Here's some ways you can help:

1. Any sandbox started by a wikibomb participant should be added to Category:University of Sydney Wikibomb 2014 so that we can all find it.
2. Monitor These Related Changes to look out for editors having trouble.
3. Write (kind) sandbox_talk page comments if you see promotional language. It seems that some participants are intending to write articles about their friend/colleague/boss. The organizing team now all understand how much COI editing is discouraged, but I'm afraid academics are harder to herd than cats. We are at least trying to ensure that everyone declares their employer on their userpage, and declares any COI they have on the article talk.
4. Assess articles' readiness to move into mainspace (also post a note on the talk page). Experienced Wikipedians will do these moves, but for COI and general stress relief, it would be good to have third party eyes over it.
5. Categorize, prettify, wikidatify, wikiprojectify ({{WP Australia}}{{WP Biography}} etc) any articles that do make it into mainspace. We will not have time to concentrate on any of these things.
6. Ping me or another Wikipedian if you spot any problems.
7. Publicise on Twitter (#Wikibomb) with a link to the project page

Thanks for helping! And thanks to those who have volunteered online help already (@WikiWookie:@Lankiveil:@Tony1:).--99of9 (talk) 10:37, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm compiling results from the wikibomb now... stay tuned. But for now, can someone look into Leonie Byrnes to see if the speedy delete tag is justified? She's in the ADB... --99of9 (talk) 10:29, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

So we had 62 people at the opening presentations, and around 55 attempted articles, 27 now live (some prematurely). Wikipedians, do have a trawl through and see what you can fix/make of the rest. A few editors have promised to keep working on their articles, but I'm sure they won't mind a bit of help. Great day. Thanks to all on-site helpers: @Whiteghost.ink: @Ariconte: @M.O.X: @97198: @Fcia0423: @Extensibledot:

Thanks also to all participants, and well done! @ValKat14:@CatScratchPost:@99of9:@Whiteghost.ink:@Ariconte:@M.O.X:@Clawsyclaw:@Fawcettanne:@GemSophos:@SoxFace:@Tahnimayfair:@97198:@Readlib:@Fcia0423:@Tony1:@WikiWookie:@Penn Syd:@Salasyd:@Minchella laura:@Extensibledot:@Vjcwade:@Kath Syd: @Tashah9:@Lazypython:@CharmaiT:@Spottedpufferfish:@FitForBusiness:@GlendaWardle:@Muzza2014:@VeeCS:@Madeleine.beekman:@Bindylou:@ChiaraN: @BiancaHaase:@Zakisanaa: @Jacqui Matthews987:@Richard Camden:@Kaj usyd:@Gee kot:@Kbelov:@Build314:@PD MTS:@Oronsay:@JustineFB:@Vice-CMS:@SarahGedz:@Drchristiebudd:@Katycuthbert:@Mochapet:@SarahHedz:@Freia091:@Telaniku:@Dyou1770:@Jenonwiki:@Kimbellanderson:@Sydney historian:@Memjax:@Lchi2758:@Saf48: --99of9 (talk) 11:52, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

One of these articles, Millicent Fanny Preston Stanley, is a duplicate of an existing article at Millicent Preston-Stanley. The two articles don't overlap well so as to allow us to pick one of them, so someone is going to need to merge the two together. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:26, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, we realized that half way through. The editor @Fcia0423: is one of our most experienced helpers, so we couldn't afford to lose her time to doing a detailed merge. --99of9 (talk) 12:41, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

As this bomb has now been detonated, I note that many of the articles don't really pass notability guidelines. I suspect the Dictionary of Australian Biography has lower standards of inclusion than Wikipedia, but some of these articles are likely to face deletion discussions. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 14:31, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

The Australian Dictionary of Biography has much higher standards of notability than we do. 90%+ of our biographical articles wouldn't meet their standards, and they tend to select only particularly standout people from each field. (They do, however, hit lots of notable people from fields that often get overlooked in Wikipedia - e.g. highly significant people in the health and education fields.) It's the sort of source where anyone in it who we don't have an article on is a failing on our part. I don't mean to be snarky, but this should be obvious to anyone who's done biographical research on Wikipedia in Australia ever. This is a constant problem with trying to improve Wikipedia coverage in underrepresented areas such as this: people who know literally nothing about the subject or even research in that area going "I haven't heard of this person so they're probs not significant". The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:35, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Amen! Look at the coverage of 'sports' identities who for instance kick a football well.... Ariconte (talk) 20:24, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

This is why I asked the question in the first place. As an American who has not done biographical research on Australians, I thought to ask those who would know better. Thank you for the information. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 00:41, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

@99of9: I'm rather surprised to read the advice to add articles to a project category, namely Category:University of Sydney Wikibomb 2014. That's very strongly discouraged by WP:PROJCATS, which in fact says it should be avoided "if possible". Since we have the Draft namespace, we had the option of categorizing talk pages instead. Manually de-categorizing the articles and categorizing the talk pages instead will now be quite a bit of work, and I'm tempted to simply nominate the category for deletion. Thoughts? Huon (talk) 20:27, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

@Huon: Thanks for asking before nominating. The reason is simple. When training >50 new editors, it is a much simpler instruction to say "add this category name to the bottom of wherever you have written your text" than "categorize the (nonexistent) talk page of your sandbox". As it was, one participant took about 10 minutes to successfully categorize their pages, and nearly half of them didn't make it on their own. If anyone thinks it's important enough, they are welcome to move the category tags onto the talk pages. When you say "quite a bit of work", I presume this is not in comparison to the effort required to prepare and train an editathon with this many new editors, or indeed the effort the participants put in to research and write about a subject using technology they had never before used? You should of course suppress your temptations to delete this hidden category that is causing no harm - how exactly would that improve the encyclopedia? Do you want to have to look through the contributions of every participant to help them? Or are we all going to rely on the fact that I have also watchlisted every user/page? (PS if you really are seriously concerned about this, you might like to start on Category:Wikibomb2014 or the many other pre-existing cases.) --99of9 (talk) 23:18, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

I am aware of that other example, which incidentally also was created in the context of an Australian Wikibomb. I know of no others, though. See also WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. If you know of an automated tool to move the categories from the articles to the talk pages, great, please do so. If not, I'll think about either wasting an hour or two on the manual transfer of categories on ~150 articles or going the CfD route, which would be far less effort for half of the desired effect. Huon (talk) 23:29, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Half of the desired effect like a toilet without a flush is half of a sanitation system? I have moved the category for our event to the talk pages. It took 5 minutes due to AWB throttles. @Kerry Raymond: if you want me to do this for the academy category too, let me know. --99of9 (talk) 01:36, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

@Huon: I agree that after weeks or a month or two moving these categories to the talk page makes some sense, but initially it is exactly for "technical reasons" these categories should be on the actual page and hidden for normal viewers. Specifically it makes Related Changes useful, which it's not now. (Instead we have to rely on the meetup page being updated so we can use that.) Mark Hurd (talk) 13:42, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

@99of9: Thanks for taking those five minutes to do a task that would have taken me hours. Could you please do the same for Category:Wikibomb2014? The "related changes" issue is a good point, but I rather doubt it still applies almost three months later. Huon (talk) 21:17, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I'll let the organizers of that event @Kerry Raymond: decide if or when they want me to do this. --99of9 (talk) 00:35, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

New biographies

I note the creation today of a series of biographies of Australian people based largely on the Dictionary of Australian Biography. These articles include Leonie Byrnes (a schoolteacher), Helen Scott-Orr (a veteranarian and minor public official), and Margaret Alison Telfer (a school guidance counselor at the University of Sydney). I suspect the Dictionary of Australian Biography has lower standars of inclusion than Wikipedia. I'd like some feedback with people more familiar with Australia to know whether these article really merit inclusion or not. I'd also like to know if anyone here knows about a project to include such biographies. Their appearance all at about the same time has the feel of a coordinated project to it. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 14:15, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

The project is mentioned in a section above. The articles are included in Category:University of Sydney Wikibomb 2014. More often than not inclusion in the ADB suggests notability in the Wikipedia sense but it's no guarantee. Hack (talk) 14:25, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

As stated above, the ADB has far, far higher standards for inclusion than we do. It is an authoritative, peer-reviewed, highly-selective source run by specialist historians out of ANU, and is the source on Australian biography. They are particularly good at hitting very notable people in topics that Wikipedians often miss because they're less sexy (i.e. specialists in health, education, and academia), and I can think of no case in which someone would meet their criteria and not ours. Ignoring the obvious reasons the ADB held them to be notable just makes one look obtuse: i.e. Telfer was not notable for being "a school guidance councillor", but "the first woman to hold a top administrative post in any Commonwealth university". These Wikipedia articles, being written by newbies, mightn't be the most spectacular in their current state, but the existence of extremely-strong sources backing up their notability should put any question of their notability aside once and for all. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:43, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

The subject of an article is notable on Wikipedia for being the subject of significant coverage in reliable sources, not appearing in a dictionary or having a particular job. Hack (talk) 10:36, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

@WikiDan61: You seriously tagged an officer of the Order of the British Empire for notability? When there are three national-level citations, and one of them is a biography by our pre-eminent biographical encyclopedia? And this is the first article the editor has ever written! I think you might find it enlightening to compare this to your ~5th article James Cromar Watt, which after four years has one dictionary biography citation and is almost all Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. --99of9 (talk) 21:45, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I seriously did. Because the Order of the British Empire, while a great honor, is not in itself a sign of notability because many people receive it and never receive any significant coverage for their achievement. The reason I brought the topic up here is because I do not know the nature of the ADB so I thought to ask among those who do. Other than the ADB, the national level citations are not significant (just mentions in passing). And frankly, the biography of Tefler basically says she was a guidance counselor and minor government functionary. It doesn't even give any indication as to why she was awarded the OBE. So, for an outside observer, this article strains the limits of notability. But I'll accept this group's assessment of the ADB as a reliable and significant source.

As for an article I create four years ago, you know nothing of the history of the creation of that article (and quite frankly, four years on, I don't much remember it either). But that has no bearing on the Tefler article. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 00:39, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

@WikiDan61: I know only that you were reasonably new, and that you licensed and released text under your name that was closely paraphrased from someone else's text, and only had one reference. My point is that when people are new, they don't always produce amazing articles, even if the person is notable. Immediately tagging for notability is quite an affront to new editors, and will scare many away. I suggest that you ask your questions (e.g. about the ADB) and do some searches to make sure you're right before simply tagging. Getting it wrong could cost editors. --99of9 (talk) 07:15, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

• just noting Dictionary of Australian Biography exists Gnangarra 09:08, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I note in that article lede: It should not be confused with the multi-volume Australian Dictionary of Biography published by Melbourne University Press in 1966. which I believe is the one being discussed :) -- Chuq (talk) 14:07, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

@WikiDan61: the real proof is in the pudding: since we notability is a consensus thing we can't really know whether these are notable with an AFD. If you put up an AfD test case, please note this in the nomination. Since it will prevent early closure and give people find time to find print references if necessary. Stuartyeates (talk) 09:37, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

They have print references as it is. The digitisation of the ADB doesn't make it any less of a source. I can dig out the page numbers from the massive old print editions if you like. Nominating articles with cited references that make them indisputably notable for deletion, just because the current text isn't perfect, is an impeccably stupid way of treating new editors. Are you trying to scare new editors off to play some sort of game? The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:13, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Wasn't there a project at some point to create articles based on every ADB article? Either way, I have never seen an ADB biography that would not easily pass notability standards even if there wasn't an ADB entry. An ADB entry is pretty much a guaranteed indicator of notability. Frickeg (talk) 02:17, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/To-do/Australian Dictionary of Biography. Regards, Ariconte (talk) 02:42, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

This might be a good time to try and get some experienced editor attention on this area, considering that it's a real weak spot, and that new editors trying to do the same have been treated absolutely appallingly. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:09, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. I just tried to test the theory by filling in a random red link: Stewart Wolfe Jamieson. Clearly notable, to me. Of course, the ADB itself will count towards significant coverage for the purposes of the general notability guideline. I reckon its a safe bet that just about all of its subjects are notable, and are red links for no other reason than they're mostly long dead. --Mkativerata (talk) 03:34, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

It's worth noting here that ADB entries are not "dictionary entries", they're actually full on biographies. At AFD, appearing in the ADB is usually considered grounds for keeping, because (a) the ADB is itself a reliable source and its coverage is typically substantial, and (b) the entries typically have a bibliography which lists other reliable sources, which is typically enough to pass it past the WP:GNG. There are exceptions, but they are, well, exceptions. I'd ideally want to do a lot of research and be absolutely sure before slapping notability tags on someone with a dedicated ADB article. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 12:14, 4 November 2014 (UTC).

I don't think someone with an ADB article could fail notability in any case. The Belle Golding article was definitely one of the poorer ADB articles I've seen, but ten minutes on Trove and that AfD still went down in flames. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:10, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Murder of Leigh Leigh FAC

The article Murder of Leigh Leigh, which is listed under the scope of this project, has been nominated for featured status for some time now, and is currently at the bottom of the nominations list, liable to be closed at any point. The only thing currently keeping it from being passed is that none of the reviewers so far have done a thorough source review. I would be eternally grateful if someone could do this; please state your intention to do so at the nomination before you commence your review as the nomination may be closed at any point now. Thanks. (Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Murder of Leigh Leigh/archive1). Freikorp (talk) 10:00, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Australian place populations

There are three templates used for Australian census population data and their usages are:

• {{Census 2001 AUS}} - 215 transclusions
• {{Census 2006 AUS}} - 3,008 transclusions
• {{Census 2011 AUS}} - 2,685 transclusions
  • Total: 5,908 articles. (Currently, 8,827 articles use {{Infobox Australian place}}.[11])

At this time, 3 years after the last census, it's amazing that so many articles still use 8 and 13 year old census data and these really need to be updated. There are a lot of articles that have to use the 2006 data because of changes in the way the ABS correlated data for the last census, but I have trouble believing that there are so many articles that can't be updated. --AussieLegend (✉) 21:27, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

I think this is also a problem because most of this population data is being used without checking that the census district has anything to do with the town boundaries, as we've discussed a couple of times before. I'd really love to see a dedicated effort to get these articles up to date, but also make sure we're actually representing in the article where that population comes from, and that's not something that can be done by a bot. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:03, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

• Although this is undoubtedly a problem, its scale may be less than it first appears. I have looked through the first 50 pages that link to {{Census 2001 AUS}}, and not all rely on old census data, many contain info from 2011 and either 2001 or 2006 census. That is not to say that many are not out of date, but that most still utilise data from multiple census; to be honest, showing data from subsequent census is probably a good idea that all pages should contain. The 18 pages which contained no reference or link to the 2011 census are: Yass Valley Council, Palm Beach, New South Wales, Uralla, New South Wales, Terang, Eurobodalla Shire, Narrabeen, New South Wales, Nimbin, New South Wales, Potts Point, New South Wales, Lightning Ridge, New South Wales, Nambucca Shire, Mundubbera, Sandy Bay, Tasmania, Riverina, Holbrook, New South Wales, Winmalee, New South Wales, Noraville, New South Wales, Elizabeth, South Australia, and Tambo, Queensland. However, going through each page is laborious, is there a way to cross-reference the three lists to identify the pages that contain no reference to 2011 census? ColonialGrid (talk) 14:28, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

• Here are the rest that contain of the pages which link to the 2001 census (and often also the 2006), but not the 2011: Goodwood, South Australia, Warnervale, New South Wales, Bellingen, New South Wales, Medowie, New South Wales, Grange, South Australia, Wattle Grove, New South Wales, Burswood, Western Australia, Narellan Vale, New South Wales, Narellan, New South Wales (mentioned but no link), Minto, New South Wales, Kentlyn, New South Wales, Leumeah, New South Wales, East Cannington, Western Australia, Mindarie, Western Australia (mentioned but no link), Neerabup, Western Australia, Ridgewood, Western Australia (mentioned but no link), Merriwa, Western Australia, Heathridge, Western Australia, Unley, South Australia, Brookton, Western Australia, Secret Harbour, Western Australia, Dulwich, South Australia, Rose Park, South Australia, Skye, South Australia, Wayville, South Australia, Everard Park, South Australia, Forestville, South Australia, Fullarton, South Australia, Highgate, South Australia, Hyde Park, South Australia, Kings Park, South Australia, Malvern, South Australia, Millswood, South Australia, Myrtle Bank, South Australia, Unley Park, South Australia, Ascot Park, South Australia, Broadview, South Australia, Thorngate, South Australia, Carrick, Tasmania, Electoral district of Alfred Cove, Athol Park, South Australia, Maslin Beach, South Australia, Cheltenham, South Australia, Streaky Bay, South Australia, Salisbury East, South Australia, Henley Beach, South Australia, Medindie, South Australia, Bowden, South Australia, Avoca Beach, New South Wales, East Gosford, New South Wales, Thorneside, Queensland (mentioned but no link), Fulham, South Australia, Hilton, South Australia, Banksia Park, South Australia, Bellingen Shire, Bogangar, New South Wales, Ovingham, South Australia, Ridleyton, South Australia, Renown Park, South Australia, Tahmoor, New South Wales, Glenelg South, South Australia, Shire of Mornington (Queensland), Town of Roma, Fulham Gardens, South Australia, Cookardinia, Kidman Park, South Australia, Albert Park, South Australia, Kilkenny, South Australia, Gilberton, South Australia, Vale Park, South Australia, Parafield Gardens, South Australia, Hindmarsh, South Australia, Burton, South Australia, Yankalilla, South Australia, Strathalbyn, Western Australia, Wandina, Western Australia, Woorree, Western Australia, Findon, South Australia, Hackham West, South Australia, Devon Park, South Australia, Henley Beach South, South Australia, Dalyellup, Western Australia, Emmaville, New South Wales, Allenby Gardens, South Australia, Croydon, South Australia, Beverley, South Australia, Hendon, South Australia, Bolivar, South Australia, Hillier, South Australia, Blakeview, South Australia, Evanston Gardens, South Australia. Many of the South Australian articles are very rudimentary. I think adding census data to these pages should be the first step, then moving onto the 2006 list (which could hopefully be cross-referenced to show only articles that contain links to 2006 and not 2011). ColonialGrid (talk) 15:19, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

• Good work on going through the list. 215 transclusions of the 2001 template isn't really much of an issue, although it clearly needs to addressed. My concerns when starting this thread were really that we appear to have around 5,000-6,000 articles that haven't been updated since the 2006 census. It could very well be lower than that, there are many articles that use census data that the templates can't handle, but we still have thousands that need to be updated and this will only get worse when the next census happens. --AussieLegend (✉) 16:24, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

I've been thinking for a while on how to handle these census population updates every five years. I may be wrong but is the future intention to use Wikidata for this kind of thing? So that the census data can be imported there and object links update automatically? Secondly, if using Wikidata for populations is a while away, perhaps the templates themselves could contain the population figure, the census year and the SSC (or other) code as parameters. At the moment it is just used to format the reference link to the ABS, but if it included the population figure and the year, it could output a formatted number for the infobox, or a whole sentence for the lede, and the reference. The standardised formatting might make it easier for a script or bot to update all the outdated references when new census data is released. Just a thought... I can do some example templates if anyone thinks it's worth pursuing... --Canley (talk) 22:54, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Anything that can automate the process would be of help. Unfortunately, Wikidata is not really understood by most editors. Apparently Australian postcode information is on Wikidata but how to access it is a mystery. I've only seen one article that uses it. --AussieLegend (✉) 23:08, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd be very wary of automating this particular process because of the census districts issue. We have enough problems with articles accidentally wildly misleading people about the populations of places because of the ABS's bizarre districts - this is something I think we need to be doing by hand and more carefully until we've dealt with this more broadly. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:17, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd just comment that not all population data uses the templates so there is probably a lot more census data being reported in articles but using other sorts of citations and probably some with no citations at all. I would also comment that we keep coming back to this conversation about reporting census populations without any resolution. I would also comment that the human horsepower available makes any manual solution unlikely to be comprehensive. I think we do need to look at some kind of automation/semi-automation at least for those places with an SSC; I think we should be looking at this for the 2016 census. One of our problems is that the ID for SSCs changes between censuses. It may be that the ABS has some table that link these across censuses. Perhaps this is something where we should talk to the ABS. With Wikipedia being a top-10 website in the world, many Australians are probably getting their population data via Wikipedia; perhaps they would be interested in helping us find good solutions (they are the experts in this space after all). Kerry (talk) 20:22, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Cite Hansard#Citation_format

You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Cite Hansard#Citation_format. regarding the format of CS1-style Hansard citations. Thanks. Evad37 [talk] 07:13, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Anyone have Questia access?

I think this article has something I'm looking for, but it's half-paywalled and I was wondering if anyone has access. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:53, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I have access (through the Wikipedia Library project, which I think might be running a new round of Questia licenses). What can I help with? Nick-D (talk) 06:59, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

@The Drover's Wife:, it's available through Factiva. I can email the text. Hack (talk) 07:31, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

That would be great. My email this user function is turned on - if you could send it there that would be much appreciated :) The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:18, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I just found found out the other day that factiva is freely accessible if you have a National Library of Australia card , which is free, at least for those in Australia. The-Pope (talk) 00:01, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Oh my god, you are fabulous. Not having Factiva access (since I'm deferred from uni at the moment) has been massively cramping my ability to edit on modern topics for months, and as it happens I have an old NLA card still sitting in my purse and just successfully tried it. This has completely made my day. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:14, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Most state libraries offer it as well. Hack (talk) 01:47, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

All Aussies should check what databases are available to you at home via the National Library, your State Library and your local library. There's a *lot* available. Generally there is no cost to getting the necessary "library card" (although you might have to wait a few days for it to come in the post) if you are an Australian resident. Here is the link to see what's available at the National Libary (tip, library folk call these things "e-resources" if you are Googling). Kerry (talk) 04:04, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Australian football wikiproject templates

There are two possible template options:

• {{WikiProject Australia|afl=yes}}
• {{WikiProject Australian rules football}}

Which should be used? Or should one be deleted/redirected? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:55, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

@Oiyarbepsy: I assume this is after a revert of mine to one of your edits. This is my rationale: {{WikiProject Australian rules football}} has 513 substitutions out of 13,537 WP:AFL articles. I'd say that {{WikiProject Australia}} (|afl=yes) is the one to keep and that {{WikiProject Australian rules football}} is redirected and a bot changes all the substitutions. - Yellow Dingo (talk) 07:10, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Keep both. Some articles, such as about Australian rules football teams overseas, don't belong in WP:Australia, so afl=yes would place them in an irrelevant project. Hence for them, we have the standalone template. For most articles about Australia based players, clubs, grounds etc, then they should be in both WP:Australia and WP:Australian rules football, so the afl=yes is easier to use, and allows you to add other sub projects like WA=yes or VIC=yes or similar as well. The-Pope (talk) 07:18, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Melbourne Meetup

As some may be aware the Australian chapter is having a strategic planning meeting in Melbourne on the weekend of the 29 & 30 November. Are there any people who would like to join us on the evening of the 29th for coffee and chat somewhere near the CBD. Its a chance for you meet the committee members especially those from interstate. Gnangarra 11:03, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

I will be coming from Brisbane so look forward to meeting some of the Melbourne Wikipedian community! Kerry (talk) 21:39, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

What do you call "ladies who do good works"?

I have just created an article on Zina Beatrice Selwyn Cumbrae-Stewart and in the process discovered this out-of-copyright digitised book full of summary information and photos of over 100 similar women. She was one of those women with a finger in every pie (Red Cross, Mother's Union, etc), president of this, founder of that, and generally full of "good works" in the charitable and cultural spheres. However, I don't know how to describe her "occupation" in the lede para. The Australian Dictionary of Biography calls her a "community worker" (which I have used in the Wikipedia article) but I am not comfortable with that as it suggests paid employment. The digitised book uses words like "philanthrophic work" and "charitable work" to describe the activity but doesn't give a term to describe the person. She meets the dictionary definition of philantrophist, but unfortunately I think common use of that term implies the giving of money, whereas she gave her time. She was part lobbyist, part organiser, etc. There were a lot of women of her time in this kind of role so it seems a little strange that I cannot think of a common term for it. What would you call these women? Philanthrophic volunteer? Charity volunteer? Kerry (talk) 22:01, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

I've also had this trouble trying to put non-career-women in a career box. "Philanthropic community worker"? Or I'd say it's good to try to reclaim the general meaning of "philanthropist" - time is money! --99of9 (talk) 23:30, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Humanitarian? Stephen 23:35, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Good Samaritan? - Shiftchange (talk) 01:48, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd assume that would refer to a member of the organisation of that name. I like "philanthropic volunteer" the best of the suggestions so far. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:23, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd look seriously at Category:Australian_social_workers and Category:Australian activists. Stuartyeates (talk) 22:40, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

What do you want Wikimedia Australia to do in 2015?

Hi everyone, the Wikimedia Australia committee will be having a strategic planning session for 2015 on 29-30 November. We would like input from our members (and other stakeholders - that includes all Australian editors) to suggest what the chapter can do to enable you to achieve our mission. There’s plenty of things WMAU could do, but there is no point in creating projects without keen volunteers, so please be explicit in showing your support for ideas that you personally would actively contribute to.

To get started, visit our Ideascale site at http://wmau2015.ideascale.com/ -- Chuq (talk) 01:38, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I know this involves a great deal of work, but it'd be fantastic if Wikimedia Australia could negotiate for more government content to be released under CC-by-SA licensing, as with the phenomenal Queensland Heritage Register situation. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:43, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Encouraging the release of decent photos of state and federal politicians would be nice. Hack (talk) 03:10, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

maye something along the lines of the Wiki loves Parliament projects in Europe https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Olaf_Kosinsky/Wikipedians_in_European_Parliament and https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wiki_loves_parliaments (for want of a better links) Gnangarra 11:12, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Agree with both the general and the specific. There's this definite gap with photos between the out-of-copyright pre-1955s and the past decade where digital cameras and mobile phones mean many people have famous folks in their digital photos albums. Although given some of the eyebrow-raising content on Commons, we'd probably accept indecent photos too! Kerry (talk) 03:55, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I left a message on Wittylama's talk page yesterday about whether any commercial/sporting organisations have ever been approached to release photographs, not just governments or GLAM organisations. To me the main stumbling block is explaining to the legal/marketing/IP controllers in those organisations what CC-by-SA really means in a real world situation. Is there a fact sheet we can show them? Working with US-based wikilawyers (prefer the real ones, but the wannabe ones too) to get some improvement/understanding/agreement on the 1946/1955 URAA issue would be good too. The-Pope (talk) 04:11, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

On a larger scale, improving accessibility of newspaper archives between the 1950s and the 2000s would be helpful. Hack (talk) 05:36, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

These all sound good! Could you add them onto the Ideascale site above, so that others can comment and vote for them there? -- Chuq (talk) 10:35, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I disagree with using third-party websites to manage the discussion of Wikimedia business, when we have perfectly good talk pages here (or there). This is especially the case when the third-party website requires me to register and create (yet another) account to keep track of. Mitch Ames (talk) 05:53, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

^This. Frickeg (talk) 06:32, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Me too. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:57, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Reading this it is so obvious that so many editors have a conceptual blank when it comes to this noticeboard (Australian editors talking about editing Australian articles on english Wikipedia) and the actual context of what WMAU is, and what it does. Also lot of the comments above suggest that the disjuncture between what is already happening in the wikimedia world, and what editors know simply repeats upon itself.

It is as if the efforts of the last few years of WMAU attempting to explain itself to editors simply evaporates when the conflation so effectively occurs here. If you edit articles and contribute materials on english Wikipedia, that is not the same as being active or a member of Wikimedia Australia. At least no one has repeated the oft problematic conflation by a sometime associate of wikipedia projects who simply lumps it all into the meaningless phrase go wiki.

(a) To object to third party websites for being survey base is missing a serious point - the Wikimedia Australia chapter committee have allocated that as the way of doing the survey for better or for worse. Large numbers of online businesses and organizations utilised third party survey providers. Wikimedia Australia chapter is not specifically directly Wikimedia Foundation -

(b) Committee members have joined in the fray here - surely, if this is really a request for Australian editors to provide input - surely you should also identify yourselves for those who dont know you are? If this was a real attempt to really reach out - state projects, and the lists of state editor categories are surely the way to reach out? Usual suspects inhabit this space here - and they hardly constitute the full array of active Australian editors. Also some editors of some duration specifically avoid state or location identification - are you going to reach out to them as well? Also should committee members editorialise in the survey as well?

(c) Somebody is going to have to put more effort into selling the survey - it has clearly been already dismissed by a number of editors, and st the same time - real hard work on the part of Wikimedia Australia to explain itself as to what its scope and aim is, against the obvious preconceptions that have been evoked on this particular talk page, and also the context of the chapter and its history. Also the limitations as to the capacity of the committee to facilitate some of the ideas above and its general standing in the online community in Australia. satusuro 15:09, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

"... many editors have a conceptual blank when it comes to ... the actual context of what WMAU is, ..."
That was not helped by the fact that yesterday (when I tried it) the "Wikimedia Australia" (http://www.wikimedia.org.au) link redirected to http://www.wikimedia.org.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo instead of http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia - which is why my post linked ("there") to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home instead of the Australian page.

"Large numbers of online businesses and organizations utilised third party survey providers"
That may be true, but that doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.

• I can contribute to Wikipedia or any of the Wikimedia projects - both article edits and discussions - using my existing single login. Requiring me to create a new account on a different system does not encourage me.
• An editor can contribute to Wikipedia or any of the Wikimedia projects (article edits, discussions) without providing an e-mail address if that editor so chooses. Requiring someone to provide an e-mail address to vote or comment on survey suggestions does not encourage participation. This is especially the case when the "Privacy & Terms" in the "Create Your Account" dialog (you all clicked it and read the terms didn't you...), to which I would provide my e-mail address, links to Google - a company whose primary business is collecting information about its users and selling advertising, so whose "privacy" policies are not likely to be consistent with the Wikimedia Foundation's.
• Perhaps WMAU should consider inviting editors to discuss the issues on a subpage of http://www.wikimedia.org.au/ and either allow editing on that page without registration or explicitly offer to create an account for anyone who requests one with the reason "to provide input to 2015 strategic planning".

Mitch Ames (talk) 12:46, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

This kind of attitude definitely does not help Wikimedia Australia. You ask for responses as to what people would like to do, people politely give a bunch of great suggestions, and you've got someone evidently involved with the organisation who throws a fit at the users here because they don't want to have to sign up for some random site to repost the same ideas. Simultaneously being incredibly rude to editors who respond to your survey while at the same time whingeing that people don't pay attention to what Wikimedia Australia does is deeply counterproductive. Grow some manners. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:26, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Apparently you have people confused as only three members of the WMAU committee who are asking the question have responded here, Chuq, Kerry and myself. The editor was not only critical of those who choose to voice that they arent interested but also the committee for the way in which the survey was presented. The ideas raised here will be included in the discussions however the survey gives a cleaner opportunity to discuss individual ideas, which also provides alot more background information beyond a few words. We appreciate the need for another login but WP:AWNB isnt the ideal forum to discuss potential activity for WMAU the intent was just to advise about the discussion and ask people to join it. The ultimate aim isnt just to collate a whole raft of ideas but also seek out those who would like to do something and give them the support they need to succeed. Gnangarra 06:58, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd definitely be interested in doing something if Wikimedia Australia were to do some of the sorts of things above; their work at present, while valuable, is not really my area of interest. I am glad to know that SatuSuro is not speaking for WMA with that attitude. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:25, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

The work being done at the moment is the result of someone putting forward a proposal at http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia in their area of interest. If you want to do something then I more than happy to help you through the process just use the email this user function. Gnangarra 11:51, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

folks, your thoughts are welcome no matter what medium you use to communicate them. Here is fine. With the strategic planning meeting being this coming weekend, please add any thoughts you have sooner than later. So far, I see lobbying to release govt info under suitable license for things like heritage registers, phtotos of pollies, what else? If we were to run some event in your city/town, what would you like it to be? Social hangout with other editors? chance to meet with local Librarians or archivists or ...? A mini conferences with presentatiosn? A photo shoot day? If we ran an Australian version of Wikimania, would you consider coming? What about a repeat of GLAMwiki? would you want to take part in a national photo competition? I'm not promising any of these things will happen, but they are far more likely to happen if you express interest in them. Kerry (talk) 00:36, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Phillip Hughes

Most would have heard that cricketer Phillip Hughes has been badly injured by a 'bouncer' at the SCG. A few eyes on his page would be helpful as in the less than ≈7 hours since the event he has been declared dead twice by vandals. --220 of ^Borg 10:26, 25 November 2014 (UTC) link added --220 of ^Borg 11:15, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

semi protected article for 3 days, though it will still need extra eyes watching especially when a change in his condition is reported, also feel free to remove the protection when ever appropriate Gnangarra 10:41, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

I was going to ask why the bouncer hit him and whether he'd been charged. --AussieLegend (✉) 10:58, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Gnagarra! AussieLegend, I've now linked 'bouncer' to bouncer (cricket) :-p 220 of ^Borg 11:15, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Eyes could also be useful on Sean Abbott, the bowler of the bouncer that hit Hughes. There's already been one sloppy addition thankfully reverted. HiLo48 (talk) 11:00, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

And another editor has mentioned it again here Somewhat better English and with links and a source. 220 of ^Borg 11:15, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

while it is a significant event for Hughes is really all that worthy of inclusion in the Sean Abbott, bowlers every year produce balls that cause injury of some kind whether its concussion or broken bones they dont warrant inclusion, at this stage this particular delivery doesnt having any lasting significance to warrant an exception. Gnangarra 12:25, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

I tend to agree, though I tidied up and expanded the text at Sean Abbott. I won't be miffed if it's removed. ;-) The incident has also made its way onto the Bouncer (cricket) page, which is bit much until the incident is 'resolved'. :-/ (though I also cited the ref there properly) Hopefully Hughes will recover, and the incident will be less notable. 220 of ^Borg 13:12, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

IMHO the bouncer article inclusion is fine, its significant enough to warrant mentioning there, even after Hughes recovers Gnangarra 13:38, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Actually, almost half that section is pure recentism, purely about incidents that occurred this century. The word "recent" is actually used! For a game over 200 years old, that's a bad look. HiLo48 (talk) 17:00, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Well there was an article in one of the papers today about batsmen being hit much more often recently (since WSC), possibly due to a partially false sense of security that the helmet gives them. So in that sense it is a recent phenomenon, not just our usual reasons for recentism. And I think it definitely belongs in the Abbott article too. The-Pope (talk) 00:38, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I was wondering about that too, how common cricket type bouncers were more 'recently'. IIRC cricket started being bowled only underarm. Not sure when Overarm bowling became the predominant action, but that WP page says it's been around and legal since at least 1864, though the page has only one source, and the date is "strongly challenged". I too saw an article listing bouncer 'incidents'. Was this Daily News and Analysis (dnaindia.com) page here it? --220 of ^Borg 02:51, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Sad update - it is being reported that he has died today. [12] The page protection should obviously be kept in place for a bit longer. -- Chuq (talk) 04:58, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

reluctantly I have also semi protected Sean Abbott, been some tasteless-offensive commentary included in the article this needs a closer watch may even need to be full protected Gnangarra 08:48, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Totally agree with your protection of Abbott's page Gnangarra. You probably know the edits I mean when I say I think they should be rev-deleted. Nb. Now that the exact injury and cause of Hughes death appears to be known,[13] mention of the incident also made an unsourced appearance in the lead section of Subarachnoid hemorrhage. -220 of ^Borg 08:58, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Australian Heritage Database

I can't believe I hadn't noticed this before now, but I've just twigged that the Department of the Environment's website - including the Australian Heritage Database - appears to be CC-by-SA licensed. This would include the National Heritage List, the Commonwealth Heritage List, and more importantly, the huge database of the Register of the National Estate. Would there be any interest in importing this on a large scale, ala what's happening with the Queensland Heritage Register? It would be fantastic to work on some heritage places closer to home. The Drover's Wife (talk) 15:01, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Good find indeed! Some quick searches here suggest there are easily over 20K entires. This is going to be a lot of work (says she currently drowning in the QHR). There's plenty to keep us busy for years here! Now this database is compilation of 5 other databases (as you mention above). So probably the format of each of the sub-databases is likely to be different. So I think the first task is to examine entries from each of the lists and determine how the headings and data fields displayed would correspond to elements of a Wikipedia article and the fields in the Template:Infobox historic site as this would underpin the automated generation of articles. Then we have to gather our data, either 1) web-scrape it into spreadsheets (ugh, but possible) or 2) we ask if we can have the data released as spreadsheets or similar (much easier on us). Then we build generators from the data to the Wikipedia article, we then load the Wikipedia articles and spend endless hours reviewing and correcting them. Let's not underestimate the size of the task but it is do-able. Obviously the more people keen to be involved, the more quickly it happens. One thing I would say. I did a quick comparison of some Qld Heritage Register entries with these ones, generally the QHR are more fullsome, so we should do some checks to see if there are other state heritage dataset which could be made available that would be better input than these Commonwealth entries. But at the end of the day, availability under suitable licensing is the key consideration for us and clearly these Commonwealth ones are ready and raring to go. Kerry (talk) 22:29, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

I had a good dig around last night, and unfortunately it looks like the Register of the National Estate was still in the relatively early stages of digitisation when Howard devolved their functions to the states. There are some that are article-length, but a lot that only have a very brief summary, and no way that I could find to search for the longer articles. Nonetheless, there's a whole bunch of articles we could still get from it, and though the other databases are likely to relate to topics we already have - there's a bunch of content that will be extremely useful for those articles in there. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:32, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

I think this may be a time when a case could be made to establish a WikiData link for the information but probably not worth creating a bulk set of 20k+ articles especially as the more notable would already have articles including many which are substantive in content and thats without considering any naming issues. Gnangarra 12:38, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

All of those are intrinsically notable - the US equivalents are well on their way to having articles for every single listing. That said, the poor quality of many of the online National Estate listings, plus the fact that we've likely got articles in some existing form on the other listings, means that (unfortunately) this is probably a do by hand job. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:45, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Might be worth creating a to-do list like Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/To-do/Australian Dictionary of Biography. Is it clear how many don't have articles? 09:01, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

I think that's a really good idea for the National Heritage List and Commonwealth Heritage List: these have a really high bar to notability and their listings have been recently updated. It's probably not worth doing for the Register of the National Estate: it's massive, only maybe 20% of their listings are detailed and high enough quality to be transferred, and if we had to write entirely new content we'd be better off working from the state registers, seeing as they're the current authority (all the statutory powers of the Register of the National Estate were devolved to the states under Howard). The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:24, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

(i can't count Colons) if we could get the data, it's easy enough for a machine to run through them and sort the entrries by their length (and/or other machine-decidable criteria). That could be used to produce a list to aid human editors in spotting the entries with most potential for articles and then using a tool to generate as much of that article as possible. Anything that reduces work means more articles get created. So far I've rented about 220 or so articles for sites on the Qld Heritage Register out of about 1700. It's not no-work but it's a lot less work the writing them from scratch. I spent about 20 minutes or so tidying up the wikilinks mostly, looking for photos, etc. No way I could write one in that time. The resultant articles aren't perfect but they are not bad either. The biggest criticism I'd make of them is that they are single source. Personally I don't see a problem with generating stub articles if that's all we can do. When Google started putting out the first para of Wikipedia articles in its search results, I believe wikipedia noticed a drop in hits of about 20%, which probably tells us that a lot of people are only interested in the basic facts. What's a ficus? ah, it's a plant! Where's Montevideo? Ah, it's in South America. Stubs deliver basic facts and are better than nothing at all on a topic. Kerry (talk) 00:02, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

While this would be lovely (especially for the Commonwealth Heritage List in particular), it's way above my pay-grade to make this sort of technical solution. If anyone else wanted to though, I'd be stoked. I'm currently putting together a to-do list as a more manual workaround - there's only about 500 entries between both the National Heritage List and the Commonwealth Heritage List. I also am not sure the metadata you've been using on the QHR articles exists in this case?

I think the Register of the National Estate is a manual job, though; I feel like looking for transferrable material from there is a bit like going fishing due to the wildly variant quality of their stuff, and I'm not that comfortable with having extremely-difficult-to-expand short stubs on stuff at the lower end of the notability scale - stuff that would be fine if we had a QHR-length article but is pretty contextless when just a sentence or three. Also, one important thing to note that can't be caught by bots - there is a lot of good content in assessments that have been declined or neglected by the federal listings but are included on state registers. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:57, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

I followed the suggestion of the user above to create to-do lists, which now exist (fully disambiguated) at Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/To-do/Commonwealth Heritage List and Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/To-do/National Heritage List.

For our purposes, the National Heritage List (100ish listings) is pretty short and eclectic, and some of their areas are broad and don't line up that easily with our articles. The Commonwealth Heritage List, on the other hand (500ish listings) has a LOT that we're missing and that would really contribute to our coverage of quite a few areas in which we've got active editors. It would be great to see - whether automated or not - a real effort to get the CHL listings ported and articles created. I'll certainly be diving in.

Also: my reading of their website and license suggests that the CC-by-SA license does not apply to the images on their listings. (The license essentially states that it includes content not from other parties, and all the images have prominent links advertising purchasing the rights, attributed to a different database.) The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:55, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Seems to be a lot of post offices on the CHL. Could work off a template for these. Hack (talk) 15:01, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

They're federal buildings. No need to work off a template when you've got the CHL's text! The Drover's Wife (talk) 15:07, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, it's probably at my pay grade :-) To get this ball rolling, I have requested that the data set(s) be made available here. As you will see, it is a site where others get to vote on these proposals. So if you think having easy access to these heritage datasets would be a good idea, please go to the link and "join the community" and vote for this proposal. We need your votes, folks! 03:36, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Oh, you are fabulous. Done! The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:41, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Vet = doctor?

Do we have a position on references to veterinarians including the unwarranted honorific "doctor"? Most vets, particularly TV vets, love to refer to themselves as doctor, despite the absence of a doctorate. This is especially relevant at the article Bondi Vet, where an editor re-inserts "Dr" before the name of every cast member. Thoughts? WWGB (talk) 14:02, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Most physicians don't have doctorates either. Hack (talk) 14:10, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

But do we need to put doctor everywhere. It's so silly at Bondi Vet that "Mr." is even being added to names, contrary to WP:CREDENTIAL. --AussieLegend (✉) 14:30, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) According to Wikipedia:CREDENTIAL, the use of Doctor should not be used "in the initial sentence or in other uses of the person's name." Hack (talk) 14:33, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd say it's a warranted honorific - the outgoing Premier of Victoria is officially referred to as "Dr" and was a vet. That said, we use honorifics in relatively few contexts, and it seems reasonable to delete them in those being referred to here. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:47, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Who said he was "officially" referred to as Dr? HiLo48 (talk) 18:47, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

I believe that was a reference to the Victorian parliament website listing him as "Napthine, Dr. Denis Vincent". --AussieLegend (✉) 18:53, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

I've done a bit of web searching. In 2010 in the interests of having a national approach it seems we have ceased to regulate the use of the title Dr in Australia. Now it is the use or misuse of specific health-related occupations that is regulated. That is, you must be appropriately registered (which generally includes appropriate qualifications) to call yourself a dentist or whatever. It seems anyone can use Dr so long as they do not do so in a way intended to mislead that they are qualified medical practitioner if they are not. So there is nothing wrong with saying "Dr Smith vet" or "Dr Brown dentist" as there is no misleading. Some of the health boards have issued *advice* to their members about the use of the "courtesy" title of Dr, when they think their members should or shouldn't use it. I note that the dentists recommend not using it, but chiropractors seem to think it OK! So it would appear to be open slather in Australia now. In which case I suggest we drop all titles and just stick to reporting qualfications and/or licensing/registration (as applicable). Signed Kerry Raymond, PhD (UQ, 1987), no I can't help with your lumbago. Kerry (talk) 20:33, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Now I know why Enzed have "Hose Doctor" on the side of their vans.[14] I fix computers so, from now on, you can all call me Dr AussieLegend (✉) 20:55, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Doctorates for all! Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:24, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

CSIRO images still need help

The batch release of CSIRO images is gaining impressive usage, thanks. Just a reminder to anyone who has some spare time for Commons that over 600 of them remain uncategorized, and categorization is usually the first step toward usage. Thanks. --99of9 (talk) 01:29, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

two articles for review

Hi people. I just spent the morning with a belated Wikibomb participant and co-wrote sandboxes: Pip Pattison and Jill Trewhella. Since we're both Usyd employees so have a COI, could a third party please review them for promotional language etc and see if they're ready for mainspace? Thanks. --99of9 (talk) 01:51, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

 Done thanks User:Chuq and User:Ariconte. --99of9 (talk) 00:01, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

No problem - I did the moves but didn't have time to clean up, fortunately User:Ariconte sorted them :) -- Chuq (talk) 01:18, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

{{Infobox nrl club}} currently being merged

Just noticed {{Infobox nrl club}} is now in the process of being replaced by {{Infobox rugby league club}}, apparently after no objections at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2014 June 9#Template:Infobox nrl club. Dl2000 (talk) 01:01, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

• Looking at page histories it was a malformed nominated back in May, this was closed as a relist. Gnangarra 13:35, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Actor Jeremy Kewley arrested

Just FYI. This Melbourne based actor, "...known for his role in the 1990s ABC Janus (TV series). has been arrested and "... faces 103 counts of indecent acts with a child under 16 and two counts of possessing child pornography." ABC source. Just may need a watch for vandalism or un-sourced updates.

In view of the fact that he has been arrested, and considering WP: BLP and WP:RECENTISM etc. Is it generally considered too soon to update his WP BLP page?
(Post script, he already has the arrest with source on his page) --220 of ^Borg 01:19, 18 December 2014 (UTC)