Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 48

Medalist?

I was wondering which way Australian English spells this word, "medalist" (1-L) or "medallist" (2-L's) ; I noticed that Category:Olympic medalists for Australia uses one, while Category:Olympic medallists for Great Britain uses two. -- 65.94.171.217 (talk) 23:01, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

I though I'd look at what the ABC uses, and it turns out they use either spelling [1], or sometimes both in the same article [2] (even in the same sentence! "Silver medallist Matthew Mitcham of Australia, gold medallist Jack Laugher of England and bronze medalist Grant Nel of Australia pose during the medal ceremony for the Men's 1m Springboard.") - Evad37 [talk] 23:36, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

The 1988 reprint of the Macquarie Dictionary (1st edition) has "Medallist ... Also, Chiefly U.S., medalist." This is also what appears in the online version (except that it has US without dots). --Scott Davis ^Talk 01:32, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Should the Australian Olympics categories uses two "L"'s? -- 65.94.171.217 (talk) 11:28, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, they should. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:14, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

I recently posted a change request for Canadian English at WP:CFDS, and it ran into difficulty. If I request this change based on Australian English, will this run into the same difficulties? (you may wish to proceed with the request before I can react to any response here, in any case, since the example of my Canada request already exists at CFDS) -- 65.94.171.217 (talk) 04:35, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

No, because two Ls is our official spelling. The problem is that there are no redirects on categories. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:00, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Not official but the Macquarie Dictionary is widely considered to be the authoritative source for Australian English. Hack (talk) 03:30, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

NT Workshops

Workshops will be happening in the Northern Territory on 5 October in Alice Springs, 6 October in Tennant Creek and 8th October in Katherine any of all of which could lay claim to being the most remote workshops held. Check out http://www.wikiclubnt.net/ for more details, these events are supported by Wikimedia Australia. Gnangarra 08:13, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:IAP listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:IAP. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. — Gorthian (talk) 21:40, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

• Just a reminder to all that this discussion is still open and could do with some more input. --AussieLegend (✉) 12:06, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

• Despite this discussion being open for 19 days now, we are no closer to consensus. Please participate in the discussion so we can finally get this out of the way. The discussion is now at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 September 14#Wikipedia:IAP. --AussieLegend (✉) 16:14, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

NSW Local Government

Following the NSW local government elections, we've now got a ton of LGA articles that need their mayors and councillors updating. Anyone keen to take that on? The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:58, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

For that matter, there are still plenty of Qld ones not updated from earlier this year. I've done some as I've stumbled over them but it probably needs a more concerted effort. The results are available here. Most of the Qld LGA articles only report the list of mayors and not the whole council, which makes the task not so large. The Qld LGA elections took place on Saturday, 19 March 2016, although I think a couple of LGAs had their elections postponed due to a death among the candidates (one was Laidley I think). Kerry (talk) 23:10, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

No, Alanis, it isn't ironic

An anonymous IP has been repeatedly editing Electoral district of Northcott to assert that it's ironic that when Barry O'Farrell resigned as premier of New South Wales in 2014, he was succeeded by the son of the man he had succeeded as MLA for Northcott. In reality, there's nothing inherently ironic about this — there's no plausibility gap here between "what could be reasonably expected" and "what actually happened" — but the IP has repeatedly reverted both me and other editors who have removed the word "ironic" from the article, often with an edit summary which implies that a person has to have some special depth of knowledge about Australian politics to have any right to edit the article at all (except that's not true, as any Wikipedia editor can respond to any maintenance or style or POV issues on any article they happen to come across.) Accordingly, I wanted to ask:

1. Is there really any special deep-Aussie bit of insider knowledge that would elevate this fact above "marginally interesting bit of historical trivia" and into the realm of actual irony?
2. If not, is anybody associated with WikiProject Australia willing to take on monitoring the article so that it doesn't turn into an edit war?

Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 23:27, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

G'day, I have protected the article for a week, warned the IP for edit warring and removed the word "Ironically" from the article for the time being. The IP has posted a comment on the talk page of the article, please engage in the discussion with them there to establish consensus. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 00:04, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

User:SatyrBot

There seems to be erroneous additions of WPAustralia's banner from SatyrBot (talk · contribs) way back in April 2008. I just fixed one such error (8.5 years later) so it would seem likely other hidden damage still exists on Wikipedia from rogue bannerings by this bot. (see user talk: SatyrBot for a description of the bad taggings lodged in 2008) -- 65.94.171.217 (talk) 10:25, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

10,000 Challenge

Hi, I was wondering if anybody would like to collaborate long term in trying to reach a 10,000 article improvement/creation drive for Australia at Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/The 10,000 Challenge like we're doing for the UK at Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge? Regional contests fuel the drive but it's a permanent goal now, with articles coming in every day from different people. Would Australian wikipedians be interested in running a similar thing and some state contests/editathons to increase output?♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:55, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

I'd be in. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:00, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. The idea would be a long term 10,000 article drive for Australia, more emphasis going on cleaning up existing articles/destubbing but also new articles as well. People place articles on the list they improve and the body of work builds up and it gives people more motivation to keep improving articles as each and every article counts towards the goal. As it grows, it might inspire others to create and so on. To fuel it there could be regional contests/editathons like Wikipedia:WikiProject England/The West Country Challenge such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/The South Australia Challenge with a contest aiming to target each county and bring wide improvements, I don't know if WM Australia would be happy to support something like that but it produces excellent results the ones I've done so far, and then the ongoing 10,000 goal. If I see a couple of people here who think they might enjoy doing something like this and see the potential I'll help set up a page.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:21, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Isn't every edit done by good-faith editors aiming to improve/create content? If so, happy to participate as I write Australian content every day. But can we automate the housekeeping -- I don't see it is in any way productive to waste time adding article titles to the "challenge list". It would be better to have some tool that processes the contributions of the participants and automatically adds the article when some quantifiable improvement is achieved (probably simplest to measure is increase in the number of bytes) and the article is within (directly/indirectly) Category:Australia. "Never send a man to do a machine's job!" from The Matrix. Kerry (talk) 15:11, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

You're missing the purpose of it. We're not recording every edit every editor makes to a country. We're running contests/editathons every few months like WP:Awaken the Dragon which saw over 1000 article improvements/creations in a month and combining the work done and keeping it going betwene contests. We're seeing articles improved which haven't been edited in ten years, a way to get a lot of the stale content improved which otherwise wouldn't get edited. Surely you and others wouldn't complain if you saw this after one month from Australian wikipedians? If the contests and ongoing drive weren't so productive, seeing many times more quality work than normal I wouldn't bother with it or make the effort to try to replicate it elsewhere. The idea was to run something similar for some of the Australian states and something to fuel a lot of major improvements in a short space of time which you might not get on that scale from regular editing.♦ Dr. Blofeld —Preceding undated comment added 16:00, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps you could explain it more concretely. When you talk about regional contests and edit-a-thons, are you talking about physical events? Are you targetting new users, or occasional contributors, or regular contributors? Yesterday I substantially expanded Archer Park Rail Museum. Is that the kind of thing you have in mind as an improvement? If we had been running the challenge event yesterday, what else would have to be done by me or others? Do I have to document it in some way? Does someone else have to review it to say it is "improved"? I am trying to get an understanding on the workload involved in running it and the resourcing of that workload, given we are a relatively small community. Kerry (talk) 22:50, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia Australia is happy to provide support to anyone who wants to run the project. Gnangarra 08:10, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea in principle, but I for one will not have any time to make any commitment. Aoziwe (talk) 13:35, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I will devise something in the next week or two, give you some contest model options, it might be you want the focus on GAs more for one state, and destubbing/raw cleanup work for another. But I was thinking of a National Contest for Australia and then regional ones based on the West Country Challenge with daily prizes for the editors who destub/improve the most articles or accumulate the most points for the biggest effort. If anybody regionally was interested in hosting a physical editathon, yes somebody could plan those to support the contests and get museums, libraries and universities on board, and it's also something I'm sure Wikimedia would help fund. There would be a simply mechanism and easy for somebody to run, just tot up basic points which would be allocated to articles with nasty tags (5 points), new articles (10 points), Destubbing (25 points), Core Article improvement (50 points) etc. Say we did a regional contest for New South Wales one month. 2 days work allocated to each of the 14? regions perhaps. Yesterday and today Kerry, say we were running the Mid North Coast leg of the state contest. Whoever did the most core article improvements/destubbing work for it by the end of today would win a prize and gain point bonuses which would go towards an overall scoreboard and then an overall contest winner. People not interested in winning anything can always participate and treat it as an "editathon" and just submit work anyway, but something with a structured focus which is going to target every area and get people working on areas which might get poorly touched otherwise.

Prizes can be books any of the editors here might want to further contribute to other articles or Amazon vouchers, something which is going to reinvest in the project long term. I don't know if you've drawn up any core article lists of your own but a general and regional core article lists can be created if not and you give editors higher points or prize opportunities for working on the important stuff. And then those lists can really benefit the overall Australian project long term. If there's any really weak area of content which badly needs improving those can be identified and something devised to motivate editors to work on them. So the model would have to be modified to meet your specific requirements, but it would work for any region of the country and it's something you could get the funding for from Wikimedia through the grants or your own chapter and then somebody take the responsibility for running them every few months throughout the year. I think the main foundation can potentially offer $US 1000-1500 into things like this as they put that in to one of the Africa ones, so if the funds distributed well and you get a lot of people interested in doing it you could probably produce some similar results to the ones I've done to date. If you did an Australian National Destubathon and give say a Aus $1000 prize to whoever fleshed out the most stubs in one month I'm sure you'd not only motivate some of the barely active editors but attract more contributors in general. Plenty of ideas ;-) I'll look into this next week.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

@Kerry Raymond: Always possible to start with a small regional focus and work up of course. Something you might be interested in is something like the Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Wiki Loves Queensland Women contest could quite easily be set up and prizes could be books which can further improve content on Queensland women!♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:33, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

I like all of these ideas, but I particularly like this one. I've always been following Wikipedia:Women in Red, but they've never really had an editathon on the sorts of topics that I tend to write about. One based on geography, however, and I could really go to town on things I'm actually interested in. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:04, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

A general Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/The Queensland Challenge based on Wikipedia:The West Country Challenge would work. There is a Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Loves Women underway in Africa that's all, and I thought some would appreciate a focus on women as we only have 16% women biographies.♦ Dr. Blofeld 06:28, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Images not working very well today

I dunno if it is something unique to me but tonight lots of images aren't rendering in articles. E.g. All Hallows' School has about 1/3 of its images not rendering and I've been seeing this on a lot of articles this evening. And they seem to be consistent (same images render or don't render). Is there some problem on Commons? Kerry (talk) 15:19, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Maybe intentional if you are on a mobile device.... see recent changes (I forget where but maybe in Signpost). If not on a mobile device; possibly a bug that should be reported. Regards, Ariconte (talk) 20:25, 12 September 2016 (UTC) BTW, they all look OK to me.... Ariconte (talk) 22:40, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

...mobile device.... see recent changes... -- See WT:ACCESS#Lightweight pages via Google and WP:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-09-06/Technology report. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:08, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Not sure if I am considered to be on a mobile device. I am using desktop mode on a laptop, so I am reading the whole article (not a lede plus table of contents as in the mobile mode). The problem occurs both when I am on my home wifi and when I am using my Testra 4G dongle away from home (the only two modes I operate in). I still have a problem with the All Hallows' School above, same missing photos, yet the images are alive and well when I click through the broken image tabs. I was wondering if it had something to do with the thumbnailing, but according to your link, that thumbnailing problem is now fixed (and in any case it involved large files while many of my missing photos are not large files). It remains a mystery. I reported it at the Village Pump (technical) but didn't get any useful response. Kerry (talk) 03:42, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

They all still look good to me.... on mobile and desktop. Your browser could be the culprit.... have you tried different browsers / cleared your history / etc? Regards, Ariconte (talk) 05:21, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

I was getting the same thing yesterday on my laptop at SLQ. But I've not noticed anything at home on my PC (which uses Chrome Canary as a browser rather than Midori). Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 07:09, 15 September 2016 (UTC).

The images at All Hallows' School display properly here, but I can't get the image in the infobox, File:Caloundra Lighthouses, 2008.jpg, to display at all in the article Caloundra Lighthouses – it only shows Caloundra Lighthouses, 2008.jpg between the first line in the infox, Caloundra Lighthouses, and the caption, "New and Old Caloundra Lighthouses, 2008", but no picture. This only happens in Firefox which I keep deliberately at v. 22.0; it works as expected in up-to-date Chrome and IE. Some other random articles which use {{Infobox historic site}} work fine in Firefox. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:38, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

And now they are all working for me (without any change at my end). Goodness knows, perhaps there was som e backend problem that has now been fixed. Kerry (talk) 03:38, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Just for the record: the infobox image at Caloundra Lighthouses now displays properly for me too in Firefox 22, without any changes here. Baffled, Michael Bednarek (talk) 23:45, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Safe Schools, Mk. 2

Can we please have some more eyes on Safe Schools Coalition Australia? I am sick of having to keep an eye on the constant sourcing issues here: we currently have a questionable claim sourced to an Angela Shanahan opinion piece sitting in the article because I'm tired of having to revert these things, and I still just had to take out a completely fabricated claim about Safe Schools that was reinserted by two different conservative editors. I don't care what people's opinions about Safe Schools are: I'm just fed up with "citing tabloid columnists is bad" and "don't make false claims about sources" being things I actually have to argue. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:18, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Skyring:, @Frickeg:, because you're uninvolved editors who piped up the last time this came up here. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:19, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Sorry mate. I have seen what is going on but I just do not have the time to do it justice at the moment. The best I can offer is moral support to those supporting verifiability, npov, etc. Aoziwe (talk) 14:08, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Invitation to Women in Architecture & Women in Archaeology editathons

October 2016
	Women in Architecture & Women in Archaeology editathons Faciliated by Women in Red

(To subscribe, Women in Red/Invite list. Unsubscribe, Women in Red/Opt-out list) --Ipigott (talk) 15:13, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

External links to Trove newspapers

Can we get some consensus on the most appropriate way format for external links to Trove newspapers, and having done so, is it worth creating a template?

• Here is an example of the format being applied by RenegadeStormie
• Here is an example of what I have been changing it to.
• Here is my change being "fixed". (That's the term used in the edit summary; I'm not using scare quotes. The change was presumed to be in good faith.)
• Here is Kerry Raymond's variation
• Here is my most recent change to that same example.

There are (at least) several hundred articles involved, so it's probably best if we agree rather than editing at cross-purposes. Reasons for my changes are:

• Only the newspaper name (not the state and year range) are in italics, per WP:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Names and titles, and consistent with italicisation of newspaper names in articles (noting that the list articles don't necessarily italicise the names in the lists, but they probably should).
• The website is "Trove", not "Trove Digitised newspapers and more". The extra words are unnecessarily promotional.
• "Trove" is not italicised because it's not a "Major work of art or artifice" etc.

Kerry's use of "available at Trove" once only a the top of a long list is good for multiple entries, but including "at Trove" on each entry is probably easier for a template. Many articles (eg those for individual newspapers) have only one entry. (A template might make "at Trove" optional.)

Comments, suggestions? Mitch Ames (talk) 11:56, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

My variation was a just one-off to try to reduce the visual overload created by RenegadeStormie's approach when applied to a rather long list, so in the interests of minimising the biting of a relatively new good-faith user, I retained the "digitised newspapers and more", which I would not have added in the normal course of events. Kerry (talk) 12:15, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I would very much oppose barring Wikipedians from using the citation option provided by Trove itself. It is an enormous timesaver, and the differences between that and what might be ideal are largely semantic, and what isn't can be easily fixed by bots. This is a solution best dealt with by working with Trove itself, keeping in mind that their budget has been slashed into oblivion and it probably isn't high on their priority list. With that in mind, drastically increasing inconvenience to article authors for semantic reasons is a bad idea. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:34, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, for Trove pages on newspapers titles, e.g. [3], the only citation option is a bare url without any formatting... - Evad37 [talk] 00:11, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Quoting The Drover's Wife: I would very much oppose barring Wikipedians from using the citation option provided by Trove itself. It is an enormous timesaver ...
I agree with you in principle, but:

• How/where does Trove provide this citation/format?
• I think that Trove should dictate the format, where that format is contrary to existing Wikipedia MOS guidelines, eg use of italics, promotional text ("... and more").

This is a solution best dealt with by working with Trove itself
Agreed - but first we need to decide ourselves how the entries should appear, then present our agreed-upon solution to them. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:33, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Click on the info tab (i) on the left of an article to see the provided citation format Reubot (talk) 07:55, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

@Reubot: That only works for articles. For links such as at Wheatbelt_newspapers#External_links, there is no "(i)" tab (and no "Cite this" button, or other variation) - Evad37 [talk] 09:39, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

I agree that the website name is just "Trove", as very clearly stated at http://trove.nla.gov.au/. For a list of these, putting it at the top instead of after every link is better, cutting down on unnecessary repetition. In all cases though, the website name "Trove" should be linked to our article on it, Trove, in much the same way that {{IMDB title}}, {{YouTube}}, {{Twitter}} etc just provide one external link, with a wikipedia article link for the general website link. Which, as I think about it, is probably necessary per WP:ELNO (guideline) #4 and #13. - Evad37 [talk] 00:00, 22 September 2016 (UTC) mber 2016 (UTC)

• Reply to Ames first comment - yes a template would be a good idea, and I do not think it is any help to outline others eccentric usages.

• I think Mitch Ames focus on Renegade Stormies edits is unreasonable, a low edit user over-using ext links - I would have thought a more reasonable approach would be to ask for the external links to be incorporated into text per MOS, rather than in an unconnected list at the base of the article.

• If there is usage of the Trove cite this article section:

• The West Australian : 150th anniversary supplement January 5th. 1983, West Australian, 1983, retrieved 22 September 2016 - surely that is enough information from Trove, but not about Trove...

• Evad's comment about another MOS issue - one link at top and cut out repetitious reference to Trove is an important point, and backed up by elno guidelines.

• Evads comment about bare URL for Trove newspaper citations is of concern, that is something we should ask Trove tech people to attend to regardless of their truncated funds and staff numbers.

• Drover's comment about usage of the wikipedia citation from the cite this - it has been provided, and is used widely and will not be changed. The issue in the end is whether when using the trove citation, where a link to trove may be made once.

• I strongly disagree with any other words such as available at, or at - if a cite this item has been used from Trove, Trove needs to be linked, nothing else of text and no repetition - per Ames, Evad, Drovers comments.

• the need for a template is strong. JarrahTree 00:55, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

"... I do not think it is any help to outline others eccentric usages.
I think Mitch Ames focus on Renegade Stormies edits is unreasonable,..."
That's probably a fair criticism, but in my defence: I was linking specific examples (something I'm sure JarrahTree knows that I am inclined to do) to illustrate what I see as a potential style issue and differences of opinion about how to format the entries. I mentioned the user(s) by name using {{U}} as the easiest way of automatically notifying them of a discussion that probably should involve them. My intent was not to unreasonably focus on a particular user; nonetheless, I apologise if I gave the wrong impression. Mitch Ames (talk) 14:07, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

These are actually references, why wouldn't they be footnotes? Hack (talk) 02:26, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

exactly - can the via=Trove simply be placed inside refs/footnotes then? JarrahTree 02:36, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

The links to the newspaper pages (example) would be publisher=National Library Australia and work=Trove. Citations to articles would be via=National Library of Australia. Hack (talk) 02:44, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for that, I hope the editors above take note of that very closely!! JarrahTree 02:47, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, wasn't trying to be passive aggressive. I didn't check the edit history before changing them back. I thought I had just made a mistake in the first place. I checked afterwards, but then decided if you didn't like it you could revert it quickly anyway, so left it. I don't actually mind just using Trove, I was just following the model used in the SLNSW Wikipedia newspapers program.RenegadeStormie (talk) 03:42, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

• I've created {{Trove newspaper}} as an external link template - Evad37 [talk] 05:19, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

• What's the plan for articles like Wheatbelt newspapers where the external links are actually references? Hack (talk) 07:07, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

• That list actually already has references for all the entries, so I don't see a problem leaving them as external links. Especially for Trove links that provide much less detail than the SLWA links, e.g. compare [4], [5]. But I don't mind if anyone does want to go through and convert them to inline references. If you think it would be useful, it is easy enough to create a {{Cite Trove newspaper}} citation template that passes appropriate values through to {{cite web}}. - Evad37 [talk] 07:32, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

There are some Wikipedia articles that use "Newspaper name (State: year-year) at Trove" as an inline reference, eg The Sun (Sydney). Mitch Ames (talk) 12:42, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

@Evad37: the list contains information that is supported by the "external links", therefore they are not external links, they are references. Hack (talk) 02:48, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Are you claiming that external links have to have exactly no information that supports article content? Maybe it's more of a philosophical difference, but in my mind a link listed under an ==External links== header (i.e. a link which WP:EL applies to) is an external link. Whereas a reference is listed under ==References==, ==Notes==, ==Sources==, ==Citations==, or similar (i.e. a link which WP:EL does not apply to). Just because a link could potentially be used as a source doesn't mean it can't be an external link – in fact, converting citations to external links is one way of dealing with WP:Citation overkill. As I mentioned before, I don't mind if these links are converted into references, and I can make a template if that would be helpful, but the information in that article is already referenced. - Evad37 [talk] 08:38, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Although the entries under Wheatbelt newspapers § External links are all legitimate ELs, they could also be inline citations. WP:ELMAYBE item 3 says "Long lists of links are not acceptable", and a long list (which I can easily see getting longer, given that there is no obvious criterion for limiting it) is what we currently have. For this article I suggest that we should convert these ELs to inline citations. Alternatively just delete the ELs from here, and only include each of them in the specific article about that newspaper. (If the newspaper is not notable enough for an article, it's probably not notable enough to include in Wheatbelt newspapers § External links.) Mitch Ames (talk) 12:58, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, you have a point about ELMAYBE#3. I've created {{Cite Trove newspaper}} for formatting citations. - Evad37 [talk] 01:51, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

... created {{Trove newspaper}} ...
Thanks for that Evad37. Please see my suggest at Template talk:Trove newspaper. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:52, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Mount Isa population

G'day. I hope this is the right place to ask; if not, please redirect me. I was looking at the article on Mount Isa and I noticed that all the population figures needed citations, so I checked the census. The figures in the article are so wildly different from the Census (713 vs over 22,000) that I have to wonder if there is something going on which needs to be spelled out explicitly. Especially since the Census figure of 713 people does not seem to be nearly enough to support the obvious infrastructure of the town. Does anybody have insight into why the figures are so very different? If so, please comment at Talk:Mount_Isa#Population_and_dwellings. --Gronk Oz (talk) 07:49, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

If you look carefully at the 2011 census map for Mount Isa (state suburb) with pop about 700 (zoom in a lot) you will see there is a tiny cut out in the middle which is Mount Isa (urban locality) which has a pop of around 20,000 which is as you would expect. This approach appears inconsistent with other Qld places, no idea why. So I would use the larger pop for the article with corresponding citation. As for the estimated pop in 2015, ABS does publish estimates like this based on (goodness knows what but I am sure they know what they are doing). Local government websites often show the latest ABS estimates, particularly for places which have highly fluctuating pops as mining towns do. So there probably is a citation on ABS or local Govt website to support the 2015 estimate figure, but if you can't find it, just put the data back to the 2011 census data as per the above. If people want to put estimates in the article that's fine but they do need to cite their source. Kerry (talk) 09:58, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that, @Kerry Raymond: I will put a copy of your response on the article's Talk page so it's there for future reference. --Gronk Oz (talk) 16:16, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

One of the nice folks on the Mount Isa page gave a suitable reference, so I have now put consistent, referenced figures throughout. Thanks for your help. --Gronk Oz (talk) 16:45, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Looks like there isn't an article for Mount Isa (suburb). Hack (talk) 02:46, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Please note that utilising 'state suburb' either as a referable item or an entity that is usable on this project is something that should be avoided at all costs, (if need be, an explanation can be got from an afd in Tasmanian 'state suburb' mis-usage last April) - please take care with getting carried away with 'artificial' constructs that are not usable in all fairness to accurate delineation of either localities or other designated areas JarrahTree 09:12, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Seems the central area is known as "Mount Isa City". Hack (talk) 02:01, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

South Australian blackout

Any sign of an article anywhere? the political fallout alone is going to make this event more than notable, cannot work out whether anyone has started anything yet JarrahTree 14:22, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

I started South Australian blackout, 2016 last night. So far, it is focused on what I knew of the power itself, would love someone else to write up about politics. It also needs a few photos - the news pictures of collapsed power pylons for example. --Scott Davis ^Talk 22:54, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

I have renamed it to 2016 South Australian blackout - to tie in with similar energy crises here in Australia - one only hopes it was the one, and we dont have to separate out other events in any way JarrahTree 23:55, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Will this article be confined to the blackout or evolve to the wider weather effects eg floods? JennyOz (talk) 00:21, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

The blackout is the only thing "big enough" to warrant an article so far, I think. Certainly the storms leading up to the blackout, and any weather or flooding that hampers restoration needs to be included. I'd say it's worth adding what you think is important, and if the article either grows too big or changes direction, split or rename it then. The key things missing for me at the moment are the political ramifications, especially Xenophon and Turnbull's comments (and a side to Shorten playing politics by pointing out the others are). Weatherill and the state government are going to cop some flack that will be notable, but we don't have full visibility of that fallout yet, and we certainly don't have the ElectraNet analysis of how it happened and what it would have cost to avoid it yet. --Scott Davis ^Talk 02:09, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

The storms are starting to cause fooding but I think given the political nature related to the power outage its probably best to keep the two as separate articles, with the outage being just a summary secion within the storm articles. Gnangarra 07:03, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Okay, I've added a few of the comments, tried to keep roughly chronological and from various sources. JennyOz (talk) 08:12, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

GPS coordinates in Australia

FYI: take a look at this web page

As far as I understood, the GPS location of Australia is about to be adjusted approx. 1.5 m (5 feet). Some coordinates may need to be slightly updated. Here or on wikidata.--Alexmar983 (talk) 03:07, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

This shouldn't make much difference to coordinates on Wikipedia, which per MOS:COORDS should only have a precision of about 10m (1′′ or 0.0001°) for building-sized objects, and about 100m for larger areas such as cities. - Evad37 [talk] 03:19, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

it will for reusers who will find that the nearby locations will be off, and for photographers trying to recreate historical pictures and the location, the previous change was 200m in 1994 Gnangarra 03:34, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, maybe very precise coordinates on file description pages and the like will be affected, but for most coordinates in articles, which are (or should be) only accurate to the nearest 10m or 100m, there should be no need for adjustment. - Evad37 [talk] 03:48, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

not an immediate issue, from http://www.icsm.gov.au/geodesy/modern.html its something that will over time need a whole wmf approach to such an issue. Gnangarra 06:28, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Most GPS receivers are not accurate to anywhere near 5m, and car GPS deliberately lie to you so you appear to be driving on the road, and not through someone's house. There's certain trickery that can be incorporated into the GPS satellite system anyway that can smooth it all out. According to the receiver I used in 1993, and the receiver I rechecked with in 2005, the house I was living in in 1992 hadn't moved, even though the 1994 changed moved everything 200m. --AussieLegend (✉) 13:00, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

What coordinate system were you looking at? Wikipedia coordinates should always use WGS84, and according to the article, that means that most Australian places will drift north by a few centimetres per year, but as pointed out above, we should not be specifying centimetre accuracy, so it will be a long time before those coordinates are wrong for any real objects. The point of the articles (especially the second one from Gnangarra) is that GDA94 is going to be superseded by something tentatively named GDA2020, just as GDA92 replaced AGD66. This will matter for people like surveyors, trying to work out where your next door neighbour should put the boundary wall of his/her new house so that it doesn't encroach on your property. A GPS readout is not much help to a surveyor, unless they also know the GPS coordinates of the local key points. [Aside - I did not expect those to be red links, perhaps they need to be added to a to-do list somewhere] --Scott Davis ^Talk 08:57, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Queensland Day

An IP editor has recently gone to this article and made a couple of edits to it, replacing the list of Queenslanders of the Year, which they claimed was inaccurate, with a list of recipients of the ‎Queensland Greats Awards. I asked for help fixing the table on the help desk, and Murph9000, who assisted me, wondered if the original table was worth re-adding as it goes back to 1981. If anyone thinksit should be re-added, either in whole or in part, feel free to put it back; as I said at the help desk thread, I know almost nothing about this subject, being from the other side of the country and all. Graham87 08:40, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

They're both genuine awards, although "Queensland Australian of the Year" is managed by the federal government and not announced on Queensland Day as far as I am aware. That being said I'm not sure if the "Queensland Greats" awards are so important that they require being listed in detail on the page; I'm about as parochial a Queenslander as you're likely to find and I'd never heard of them until now. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:29, 6 October 2016 (UTC).

List of Brisbane Roar FC players at FLRC

I have nominated List of Brisbane Roar FC players for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare to "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.--Cheetah (talk) 06:51, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Speedy move

There is a speedy move request for Category:VFL/AFL players to Category:Australian Football League players. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:07, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Location of Wurdi Youang

Editors are invited to comment at Talk:Wurdi Youang#Location as to whether the specific coordinates of an Aboriginal stone arrangement should be included in the article. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:35, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Disambig to category

I am wondering what other oz eds might think of a category that feeds from a disambig of unrelated items - where the subjects of common name or similar name have a category connection - [[Category:Granny_Smith]] - it may well be workable but I am wondering of others views of such categories JarrahTree 06:15, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

WP:SHAREDNAME says no. I suggest that Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization might be a better place to raise the discussion. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:03, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

... or WT:CAT, which has more watchers (680, vs Overcategorization's 126). Mitch Ames (talk) 11:59, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Iron or iron ore?

Australians editors are invited to comment on the proposed, and currently opposed, renaming of Category:Iron ore mines in Western Australia to Category:Iron mines in Western Australia, at WP:CFDS. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:38, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

our editor in Albany, a qualified mining chemist has adequately pointed out the misnomer of the main parent category, so the query is in effect redundant - the parent cat of 'iron mines' is wrong, and the western australian 'iron ore mines' needs to applied to the rest of the category tree JarrahTree 13:09, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

I've withdrawn this proposal, and instead raised Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 October 17#Category:Iron mines in Australia. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:15, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Possum move

Did anyone notice Talk:Possum#Requested move 26 September 2016? I don't have time to consider it now, but it has been closed as "The result of the move request was: Moved. Possum to Phalangeriformes and Possum (disambiguation) to Possum." with only a couple of !votes. --Scott Davis ^Talk 08:17, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Move to delete Bevan Lawrence

Alas, we have neglected this article for deletion, and we need to rally support to retain it. I undertake to do the donkey work but would appreciate some support. Bjenks (talk) 04:55, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

I notice you mentioned the Quentin Beresford book The Godfather: The Life of Brian Burke here (in 2008) in relation to this article, but it doesn't seem to be used as a source. I had a look in my files to try and narrow down some of the donkey work—there are a few small mentions in the Australian Journal of Politics and History; there was an article about him in The Age on 26 April 1997 by Bill Birnbauer: "Brother Crosses A Political Divide To Defend Lawrence"; he was one of the political siblings mentioned in "Stranger in the House" by Jason Koutsoukis in the Australian Financial Review on 12 December 2003. --Canley (talk) 06:57, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that - the article is clearly within range of being saved as a failed delete nom. JarrahTree 07:07, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Peter Kennedy's "Tales from Boomtown: Western Australian Premiers from Brand to Barnett" has some useful content on Lawrence - Kennedy interviewed him for his section on WA Inc. Beresford's "The Godfather" does indeed have useful content too (Beresford also interviewed him). The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:41, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

There's not much Western Australian online news content freely available for the 1980s and 1990s. Hack (talk) 07:00, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Gosford Airport

I have come across multiple mentions recently of an airport in Gosford (Gosford Airport/GOS), but can't verify its existence. I have only been able to find brief pages of information about it (country, city, coordinates, etc.) on various sites, but the only coordinate I have been able to find of it (-33.433334, 151.35) leads to a residential area of Gosford. I have therefore removed it from the list of Airports in Australia on the basis its existence can't be proven. If you come across a mentioning of it, please remove it, unless you know it exists, in which case I ask you to notify me. trainsandtech (talk) 09:03, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

One of the references to Gosford Airport had an address: 65 Lackersteens Rd, Somersby NSW 2250, Australia. That is also what appears to be a residential area (-33.3681, 151.2993), but there is a business called Microlight Adventures next door (89 Lackersteens Rd), and there seems to be a grass airstrip of some kind behind it. So it would appear to be a private microlight aerodrome of some kind, but not really what would be counted as an airport. --Canley (talk) 09:46, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Hard to prove a negative, but as a former resident of a nearby suburb i can confirm that there is no Gosford Airport; the nearest is Warnervale Airport some considerable distance to the north. -- Euryalus (talk) 11:52, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

After looking at Google's business directory and Microlight's website, they definetly operate ultra-light aircraft, and have no intention of providing point A-B transport. Google Maps appears to show a long stip heading north, a tell-tale sign of a runway of sorts. Probably best to leave it for now; planes take off and land from many places that arent specfically airports. trainsandtech (talk) 20:39, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

UPDATE: Yesterday, I sent Microlight an email to see if they consider their property an airfield. Also, as I found out after some slightly more in-depth research, that (89 Lackersteens Rd) is actually Somersby Airport (YSMB), and has multiple companies operating at it. The other buildings seen on the property are in fact hangars. I will add 'Somersby Airport' to Airports in Australia trainsandtech (talk) 06:53, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Well done, that looks more like it. There are some videos on YouTube of Cessnas taking off from Somersby YSMB so it is an airport not just a microlight strip. --Canley (talk) 07:08, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I also just created an article on it, Somersby Airfield. trainsandtech (talk) 07:27, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Congratulations User:Rocketrod1960!

We have a real quiet achiever among us. User:Rocketrod1960 has been plugging away writing biographies for the Qld Members of the Legislative Assembly for some years. I've just returned from a number of months of travelling to discover that he's completed the task! Congratulations to him for tackling such a large task and for bringing it to a successful conclusion! Kerry (talk) 23:50, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Brisbane meetup: Saturday 26 November 2016

Anyone in or passing through Brisbane is invited to join us for a Brisbane meetup on Satuday 26 November. Details and signup are available here. Please join us for a sort-of Christmas/End-of-Year celebration! Kerry (talk) 06:40, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

regional Christian church polity articles

I recently created six articles about the six "synods" (roughly state-based councils) of the Uniting Church and named the articles with the name of the Synod as used in the context of the Uniting Church — mostly "Synod of <state>" in the hopes that they would rarely need piped links. The ensuing conversations have led to those article titles being prefixed with "Uniting Church in Australia, " which makes for very long article names that will always need piped links. A consequence of drawing examples from another denomination has resulted in quite a few articles that were named "Diocese of <somewhere>" being moved to "Anglican Diocese of <somewhere>". Someone suggested raising the topic for conversation here, and as nobody else has started it, and I have finally found time, here it is. People who have already commented on the topic on user or article talk pages so might like to see this discussion include: @Kerry Raymond:, @Castlemate:, @DBD:. We invite comments, affirmations or alternatives. --Scott Davis ^Talk 07:47, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

We write articles for readers, not for the convenience of contributors :-) so I think piping is a secondary issue. Personally I think the "in Australia" is a bit superfluous in the titles, since no other Uniting Church in another country is going to establish a Synod in South Australia. As for the piping, for such time as "Synod of South Australia" is unambiguous, it can redirect to the longer title, which is likely to avoid piping in practice. The only case that might be different is Uniting Church Northern Synod as there are no clues as to where it is. In that one case, I might be tempted to call it "Uniting Church Northern Synod (Australia)". Kerry (talk) 08:25, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Ditto re readers versus contributors, and too, redirects to "reduce any piping" as appropriate. Aoziwe (talk) 11:44, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

My query would be: what is the common usage for these unambigiously-named organisations? For instance, how would a regular Australian call the Diocese of North Queensland? Would they call it the Anglican Diocese or the Diocese (given there's no especial need for disambiguation)? DBD 15:06, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

I think it makes sense to include "Anglican", because it disambiguates it from, say, the Catholic diocese in North Queensland. (That may be called the Diocese of Cairns, but a non-Catholic isn't to know that.) The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:58, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

For the Uniting Church synods, they are mostly state-based and tend to be used with whatever disambiguator is required in context. Common use inside the Uniting Church is the names I originally gave the articles, and I was surprised there were no clashes with other protestant denominations (the closest I found was the "Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Queensland" which only existed for a few years in the 1880s). The South Australian Council of Churches lists its members with the name of the denomination then the name of the specific body in that denomination that is represented ("Anglican Church of Australia, Diocese of Willochra" or "Uniting Church in Australia - Synod of South Australia"). News organisations do what they like, which could be "The Uniting Church in South Australia" or "South Australian Uniting Church" (without the word "Synod" at all), "Uniting Church Synod of South Australia", "The Uniting Church's South Australian Synod".

I would prefer either Synod of South Australia (Uniting Church) or Uniting Church Synod of South Australia for the style of longer names rather than the fully-spelt out big-endian "Uniting Church in Australia, Synod of South Australia" if we decide that Synod of South Australia has the potential to clash with someone else's diocese, archdiocese, district, regional meeting, parish or division. --Scott Davis ^Talk 04:15, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Anglicans and Lutherans do use the term "Synod" although with a different meaning. For Anglicans, the General Synod is where they decide matters of common interest to the dioceses. For Lutherans, the General Synod is their annual? conference. I agree with you about the "big-endian", especially when the likelihood of clash does seem fairly low. Kerry (talk) 05:41, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Cultural heritage of Australia

I've just created Category:Cultural heritage of Australia, which is in need of some more subcategories and/or articles ... Mitch Ames (talk) 23:56, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Can we add some kind of statement as to what is (or isn't) cultural heritage? The lede of Cultural heritage says:

Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations. Cultural heritage includes tangible culture (such as buildings, monuments, landscapes, books, works of art, and artifacts), intangible culture (such as folklore, traditions, language, and knowledge), and natural heritage (including culturally significant landscapes, and biodiversity).

Is that what we mean (replacing "a group or society" with Australia)? Personally I am OK with the tangible and intangible stuff, but I am a little less certain about natural heritage (to my mind, cultural heritage is the opposite of natural heritage, one being man-made andthe other not)? Or to be concrete about it, I can see a heritage house or the Australian national anthem or the Dreamtime legends as cultural heritage but not a national park nor an endangered snail species.

It's possibly worth looking at Category:Australia's subcategories and asking where this new one fits relative to other ones. To my mind, it's the intersection between Category:History of Australia and Category:Australian culture but not Category:Environment of Australia. Kerry (talk) 07:50, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Well (with WP:AGF and respect) - there are many usages of the term cultural heritage that actually are inclusive of natural heritage features inthe landscape... specially with indigenous understanding of what their heritage includes and where it lies. In some cases snails and national parts are part of cultural heritage in very specific cases.

In all fairness - Mitch's creation of a category long into the history of the Australian project is problematic in that many established categories may exist that are neither 'neat fits' unless there are adjustments made, so it might be more adjusting other categories rather than this one for the larger pattern to be coherent JarrahTree 08:30, 15 November 2016 (UTC).

... it might be more adjusting other categories rather than this one for the larger pattern to be coherent ... — Agreed. I suggest starting with Category:Heritage trails in Western Australia. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:24, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to the category as such (as someone who writes about heritage sites, it's of some interest to me) but we get into a lot of category arguments in Wikipedia because we don't define the membership rule to begin with. Mitch has inherited from the category Australian culture, but not History of Australia. Was that deliberate because of how Mitch understands the term cultural heritage, or was it an oversight? If the discussion gives us a clearer understanding of relationship to existing categories (and their definition), that's a bonus I think. — Kerry Raymond 04:47, 16 November 2016 (UTC) — continues after insertion below

The reason I created the category with those particular parents was for consistency with other countries in Category:Cultural heritage by country, based on a random sample of a few of them. The reason I created it all was because I was looking at Category:Heritage trails in Australia, and heritage trails were defined in that article as "relating to cultural heritage", so naturally Category:Heritage trails in Australia should be in Category:Cultural heritage of Australia, thus it was created.

I agree that the category should have a {{Category explanation}}, but I admit I don't actually know what it should be! Similar categories for other countries don't generally have a {{Category explanation}} either, or if they do it's very vague.

Note that the {{Category explanation}} should define the scope of the category, not try to define the subject "Cultural heritage of Australia". WT:CAT# Categories are not articles has a proposal about this; more comments there (preferably in support of my proposal ) would be welcome.

Mitch Ames (talk) 12:40, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

classic failed to sign message from mitch. JarrahTree 14:11, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Having spent a lot of time with the Qld Heritage Register, I see the fine line they walk around "natural things". They don't heritage-list "natural things" as such (that's not their mandate), but they do sometimes heritage-list the man-made things that relate to natural things. As an example, they do not list the Malanda Falls (a natural thing) but they do list Malanda Falls Swimming Pool as an early example of tourist development. They do not list the cactoblastis moth but they do list Cactoblastis Memorial Hall built to honour the moth (yeah, yeah, only in Queensland!). I can certainly see a line of argument that our decision to protect a particular piece of bushland by giving it national park status is a man-made act of preservation of an otherwise natural thing (which seems to highlight the importance of preservation in the definition of heritage).

Ignoring this "man-made/natural" distinction, is preservation what distinguishes "heritage" from mere "history". Lots of things have happened over time, but which do we choose as a soceity to preserve in some form? I'd say Anzac Day is a good example of our preservation of the history of the Gallipoli landings specifically and more broadly WWI military service. In contrast, while there are a few heritage-listed monuments to Australia's involvement in the Second Boer War history, I would not say that, as a society, we are preserving that piece of history. We seem to preserve Ned Kelly. Not through some govt action (like gazetting Anzac Day), but through continued reference to him, use of his helmet as an icon, films/TV continues to be made about him, etc. Is Christmas_traditions#Australia part of our cultural heritage? is "Our Common Bond" (the document you have to study to pass the exam for Australin citizenship) a starting point for identifying our cultural heritage? Kerry (talk) 04:47, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

PS. If you want to test yourself to see if you are dinkum Aussie, practice tests are available for your entertainment. Kerry (talk) 04:51, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

I do hope others join in JarrahTree 14:11, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

In the news

It looks like we have been reported as being too efficient with early results of the Orange state by-election, 2016 and related articles At the time, Antony Green also reported that Donato had won the seat (as he does again now). It looks like we have to wait until Monday to have a final result declared. For the federal election, I prepared one or two articles like this, but kept them in Draft: namespace until it was clear they belonged. I don't know if that would have made any difference to this report. If the result is not declared until Monday (or later) is his appointment (and pay) backdated to last weekend, or will we need to report that he assumed office on 21 November (or later)?

Is there somewhere else to record when Wikipedia is the news? --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:44, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

You could use {{Press}} on Talk:Orange state by-election, 2016. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:51, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Added there and talk:Electoral district of Orange as that is the page that provided the screenshot. --Scott Davis ^Talk 23:17, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, this was my doing—I misinterpreted the finalisation of the primary vote count and its match with the 2CP count as essentially the end of the count, so I started doing some of the updates as I mistakenly assumed the declaration would occur later in the day (Thursday) as scheduled and just was a formality at that point—lesson learnt. I also underestimated media and public interest in a state by-election which normally goes by without much attention. By the time I heard about the rumour that the Nationals had won the preference distribution, I was in a cinema, but reverted it all as soon as I was out. Interestingly (luckily) it looks as if it will all be correct anyway, and it's the "bye-by Shooters" and "Wikipedia jumps the gun" articles that have ended up incorrect! Regarding the term date, it should still be 12 November as the date of election, despite any eccentricity of the count or delays in declaration or swearing in. --Canley (talk) 00:58, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

We learn from experience. I have a feeling I did the same to the first one I changed after the federal election, before discovering to be more careful and wait for formal declarations. I just got corrected from within the WP community before the press caught on. Yes, we jumped the gun, but "Verifiability, not truth" supported the edits as they were appropriately sourced. --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:22, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

These things happen - it had been effectively called for Donato when it was added, and the brief change in the lead that sparked the media interest was the result of a counting error that led to it being re-called for Donato in fairly short order. No big deal in my book. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:08, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

WP:NOT

You must not come to Wikipedia and preach about trivial matters. Wikipedia must never, under any circumstance, be a voice for a particular view. This is why we are so popular with internet users. This is our cardinal rule. Please adhere to our policy. It works best that way.

We do not aim to contain all expression found elsewhere. This isn't anarchy, we have rules. Wikipedia is not here to promote things or make our readers contemplate a topic nor is it a form of personal communication. When this happens, it breaks all of these policies.

This type of editing is extremely poor quality and should be removed immediately. Its just a quote farm - a long list of quotations said about various things. This is trivia because anyone can say anything about anything. There is no value to that information from a referencing (building an encyclopedia) point of view because it is of very little consequence. Its not knowledge on the topic of the article. Its imparting knowledge of what was said about something. That is peripheral, off-topic and too trivial and therefore doesn't belong.

We aren't here to document the activities of any organisation in detail. We provide a summary of information, not little bits and pieces, not lists of activities, political positions or quotes. We don't want to copy and paste what was said about things into Wikipedia, except rarely and with good reason. This is laziness and can be a form of fraud where editors game the system to procure a vehicle or platform for ideological dissemination. When you let this stay it devalues all the other good editing we do. Its makes a mockery of the WikiProject Australia. When editors do this they are displaying a lack mutual respect. Its incivility. Some contributors are unable to constrain themselves from their deeply held religious views. Biased edit histories disprove any notion of neutrality. This editing is not done to improve our encyclopedia. It is done solely for the purpose of showcasing religious views. Help stop the biblethumping and push this dribble away. Please don't underestimate this threat and support me on this. - Shiftchange (talk) 02:28, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

My approach to biased articles is to attempt to restructure them and add balancing reliable sources. Whole scale deletion of content with a large number of independent sources is problematic, I have also found at times the existing sources useful in rebalancing an article. -- Paul foord (talk) 23:45, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

My approach is remove what doesn't belong. That is the solution to our cleanup backlogs. We don't have time to pretend biased editing is useful and ignoring it is failure. I don't feel obligated to fix other editors mistakes, especially not decades into the project when our policies are firmly set. This is how we assess our peers' contributions. Any edit away from our assessment criteria should be corrected by its removal with pointers to our policy unreservedly. - Shiftchange (talk) 02:06, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

If there is significant independent media coverage of campaigns run by such organisations as the Australian Christian Lobby, and such organisations are reported to have significant political influence, then labelling reference to those campaigns and political influence 'trivia' and removing links to those sources is counter productive. Putting it in a critical encyclopedic perspective is what users want, where that can be done from the independent reliable sources then that should be done. Paul foord (talk) 05:28, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Australian Christian Lobby

Please continue the discussion regarding the Australian Christian Lobby at Talk:Australian Christian Lobby#WP:NOT copied from Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians.27 notice board.23WP:NOT Paul foord (talk) 23:35, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

The article I presume you are referring to is Australian Christian Lobby? If so, then because they are a lobby group it is entirely appropriate that their stance on issues they lobby in regard to is succinctly documented in the article. The usual verifiability via reliable secondary source guidelines still apply. Aoziwe (talk) 12:23, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Please try to think of the wider world. The very same argument could be made for railway stations and what they do. Its not our role to document, record or list what times trains arrive and depart from a station and yet that is the purpose of a train station. We direct our readers to the relevant train authority for that information. Likewise readers wanting to know this group's specific stance at some point in time need to visit their website for that information. We don't track any organisation's views for them. We don't provide that kind of content because its trivial information not belonging in an encyclopedia. How about casinos, shall we list what games are available and what a casino manager thinks of their facilities? The purpose of all companies is to generate profit and yet we don't include lists of annual profit and loss statements. This edit serves no other purposes but to spread religious speech. Someone wishing to inject so many quotes is trying to persuade. We must write objectively without bias. - Shiftchange (talk) 13:36, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

I think the correct analogy is the railway (organisation or line), not a single station, and yes we do document major routes and when they run and which stations they service. Similarly the correct analogy for a company is what they produce and where and sometimes also important who-fors, etc., which we do document, which for a lobby group is their stance on issues and who they target. Aoziwe (talk) 12:39, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

It is a sad reflection on the current state of our editing community in Australia when individual editors have taken up a specific case of misuse of the editing privilege - and no one turns up to support or add comment. I for one think Shiftchange's current reward of total silence from others is unfair on the effort put in to try to present the case and point it out. The possibility of further situations such as these is always there, one only hopes others who have to battle with misuse in what increasingly are singular efforts, are supported more over time. There are probably similar efforts by well meaning editors in less noticeable corners, they are always better brought here for the wider community (where ever it is) to see. JarrahTree 02:12, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

... no one turns up to support or add comment. I for one think Shiftchange's current reward of total silence from others is unfair ...

Qui tacet consentire videtur (He who is silent is taken to agree). Mitch Ames (talk) 04:05, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

That looks like a challenge to comment. I think the "detail version" is too long, but a brief summary of the key points of the ACL platform is helpful to an understanding of why it is not precisely representative of many Christian Australian's beliefs, and why it is such a polarising organisation even if it broadly has agreement or acceptance on some topic. It's a lobby group, not a political party, but we give a description of the key policies and attitudes of many parties to help readers understand reactions. --Scott Davis ^Talk 10:16, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

There are thousands of Wiki-articles which detail the views and lobbying efforts of organisations. Many examples here: environmental organizations;LGBT rights organizations and Lobbying organizations in the United States.

User:Shiftchange has said, "I'm spearheading a campaign to remove Christian propaganda, such as this from Australian articles. Join me, now! I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I am fully motivated to come after every single scrap of it with military precision. I am not willing to compromise on our policies and guidelines. In the articles I watch I want to remove all but the very most important speech or quotations. I then want to replace that with concise, fact-based prose written by a Wikipedian, sourced by reliable references." Obviously a POV. On 17 November 2016 User:Shiftchange removed every single reference to ACL's views and lobbying efforts (being 42,704 characters) with the justification as "remove trivia".

Under Shiftchanges, changes, (1) the 10 year old ACL Wiki-article is decimated, the (2) its Wiki-structure is now different to most similar organisations and (3) the lede now refers to issues which are now not mentioned anywhere else.

John Warhurst, emeritus professor at ANU said, "ACL is now established in the top echelon of lobbying groups"[33] Professor Marion Maddox . . has said that ACL has achieved, "remarkable influence . . "[37] Fine, but what does the Shiftchange-ACL actually do?

I agree 100% with User:Aoziwe's comments above. I agree 100% with User:Paul foord's comments here. I recommend the ACL wiki article remains in its unvandalised state. From there it can be further improved. B20097 (talk) 10:09, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Is there a reason this discussion is not at Talk:Australian Christian Lobby? Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:12, 19 November 2016 (UTC).

For some unknown reason Shiftchange put it here??? B20097 (talk) 10:34, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

New 5000 Challenge for Australia

Hi, Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/The 5000 Challenge and the wider Wikipedia:WikiProject Oceania/The 10,000 Challenge are up and running based on Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge for the UK which has currently produced over 2300 article improvements and creations. If you'd like to see large scale quality improvements happening for Australia and Oceania like The Africa Destubathon, which has produced over 1600 articles in 5 weeks, sign up on the page. The idea will be an ongoing national editathon/challenge for Australia but fuelled by a contest if desirable to really get articles on every state/territory and subject mass improved. After every 100 articles done for Australia this would feed into the main Oceania one. I will start a 1000 one for New Zealand or even a sub 1000 article challenge for a state of Australia or something like Rules Football if there is the support. I would like some support from wikipedians here to get the Challenge off to a start anyway with some articles to make doing a Destubathon for Australia and Oceania worthwhile! Cheers.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:14, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

City of Bankstown template

Given that City of Bankstown has now merged to become Canterbury-Bankstown Council this template will need to be updated. Template:City of Bankstown topics. LibStar (talk) 08:30, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Australian agencies are confusing

Can someone do some work on Australian Classification Board and Australian Classification Review Board. I was also told by とある白い猫 that some of the content may need to be split into a third article, Classification of media in Australia. I would rather someone familiar with these Australian agencies work on this rather than someone like me, who's completely unfamiliar with them. (I'm American, by the way.) — Gestrid (talk) 22:00, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

My suggestion is this (just to clarify and verify). You have two different "sister" agencies. Each should have their separate article for the separate history (who run the office, how much funding it got and other such bureaucratic operation). And a third article to discuss their joint work classifying games, movies and whatever else they classify. Both articles have content (#Controversies, #Classification decisions) on this so they would be merged to this third article where issues are more prominently discussed with the role of each agency since I expect there will be some overlap. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 11:47, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Logo Change

I think we should change the logo of WP:AUSTRALIA. This was previously discussed here. The final vote was 2-2 and I think we should discuss it again and see if we can come to a conclusion. Catmando999 Check out his talk page! 00:57, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose changing the logo. There's nothing wrong with it, and nothing to gain by changing it. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:56, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose no reason provided, no inadequacies in current logo demonstrated, pointless distraction. - Shiftchange (talk) 04:30, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Completely agree with both Mitch Ames and Shiftchange. --AussieLegend (✉) 18:34, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose I was not going to comment as I have nothing new to add, but since a previous discussion is described as a vote and the results tallied, I pile on the bandwagon as I also see no reason to change. "If it's not broke, don't fix it". --Scott Davis ^Talk 12:08, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Same as above. Hughesdarren (talk) 12:23, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose The logo seems fine as is, as are the points of others who have come here JarrahTree 14:16, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

drum line program to kill sharks

Australian editors' opinions are requested at Talk:Queensland#drum line program to kill sharks. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:00, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

I think it would be better suited on Drum lines. Although if Queensland was the first jurisdiction in the world to deploy them it may be of historical significance. - Shiftchange (talk) 13:53, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of copying Shiftchange's comment to Talk:Queensland#drum line program to kill sharks, so that the discussion is all in one place.

Please add any further comments to Talk:Queensland#drum line program to kill sharks rather than here. Mitch Ames (talk) 22:59, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Courthouse or Court House

What's the consensus on the correct form in "Australian English"? I notice we have both in use in article titles. I usually write it as 2 words myself, but I have no idea for why I do. The Queensland Heritage Register uses both forms (which is what triggers my question). Or doesn't it matter? Kerry (talk) 14:30, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

The Macquarie Dictionary only lists "courthouse" with no alternative spelling, which is odd because "court house" is pretty common as a proper noun. I'd suggest "court building" as a generic descriptor. Hack (talk) 14:46, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, we should always use "courthouse" for the common noun. In proper nouns we could look for an official version in each case. For instance, Berrima Court House. This can get tricky where there is no consistency in the sources, e.g., the WA Heritage Council describes the "Albany Courthouse", while the Royal Association of Justices WA chooses "Albany Court House" (but "Bunbury Courthouse", "Mandurah Courthouse", etc! But perhaps the truest "official" source is the administering authority, the Attorney General's Dept. My search there showed that their consistent preference is for "Albany Courthouse", etc This option provides consistency within WA while allowing other states to differ. Note, however, that a historic (only) building may be administered by a heritage authority which may have settled on "Court House", and we should go along with that. Bjenks (talk) 02:10, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Queensland Supreme Court website is using "courthouse". I'm thinking this is the best way to go, given the Macquarie Dictionary support. Not that I am going to rush out and rename everything, but incrementally I'll try to move towards standardising "courthouse". Kerry (talk) 09:06, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

No worries with the common noun—"courthouse" is also endorsed by the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors. (In their 1965 edn, the first I bought, they prescribed "court-house".) But that does not carry over to proper nouns which are spelled according to local usage and/or documentation. Bjenks (talk) 09:49, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Just Jeans

The article Just Jeans has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

unreferenced and non-notable

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. 103.6.159.83 (talk) 17:16, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

possible new article?

Cheryl Grimmer - http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/crime/stunning-breakthrough-in-cheryl-grimmer-abduction-and-murder/news-story/b6fa2f7cf0bef6565fc30cfd5dee697a

Paul Benjamin Austin (talk) 05:00, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey Proposal to Revive Popular Pages

Greetings Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 48 Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:

• Fix and improve Mr.Z-bot's popular pages report

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, Stevietheman — Delivered: 17:52, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/The 5000 Challenge

If anyone is interested in writing some articles that are "most wanted", I have generated a list of "topics most redlinked" for Australia, for each of the various states, and can do so for any other Australian category if anyone desires (just ask, or run the tool yourself).

You can find these lists at Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/The 5000 Challenge#Missing articles. If you create any others (relevant to Australia), please feel free to add them there. I think most people would prefer to write articles in their favourite topic areas than just pick a totally random topic from a list. And I hope there are some folks out there interesting in racing car drivers (which seem to feature prominently in these lists). Kerry (talk) 14:18, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Are there guidelines for whether a shopping centre is notable?

Are there any guidelines for how big a shopping centre should be, in order to be notable (apart from the GNG)? The background to this question is: there is a discussion here considering whether North Rocks Shopping Centre should be deleted for lack of notability. One reviewer noted its floor area of just over 21000 square metres and one-floor layout as factors in being non-notable. I can't find anything to indicate whether that should count for or against, so I thought the experts here may be able to point me in the right direction... --Gronk Oz (talk) 10:13, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

there are no guidelines but consensus is increasingly showing smaller one storey centres tend to be deleted. LibStar (talk) 10:22, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

I can't see why the number of floors matters; that's more a question of the price of real estate. Inner city shopping centres tend to be in towers, regional ones tend to be on one level. I'd be expecting to see the centre to be large (whether tall or sprawling), hosting a number of the major large stores or have some unusual kind of tenant mix, the sort of place you would go from "something special", not just the regular weekly groceries. I think a lot of smaller shopping centre articles could be merged into their suburb/town article. The larger centres tend to get newspaper coverage of opening, expanding, refurbishing etc, being bought and sold, so probably can pass GNG. Kerry (talk) 14:35, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

creeping wheatbelt

Interesting, the notion of an Australian wheatbelt exists apparently, as well as the belts in states other than WA.

A recently updated disambiguation page - Wheatbelt claims from usage in articles: -

SA near Kyancutta

Vic near Sea Lake

and for the continent, a whole rainfall range area has been recently identified at Wheatbelt_(Australia), utilising two online sources of 'authority'. The plot further thickens when there is evidence that at Trove (http://trove.nla.gov.au/) that the term for the Australian wheatbelt, if it exists in name on the web, simply has never been referred to as such, at least not in a general search.

So what to do? I reserve my doubts as to the veracity of the usage of the term in the SA and Vic articles, and the usage of the term at the new australian generic article. I would much prefer to see other informed australian editors offer their understanding of where the term starts and and ends, and where the body of evidence shows and allows for an encyclopedia article and title as such in a wide and general usage.

A similar looseness of usage can be found with the word Nullarbor - where imagination and the propensity to make 6 out of 2 + 2, has the nullarbor starting at Norseman and ending at Port Augusta, whereas in fact, the real nullarbor is a lot more confined in its actual reach. In the end I suppose it is whether fellow editors want to allow ranges of things from picked sources, to be allowed in an online encyclopedia, or we stick to the general term as it has been used in time to be understood as what it is generally accepted. JarrahTree 23:50, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Writing as a South Australian with an opinion, I don't think I hear the term "wheatbelt" often enough to consider that it is in common use, but I wouldn't claim I have never heard it, either. I would imagine it is a band across the state south of Goyder's Line, but I wouldn't have any idea how wide it could be considered to be. South Australians would never consider the Nullarbor extends east of Ceduna nor as far north as the APY Lands, but otherwise, there is not often a need to be much more precise in common use anyway. --Scott Davis ^Talk 10:50, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Followup thought - I would read an article on Wheatbelt (South Australia) to see what it was defined as, as I don't think there is a clear definition (and I'd expect it to be far larger than just near Kyancutta), but I was surprised there wasn't a meaningful article at APY Lands or at least a redirect to a geography or anthropology/sociology article rather than the legislation article I piped to above. --Scott Davis ^Talk 11:19, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Because I wanted to see others comments - rather than pre-judge what I suspect to be the equivalent of a hoax article - I would like to challenge any editor to find anything on trove that specifically refers to the Victorian or South Australian wheatbelt in either a book or journal article JarrahTree 11:35, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Both http://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q=%22Victorian+wheatbelt%22 and http://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q=%22South+Australian+wheatbelt%22 return multiple entries (in books, newspapers, journals, archived websites) for me. If they really don't return any results for you, let me know and I'll post a sample of the links. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:25, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

On that basis they need to be added to something to clarify that the alternate usages exist as the general trend and bulk is for western australia - however the next challenge - more than just Vic or SA - to show that 'Australian wheatbelt' term has been used over time and is not a recent web invention... go mitch ! JarrahTree 14:13, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

The 2nd edition the Macquarie Dictionary, first published 1981, reprinted 1991, defines wheat belt as "that part of the country, usually a long, broad strip, in which conditions are ideal for growing wheat. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 6th ed, 2007, defines wheat belt as "a region where wheat is the chief agricultural product". There's no mention in either case of any specific state.

Given that the article is Wheatbelt (Australia) with "Australia" being a disambiguator (cf Wheat belt (North America) ) rather than part of the proper name "Australian Wheatbelt", I don't think it is fair to insist that the specific term "Australian Wheatbelt" has been used, but http://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q-field0=&q-type0=phrase&q-term0=Australian+wheatbelt&q-field1=&q-type1=not&q-term1=Western&q-field2=&q-type2=not&q-term2=West&q-field3=&q-type3=not&q-term3=South returns some hits, including newspaper articles from as early as 1924. The results may not be complete, because forcing the search to remove the words "Western", "West" and "South" (to exclude "Western Autralian wheatbelt" etc) may hide otherwise valid results, eg the perfectly valid (hypothetical) "While heading west across the Australian Wheatbelt".

I do note, however that Encyclopædia Britannica, both the 1986 printed version and the current online version, has two definitions for Wheat Belt:

• "principal crop-growing region of Western Australia", with no mention of the rest of Australia
• "the part of the North American Great Plains where wheat is the dominant crop"

However Britannica's Australia article online does include "Wheat is the country’s leading grain crop and is grown in every state, with production concentrated in the wheat belts of the southeast and southwest", and the Teens version includes "... a [railroad] line connected Melbourne and Port Melbourne, and 1871, when the inland wheat belts were being developed". (The 1986 printed version of the Australia article does not appear to use the term "wheat belt" in the agricultural section - it says "Wheat is usually grown in the medium rainfall belt in all states ...".)

Mitch Ames (talk) 02:01, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I fail to see why EB becomes part of the equation.. all your material above is derivative, as is the article in question, the problem is there is no evidence that the term(s) are in actual fact in common usage or understanding or wide usage to actually allow for inclusion as an entry in this encyclopedia. The article (wheatbelt australia) clings to 2 websites as sufficient proof. The reality is over time WA has been the main place for the term usage and its inclusion into books, place names etc... The victorian and south australian and australian terms are not widespread or understood or known, and should be subsumed, imho into an article that ratifies the fact of limited usage - they otherwise come over as WP:UNDUE emphasis on an exception to establish a usage, where that is probably not a good way to go JarrahTree 02:29, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I fail to see why EB becomes part of the equation.. — Encyclopædia Britannica (current/online) is an example of a current reliable source that uses the term "wheat belt" for other parts of Australia. (I don't think that the space between the words is significant in this context; if you do, please say so.)

all your material above is derivative — The appropriate term here is secondary source, as in "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources".

The article (wheatbelt australia) ... — The article is "Wheatbelt (Australia)" with a parenthetical disambiguator, so - as I explained - I don't think references to the the exact term "Australian wheatbelt" are strictly necessary, hence my citing of reliable sources (older physical books, not just "recent web inventions") that use the term "wheatbelt" in contexts that cover the whole country, not just WA.

You asked for evidence that "'Australian wheatbelt' term has been used over time" and I gave you some.

I'm not saying that the article is perfect as it is, and I'm not disagreeing that wheatbelt might more commonly refer to WA. However I don't think that WA can lay exclusive claim to the term. Feel free to update the article if you think it appropriate, just be sure to cite references that support your new wording and/or do not directly contradict the above-mentioned reliable sources. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:11, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I changed the inbound link to each of the SA and Vic redlinks to point to the Australia articel instead, and removed those red links from the dab page. There's no real difference between the surrounds of Taldra and Meringur which both have (unused?) grain silos next to former railway lines. --Scott Davis ^Talk 05:10, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

A couple of days ago, ABC local regional radio I think it was, used the term Victorian wheatbelt in a programme about bumper grain harvests, possiblt Landline - sorry cannot remember the details, but the term stuck because I had read the above discussion the day before. Aoziwe (talk) 13:29, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps once determined they could also be added to List of Australian regions? Eno Lirpa (talk) 13:18, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Missing the point - this discussion has not seen any bright spark actually come up with sufficient number of WP:RS to actually justify enough evidence to create the viability of separate regions to be adequately identified or determined as specific wheatbelts.JarrahTree 14:02, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

First you wanted "anything on trove", which I provided; then you wanted "over time and is not a recent web invention", which I provided; then you wanted "evidence that the term(s) are in actual fact in common usage or understanding or wide usage" and I pointed out that I'd just given you secondary sources; and now you want a "sufficient number"! How many references exactly do you want?! What about these:

• South Australian and Victorian wheat belt farmers on the state of grain growing
• Living in the heart of Victoria's wheat belt
• Victorian wheatbelt waiting for autumn break
• Pastures in the Victorian wheat belt : their role and management
• Pounds, shillings and suspense : the South Australian wheatbelt and the Great Depression 1929-1939
• "... every Australian wheatbelt town ..."
• "In the Australian wheat belt..."

Or are you just going to keep saying that no truly reliable source would use the term wheatbelt for anything other than WA? Mitch Ames (talk) 23:44, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

This is a totally pointless exercise taking up a vast amount of space on a national noticeboard. Either put the items in the appropriate article, or move on to something else JarrahTree 00:09, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Student unionism in Australia

I will just note that the decidedly Leninist bent to Student unionism in Australia noted on the talk page is still there. Can someone who can redraft an article better than me please fix it? Paul Benjamin Austin (talk) 09:34, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Anyone with sharper eyes than me?

Please take a look at Killarney, Enoggera#References. As you will see, citation [4] has a red error message "Check date values in: access-date and date". But when I look it, I can't see anything wrong. In particular, [4] and citation [3] immediately above it are both Trove-generated citations for newspaper entries on two successive days, both generated and hence access-dated today. Apparently [3] is fine but [4] is not.

[3] <ref>{{cite news|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article174760141|title=Family Notices|date=1 April 1887|newspaper=[[The Telegraph]]|issue=4,518|location=Queensland, Australia|page=4|via=National Library of Australia|accessdate=23 December 2016}}</ref> - no errors

[4] <ref>{{cite news|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article175119645|title=Family Notices|date=31 March 1887|newspaper=[[The Telegraph]]|issue=4,517|location=Queensland, Australia|page=1|via=National Library of Australia|accessdate=23 December 2016}}</ref> - errors

I can't fathom what the problem is with [4]. Any advice most welcome. Is there something obvious that I am missing? Kerry (talk) 03:47, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Looking at my diff, it was something to do with the "space" character between 31 and March and December and 2016. It appeared as a non breaking space & n b s p ; in the output code. I just rekeyed the dates from my keyboard to fix to normal space. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:58, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@Graeme Bartlett: You can use &amp; instead of the & when typing entity codes, like this: &nbsp; - Evad37 [talk] 04:09, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

+1 Yep. Comparing the accessdate copy-pasted from [4] with it typed-out from scratch: {{#ifeq:23 December 2016|23 December 2016|same|different}} → different. BTW, for future reference, Help talk:CS1 is a good place to go for answers if you have problems with {{cite ... }} or {{citation}} templates. - Evad37 [talk] 04:04, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

In this case we need feeback to the NLA/Trove website people who coded the algorithm that is producing the erroneous template. Its not enough that it looks correct on the screen! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:14, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, true for this case now that we know whats wrong, but in general the Help talk:CS1 page is good for figuring out why error messages are showing up in citations, or why stuff doesn't appear as you think it should. - Evad37 [talk] 04:30, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for finding it. Curious, even knowing what the problem is, I cannot "see" the nbsp in the version-with-the-problem in either editor. But I don't think the problem isn't in Trove in itself (I don't think they are generating the nbsp in the citation - they don't normally). I think the problem is that when Trove is rendered in Chrome (the browser I use), the nbsp has been added in the rendering process. My "copy" of the Trove citation in Chrome copies the nbsp and then my paste into the Visual Editor retains the nbsp. This copy-and-paste from Chrome-to-VE retaining invisible characters has been a cause of other mysterious errors before; this looks like yet another one. I'll report it in the VE feedback. The workaround is to use CNTL-SHIFT-V to paste into the VE as that strips the invisible characters. I did look at the CS1 help of course, but the problem was not one of the many listed (no mention of invisible characters). Is there any way to get either editor to display the invisible characters (which seem to break lots of things)? Kerry (talk) 02:54, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

"Sallys Flat" - article creation

Request for someone to create, or advise on how to do it: Create Wikipedia article for Sallys Flat. Wikiedit says of the place "Sallys Flat is located in the Australian state of NSW. The latitude -33.001222 and longitude 149.567131 are the decimal geo-coordinate of the Sallys Flat". Sallys Flat (Sally's Flat) has a long history and sprung up as a small gold-mining village in 1872 at the same time as nearby Hill End boomed. It produced gold for many years but was not a large producer. Residents in late 2015 were suddenly surprised to find it on an Australian Government shortlist for nuclear waste dumping ( http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-16/sallys-flat-resident-murray-price-and-an-anti-nuclear-sign/6943180). However the Government soon found the idea unpopular with locals and dropped it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.173.27.252 (talk) 05:05, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Sallys Flat, New South Wales has been created, needs more work still. --Scott Davis ^Talk 10:23, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

construction company

Does anybody know much about construction comanies? What should be added to BMD Group to remove the PROD tag, or is it entirely non-notable despite being used by state governments across the country for bridges and road upgrades? --Scott Davis ^Talk 12:19, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Peer review for Tom Wills

G'day, the article about Tom Wills, an Australian cricketer, has been nominated for a peer review. The review has been open for several months without comment, so if anyone is interested in reviewing, I'm sure that the nominator would be greatly appreciative. The review page can be found here: Wikipedia:Peer review/Tom Wills/archive1. Thank you for your time. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 04:15, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Glenn Lazarus

The Glenn Lazarus article has some potential autobiography problems - an IP claiming to be Lazarus himself made sweeping positive changes and added "Content not to be changed without the EXPRESS written consent of Glenn Lazarus. www.glennlazarus.com" to the article. This was then later changed by a new account apparently claiming to be Lazarus' wife to "Please refer proposed changes to www.glennlazarus.com".

The edit summaries and such have a bit of a threatening tone so it'd probably be good to have some more eyes on that article (and to go through the changes made by the IP and the account). The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:16, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

This noticeboard is probably not the last resort - any watching admins with a good sense of WP:LEGALTHREAT should probably ramp up the protection of the article, please. Thanks to The Drovers Wife for the heads up JarrahTree 06:35, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

On past form, Glenn is a big fan of Wikipedia. WWGB (talk) 11:07, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

even if it is him , the self promotional additions raise WP:AUTOBIO concerns. No article subject controls the content on their own Wikipedia page. LibStar (talk) 11:14, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

1Lib1Ref - happening 3 weeks

Folks, just letting you know that the 1Lib1Ref campaign is running again from 15 January - 3 February. This campaign targets librarians asking them to add one reference to some unreferenced material in a Wikipedia article to improve article quality. Slogan: Imagine a World where Every Librarian Added One More Reference to Wikipedia. While this is not a great time of year for such events here in Oz, I guess it makes sense in the northern winter.

The intention is that the librarians flag their additions to articles with the tag 1Lib1Ref in the edit summary; they are also encouraged to use that tag on social media to encourage (or shame?!) other librarians to get involved.

So why am I telling you? Three reasons.

1. There is a program of events running in Brisbane with the State Library of Queensland of awareness-raising, edit training, and mentoring for 1Lib1Ref. See WMAU Upcoming Events for dates. If anyone in Brisbane wants to be involved as a mentor, please get in touch with me.
2. Please consider talking to your local library about getting them involved in some way. Even just letting them know it is happening is a start. If you want to do any training or other presentations, I do have some training material etc that I have developed I can share with you.
3. On-wiki, please keep an eye out for any edits with the 1Lib1Ref tag and be nice to them. Thank them, send some WikiLove, and/or gently fix any mistakes they might be making. I think we can assume they will all be good faith editors, albeit inexperienced. Many will be doing this for the first time so let's make it a nice experience for them.

Thanks for anything you can do to help. Kerry (talk) 03:33, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

---

Thanks Kerry for all you are doing for this campaign.

Is there a Wikimedian in the vicinity of Grafton, NSW who would be available to assist with a #1lib1ref talk, workshop or one-to-one assistance?

--Pru.mitchell (talk) 11:49, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

CC-BY source for Queensland indigenous communities

A librarian at State Library of Queensland was just telling me that there was good source material on Indigenous communities in Queensland. Good, I said, but when I checked it out, the website is more than good, not only is it good quality material, it is CC-BY licensed AND the info on each community comes with citations. So if anyone is interested in creating/expanding the relevant Wikipedia articles, jump on in and take advantage. I'm still busy with my Queensland Heritage Register projects at the moment (another Qld Govt CC-BY source material situation) or I'd be doing it myself. Kerry (talk) 04:08, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Use of italics ton indicate future elections in Australia election year templates

Australian editors are invited to comment at Template talk:Western Australian elections#italics. Although the specific template is Western Australian, it would apply to all Australia election year templates. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:52, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

My 10c is that MOS:EMPHASIS says "Emphasis may be used to draw attention to an important word or phrase within a sentence, when the point or thrust of the sentence may otherwise not be apparent to readers, or to stress a contrast". I think this is a situation where we are stressing a contrast. The 2017 election is not like the other elections because it has not yet happened and therefore probably should be emphasised. It may be obvious to the reader (if they are WA residents who would presumably know if they had voted already that year or not) or they may need to click through to see what the difference is, a difference that is evident in the first sentence ("will be held on ..."). I notice that we use this italicisation in other templates, e.g. infobox Australian place has fields to show the neighbouring suburbs/localities. If we look at Cottesloe, Western Australia (a coastal suburb), we see that Indian Ocean is shown as the western neighbour while Peppermint Grove etc (with no italics) are other neighbours. Thus the reader is alerted that the Indian Ocean is different to the other suburb names. This seems to be common practice in these infoboxes. I see no problem with using it in a navbox because it is advice about navigation - "you can click on this but it might not be exactly what you are expecting it to be (i.e. a past election)" - if anything, it encourages the reader to be alert to the lede when they read the article that something is not as they might expect. Kerry (talk) 08:32, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Odd pattern of editing?

Take a look at the history of Arthur Morgan (Queensland politician). This article on the Queensland Premier from 1903 to 1906 isn't exactly a hot topic and is edited sporadically by active editors. However, since 11 January, it has been edited by 5 new accounts, one of which User:Gyoza Rain has been blocked for sockpuppeting and the other 4 have not edited any other article. Am I right to be suspicious? I note the sock master has a track record of editing Korean pop music articles (a far cry from Queensland Premiers) so not exactly a case of "looks like a duck". Most of the edits are just messing with the existing content although the most recent edit added new material. Kerry (talk) 09:28, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

My first thought was that I might be seeing a school assignment or similar but then I realised schools/universities are still on holidays, so that seems unlikely. Kerry (talk) 09:31, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

The pattern does look peculiar, and the last edit by Marchenko11 was copied directly from adb.anu.edu.au/biography/morgan-sir-arthur-7652. So I reverted it. --Gronk Oz (talk) 12:02, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

The South Australian Government Gazette

This is one of the top cited publications on Wikipedia without an article according to WP:JCW. Searching on Wikipedia reveals possible matches under alternate titles, but I'm don't know enough to say for sure that these are the same publication.

So if one of you project members could take a look at this, and create an appropriate article (or redirect), that would be much appreciated! Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:53, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I have been asked to create articles on government gazettes in Australia (and also other old journals). Hopefully a librarian is going to send me some more info in another week. The search you list does not appear to have that journal as any kind of alternate name. These gazettes are having their digitised form made available on Trove, so full text searches will be possible. We can expect the number citations using them to increase. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:02, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

It looks to me that The South Australian Government Gazette is the article you want. It doesn't say a whole lot and I don't know why the title has a "The" in it. Kerry (talk) 02:07, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

So, I see, Graeme just created it! That's why it already exists :-) Should have checked the history first. Kerry (talk) 02:13, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

And if Category:Government gazettes of Australia is an indication, we have them for NSW, Qld, SA and WA already, although they may not all discuss Trove coverage yet. Kerry (talk) 02:10, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Graham Bartlett is correct - there has been a GG section on Trove as Pending for months now JarrahTree 02:12, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I heard that the NSW GG would be the first cab off the rank (I think because someone, possible SLNSW, is funding it). My impression that, while they would like to have them all ditigised, the age-old problem of funding is the issue. Kerry (talk) 02:15, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

The South Australian Government Gazette is available in digitised from Auslig. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:50, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

My recent edit at Jack Pollard utilised the up and running version of the NSW GG today JarrahTree 06:24, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Graeme Bartlett meant Austlii[6] not Auslig. --Scott Davis ^Talk 04:14, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Sum of All Paintings - Australian list

Hi all,
For the "Sum of all Paintings" project on Wikidata we're seeking to find all available digitised catalogues (metadata, not necessarily images) of paintings in any kind of GLAM. We've found a bunch of GLAM websites in Australia already but perhaps you know of others we've missed? Please add as many as you can think of to this page, ideally if you can also indicate the number of paintings in the collection, and the URL that can be used to scrape that metadata: d:Wikidata:WikiProject_sum_of_all_paintings/Location/Australia. Wittylama 10:35, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I've added the Australian War Memorial which appears to have a web catalogue of nearly 18,000 artworks in their collection. --Canley (talk) 10:50, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Art Gallery of Ballarat (d:Q2881135), formerly Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, could be added. Has an extensive collection of Australian art. Collection page here. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 01:15, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Mattinbgn however their website doesn't have a list of works in the collection :-(

"This section of our website contains detailed information about a small sample of works in our collection. It is not a comprehensive listing of the collection. If you are interested in a particular work or artist not listed here, please contact the Gallery."

They've only got 14 artworks listed online, which is not enough to scrape. Wittylama 10:02, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Australia Day

Australia Day is taking its annual hit from the vandals and those with non-neutral opinions about alternative names. A little more monitoring by neutral editors would be helpful. Mitch Ames (talk) 05:41, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/The 5000 Challenge - time for some patriotic editing?!

With Australia Day coming up this week, it's a good time to practice a bit of patriotism. Inside of running around like a lunatic with a flag wrapped around you, why not contribute to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/The 5000 Challenge?

At the moment, we have only about 130+ achievements reported (new Australian article or expanded Australian article). As the system is set up, there are flags to wave for the various states, where the content has a connection to a state. At the moment, my rough count (by running my finger down the screen muttering "1 .. 2......3 4 5 ...") reveals 11 Australia-wide articles, 7 for NSW, 12 for Victoria, 74 for Queensland, 1 for WA, 24 for SA, and none for Tasmania, Northern Territory or ACT (ok, it doesn't add up but I said it was a rough count).

What has happened to all our Australian content writers? Still on holidays? Is the inauguration of Donald Trump arousing such strong emotions that you cannot edit? I know that WA is 2 hours behind the times, but that hardly accounts for the shortage of new/expanded articles on WA topics by our usually very active WA-ers.

The challenge commenced on 21 November 2016, so why not scroll through your contributions (you know, that link on the top right of screen) and remember what new/expanded articles you worked on since then and add them to the Achievements section of the challenge page.

And thanks to those of you who have been listing your efforts on the challenge page! Kerry (talk) 09:05, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Not sure how this works or what counts. Does this diff count? Aoziwe (talk) 12:34, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

@Aoziwe: As far as I know, it's entirely self-assessed. But I would definitely say Yes to what you did to Stephen Crean (indeed, I would say it was a lot more than enough). With a target of 5,000 new/expanded articles, I don't think you should set your bar too high! Kerry (talk) 09:24, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Kerry. Aoziwe (talk) 10:50, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Is there a bonus prize for the editor who manages the most different flags on their contributions? As a parochial South Australian, I have been surprised at my own breadth of significant contributions. --Scott Davis ^Talk 10:22, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Prizes? Well, not that I have heard about, but I guess we have plenty of time to think about it (we just broke 3% so we have a way to go). Certainly we could lash out with some barnstars for a range of worthy achievements. Maybe something like the "Widest Brownest Land Barnstar for the least parochial editor". Maybe "Sandgroper Kickstarter Barnstar for the first WA achievement by a local" (any claimants yet?). Or something similar for the Northern Territory. I hope I am in a strong position for the "Most Bendy Banana Barnstar for Queensland achievements". 14:41, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Auto-Assesment

Hello! What do y'all think of having a bot go through and automatically assess all stubs? --SwiftyPeep (talk) 02:41, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

not unless it is a very smart bot - sub projects exist and are under-assessed - and it is likely your proposal will only do the main Australian part - I havent seen a bot assess sub projects as well to date anywhere JarrahTree 03:08, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughts on the matter. Bots that we can use are at Category:Autoassessment bots (Excluding YoBot, who is currently blocked). You have a very good point on subprojects however, I don't see that as a reason to reject this proposal as it could still be helpful even if it's only to the main Australian one. Cheers! --SwiftyPeep (talk) 03:54, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I think there are plenty of reasons to use automation for assessment. While new articles trigger a quality assessment (usually that it's a stub/start class because new articles tend to be small initially, there's nothing else really that automatically triggers any kind of subsequent review as the article develops over time. If nothing else, bots could be initally used to create lists of articles whose current human-assessment is significantly different from the machine assessment (e.g. a stub that looks like a B class) which would then serve as a trigger for human reassessment. I think if projects and subprojects were to work with the bot developers, I can't see why the bots couldn't be customised for specific projects and subprojects. I am thinking here of the Australian Roads that have certain expected sections and their road junction list. I think a bot could spit out an assessment of an article and a report of things that prevented the article from achieving the next level, e.g. "for B-class needs history section". We don't have an infinite human resource to do these assessments so a tool that focuses human effort on articles that seem to have the greatest need for re-assessment would be making best use of the human resource in terms of achieving accurate quality assessments. If the tools can indicate the issues that prevent an article achieving a higher rating, then that gives contributors a more obvious task to do rather than the more nebulous "make it better" (like the difference between citation-needed and refimprove templates - the first tells you where the need it, the second lets you guess). I think the main thing would be for the bot to add its ratings under its own banner on the Talk page and not to mess with the human ratings. Kerry (talk) 15:12, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

I'd also like to see a trigger for re-assessment when the text of the current article is >50% (or some other arbitrary threshold) different to the text of the article at the time it was last assessed. As Kerry said, new articles tend to be Stub or Start, but not reassessed even if the author doubles the article a week later. --Scott Davis ^Talk 23:48, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, but the problem lies in identifying the "article at the time it was last assessed". The WikiProject Australia banner on the Talk page does not appear to link to the specific version of the article as assessed, nor include a date/time. So as a human, you have to look at the history of the Talk page for an edit summary that suggests it might be responsible for the present tagging, confirm that it was the edit that added the current assessment and then knowing the date/time of the assessment, go to the history of the article and find the version that most recently preceded the assessment. (Aside, if the article was being actively edited at the time of the assessment, it may be that the assessment took place on the not-most-recent version but one of the slightly earlier ones - we have no way of knowing what version was showing on the assessor's screen at the time). Now, to do that automatically is an interesting problem. The main problem lies in identifying the edit on the Talk page that created the last assessment. It's possible by just working through each successive version of the Talk page to find the one that first adds the WikiProject Australia tag (let's assume we are only interested in this project for the moment), but it is somewhat harder to work out if any subsequent version has modified it. Assuming you have identified the last edit to Talk in relation to that project's assessment, it should be easy enough to find the version of the article at that time (and not possible to know if that is the one that the assessor is reading if the article is being actively edited). Once you have that version of the article, it's relatively easy to run a check of certain metrics of that version versus the current version, such as number of bytes, number of citations, number of intermediate edits, as a big change in any of these suggests a need for re-assessment. So, I would say it's probably impossible to do this perfectly but I think the accuracy should be good enough for the practical purpose of triggering a human re-assessment. The main thing is to reduce false positives (articles that are declared as showing a lot of change since last assessment when it is not the case) as that wastes human reviewer time. It is less of a problem (I think) if an article doesn't get re-assessed when it should have (given we may not have enough human resource for the re-assessments in any case. This is why I would have the tool look for considerable change to the article in the first instance and dial it down over time as progress is made on the re-assessments. Kerry (talk) 01:04, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I admit I didn't think about the challenge of determining when the article was last assessed. It's pretty simple for the vast number of articles with exactly one edit to the talk page, and an adequate approximation would be the last edit to the talk page for any pages with only wikiproject banners on the current version. If a date was added to the wikiproject template, and filled in by bots, I'd expect most humans who re-review a page would update the date at the time they change the rating, so the set of more challenging pages to identify is smaller. --Scott Davis ^Talk 01:33, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Susan Kiefel

Raised the importance of Susan Kiefel to High in common with other Chief Justices of the High Court. 167.123.240.35 (talk) 02:46, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

1Lib1Ref

Further to Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 48#1Lib1Ref - happening 3 weeks ...

At approximately 10am today, the final day of the campaign, the State Library of Queensland passed their target of adding 1000 citations to Wikipedia articles as part of the Wikipedia Library’s #1Lib1Ref campaign which calls on every librarian to add one citation to an unsourced fact in Wikipedia. Many of the librarians at the library had not previously contributed to Wikipedia. In the case of the State Library of Queensland, I know at least 2 of their librarians who contributed over 100 citations each, one of whom made their first edit as part of this campaign.

Wikimedia Australia supported the SLQ initiative with Visual Editor training and several mentored group sessions over the 3 week campaign.

Great work, State Library of Queensland! Thank you to the Australian Wikipedians who sent welcome messages and thanks to these edits. Kerry (talk) 09:31, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

The library got pretty excited about 1Lib1Ref with comments and photos here on Twitter. Kerry (talk) 09:38, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Ask a librarian

Is the "Ask a librarian" still operating? I don't see the link anymore on talk pages. --Micha 11:33, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Should still be there for article talk pages – {{WikiProject Australia}} hasn't had any edits to that part of the code since June 2016‎. Is there a specific page or pages where the link doesn't show? - Evad37 [talk] 11:43, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Now I can see it. Was on the wrong page. - Do you know where I can get information about the success? For example how often the service was used? --Micha 12:04, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

It is very unlikely that we would be able to retrieve that sort of information - as the librarians could be at any of the participating institutions, and are not otherwise tied to the links JarrahTree 01:05, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

JarrahTree is correct. Micha, When I first proposed to the National Library reference desk staff (I was their social-media manager at the time) that answering wikipedia editors' reference enquiries would be a beneficial project, the idea was that the librarians would come ON to Wikipedia - the librarians of the National library of Israel do this with the Hebrew wikipedia (documentation). However that was not possible for a variety of reasons in Australia: one because the staff couldn't log the enquiries through their centralised system (not dissimilar to our OTRS) which is required as a publicly-funded organisation; but also because there is no 'australian specific' section of the wiki. Israel-Hebrew is a logical combination for their staff to be able to justify their time - but Australian library staff cannot justify time answering questions from any English speaker about all potential topics. So, as a result, we ended up with a system where the 'ask a librarian' external-link was placed on the talkpages of articles with the Wikiproject Australia tag. This is not particularly visible and, more importantly to your original question, simply sends the wikimedian to the Library's existing public enquiry website. It does NOT specifically track the origin of the enquiry as 'being from wikipedia' (although it is encouraged in the documentation that wikipedians state this fact, so it can be recorded un-officially) and furthermore the link to the relevant STATE library is provided as well as the National library for each time this template is shown (meaning the statistics of usage are potentially split across up to 8 libraries). From the library's perspective their work-activities have not changed, there's just now some links to the service on Wikipedia which hopefully encourage more use of it. I no longer work at the National Library but the results when I was there the actual usage wasn't very much. My assumption is that this is because a) the link is not very visible, b) requires the wikipedian to go to the mental effort to 'leave' wikipedia to a different website, and c) the interface of that website requires you to fill in a dozen fields (click 'enquire now' to see what I mean) which is normal for libraries to track abnormal for wikimedians to be asked these questions (like 'postcode'). Does that help answer the question? Wittylama 14:40, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Fair Use recommendation for Australian law, could WP have a role in this?

Hi all,

The background:
As some of you may know, the Australian productivity commission recently handed down a report into Australian Intellectual Property law (Report), and one of its key recommendations was the introduction of the principle of Fair Use - to replace the current Australian system of Fair Dealing. This is not the first time a government inquiry has recommended this (e.g. the 2014 Australian Law Reform Commission's report Copyright and the Digital Economy).

As Australian Wikimedians, we have (arguably) some of the best practical experience in the country working with a Fair Use framework - as it is the method by which all the company logos, album covers, film posters etc. appear on English Wikipedia articles. Ironically, we have very limited experience in working with the Australian Fair Dealing system (that's the "Part VB of the copyright act" you might have seen on university handouts for example - it's a "statutory license" meaning that schools PAY for this, even for the use of free-access websites). This current system is deeply opposed by the Australian public education sector (see for example the "Fair Use And Why Australian Schools Need It" documents published by the Copyright Advisory Groups (Schools and TAFEs)) and the Libraries sector (see the Australian Libraries Copyright Council submission into this enquiry[7]). Given Wikimedia is all about free-access to the sum of human knowledge, by rights, the Australian schools and libraries sectors are those who we ought to be supporting as best as we can.

Now, unsurprisingly, the Collecting agencies of Australia are opposed to this change - See for example the counter-arguments from the CopyrightAgencyLtd[8] or Australian Copyright Council[9]. They are, as expected, talking about this in the context of preserving the rights (and revenues) of Australian content creators and using emotive arguments about struggling authors to push this point. This is notwithstanding that one of the Fair Use checks is whether the usage would undermine the commercial value of the work in question. On the flip side, there has been a fair bit of support for the idea - from obvious places e.g. EFF [10] but also from more general sources e.g. IP-Watch [11] and these two articles by Fairfax Economics columnist Peter Martin [12] & [13].

The suggestion:
Australian Wikimedians, through the vehicle of the English Wikipedia, have a massively visible platform for awareness-raising about the role of Fair Use - because so many Australians are benefiting from Fair Use every day when they read our articles, without knowing it!
Wikipedia is neutral as a matter of core policy, but we are also deeply activist as a matter of supporting free-access to knowledge.
So, I'm wondering if the Australian Wikimedia community would be interested in "getting involved" in this area of public policy advocacy??

Specifically - here's the idea I thought might be practical, and powerful. I'm asking your thoughts about whether you think it's a good idea in the general sense. Please don't pre-emptively shoot it down on technical minutiae, I'm aware that some software (as well as communications) work would be needed to make it happen.

For all the media files on English Wikipedia that are a) are in the category Category:All non-free media, b) when they are viewed from an Australian IP address, c) by a non-logged in user,
we overlay them with a graphic that says something to the effect of:

This image is illegal to view in Australia under copyright law
Click here learn why and how you can change that. Show me anyway.

Clicking the 'learn why' would take you to a page (on meta?) describing Fair Use etc, and linking off to the lobbying campaigns of our allies (petitions, contact your MP etc.). The 'show me anyway' would dismiss the graphic and show the original Fair Use image.

The idea here is to make Australians aware that they are already benefiting from Fair Use. Furthermore, unlike the SOPA blackout this can be targeted to only people who are affected (Australians viewing Fair Use content), be dismissible, and run for any period that allied organisations are making lobbying efforts (rather than a fixed 24 hours). Clearly, this idea (specifically the start/stop times, and the wording) would need to be coordinated carefully with organisations who could do the 'heavy lifting' of communicating with the press such as the ALCC - they are the lawyers, not us. Also, it would require the support of WMF-Legal as I imagine filtering a banner/graphic on the basis of IP-range has privacy policy concerns, not to mention the act of political advocacy in general.

Obviously it would be importantly also to have the support of Wikimedia Australia (i'd say actually that it would be mandatory) but this would first-and-foremost be an on-Wikipedia action and therefore would require the consensus of Australian Wikipedian editors.

If this is a super-dumb idea, please don't shoot me. But if it's a good one that needs some tweaks, please say so. I just think we're in an excellent position to lobby for some improvements to Australian copyright law because we already have the platform and already have a massive category of Fair Use content that Australians are accessing every day.

Sincerely, Wittylama 15:44, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Witty lama for your well thought out response to the issue. I do hope others respond as well. I do think that it is well worth considering. One small problem is at this time of the year many Australian editors disappear from here into shopping hysteria like the rest of the country.... there might be a delay of responses... JarrahTree 23:36, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm not an editor, but an academic working on copyright reform, and work for civil society organisations that are active on the issue (Creative Commons Australia and Digital Rights Watch). We would welcome the support of WP & Wikimedia in advocating for the public interest in upcoming copyright debates. Bringing the importance of fair use to the attention of Australian users is an excellent idea. There are some legal issues - i.e. that some uses of the non-free media may already be permitted under Australian fair dealing law, but it's still an important point. The other really useful point that the WP community can make here is to show that fair use is not uncertain: that with a few guidelines, it's actually relatively easy to apply the legal rules to different situations. Nicsuzor (talk) 23:48, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

While I support introducing fair use in Australia, I don't think that Wikipedia should get involved in national politics in this way. This is a contested issue (this article on The Conversation does a good job of discussing the debate), with some content owners raising legitimate concerns about the Productivity Commission's recommendations - see this op-ed, for instance. As such, we cannot assume that Australian Wikipedia editors as a group support what the Productivity Commission has proposed. Wikimedia Australia and individual editors should advocate for this change, but Wikipedia shouldn't. Nick-D (talk) 07:58, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

hi Nick-D, thanks for taking the time to comment. I'm not assuming that all Australian editors as a group already support the introduction of Fair Use to Australian law - that's why I'm asking what people think (of both the general principle and of this specific suggestion) here. This thread is to seek some form of [initial] consensus in that regard. I do assume that because we're already practitioners and beneficiaries of a Fair Use system, that we would be more informed about its benefits/risks that the general Australian population: if any group of non-lawyer Australians can speak about how fair use works in practice, it's us!

I know that political lobbying has been done (eg for Freedom of Panorama legislation) on various language editions of WP, but I don't know if there's ever been any geo (IP) targeted advocacy before.

I should also note that the Producivity Commission report recommends a whole range of things to do with IP, not just Fair Use, (including things like confirming that 'circumventing geoblocking is not a copyright infringement' - see page 28 of the report for a summary table of all recommendations). However this suggestion here that Australian WP editors might like to get involved is specifically and only related to Fair Use - given that it is the thing that we already promote by default in Australia through our use of it on en.wp. Wittylama —Preceding undated comment added 10:58, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I see this as raising two question, one is how the Wikipedia community reacts to the potential changes and how Wikimedia Australia reacts to the potential changes. In an ideal world they should be the same but WMAU is bound by the requirement of representing its members the larger the members base the stronger the voice WMAU can speak with, everyone is welcome to join WMAU. I'll watch this discussion with a keen interest to see what evolves as a WP contributor, as a member of the community, an outreach project leader and as President of WMAU. As yet WMAU has no agreed position and any members of the chapter or committee are speaking as individuals. Gnangarra 11:05, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

" ... WMAU is bound by the requirement of representing its members ..."
@Gnangarra:Which "requirement" in particular? Mitch Ames (talk) 13:00, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia Australia is an Incorporated member organisation and charity it represents the interests, and furthers aims of its members, this is the primary purpose of all incorporated associations. Gnangarra 13:04, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Further comments at User talk:Gnangarra#Wikimedia Australia's primary purpose, if anyone's interested, because it's off-topic here. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:19, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Personal attack noted and deleted, Merry Christmas Gnangarra 00:10, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

My refutation of this accusation of personal attack is at User talk:Mitch Ames § December 2016 Mitch Ames (talk) 02:53, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Gnanarra. You're quite right - there are two potential (and partially overlapping) communities who could "do" something in this regard - the Chapter and the Editing Community - each with its own tools and constraints. WM-AU has previously been involved in submissions to government enquiries (e.g. our Submission on Australian Digital Future Directions paper in 20009) - which does mention Fair Use in passing - but the time for official comment/submission to this current enquiry is now over. At this point it's a question of publicity and lobbying (both in the positive and negative senses of those words) by interested stakeholders to encourage the Federal parties to actually turn these recommendations into a Bill, and then to actually vote on it in parliament... The Copyright industry is most certainly already doing this (see for example their "free is not fair" campaign). So, yeah, aside from this on-wiki suggestion, it would be good if WM-AU as an Chapter could do something in supporting this - perhaps a press-release or letter of support that our aforementioned allies could help to bolster their own work? Wittylama 12:13, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

• I think this is an excellent idea, and I'd love to see it carried out. Am not a very active Wikipedian, so I'll watch for feedback from others. --Sanglorian (talk) 00:38, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

• Again, not a regular editor here, but someone who has worked closely with Wikimedia over the years and now works on copyright reform. If Wikimedia Australia does agree to support this suggestion, the organisation I work for, the Australian Digital Alliance could provide support in terms of materials to link to. We already have a series of CC-licensed videos and have plans for fair use mythbusting documents. If you want a partner, we're interested. Damph (talk) 12:12, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

• I'm supportive of a change to our regulations. But if we do write a message, I don't think it should state that *viewing* an image hosted under US fair use on US-hosted Wikipedia is *illegal* for Australians unless we have a strong legal opinion that says so. I doubt it's true. --99of9 (talk) 04:30, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks to the people who have commented here. It seems that, while there's certainly not an overwhelming or vociferous support for the idea, there is a general degree of positivity for the general concept across the comments (with the exception of Nick-D which I acknowledge). I agree with Nicsuzor and 99of9's points that the *wording* of any such notice (and landing-page) would need to be carefully constructed to be both 'good design' and 'legally accurate'. Perhaps an good text to overlay would be, simply, "FAIR USE" and people could click through to find out what that means (or click the 'x' to dismiss the overlay and see the image itself).

I particularly thank Damph for offering that the Australian Digital Alliance could be the formal partner/supporter of this concept. And, I believe, if this idea would work it would be absolutely crucial for an external professional organisation that is *already* active in this lobbying-space would be the leader. This is not an area that Wikipedians or Wikimedia-Australia is capable of "owning" even if we wanted to, but it IS something Wikipedia can direct attention to the existing work of others like the ADA.

This leads me to three questions:

1. Would WMF legal department (e.g. User:Slaporte_(WMF)) be able to say that the idea of geo-targeting an overlay on Fair-use tagged images, for the Australian IP-range, to logged-out readers, for a few weeks(?), is both technically possible and legally allowable within of the Wikipedia terms of use/privacy policy?
2. Would Damph be able to say that the text of the landing page could be written by the ADA and public-facing communication be coordinated by them - and what is the timeframe for starting/finishing any such campaign?
3. And if these first two questions were "yes", how would Australian-Wikipedians here recommend that a fair community-consensus for approval or rejection of the proposal be reached?

Sincerely, Wittylama 13:03, 23 January 2017 (UTC).

Hi all - in response to Wittylama I can confirm that I've talked to the ADA Board and we are very keen on the project if you are. I think launching in March would be best. Public consultation on the proposed PC changes closes next week, so that will be the period when the government is making a decision about any response. We can certainly provide a landing page, which we would edit in consultation with WM-AU. It would be on a fairly slim website, with the aforementioned fair use videos, a few fair use fact sheets ("what is fair use?" "mythbusting" etc) and probably a call to arms for people to write to or phone certain parliamentarians. Does that sound like what you had in mind? Damph (talk) 23:34, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Note from Wikimedia Legal

Hi all, I spoke with Wittylama, and want to confirm here that this is technically possible and legally feasible if there is community consensus in support. Following the Wikimedia Foundation's policy guidelines, we have a few steps to get approval for a potential action like this. The first step is to get the community's opinion on the proposal. As part of this discussion, it would be good to thoroughly consider the user experience of the proposal, so the campaign is designed to continue to empower people to get access to knowledge and information. Fair use can be a very important legal doctrine for free expression and the public interest. I'm glad to see a discussion about how to support a policy like this in Australia. Best, Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 01:40, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Settlement_Scheme

The colour poster on this page "1920s poster for the Group Settlement Scheme" is totally incorrect in the context of this article. This poster is dated around 1913 for a different land settlement scheme - the Ready-made Farms scheme of the Midland Railway Company. It has nothing to do with the Group Settlement Scheme at all. The image is sourced from: http://www.carnamah.com.au/ready-made-farms. The solution is to remove the image, then the article will be more correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Copeboox (talk • contribs) 11:22, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

I suggest you take this up with the State Library of Western Australia, from which the image was sourced. --AussieLegend (✉) 12:07, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

removed image - the Midland Railway Scheme was totally separate from what is known as the group settlement scheme - JarrahTree 12:14, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Qld Wiki Club - Mon 6 March

Following their success in having group sessions for #1Lib1Ref (over 1000 citations were added, hurray for SLQ!), the State Library of Queensland is hosting a Qld Wiki Club afternoon from 12 noon to 3pm next Monday 6 March at The Edge at the State Library of Queensland in sunny Brisbane. The Edge is not in the main State Library Building but in an adjacent building (see map).

There are a number of iMacs available for use or you can BYO laptop. The theme is Qld Women (in honour of International Women’s Day), but all are welcome regardless of what topic you are working on.

My apologies for the short notice but I only learned of it when I returned from holidays. If you can interested in coming, can you RSVP me with an indication of whether you will BYO or use one of their iMacs as that helps with the room setup.

Thanks Kerry (talk) 07:35, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I am in the process of creating some stubs on notable Qld Women for the Wiki Club session on Monday for use by the less experienced contributors, using the Australian Dictionary of Biography as the single citation (edit summary will mention Wiki Club). Can you all please resist your enthusiasm to improve them until after Monday 6 March 2017? Thanks Kerry (talk) 02:53, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Fremantle West End Heritage area --> West End, Fremantle

Editors are invited to contribute at Talk:Fremantle West End Heritage area#Requested move 6 March 2017. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:38, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

paywall for The Australian and other NewsCorp newspapers

Today as I worked through my watchlist I found a number of articles with really messed-up citations. So like a good citizen, I tried to fix them by clicking the URL and retrieving the fields like title, author, source date, etc. My problem is that many (all?) of our NewsCorp only allow a few articles to be retrieved each day and then you hit the paywall. This is increasingly impacting on my ability to both manage my watchlist and create new content. If it was just one newspaper, I'd probably be willing to pay for a digital subscription, but unfortunately it's many different newspapers. Are other people experiencing this problem? If you know of a solution, please let me know here or by email as you prefer. Kerry (talk) 07:13, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

A lot of this content should be available online through the likes of Factiva and EbscoHost which are available with a library card from the NLA or pretty much any state library system in the country. Hack (talk) 07:22, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm finding it to be a real problem with citations to The Australian now that their paywall is so strict and widely applied. Hack, is Factiva's database updated frequently? I've generally treated it as a historical resource, but I might be able to get more from it! Nick-D (talk) 07:48, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I tried to use the online The Australian available through ProQuest via the State Library of Queensland but all I have to work with is a naked URL, e.g. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/safe-schools-coalition-mps-label-review-a-joke-storm-out-of-briefing/news-story/4a1b1726f14d02366517c85dc50ab050 (from George Christensen (politician) an article full of minimal citations that I have been cleaning up all day until I ran into the paywall).

Giving ProQuest the URL as search string doesn't work (unsurprisingly), using keywords "safe schools coalition mps label review a joke" as keywords (extracted from the URL) produces hundreds of results or nothing at all. My problem here is NOT that I am looking for any article on the topic but for a specific article that was cited. Kerry (talk) 07:57, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that every story in The Australian over recent months includes those words ;) Nick-D (talk) 10:04, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I always access news sites that provide a limited number of articles to view using my browser's "private/incognito" mode. It works for the NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, The New Yorker, etc, but I haven't used that method for The Australian or other News Corp publications. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 08:26, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Great idea, but alas not for The Australian it seems. I went straight to the paywall in incognito mode. Kerry (talk) 09:04, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Assuming you already have the URL of the article, you can simply paste that URL into Google's search and then click the first result – voila, you will have avoided News Corp's paywall. Try it with the URL for the Safe Schools article mentioned above as an example. Jenks24 (talk) 09:05, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

When I do it, I get the paywall. I tried using other browsers, same thing, I hit the paywall. Were you already hitting the paywall when you tried it as describe above, because if not, it worked because you hadn't used up your quota of free hits. Kerry (talk) 03:42, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

You could try viewing the Google cache of the article. Hack (talk) 03:50, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Using the URL didn't work (as soon as Chrome sees a URL, it immediately load it and hits the paywall), BUT if I typed in the key words from the URL, then the Google cache result for the desired URL worked beautifully. Thanks for idea! Kerry (talk) 04:10, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Maybe try clearing any cookies relates to these sites and/or clear your cache. Another potential away around this, once you can view the article, is to take a screen-shot of the entire article, e.g. using the Screengrab! program on Firefox, then uploading the screen-shot to an image-hosting site such as imgur.com and linking to there for the citation.Nqr9 (talk) 02:01, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that publishing even an image of the page would have copyright issues. Mike (talk) 05:04, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Usually just going into developer console, highlighting the paywall and deleting the element usually works, but it might be too much of a hassle.--Dark-World25 (talk) 21:13, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

2016 census data release

Hope this discussion doesn't get lost in the noise above, but the ABS has announced that the official release of 2016 census data is scheduled for Tuesday, 27 June 2017 - see here. As thousands (tens of thousands?) of articles use ABS census data, updating these articles will be a massive undertaking and some pre-planning and preparation may assist in this work.

I am not sure what part of, if any, Wikidata project could play in this updating, but this may be a project that it could assist with. I understand that ABS data is released under a Creative Commons licence - see here. Happy to hear the thoughts of those much more au fait with Wikidata, the ABS and licencing than I. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 00:53, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I believe it should be possible to get a datacube from the ABS (which will be suitably CC-licensed) and then strip it back to the stuff we want and then ingest that into a set of Wikidata property values. It is then just a simple matter of updating the population for every state, lga, town, suburb, locality to call on the relevant Wikidata property to provide the population information in the articles. While it is "simple" intellectually, it is likely to be a truckload of work in practice. I suspect we will need to modify the Template:infobox Australian place to have the option of using the Wikidata property for the population or to supply it manually (as there will inevitably be situations where the automated result fails, is wrong, etc). We will probably also need a templated sentence for use in the text to provide the population data with the same automatic-vs-manual options. In an ideal world, I would prefer if we didn't throw away the 2011 census data but save it for a population table or similar. When I update anything to 2011 data, I usually save the old 2001/2006 data in the History section. It would be nice to have tables or graphs in the article showing population data from 2001 to 2016. But yes we need to plan all this and it's good to start this discussion now. Kerry (talk) 04:29, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

It should be possible to keep a history of the various population figures on Wikidata, see the entry for New York City for instance, which gives figures based on the US census. What may help is linking the various Wikidata items to the Census' own suburb identifiers (for instance, Chermside West, Queensland = code SSC30358), it should be possible to get a fair chunk of these by having a bot go through the articles and pulling them from the URL used in the reference for the census figures. The two main problems would be ensuring the data quality of the code-gathering process, and getting a suitable property set up at Wikidata to store this value. Then, once the census comes out, it should be easy enough for us to automatically add a "2016" value for population using the value of that particular property.

Sounds simple in theory, but probably there's a few spanners that would be thrown in the works in practice. The (potentially spicy) discussion about whether we then source the infobox data here at Wikipedia from the figures from Wikidata could then be approached. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:04, 3 March 2017 (UTC).

I've been working and preparing for this release on this for some time in Wikidata, putting in the 2011 census population with a "point in time" qualifier of 9 August 2011, and a link to the censusdata reference. The advantage of this is that it links each Wikidata entity to the SSC or other ID. The IDs will change for the 2016 release but the ABS provides a key to link across years. Once the ABS releases the data the quickstatements tool can be used to import the data fairly quickly. So I think the main tasks are to work out out how to make a Wikidata call in the infoboxes, then it should be possible to just update the populations with an import into Wikidata, and the Wikidata calls in the thousands of articles should update automatically. --Canley (talk) 09:28, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I can answer part of that. The template call {{#property:p1082}} should should return the value for property p1082 (population) for the article it is in. For example, a little experiment shows me that the property value for Bundaberg is the string "70,540±0". I don't know at this moment how we strip off the "±0" but I am guessing there is a way. So this is the call we would need to put the pop field in the infobox. Similarly we would have to extract the "point in time" and "reference URL" from the property value to get the pop_year and the pop_footnotes. We would probably want a template to put in the lede para to write out this information in a standard sentence. I think that where we have the population data in Wikidata this should all work fine. The problems are more likely to arise when we don't have population data in Wikidata. Kerry (talk) 11:04, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Take a look at Template:Wikidata for more information on all of this. Kerry (talk) 11:06, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Great, thanks! I just experimented with it too and it worked really well. I'll investigate further about showing qualifiers and other details. Regarding the "±0", I have been removing them if I see them (they were originally applied by default to integers but that seems to have changed recently, or you had to include the ±0 to stop it from assuming a range of ±1), but I have seen a bot removing them for integer fields where there is no need for a tolerance range. --Canley (talk) 00:28, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

@Canley: Ahh, this is really excellent. Is this sort of thing what you had in mind for everywhere? Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:46, 3 March 2017 (UTC).

Ah, Glenorchy, I did that a few days ago! Yes, exactly that, but for EVERYWHERE! I have been adding populations, postcodes and areas for suburbs to Wikidata manually so far, but I've been building up a database of populations, postcodes, LGAs, electoral districts and divisions for every place in Australia. I have done some tentative bulk imports already such as all Tasmanian postcodes; cleaning up names, type of settlement and descriptions; and ACT electoral districts which have all worked well, so I should just bite the bullet and do it I suppose! I've been mainly concentrating on the electoral stuff so far which is probably why I haven't done it yet. --Canley (talk) 10:18, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Some estimate on the scope:

• I extracted just over 5,000 entities which were subclasses of human settlement in Australia from Wikidata. Can probably use Petscan to pick up Wikidata entities which are not properly classified using the categories.
• The 2011 census releases contain about 8,500 SSCs.
• Australia Post lists 9,786 places with postcodes.
• The Infobox Australian place template is transcluded 10,937 times on the English Wikpedia.

--Canley (talk) 10:36, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I have the following comments based on the experience of starting a number of articles for suburbs and localities in South Australia as well as adding to articles started by others. Firstly, SSC usually have no resemblance to gazetted suburbs and localities and would appear to be based on ABS logistic requirements - please refer the article that I started for the locality of Custon, South Australia where I found that Custon and two adjoining localities share a SSC. Secondly, the same issue exists with postcodes as these can be shared by a number of suburbs and localities rather than by one specific place - a good example is localities on Kangaroo Island. Finally, I found that the only reliable useable data published by ABS is the population of LGAs. Regards Cowdy001 (talk) 19:50, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

It would be fantastic if we could take the opportunity of the 2016 update to ensure that our use of SSC census data is factually correct - because the SSC district boundaries have so little in common with the actual gazetted boundaries of the places our articles are on, using that figure without further explanation can lead to highly misleading results. A bunch of people have flagged this problem over the years and struggled to work out what to do about it, but (IMO) Cowdy001 is the only one so far who has come up with a good solution - see Ballast Head, South Australia for an example, which explains in a footnote that one SSC figure in fact refers to the total of ten localities on Kangaroo Island. I'd love to see that approach get rolled out nationwide. The Drover's Wife (talk) 20:32, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, that's a really good way to approach it and I agree this would be the time to standardise how this situation is handled. The ABS works out the confidence value for the accuracy of SA1 boundaries, so perhaps we could set a threshold for use of the SSC (as "good enough" for representation of population or area) such as acceptable or higher (> 75%)—74% of SSCs meet this threshold in the 2011 data, 65.4% if threshold is good or higher. I can also work out which GLs/SA1s have been aggregated into SSCs, so that we know which articles to include the agreed text notes on. --Canley (talk) 23:17, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Agreed re SSCs - once you get out of the metro area or even to the outskirts of one, they stop making much sense. In general they *do* work in urban areas though, although there can sometimes be disagreement between a suburb's boundary and the shape of a CCD. And in rural areas, only significant towns get their own CCD (and for those, it's better to use the Urban Centre/Locality population anyway). Orderinchaos 04:37, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Article needing cleanup and update

The article Manufacturing in Australia is out-of-date, mostly unsourced and has poor wording at times. This topic area is really not a speciality of mine. Would anyone with more knowledge on the subject matter be able to assist? AusLondonder (talk) 08:05, 19 March 2017 (UTC)