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Anti-Zionist

[1]- It seems defamatory to me without a specific neutral source saying that a particular living person is anti-Zionist, but I don't care, so I'll leave it to you guys to sort out and will refrain from reverting this IP editor again. Cheers, Alec ✉﹌ ۞ 13:11, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Such an allegation requires proof. I've reverted the one surviving one, which was Tanya Plibersek. I think one would have had to have made statements against Zionism as a movement, or against Jews in principle, in a reliable source to qualify for such a POV tag. (I know of hardcore nationalist types who think *anyone* who ever disagrees with Israel is "anti-Zionist" and at the same time I know of hardcore Communists who openly proclaim they are anti-Zionist but are also anti-every-other-kind-of-nationalism.) Orderinchaos 13:17, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Elite Nine Australian Schools

This article needs the widest attention as it appears to be a POV pushing issue - in deference to WP Civility and WP principles of general for AGF I am not touching the talk page or the article - I honestly think it and the assumptions are seriously problematic. SatuSuro 06:37, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

If it remains, then it needs to be given a time reference for context. Is it current or dated?.petedavo 09:58, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
It looks seriously out of date: the most recent reference is a 1992 study of prominent people in 1988! It's also not stated whether the two studies cited are regarded as being definitive, or whether they were disputed - this seems rather important given that the only evidence that these schools are 'elite' is the studies. Moreover, the sentance "most important schools relevant to the education and formation of the upper class in Australia" doesn't define how the schools are 'relevant' or what is meant by 'education and formation' or 'upper class in Australia'. As the article seems to be of no obvious value and probably can't be updated to get around the NPOV/reliable sources problems it mught be suitabale to nominate it for deletion. --Nick Dowling 10:11, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
The articles on the schools listed are having "X school is one of the Elite Nine Australian Schools" added to their leads. That is a worry. --Merbabu 14:18, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Comment of the level of acknowledgement given to the particular report would also be useful - all we know is it was written, but not whether that writing was used for any purpose other than to flog somebody's book. Orderinchaos 17:36, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, there is big NPOV problems with this article, for the reasons spelt out by Nick Dowling. The problem is what to do with it? Lankiveil 01:35, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I went to one of those schools and I've never heard the term. Googling "Elite Nine Australian" brings up nothing except Wikipedia and its mirrors. It seems to me that the term is not very widespread, therefore is non-notable and the article should be deleted. Peter Ballard 01:56, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Initially I thought the same, but I have managed to find other sociology texts that actually describe the concept of these nine schools. In addition to the references provided, theres also this [2]. I agree that it shouldn't be added to the particular schools articles, but the page itself on this concept should remain. Recurring dreams 06:18, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

That adds some credence to it. The article is now proposed for deletion, so you should your comment at Talk:Elite Nine Australian Schools. Peter Ballard 07:27, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

SMH - Half Truths column - a nasty attack of the hacks

Today's column from Chris Henning - a nasty attack of the hacks made me smile. Related of course to the news stories on WikiScanner [3] [4] - you can dob in IP ranges to the WikiScanner --Golden Wattle talk 22:42, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Interesting.. noticed one of the edits listed at [5] is "Canberra International Airport modifies Wikipedia to hide accidents, traffic chaos plus a general shining astroturf." --Astrokey44 13:09, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Contents

An issue noticed at the help desk was the disappearing "Contents" boxes on some Australian pages. I think it may be related to adding the coordinates for locations. Has this issue been raised elsewhere? Recurring dreams 10:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC) Eg see Sydney Opera House. Recurring dreams 10:38, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I can see it fine, not sure what it would be - literally thousands of Australian articles have coordinates. However some changes have been occurring at coord recently (including the world globe) and I don't know if any of them have impacted. Orderinchaos 14:08, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Argh - seems it may have been an edit I made about a week ago. Another user identified and fixed it earlier tonight, so the problem should now be gone. Sorry :| Orderinchaos 15:44, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Good Weekend profile on Jimmy

Not very interesting (not much new), but a nice enough photo of Jimmy's head next to a Britannica. pfctdayelise (talk) 10:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

It was a reprint from the Guardian [6]. Was good reading though; hopefully draw more Australian editors. Recurring dreams 11:54, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Facebook group

Just for those Aussie Wikipedians who use facebook - I have created an unofficial Wikimedia Australia group there - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4621038669 - feel free to join! -- Chuq (talk) 13:10, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:Indigenous Australians/deceased

This template has been proposed for deletion at TfD. From my time in the Northern Territory, I believe this is a case for WP:IAR as using this is the culturally correct thing to do. What do others think? --Bduke 00:00, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I say keep - it's a cultural issue, the difficulty will be convincing policy addicts (those guys who will never use IAR) that it's necessary. It would also be good to see it in use (currently only shown on one talk page, which is pointless). Giggy Talk 00:13, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I wondered about its use - has it been removed from articles?--Golden Wattle talk 00:48, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that the existence of the template is widely known. If it had, I think it would have been used here for example - Mulrunji. See here for some earlier discussion on cultural sensitivity - Talk:2004 Palm Island death in custody. I will say that while I have no strong feelings either way, I feel that acceptance in the Wikipedia community of use of a disclaimer on articles would require a very strong argument as to why for this particular cultural issue it is appropriate and not for the many other potentially culturally sensitive issues that Wikipedia deals with. Just to state again, I am not against the template (or for it for that matter - I don't know enough about the issue), I just think that the argument to keep will need to be very strong. Perhaps someone with a background or knowledge of indigenous culture could draft up some reasoning. -- Mattinbgn/ talk 01:18, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
from the history it appears the template was only created a few days ago. - Ithink Mattinbgn makes good points - if we have this template, then when and how should it be used. At the top of articles with images of dead Indigenous Australians? Eg Umbarra and King Plates?--Golden Wattle talk 01:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Could it possibly also be reduced in size somewhat, particularly laterally? Recurring dreams 01:50, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
If someone whats to dig I think the Australian Broadcasting act does have a requirement for the disclaimer to be included, I off now for a few hours so wont be able to do anyhting today, also this discussion should be noted on the TFD page. Gnangarra 01:59, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I have tweaked the width. I have commented on the wording on the template's talk page. Not sure want to invest more in this while there is a deletion debate.--Golden Wattle talk 02:08, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to see it a bit more streamlined, so it looks a bit more like the other maintainance templates. Using {{notice}} or something...in any case, the TfD will be a snowball keep. Giggy Talk 02:33, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd agree with the above suggestion. Thewinchester (talk) 02:42, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I have followed your suggestion. Haven't changed the words but used {{notice}}. --Golden Wattle talk 02:53, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm assuming this notice would be placed at the top of an article relevant to the disclaimer, so may I be as bold to see what people think of this wording?
Indigenous Australians should be aware that this page may contain names, images, or depictions of deceased Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander people. In many Indigenous Australians communities, restrictions often apply on viewing images of people who have passed away. If appropriate, the approval of the relevant local community leaders should be sought before this page is viewed.
Thewinchester (talk) 03:36, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The template is in direct contravention of Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles, an official policy of the English Wikipedia. If you don't like the policy, try to get the policy changed. Invoking "Ignore all rules" and characterising opponents of the template as "policy addicts" will get you nowhere. Hesperian 04:26, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Except that IAR applies to all policies, and can be invoked when there is a really good reason. We have a really good reason - to protect the cultural beliefs of the Indigenous people. Giggy Talk 04:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
It's the thin edge of a wedge. If we're going to "protect the cultural beliefs of the Indigenous people", why not also Moslems? (a disclaimer before showing an image of Muhammad please) People who are offended by pictures of genitalia? Scientologists who don't want their secrets leaking out? If the policy has any value at all, it has value right here. Hesperian 04:50, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm all for adding a similar template for Moslems. Not for genitalia images - that's not a religious deal, so "get over it" could apply in that situation. Same for scientology. Giggy Talk 05:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree that we should not characterise opponents of the template as "policy addicts", but I think "Ignore all rules" does fit this case. If it does not we should, as you suggest, try to get the policy changed, or we should remove images and names of deceased indigenous people according to the rules for that particular group. Some groups for example, do not allow the use of the name for a certain period of time after the death. As Australians we should insist that Wikipedia is culturally sensitive on this issue. I am pleased to see the strong support my initial comment has received. --Bduke 04:52, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

"Policy addicts" was an incorrect phrasing, and I apologise to anyone who was offended by it. I concur with Bduke's summary of the situation. Giggy Talk 05:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Wouldn't removing images and names of deceased indigenous people be censoring Wikipedia and therefore breaching another official policy of Wikipedia? -- Mattinbgn/ talk 05:10, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, we have to break one, or risk offending people... Giggy Talk 05:13, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Er, I mean, religiously offending, not the regulary WP:CENSOR type. You know what I mean...:) Giggy Talk 05:13, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I expected some debate when I created the template. I placed it on three talk pages to get the debate going, and I notice that it's already been removed from Rob Riley. I expect that adding a warning, will be in lieu of having to start debating AFD'ing articles and pictures.petedavo 05:28, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
If you're going to start AfDing articles, I suggest you start with Yagan, our one and only Featured Article on an Indigenous Australian, the prime image of which is a painting of his head after he was decapitated, decked out with cockatoo feathers, Native American style, by a culturally ignorant portraitist. And once its gone, ask yourself if Indigenous Australia is better off for its absence. Hesperian 05:58, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Isn't the point raised by Hesperian that we should not break Wikipedia policy just because material may be offensive. Once again, I stress that I do not know enough about Aboriginal culture to understand the nature of the offence, but it may be difficult to justify why an offence to one's religion is more deserving of protection than an offence to one's political beliefs, nationality etc.. I understand what the template is trying to do, I just think you are going to have a hard time selling it to the community. -- Mattinbgn/ talk 05:49, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Personally I think that this was a good contribution:

{cquote|I think the wording of the template may need tweaking. It may in fact be a layout problem - too many boxes ... The Australian Dictionary of Biography has the following advice at http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/advice.htm : Users of the Australian Dictionary of Biography Online are warned that it contains the names and images of deceased persons, and that in some Indigenous Australian communities this material may cause sadness or distress and in some cases may offend against strongly held cultural prohibitions. In the deletion debate, reference has been made to The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's advice also.--Golden Wattle talk 02:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)}

petedavo 05:28, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I note that the template {{current fiction}} is probably in breach of the policy as being a spoiler warning disguised and I guess I would be arguing the same status for this template. I think it is a furphy to discuss what could happen elsewhere, ie with images of Mohammed - those who want to enter into the space feel free, but some of us have our sights set firmly on Australian issues and thus wish discuss how we want to deal with this issue. Lots of us have been aware of it for some time but it has really only arisen for discussion because of the deletion debate. One possibility, following the line of thought raised by Hesperian (although there is not concensus that this is a policy breach as per at least one TfD comment) and also the Australian Dictionary of Biography's approach, is to amend Wikipedia:Content disclaimer. That is a legalistic approach but it might help. I concur with one person's point in the Umbarra articel that the template is sitting awfully close to the picture. It could be that, where an article is long enough, we place the picture at least one screen depth below. My point in tagging those articles was in fact to show exactly what it might look like.--Golden Wattle talk 05:29, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Muhammad images are also something that can be considered offensive to another group of Australians as such the two do correlate to each other when deciding on which cultural aspects we respect and which we dont. Given the method by which a person finds information on Wikipedia is via a word search or link to have a warning after a person has already found the article is a bit late anyway. All pages about Australia will need this warning as it is possible that the names, images, or artworks maybe displayed, this would also need to be placed on the top of the FA page(Yagan), GA page, FP as some Firs images could be (unknown to us) showing sacred sites even this page, the various Australian portals even User: pages. With such a wide spread use of the template every cultural group will also make the similar claims we'll end with literally 100's of warnings that need to be displayed before . While its aboriginal culture is something all Australians should respect we can do it by the way we present and treat the articles. I think it doesnt recognise that aboriginal people arent going to go searching for information about deceased people without already knowing their own cultural limitations anyway. Gnangarra 06:19, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
That sounds like a fair compromise, as I believe the same prohibition applies to very diverse other native groups around the world, so it would seem to fit into a general disclaimer. Orderinchaos 06:02, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
That fixes it then. I propose that all argument would now be redundant, and we can forget having to use a warning or nominating articles for AFD. However since someone else has edited the template since I created it, please just consider this a vote.petedavo 07:20, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Personally agree with the need for a template in this instance, but consensus is going right down the line, and having Wikipedia:Content disclaimer (which appears from every page down the bottom) clearly elaborating this point is in my view a more than acceptable compromise. It goes without saying that due care should be taken in writing articles *not* to use such information simply to block access from readers of certain cultures, and also to be correct in one's usage (eg the Mulrunji/Doomadgee issue where it's not a case of cultural sensitivity but the fact the guy actually has a new name after death, and we can use his former name to refer to his actions and persona before death). Orderinchaos 07:37, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

The template has now been deleted. This has been an interesting discussion and I am glad I raised it here. I do not htink we should dispute the deletion, but we may need to set out some guidelines within the WikiProject Australia pages, that suggests how we deal with the names of deceased indigenous Australians. This might be a little tricky as cultural rules vary. Since moving from the NT, I no longer have Aboriginal colleagues and friends who might assist me to write such a guideline, so I'll have to pass. Can anyone research this and give us some guidelines? --Bduke 23:55, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

That's disappointing - obviously most of those voting do not understand the implications of such a template for Australian Aborigines. I don't agree with the outcome whatsoever. JRG 00:59, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually JRG some of us do have a very good understanding of the cultural implications to Aboriginal Australians and still said the template isnt appropriate please dont think that we are all ignorant of the implications or insensitive to them. Gnangarra 16:05, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I also disagree with the outcome, but DRV would be pointless here - we'll just have to deal with it. As for what Bduke said, I also have no idea on the cultural rules, but I think we all have a general idea about it being VERY, VERY BAD. Unfortunately, there isn't really much we can do about it - any sort of warning is a "disclaimer" - whilst not showing the content would get attacked by something. Catch 22, in a sense. Giggy Talk 01:57, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Julia Gillard is new ACOTF

Second Fleet (Australia) was the Australian collaboration of the fortnight from 5 August 2007 to 19 August 2007

  • 4 contributors made 15 edits
  • The article increased from 3,876 bytes to 5,990 bytes
  • See how it changed

The new ACOTF is Julia Gillard. Please help to improve it in any way you can. --Scott Davis Talk 09:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikisource CotW

For those interested in transcription of historical sources, the English Wikisource Collaboration of the Week is James Cook. Hesperian 06:07, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Even if you arn't interested in devoting large amounts of time transcribing documents, finding related works online or in books and mentioning them on s:Author talk:James Cook is also very helpful. John Vandenberg 06:10, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Anthony Mundine

I came across the Anthony Mundine article today in really bad shape, so I decided to fix it up a bit, resourcing and adding and removing information. If anyone is interested in helping out, it would be much appreciated, as more collaboration on the article will help a lot. –sebi 04:52, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

ADB citation template

For some light editing I've created {{ADB}} for when referencing by using the following format

  • {{ADB|last="author last name"|first="Author first name"|authorlink="Author article"|year="publish year"|id="htm page from ADB"|title="ADB article title"|accessdate="access date"}}

Example

  • {{ADB|last=Oldham|first=Ray|authorlink=Ray Oldham (Author)|year=1972|id=A040543b|title= Jewell, Richard Roach (1810 - 1891)|accessdate=2007-08-23}}

returns

This will provide the requirements as listed on the ADB copyright, this template can be either used as an inline reference or separately in the reference section Gnangarra 07:41, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I suggest adding ".htm" to the code so that it doesn't have to be specified in the id parameter, and renaming the "access" parameter to "accessdate" so that it conforms with the {{cite_xxxx}} templates. Otherwise, those of us who use the latter will have trouble remembering to switch to the former. Hesperian 12:42, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
checkY Done Gnangarra 12:49, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I think authorlink should be optional - not all ADB authors will get their own wikipedia articles--Golden Wattle talk 00:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Generally authorlink is left blank in cite templates, but the option is useful.--Grahamec 01:39, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Categories for Australian English and Aboriginal language speakers

Wikipedia:User categories for discussion#Category: User en-au subcats has, I think, opened up a can of worms. There are catgories for Australian English, categories for Aboriginal English, whatever that is, and categories for speakers of Aboriginal languages. Unfortunately there are userboxes that put people into a category for Australian English and a category for Aboriginal English or Aboriginal languages. I have not even begun to understand the confusion. I welcome suggestions about how to deal with this. On the UCfD debate I have supported merging all the Australian English catgories into Category:User en-au and added the suggestion that two categories that mention "Aboriginal" be merged with a third - Category:User au. If this get approved and implemented by a bot, we could then sort out the different userboxes. I mention it here because what makes it important is that could be seriously insulting our Aboriginal population by users claiming to speak their language when they do not. We need to sort it out. --Bduke 05:22, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, there's Australian English (a variation of Standard English), Australian Aboriginal English (a seemingly large variety of pidgins), and a larger group still of Indigenous Australian languages which bear no liguistic relation to English at all. I think these three are and should be considered distinct. I see no need for more division than that, as categories for most individual dialects of Aboriginal English or Indiginous Languages would not serve more than a handful of Wikipedians, if any at all. --The Chairman (Shout me · Stalk me) 03:44, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
I think the Australian Aboriginal English language group are more properly creole languages than a pidgin, but I would otherwise agree with the above. Orderinchaos 05:43, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
I think the two comments above have it right. The deletion debate was closed and archived here. In closing the debate After Midnight added, " Note that the 2 Aboriginal categories are unused and they can always be changed later". These two were, I think, Category:User au-N and Category:User en-au-A. Category:User en-au and Category:User au still exist, the former for Australian English and the latter for Australian Aboriginal languages. Is that all? If not could someone summarize what we have. We should then discuss what we want and make sure that the userboxes have the correct categories. I suspect there are now some useless userboxes (i.e. using deleted categories and even more useless than usual). --Bduke 08:28, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Possible hoax

Today's Affairs. I've not heard of it . Tagged as {{hoax}}. —Moondyne 03:14, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Original version said it was 3-7 minutes long and its host is 15 years old. Does not get any external hits and no hits on Factiva either (esp if it's involved in alleged "controversy"). Sounds like WP:NFT. Orderinchaos 03:20, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Yep, I reckon it is a hoax. Recurring dreams 03:21, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks guys. I just needed the second opinions. I zapped it. —Moondyne 03:29, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Fairfax article

Not sure if others have seen this yet - Why we can still trust Wikipedia - in the Fairfax press. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 20:42, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

That's a nice article. I don't suppose Tamsin is lurking around here somewhere? Confusing Manifestation 23:09, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikiscanner in the SMH - PM&C edits Costello article etc

Wikipedia made front page news in the SMH today with a story about PM&C editing Costello's article[7]. Also a full page article on page 15 - Who will edit Wiki's editors.[8] and another article Identification not required.[9]--Golden Wattle talk 20:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I've full protected the John Howard article(media reports 120+ edits from his office) and added COI tag. This article needs to be check as quickly as possible to establish what info was removed/altered. Gnangarra 00:48, 24 August 2007 (UTC) null edit Gnangarra 00:49, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I have raised this event on WP:AN/I Gnangarra 01:34, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
On ABC too. Honestly, the likelihood of this being officially sanctioned is a bit of a stretch. Most probably, we just have some individual contributors in Defence and DPMC. I doubt the article has any remaining COI concerns, considering the scrutiny it has been under for the past several months.--cj | talk 02:40, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
It has been known to some of us for quite a while now that one of our most troublesome recidivist sockpuppetteer trolls is operating out of the Department of Defense. He is just a dickhead with a desk job that he'd rather not be doing. I should say the vast majority of the DoD edits are him editing logged out. Conspiracy my foot! Hesperian 12:10, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Alexander Downer has just accused the "Wikipedia editorial board" of anti-government bias (The Age)! --Canley 06:31, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Can we get a lock on every single article (Lib, Lab, whoever) which will undoubtedly get vandalised to hell in the next week? Michael talk 07:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
There was another article in the SMH about Morris Iemma's staff taking out unfavourable information last September. I've replaced the deleted information. JRG 09:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

As noted at WP:AUSPOL, I've created an Australian politics articles watchlist which we can monitor through the related changes tool.--cj | talk 14:10, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Someone might like to go over Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (Australia), which has been impacted by a bit of recentism.--cj | talk 15:33, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
For a government deptment that been functioning since 1911 it has very little information about it, recent even doesnt have anything of substance to balance against it. The disturbing thing is theres no detail only a number 126 edits, I think that while we focus on the incident we really needed to identify those 126 edits and see what each one was, the only looser in this has been wikipedia credibility. Gnangarra 15:39, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to Rove McManus for perpetuating the affair.--cj | talk 11:15, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

What did he say? Recurring dreams 11:18, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Oh, pretty much opened the show mocking the affair, and suggested some changes to Larry Emdur, much in the way of Stephen Colbert.--cj | talk 11:20, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

The John Howard article is an embarrassment, in my opinion. Mainly for what is omitted. It has been thoroughly cleansed before election time. Lester2 14:49, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

True. Like many articles too it's guilty of chronic recentism. I'm actually tempted to go through the 1977-83 "Political Chronicles" in the Aust Journal of Politics and History and pick out anything notable which happened in those years. I don't know how late the PCs go, the library I use only has up to about 1988. Orderinchaos 15:33, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
'Orderinchaos', I think it's commendable that you will source new information for the J.H article, and any positive looking info will be warmly welcomed, but I fear that if you add historical info that may not create a glowing image of the subject, it will be deleted soon afterwards. Lester2 21:20, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Looking at Lester2's edit history, one sees that his entire wikicareer has consisted of adding negative material of zero or little relevance to this one article and then whinging that it gets deleted. --Pete 10:30, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Census

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned earlier since I haven't been around much recently - but the some of the 2006 census data is out. There is certainly enough there to update demographic information for Australia and the capitals. --Peta 00:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

We did discuss this when the data came out ... (after some searching) archived here. Because they've only released data for "State suburb" and not "Urban centre/locality" so far, we don't know whether we'll have to rejig the definitions of the areas in the Wikipedia articles. Confusing Manifestation 01:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
UCL didn't come out until second release last time, have no reason to doubt it'd be the same this time. There will be a minor release on Monday which will clear up some ambiguities and missing bits, and the proper release is currently Jan or Feb next year. Orderinchaos 10:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

BTW - community profiles available as of four hours ago! Will fix the Census 2006 AUS template to work like the 2001 one now. Orderinchaos 14:33, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Equine Flu outbreak

Has an article been created about the current outbreak? I think it is probably important enough to warrant one. Nomadtales 00:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

2007 Australian Equine influenza outbreak has just been created --Melburnian 00:59, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Kyle Sandilands

It has been brought to my attention off-wiki by someone who knows I am an admin, that this article has BLP concerns. It certainly looks as if that may be a concern. I removed one. If his nickname really is "Dickhead" it certainly needs sourcing! I know nothing of this guy, being an old fuddy duddy who does not listen or watch these programs. Could someone who knows more about him, please have a look over it. Australian input may be valuable at this stage. If you need admin tools to help, let me know. --Bduke 22:47, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

And there I was thinking his nickname was "Wanker". Damn. Orderinchaos 15:34, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Brian, a few days ago I tried to clean up some of the vandalism and rubbish on that article but it was being vandalised by different IPs with "fat" nicknames and such as I was cleaning it up, so I ended up sprotecting it. I am not a Sandilands fan, don't watch Aus Idol or listen to his radio show, so I'm in the same boat as you, but if your off-wiki source would like to provide more information, I'm willing to do some more work on it. Sarah 13:32, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Politicians and conflict of interest

Speaking of politicians and conflict of interest, the following edit is interesting, albeit on a more local scale - [10]. Cheers, Mattinbgn\ talk 01:02, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm...it's spreading. Maybe we should tell Rove about that one too - last night's show was all about that stuff. Giggy\Talk 01:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Rove already had people vandalising Larry Emdur ("cured polio") and Venus de Milo ("actually made of Milo") last night, don't encourage him! --bainer (talk) 02:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
[11] [12] - Oh dear Bainer, you didn't warn any of them - they'll think his description of WP ("you can change anything, forever...it's great!") will be accurate :P Giggy\Talk 06:49, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
I really wish Rove would come up with his own material instead of copying American comedians. Sarah 13:38, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Request for assistance

HI all. I would like to add a photo to an article but HTML code isn't my thing (I am 73 !) If someone would care to help by adding the photo (it's by me so no copyright problem), or by teaching me how to do it myself I would be most appreciative. Contact me on my talk page Thanks.Geoffrey Wickham 00:58, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page... -- Longhair\talk 01:07, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Kyle Sandilands

It has been brought to my attention off-wiki by someone who knows I am an admin, that this article has BLP concerns. It certainly looks as if that may be a concern. I removed one. If his nickname really is "Dickhead" it certainly needs sourcing! I know nothing of this guy, being an old fuddy duddy who does not listen or watch these programs. Could someone who knows more about him, please have a look over it. Australian input may be valuable at this stage. If you need admin tools to help, let me know. --Bduke 22:47, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

And there I was thinking his nickname was "Wanker". Damn. Orderinchaos 15:34, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Brian, a few days ago I tried to clean up some of the vandalism and rubbish on that article but it was being vandalised by different IPs with "fat" nicknames and such as I was cleaning it up, so I ended up sprotecting it. I am not a Sandilands fan, don't watch Aus Idol or listen to his radio show, so I'm in the same boat as you, but if your off-wiki source would like to provide more information, I'm willing to do some more work on it. Sarah 13:32, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Politicians and conflict of interest

Speaking of politicians and conflict of interest, the following edit is interesting, albeit on a more local scale - [13]. Cheers, Mattinbgn\ talk 01:02, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm...it's spreading. Maybe we should tell Rove about that one too - last night's show was all about that stuff. Giggy\Talk 01:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Rove already had people vandalising Larry Emdur ("cured polio") and Venus de Milo ("actually made of Milo") last night, don't encourage him! --bainer (talk) 02:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
[14] [15] - Oh dear Bainer, you didn't warn any of them - they'll think his description of WP ("you can change anything, forever...it's great!") will be accurate :P Giggy\Talk 06:49, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
I really wish Rove would come up with his own material instead of copying American comedians. Sarah 13:38, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Request for assistance

HI all. I would like to add a photo to an article but HTML code isn't my thing (I am 73 !) If someone would care to help by adding the photo (it's by me so no copyright problem), or by teaching me how to do it myself I would be most appreciative. Contact me on my talk page Thanks.Geoffrey Wickham 00:58, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page... -- Longhair\talk 01:07, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Howard Government

I have decided to be bold and create the Howard Government article to resolve the BLP issues with the John Howard article and so there is a good article which gives an overview of the Howard Administration, a pretty significant period of continuous Government in Australia. I have not put any significant content into the article because I figured what ever I put in there would be considered POV by one editor or the other and that would be a distraction from the main game. I'd be happy to contribute to this article but I figured I'd leave the initial contributions to others to get the feel of how the article will pan out. I would suggest however that it take a very broad overview approach, whenever a certain section starts getting overly detailed it can be branched out to its own article, or content moved to a more appropriate article. Keeping with WP:NPOV the article should concentrate fairly evenly between what are considered to be the 'achievements' of the Howard Government and what are considered to be the 'controversies' of the administration. Would welcome all those who would like to contribute! Cheers, Alec ✉﹌ ۞ 09:37, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Alec. I thought about this also, but then wondered how you would separate Howard the man from Howard the government. What would go in which article? Would quotes go in the biography or the government? What about Howard's policies during the opposition years? He formed policies before he formed government. George W Bush has his policies in his biography article. Well, each policy gets a paragraph, which links to a larger article about that policy. But GW Bush had a lot more history than Howard before politics. Howard has been a politician all his life. Are there BLP issues in the Howard article? Sure, libelous stuff can't go in, but what about controversial policies? Cheers, Lester2 07:04, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
From WP:BLP
We must get the article right.[1] Be very firm about the use of high quality references. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material — whether negative, positive, or just questionable — about living persons should be removed immediately and without discussion from Wikipedia articles,[2] talk pages, user pages, and project space.
An important rule of thumb when writing biographical material about living persons is "do no harm". Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid; it is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives. Biographies of living persons (BLP)s must be written conservatively, with regard for the subject's privacy. Shot info 07:17, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Please continue this discussion at WP:AUSPOL.--cj | talk 12:08, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Andrew Bolt article

Those with an interest can read here I have never seen Wikipedia as a "collective". Sometimes it seems disagreeing is what we do best. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 01:45, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

That's a bit like saying that conversation in a pub is biased because the people in it have similar views. What is it with conservative commentators and 'bias'? (and why didn't Bolt spot the big 'edit this page' button at the top of the entries he looked at?) --Nick Dowling 08:05, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Funny stuff. By the way, I'm sorry to inform you, but all us admins are actually a secret grouping of socialists, we only disagree with each other purely for show. What they don't tell you is when you pass an RfA you have to go through a secret inauguration ceremony where one has to pledge allegiance to the hammer and sickle, and to the Holy Cabal, who art on high. Orderinchaos 14:00, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I'll be the dissenter; Bolt has a point. There is a conspicuous absence of any sort of negativity in Rudd's article (which is good, and which I argued for on the talk page) but on Downer's it's a free-for-all against the man. Standards need to be set, and I think Downer's article needs a cleanup. There's plenty of muckraking that could be done to Rudd (anyone read the Latham Diaries?) but isn't. Michael talk 14:06, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Bolt certainly isn't the epitomy of neutrality. But Michael does have a point; the Downer article isn't the greatest, and seems to have gotten worse recently. There was a recent Bulletin article on Downer; maybe I'll dig that up and have a go at a rewrite. Recurring dreams 01:49, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Bolt's claims of conspiracy / cabal are rubbish, but in this particular case, he was right. Michael talk 02:05, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Anyone who looks for conspiracy will find one on circumstantial evidence. Alec ✉﹌ ۞ 02:09, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Articles on politicians tend to be awful and dominated by either muck-racking or text which appears to have been written by one of the faithful so Rudd and Downer's articles are pretty typical. --Nick Dowling 05:12, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Second opinion requested

Should the "Reputation" section on Frankston, Victoria be removed with extreme prejudice? Orderinchaos 09:45, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

done Alec ✉﹌ ۞ 09:52, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

John Howard: When does deletion become censorship?

In Wikipedia, it's much easier to delete existing information than to add new information. The deletion of content from a political article can be an effective way to create a positive slant to that article, and Wikipedia does not seem to have enough checks and balances to stop it happening.

The incentive to slant a political article can be enormous. It would not surprise me if, in the future, political parties actually paid people to join Wikipedia and edit articles in their favour. Wouldn't you think there'd already be enough incentive to operate two separate internet accounts to evade sockpuppet IP checks? It costs relatively little to do that. Deleting editors are already very organised, forming tag teams to avoid 3RR penalties.

Most of the recent newspaper accusations about political editing of Wikipedia involved deletion of unsavoury content, not the addition of new content. The practice of systemically deleting unfavourable paragraphs is where the real political interference will be, and as such, Wikipedia really needs to take a closer look at its policies regarding deletion to prevent the most likely form of political interference.

I use the example of John Howard, as it is approaching election time in Australia, the incentive to produce a clean image for the subject will be great. It's also an article under the spotlight as recent newspaper headlines of a "Wikipedia Whitewash" show.

Deletion of cited factual information on this article is rife. The J.H. discussion pages (and archived discussions) are full of examples. There really needs to be much closer scrutiny as to the reasons why factual information gets deleted from political articles. Deleting editors often don't participate in existing discussions about the content they are deleting, rendering the discussion useless. Wikipedia has some guidelines regarding etiquette and deletion, but in practice it won't be enforced as long as the deleting editor has written a comment (any comment) in the edit summary window.

Etiquette guidelines are not enough to prevent the cleansing or whitewashing of political articles. Something stronger is needed. Stronger oversight? New rules maybe? How about a rule that prevents an editor deleting referenced content without participating in an existing discussion?

Finding referenced information for Wikipedia takes a lot of work. The incentive to do so diminishes when deleting is a much more powerful weapon. Thanks for reading about my concerns Lester2 23:19, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate your concerns, however, for myself at least use of edit summaries, use of a login, or whatever do not stop me from critically reviewing an edit and I deplore removal of referenced material. However, material that is supported by citations may be removed if it is of inappropriate balance or ... . I think the policy at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons is especially relevant. In particular note the section on Remove unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material. What you are suggesting though is that sourced material, albeit contentious, has been removed. The removal of material in the last few hours on the Howard article is contentious because it is not about Howard as per the talk page discussion. I would endorse that removal and do not see it as censorship, rather I see people trying to include material that does not link directly to the subject. Removal of that material has been done with quite adequate edit summaries and with engagement on the talk page. Are you able to give another example to clairify your concerns? --Golden Wattle talk 00:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Lester, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that is already happening (just in general, not particularly in relation to Australian political articles). In fact, I saw an article about an American political candidate that had been tagged for speedy deletion last week which had been written by a public relations company. It is not unusual to hear of such companies being hired to write articles, and I don't think it is that big a step to imagine political parties employing people to do likewise. This is why you need to look at the edits themselves and evaluate them entirely on their own merits, and not on whether they were posted by an IP or someone you know. As much as an IP could be hired to write, the person next to you could be hired to write. So we really have to look at all edits and the sourcing and not allow ourselves to become complacent about evaluating edits based on who contributes them. Also, you say "the incentive to produce a clean image for the subject will be great," likewise, there is just as much incentive incentive to do the opposite. I agree with GW's comments about BLP and removing cited material. Just because you have a cite doesn't mean the material is appropriate for the biography. In particular, please be aware of undue weight, as well as other sections on the NPOV policy page, such as balance and tone. Sarah 12:13, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Hello Golden Wattle & Sarah. Thanks for commenting. The problems I encounter never occur in other Wikipedia articles. It just happens in the hotbed political articles, such as John Howard. You get some editors who just delete. Myself and other editors can spend weeks discussing whether or not some info should be in the article. You can a consensus. The information is added. Then from left of field an editor who never wanted to be involved in discussion just deletes it. Edit war ensues, and of course one must give up to avoid 3RR. Every sentence added to Wikipedia can take a lot of time, finding the info and the multiple references. Then there are weeks of discussion. Then the whole effort evaporates when a "deleting editor" arrives, right on cue, and deletes it in 2 seconds. I've even seen deleting editors form tag teams. The deleting editor can write nothing more than "nn" in the edit summary and that satisfies the Wikiquette tribunal that a reason is given. Regardless of the merits and debates about a particular piece of information, you'd think the very least a deleting editor could do would be to move the cited information to the discussion board, but there's no way to enforce this on Wikipedia. It appears the discussion board is just optional. Lester2 06:56, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
"problems I encounter never occur in other Wikipedia articles". Try Stephen Barrett and James Randi. Jimbo Wales is a good example of a bio that is more heavily reverted than John Howard ever will be. Basically, there are a lot of inexperienced editors who just fail to understand WP:BLP, WP:N, WP:V and WP:RS. This causes a lot of angst in bio's particularly as the overriding policy document is BLP. And as I pointed out below, this often results in the experience you describe above. But one positive, once information is notable and common knowledge, it is often included by consensus. Only material is that is not factual, poorly sourced, uncommon, pointless, or trivial is disputed. Sometimes information needs to wait until the world catches up with Wikipedia :-). Shot info 07:25, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
My suggestion is that if you are seriously concerned about an article being targetted for bias, add it to your watchlist. If everyone reading this did that, this would be a non issue. aliasd·U·T 07:39, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, U.T., I'm not sure that adding the article to the watchlist would stop it. As far as I know, there are no rules about forming a tag-team to avoid 3RR, as long as each editor doesn't make more than 3 reverts. There also appear to be no rules enforced to make a deleting editor (who deletes cited information and deletes the references) initiate a discussion topic to discuss the deletion. Hotbed political articles almost need to be a special category of article where special rules apply. Then again, it probably wouldn't hurt the regular Wiki articles if deleted paragraphs and their references are moved to a discussion page.Lester2 23:34, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
It works itself out. As for tag-teams, I'm often on the short end of the 3RR stick when I can't find anybody willing to support my wacky views. If the thing turns into a real edit war, 3 reverts each side each day each week, then other editors step in to find a conclusion, and then the admins wade in with baseball bats and in some cases, the ArbCom is pissed off enough to nuke the battlefield.
My problem with the John Howard article (or any other high traffic political article) is that you get fundamentalists who want to tinker and nibble and spin and slant until the article precisely reflects their own political position and all other views are downgraded to irrelevance. It's a never-ending process, really, and once one warrior is exhausted or bludgeoned to death, along comes another who has exactly the same unlimited internet access and time.
Now I realise that anybody who's been around for a while will smile and say, hey, I know someone like that. --Pete 00:22, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
G'day Pete. Rather than being "on the short end of the 3RR", as you say, don't you think it would be a good idea for everyone who deletes referenced content to (at the least) move that content to the talk page? I think this would help stop edit wars, as the content is not just annihilated and it can be viewed and discussed by other editors. Like it says in the Wikipedia guidelines Avoiding Common Mistakes, information that is factual and referenced is still 'useful information' (even if people want to debate its noteworthyness). As those guidelines suggest, that information can often be used elsewhere, in expanded sub-articles on the same topic. I wish those guidelines were actually rules, and were enforced. Whatever anyone's political viewpoint, all cited information takes a lot of work. I don't like to see it just vapourised. It's kind of indignant when the deleting editor writes nothing else but 'nn' in the edit summary.Lester2 04:07, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
G'tag Lester! Nothing is ever lost - just trawl back through the history and every previous version reappears as if by magic. You can even edit previous versions. --Pete 04:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I still maintain that the watchlist is the solution to all this. If you become another set of eyes on the article in question, you are addressing your concerns there, just as anyone on the other side of the fence to you would be doing the same. If you are concerned that you will be outnumbered by people with a different view, than mabye you are the baddie! aliasd·U·T 04:31, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
But, U.T, you're saying that whichever side manages to round up the most people for an edit war wins. What about all those people who were patiently discussing the subject for 2 weeks before "the deleter" arrived?Lester2 12:30, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

<--- moving back Lester I think your comment does a disservice to the majority of editors who are able to reasonably discuss an issue reach a resolution, its these editors that prevail over time because the extreme POV editors arent normally long term editors. Sometimes it better let an issue slide, let the discussion settle and revisit it when the extremist element have lost interest. Gnangarra 13:32, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

People are always going to tweak articles. Of course, that's how Wiki works. People are also going to remove large chunks of cited information, too. My only wish is that when chunks of info with citations are deleted, that it could be done in the manner that Wikipedia recommends, but doesn't enforce. I hope nobody takes that general suggestion as a criticism of their work. Cheers, Lester2 01:45, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation & APEC Australia 2007

Please add this to your watchlists, espec. over the next week or so. —Moondyne 09:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Hailstorm in Sydney during 1999

I'm currently writing about this storm, which caused $1.7 billion damage. If anyone has any photos they could upload, that'd be great. Government agencies can't give me much, unfortunately. If you could upload any form of photo of this event or the aftermath, I'd be extremely grateful. Cheers, Daniel 07:30, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Moree, New South Wales

There is a little bit of a revert war going on there regarding the Freedom Ride in the 1960s. Those with more knowledge and interest than I may be able to come up with a reasonable resolution. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 13:51, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Clontarf, Queensland

Could some of you guys weigh in (nicely) one way or the other here? I have had several disagreements with another editor on this article, and am being accused of WP:OWN. Normally I would dismiss this sort of thing, but the other editor has lots of good contributions and is in good standing. I think ideally I would like to step back from this for a while and allow the community to sort out the dispute. aliasd·U·T 01:12, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

OR article on Newtown Graffiti

I'd like to bring Newtown_area_graffiti_and_street_art to the AWNB's attention. A lot of it strikes me as OR as an essay on art in Newtown at best and a show-off page of someone's graffiti at worst; but the mural history of Newtown is quite significant, and there is probably some things worth keeping; it's also (somewhat) referenced, which is rare for an OR article. Any suggestions on which parts to keep and delete? I wouldn't go slapping an AFD tag on it yet - I think some discussion is warranted first. JRG 08:20, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me to be a reasonably comprehensive article that should grow to be even more compliant with policy of it's own accord. aliasd·U·T 14:25, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree with JRG; it's a primary "research" document; probably written by someone involved in the scene. If someone can find some secondary sources (maybe the Lonley Planet Guide to Sydeny says that there is great street art in Newtown?) it could be merged into the suburb article - and the images moved to the commons and linked as galleries. Raise the OR issue and/or send it to afd. --Peta 14:33, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I was in Sydney over the weekend, and at Kinokuniya they were promoting a new book on Australian graffiti - this one. I don't remember if Newtown was mentioned, but it's a likely source. Confusing Manifestation 02:05, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Peter Costello is new ACOTF

Julia Gillard was ACOTF from 19 August 2007 to 2 September 2007

  • About 5 serious editors and several vandals and vandal fighters made a total of 31 edits
  • The article increased from 9,560 bytes to 11,399 bytes
  • See how it changed

The new ACOTF is another federal politician, Peter Costello, from the government side of the house. The article has been protected for over a week due to vandalism. It is now unprotected for the collaboration, so as well as improving the article, could readers of this noticeboard also please assist to ensure the article does not actually get worse. Thanks. --Scott Davis Talk 14:22, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Wow, didn't take Crikey long to notice... In yesterday's edition:
Wikipedia has now nominated the Peter Costello article as their Australian Collaboration of the Fortnight. "Please help improve it to featured article standard," they ask. Anyone at PM&C want to lend a hand? Woof.
Addendum: As of just now, Costello's Wikipedia page includes:
  • "In Australia Peter Costello is affectionately known as "captain smirk" by the media and popular comedy teams such as the chaser a satirical news and political programme. It is of common knowledge that this Wikipedia entry has been edited by the government to attempt to remove this nickname from popular usage in an effort to withhold incredibly vital information from the public during the election season."
No doubt it will be changed shortly.
The article also has a piece regarding the IP addresses, basically making the case that it couldn't be a randomly assigned IP and had to be the PM's office as that's where it is assigned to. Orderinchaos 22:56, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Looks like we need some more ACOTF entries. JRG 00:36, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

PC Authority magazine article

I noticed in the magazine stand today that PC Authority has a 4-page or so article about the inner workings of Wikipedia. (They use Sanger's phrase "broken beyond repair" on the cover.) They also do some "expert comparing" with Brittanica etc. If anybody picks it up would they mind posting the cliff's notes here? :) --pfctdayelise (talk) 11:13, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The blurb at http://www.pcauthority.com.au/magazine.aspx states Wikipedia is becoming the de facto fountain of knowledge for the online world. But can we trust it? Stuart Andrews investigates its custodians and uncovers serious infighting which could undermine the entire resource. We also ask top experts to compare it to the old-school encyclopaedias from Microsoft and Britannica to find out which is best.--Golden Wattle talk 23:36, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
The magazine has a link to an article dated April 2007 about "broken beyond repair" [16]. It makes reference to the Essjay controversy for which they had a separate article in March [17]--Golden Wattle talk 23:46, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Our 2 millionth article got a note on ABC this morning - [18] Orderinchaos 03:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Susepct Portugal edits

Hi folks... User:209.183.189.10 has made some suspect edits to Australian suburb articles. They all appear to be increasing the prominence of the Portuguese community, in some cases replacing ethnicities (e.g. Greek) with "Portuguese". Can some people who are familiar with these suburbs please take a look? Thanks! - Borofkin 01:26, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

This IP is also editing as User:122.148.153.53. It all just seems to be strange WP:CRUFT. Especially if it is replacing other content. I am reverting when I see it. aliasd·U·T 02:09, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Nationalism... gotta love it. Orderinchaos 04:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello Aussies, can someone throw light on this please

I have just uploaded Image:Aborigine.rubbing.sticks.jpg‎ which may be useful in Australian/Aborigine articles. A friend who owns them says he was told they had some sort of ceremonial significance, but he couldn't elaborate. They are obviously petrified wood, natural finish, very heavy, and have deep rub marks which can particularly be seen in the bottom stick. It would have quite a few years to create such an indentation if it was made by a thumb. Are they some sort of ceremonial worry beads, or somesuch? I had a cruise around google but no luck. Cheers. Moriori 09:01, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Aborigine.rubbing.sticks.jpg

Australian collaboration of the fortnight

Mateship has been selected as the new Australian collaboration of the fortnight.

Peter Costello was ACOTF from 2 September 2007 to 16 September 2007

  • many contributors made 109 edits, including vandalism and its reversion
  • The article increased from 12,492 bytes to 16,273 bytes - 1/3 longer
  • See how it changed

Most of the remaining nominations will time out soon if they do not get more votes. --Scott Davis Talk 11:46, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

GA delistings

There seems to have been a sweeping review of GA class Australian geographical articles overnight. This has resulted in the Adelaide, Perth and Sydney articles being removed from the GA list and a review of Melbourne and Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, with "improvements" to be made within 7 days on threat of delisting. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 21:25, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

To be honest I think the Perth one was always going to go back down, it's symptomatic of the fact it's sporadically added to by new users and few of us have the time to look at it. I wouldn't doubt the other three capitals mentioned are in the same boat. It's unfortunate that it's come to our attention by means of watchlist without any warning, but looking at the project that made the changes, it does seem at least that they're trying to make GA a more consistent(ly high) branding, perhaps in response to criticism that it has been overly arbitrary to date. Orderinchaos 23:14, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
I have listed Sydney at ACOTF and will list the other cities over the next few months. The capital cities deserve at least GA quality articles, FA if possible. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 00:39, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Indeed. The main problem with Perth's one is a lack of focus and an accumulation of clutter and images. I think if it was to be worked on, those doing so would need to try and get a big picture plan happening. Orderinchaos 00:48, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Note also though that the review is confirming GA status for some articles, eg Riverina, Cullacabardee, Western Australia, Palm Island, Queensland and St Kilda, South Australia :-) --Golden Wattle talk 00:58, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Basically all the recentish ones. :) Orderinchaos 01:50, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Can someone list all of the articles affected? I notice Summer Hill, New South Wales got delisted - it's a good article but was promoted before inline citations became a necessity. Additionally, the reviewers need to be told to give more helpful summaries on why the articles were delisted - simply saying "every statement that is likely to be challenged needs an inline citation" is not very helpful for those who want the article(s) to remain GAs. JRG 05:57, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

In all fairness four of the delisted articles I've so far looked at need a new improvement drive to get them up to scratch. One or two, even looking at the version that made GA, I'm not sure that I'd have made the same call as the initial promoter. In general standards have improved a lot - I note all of our 2007 GAs have survived. Orderinchaos 06:33, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Good_articles/Project_quality_task_force/Sweeps is a progress report. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:01, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force/Sweeps explains the process and list Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force/Sweeps the reviewers and the article they have reviewed. Gnangarra 06:03, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

List of rivers of Australia

In my travels I found this list - List of rivers of Australia. The list appears to be nothing but a list, without any context, and could be easily covered by the Category:Rivers of Australia but before I nominate it for deletion, I thought I should see if it actually was of any continuing use at this stage. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 05:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's still useful - if converted to a table and updated with contextual information, it could certainly serve more use than a category. Dihydrogen Monoxide (H2O) 06:17, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps move it to a subpage of the current todo lists? There's a lot of red links there. -- Longhair\talk 06:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be better fixed up than deleted. There's plenty of potential for it to be a useful list. Rebecca 06:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

this is a very interesting collection. I would be happy to help with this one. Stellar 07:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
This brings back memories of the category/list issues earlier in the year - in this case I would argue for keeping the list if there are willing helpers SatuSuro 07:09, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Agree with the above as to keeping this- the list is maintainable (it's very unlikely there will be any more rivers created in the next while) and so could serve to be a better article than just what a category would do. How about we add some images and turn it into a good article. JRG 08:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Let's get to work then! Dihydrogen Monoxide (H2O) 08:13, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
also List of rivers of France is done by the sea the rivers flow into - I think it shoudl be a reasonably straightforward model to emulate--Golden Wattle talk 09:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Something along these lines I assume - Rivers of New South Wales. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 09:54, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes - noting that the see also section for that article says List of rivers of Australia for an alphabetical listing including rivers in other Australian states which gives some context on how the article was intended as part of the series --Golden Wattle talk 10:01, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Transfield POV editing Lane Cove Tunnel

Hmm. Just spotted this rather blatant POV change to the article about the Lane Cove Tunnel, where reference to traffic funnelling was removed and replaced by the positive spin of improved public transport due to 24-hour bus lanes... While I was composing a commment for the article's talk page, I did a traceroute on the IP, which returned "Transfield Services" as the owner of the IP. Seems like a probable conflict of interest issue that might need watching. --Athol Mullen 03:09, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Transfield have been very heavily connected to tjh civil construction efforts, so if anyone wants to confirm there is a Transfield - TJH connection, yes it's there, and it's strong.... aliasd·U·T 05:57, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Athol - email the Sydney Morning Herald with the relevant pages. They may be interested. JRG 05:59, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Most of the diff looks good though, I don't think this is a deliberate attempt by Transfield to gloss the WP article, I think this was a good faith contribution by some office worker somewhere that was a bit POV due to their connection to the project. They say, nobody can be totally NPOV. aliasd·U·T 06:05, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
It should be noted, however I can't maintain NPOV on Transfield, TJH, etc matters either, although I try. aliasd·U·T 14:11, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
We've all got our biases and COIs here and there, as long as we can put them aside when editing an article, then there's no problem. For those I think there's likely to be a problem on for myself, I simply don't edit them. Orderinchaos 16:31, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Southern or Indian Ocean

There seems to have been a flurry of editing this morning to move the south coast of Australia from the Southern Ocean to the Indian Ocean in a number of articles, as some other countries say the Southern Ocean is only further south. I've changed a couple back (eg Murray River), but thought I should check whether other Australians think the south coast is on the Indian or the Southern Ocean? --Scott Davis Talk 09:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

You can see here [19] that Southern Ocean has been officially gazetted as the name of the sea off the coast of WA and TAS at the very least... so I would suggest it should stay in as the official body of water to the south (as far as the Australian official source goes). Furthermore, the Southern Ocean article itself makes mention of the sea being "defined also to include the entire body of water between Antarctica and the south coasts of Australia and New Zealand". PalawanOz 12:50, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
The most discussion is now at Talk:Australia#Ocean_names. I don't know how to proceed. --Scott Davis Talk 10:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

more opinions needed on recent merge

Could a few more people please comment at Talk:South Australian food and drink about the recent (disputed by a primary author) merge of South Australian food and drink into Cuisine of Australia? The source appears to have a wider scope than the target, which is now way out of balance with a focus on a single state, but on industry and economics, not cuisine. --Scott Davis Talk 12:19, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia Australia

Hello,

Discussion is crawling towards action WRT forming Wikimedia Australia. Victoria is looking like the likely state of incorporation so if you live around here please get involved, we would love to hear from you. We will probably have a meeting on Wednesday 3rd October and after that I would like to try and have 4-6 week meetings in Melbourne (not just for Wikimedia Australia stuff, but general meetup stuff too).

I would also like to try and get us to organise a Wikimania Australasia for early 2009 in Canberra. :) So if anything of this sounds interesting please join us on the mailing list and get involved. :) --pfctdayelise (talk) 12:37, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Qian Xun Xue aka Pumpkin

This article is up for deletion at Articles for deletion. Various people have voted to delete on the grounds that they haven't heard of it amongst other reasons. In my view, this story will be of ongoing interest and has dominated the media for the best part of a week. We should have something on her even if it is in an article on her Dad who seems to have ongoing notability. Capitalistroadster 03:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

After the father is convicted, he could be added to the List of Australian criminals. --Lester2 07:26, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
He's not really Australian though. Recurring dreams 07:36, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
True, he seems to be a Chinese-born New Zealander hiding in America. The only bit relating to Australia is the abandonment of the girl. Orderinchaos 08:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't think the father is notable, but the girl (or the case) seriously deserves an article - it's been huge news in the last week. AfD was closed with the verdict "keep with the consideration of focus on the incident, rather than the person herself." I suppose at its new location, it no longer violates WP:BLP1E, since it discusses the case rather then the person, so it should be kept. Not sure where this comment is going, but hey! Dihydrogen Monoxide (H2O) 11:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Perception of Wikipedia as a good example of an online community

A SMH article today gives the Wikipedia community a good rap: in Sack the net nanny, talk to your kids "author and academic" Howard Rheingold (who is speaking next week at education.au's national seminar series in Melbourne) says Wikipedia and open source software are some of the best examples of online communities. It is nice to think that the effort we put into for example WP:NPA and WP:AGF is perceived well and that despite, on the flip side, the lack of censorship. I think it is a relatively tough environment for all in the real-world community, as opposed to adults with healthy levels of self-esteem but perhaps not ...--Golden Wattle talk 00:17, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Today's article didn't get as much exposure as last month's Sydney Morning Herald headlines --Lester2 04:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Both WIkipedia and OSS are great places for young people to grow and learn. I am often amazed at some amazing contributions that are coming from young people in both arenas. aliasd·U·T 04:38, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Melbourne Meetup #7: Wednesday 3rd October

Melbourne Meetup
See also: Australian events listed at Wikimedia.org.au (or on Facebook)

See Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne 7 for more details. Please come!

Agenda: Wikimedia Australia

--pfctdayelise (talk) 12:25, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

North Bundy, New South Wales

the area around North Bundy homestead

User:Mclauc1999 contributed the above article yesterday. I suspect that this is a hoax but I am not entirely sure. I asked the editor for more information, especially given the co-ordinates given put the town in the middle of the nowhere in the Hay Plain. However, I won't be getting a reply as the editor has been blocked indefinitely for continued copyright violations regarding images.

Unless someone else can confirm this place exists, I intend nominating this article for deletion. The same applies to Border Downs, New South Wales, by the same author. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 00:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I use http://www.ga.gov.au/map/names/ to check authenticity - I would need to be thoroughly convinced from multiple reliable sources it it wasn't otherwise in the Austrlaian Gazeteer. There is a place called Border Downs in NSW but it is just a homestead [20]. The coordiantes match. Not a hoax but whether notable enough for an article ? There is no North Bundy [21] but there are several places called Bundy [22] - the coordinates of none of the various places called Bundy line up with those in the article. I have thus tagged it as a hoax.--Golden Wattle talk 01:42, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick response and the link to the gazetteer. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 02:19, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
"North Bundy" appears to be a property or homestead near Booroorban, New South Wales as per these obscure sources:[23][24] Melburnian 04:20, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
A homestead makes much more sense and I note the article has now been deleted a hoax. I would be surprised if there was a town around there as the surrounding area looks like this picture-- Mattinbgn\ talk 05:10, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Why did you delete it if it is a genuine homestead? Why not merge to the surrounding area? JRG 23:56, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I didn't delete it nor did I tag it for deletion. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 00:02, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Sorry - I thought you had done it - but the question still stands - why did someone delete it if it is not a hoax? JRG 00:06, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
I tagged it a hoax since I could not find it in the gazeteer as per above - I hadn't seen until this morning Melburnian's research. Somebody else deleted on the basis of my tag. While a homestead now appears to be possibly real, I would next have it deleted as totally not notable - ie not even in the gazeteer. A redirect won't answer - we do not include individual homesteads unless they are notable or have I missed something - I could otherwise create a redirect from my street to the suburb I live in or even better street and house number ? --Golden Wattle talk 00:11, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, agree with GW, I couldn't find the slightest inkling of notability. --Melburnian 00:58, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Homesteads are not "places" in the sense that towns, villages, suburbs and localities are. They would have to satisfy notability in their own right. Orderinchaos 04:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Candidates for Deletion

The updating of the listing of Candidates for Deletion by bot seems to have broken down.Grahamec 07:12, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

The issue of David Hicks and libel

I have some concerns about the David Hicks article that some parts might be libelous. I think it's an article where extreme care must be taken when writing. Any claims and counter-claims about Hicks should not be stated as fact, but instead be attributed to the person or organisation that made the claim.

For example, "the US government said (x-fact)", and "protesters said (y-fact)", and "his father said (z-fact)".

I think the danger is when Wikipedia, an encyclopedia, uses someone's quote to reference a fact, when it is not a fact at all but someone's impression of how it was. That's why I think all statements and claims about Hicks should be clearly attributed (in the actual text) to show who made that claim.

That way, both sides can be put forward safely, by protecting Wikipedia from liability by attributing the claim to someone else. As it stands now, my personal opinion is that some of the text is risky. In late Decemeber, David Hicks will be released from prison and hopefully won't be mad at what he reads.--Lester2 04:28, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Seems like a reasonable solution. ~ Sebi [talk] 01:48, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Re: "protecting Wikipedia from liability by attributing the claim to someone else". Attribution does not protect the publisher where a falsehood has been published. Many newspapers have been sued successfully for re-stating someone else's position, subsequently proven to be false or malicious. I guess that's why WP:LIVING is so rigorous. WWGB 02:16, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Is that correct? That attributing a claim to someone else doesn't solve liability issues? I thought if we said something like "US military prosecutors alleged that David Hicks was involved in (insert heinous act here)", then that removed the defamation risk to Wikipedia, because the claim is attributed to someone else (eg "US prosecutors").--Lester2 20:56, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I think it comes back to WP:NPOV - we won't report everything that's said, but it may be necessary to report if it has an impact on the situation. When we do, we have to be careful how or in what terms we report it, so as not to unduly slant the article. That goes for pretty much any controversial topic. An interesting comparison is if or how or where we would report criticism of George Bush by Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Orderinchaos 21:22, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:PD-art-life-50-aus

Template:PD-art-life-50-aus has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Iamunknown 16:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

WP:AUS assessment subpages

Have started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australia#Assessment_subpages - advertising here as I realise not everyone has that page watchlisted. It relates to /Disputes and /Requests being abandoned at the present time. Orderinchaos 16:11, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Appropriate categorisation - should there be 'Category:Schools in city'

moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australia

User:Twenty Years has been removing the Category:Schools in Adelaide from Adelaide schools stating that he is 'basically bringing SA schools into line with all other school categorisations in Australia' before CFD, however there are a number of other school*city categories (e.g., Category:Schools in Sydney & Category:Schools in Melbourne), so there is an issue for other WPs - schools, Education in Australia and the WP for each Australian city. What thoughts do other people have. -- Paul foord 13:53, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Sydney and Melbourne are unique cases in Australia - I'm from Perth and note there's no "Schools in Perth" category, schools have historically been in the "WA" category. Orderinchaos 15:41, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
BTW this is a fairly under-read page, WP:AWNB would be a better forum. Orderinchaos 15:42, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Other 'special cases' Category:Schools in Brisbane & Category:Schools in Hobart it seems Perth & Darwin are the exception. Paul foord 01:25, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Just because they exist doesn't mean that they should. I was arguing that Sydney and Melbourne are useful because of their size. Also, the Hobart category is empty for 4 days and awaiting deletion has been deleted. Orderinchaos 03:56, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
  • My thoughts are that the category breakdown between main metro areas and the rest of the state are a useful categorisation. Like categorising between gender specific, public/private, the various local associations, religious, teaching specialties or residencies. A person looking into education in SA would benefit knowing if the school has the resources of a metro area or is subject to the isolation of a country town and being able to easily find a useful comparision. Gnangarra 01:42, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
The issue is that it articles are becoming over categorised, with many schools that are in Schools In City, are also in Schools in state/territory, which is creating a mss of categories at the bottom of article pages. There may be a case for NSW and Vic to have their own city categories for Syd and Melb respectively, but other than that, definately not. Twenty Years 07:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Thats just a lack of house keeping, metro schools should be removed from the state cat as metro would be a subcat of that anyway. Gnangarra 07:51, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I would argue then that there's a case for a "Rural and regional schools in South Australia" category - I doubt it would survive though, as there isn't too many notable schools outside of Adelaide in SA. Orderinchaos 11:59, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't remember these CFDs being listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Australia#Australia-related_Categories_for_Discussion, what about Wikipedia:Category deletion policy and the action taken is not consistent with 'Unless the change is non-controversial (such as vandalism or a duplicate), please do not remove the category from pages before the community has made a decision' -- Paul foord 08:12, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
What do you think should happen then? Should we have Melb and Syd, or do you want to create one for all cities in Australia? The only ones i can see that would support it would be Syd and Melb. Twenty Years 09:45, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
They weren't CfD's, and there's no requirement to list at CfD. Some things are process for process's sake, other things can be done relatively easily by the project. The instruction you quote relates solely to categories which are under discussion for merge/delete. Orderinchaos 10:43, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, now I understand, so Twenty Years empties them & Orderinchaos then deletes them with no discussion, so it seems I should start adding the Adelaide ones Twenty Years removed back in. The only ones originally missing were Perth & Darwin with maybe Alice Springs. Paul foord 11:43, 7 October 2007 (UTC) Paul foord 11:40, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

According to WP:CSD, categories that are empty after 4 days can (and should) be removed. I do note you created some of the categories a year or two ago, but needs change over time, and the entire WikiProject (Australia) is in a state of massive reorganisation and realignment at the moment to reflect where things are at presently. Some changes I made that time ago have been revisited by others since. We don't own articles or categories, what is best for the project should be paramount always, and an edit war over categories is in nobody's interests. Orderinchaos 11:58, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I was commenting on the observed process and the lack of consultation regarding the change, if my comment was read as an attack, I apologise, but articles have been removed from the schools*cities categories typically with a very bland edit summary of 'cat fix', whereas the change seems more significant than the description - e.g., deleting Category:Schools in Adelaide and inserting Category:High schools in South Australia[25], Category:Schools in Hobart and inserting Category:High schools in Tasmania[26] appears to be more than a 'cat fix' -- Paul foord 12:29, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
That was purely because i was categorising articles via public/private, high. It wasnt simply relacing schools in adelaide with high schools in adelaide as you have stated. Twenty Years 12:37, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I did not write what you say. -- Paul foord 12:48, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I do not own the categories, I created them as I saw other cities had these and to add to consistency - which has been touted as a value. -- Paul foord 12:32, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I started this discussion to try to gain consensus and avoid edit warring - stop imputing motive! Paul foord 12:34, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Paul, i think the issue here is that the larger states (NSW and Vic) have alot of large regional centers, which will have alot of schools, so those states should have categories for their city and their state as a whole. Whilst in the smaller states, like SA and WA, we dont have many large regional centres, so we can get away with just having a state category. Twenty Years 12:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I was going solely off the "it seems I should start adding" sentence. If this was not your meaning, I apologise and retract. Orderinchaos 12:37, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
But you wrote categories empty for four days can be deleted. Apart from Brighton Secondary School (I corrected the catehory from private and readded Adelaide) the Adelaide category would be empty and deleted. Paul foord 12:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I just looked at the Category:Schools in Adelaide and noticed that Category:Education in Adelaide had been removed, I reverted the removal - they would appear to go together, also it fits the the Category:Education by city or town higher level cat Paul foord 12:59, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Twenty Years just removed the Category:Schools in Adelaide from Brighton Secondary School - explain how that is 'good faith'. Paul foord 13:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
In no way, shape or form have i violated WP:AGF. Ive now provided a summary of my edit on the talk page. If you noticed my edit summary on the mainpage you will have noticed that i said it was redundant. Twenty Years 14:07, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
You have a different understanding of redundant! Paul foord 20:49, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Education in Adelaide

User:Twenty Years depopulated Category:Schools in Adelaide which had been created to tidy Category:Education in Adelaide. The schools removed should have been recategorised upwards into Category:Education in Adelaide, or is it proposed that this category also be depopulated ready for deletion without referral for CfD? Paul foord 20:49, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The schools have been moved into sub-categories of Category:Education in South Australia. We do not need to go to CfD, this category has been empty for four days, it can be speedily deleted (see CSD C1). I fail to see why you are making such a big issue over deleting an empty category. Twenty Years 08:07, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
What I don't understand here - SA is actually the best case in the entire country for one category, as in school and institutional terms one could almost say they are equivalent. (WA's pretty much the same, and TAS is small enough to not need to worry about the situation). Orderinchaos 10:22, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Australian FA maintenance

Yesterday I located an instant prose counting tool, so I used it to count the prose in all Australian FAs. Then I counted how many inline refs (including repeated usage) and took the ratio of references to size, to get the inline ref density. Some of the articles are in a weak state in terms of inline references, which are one of the criteria for FA. It is also the criteria which is used the most to get rid of FAs, so a drive to improve the referencing might save work down the track in terms of avoiding FAR paperwork. The full list is at User:Blnguyen/AusFA. Thanks, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:22, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Very cool! but, it doesn't really show if the right things are referenced, if a article has its controversial stuff and facts referenced by a dozen or so great sources, thats fine! That being said, how did we get a FA promotion with 2 REFERENCES and NO INLINE CITES?!?!! aliasd·U·T 16:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Probably a very long time ago when FA standards were much lower than today's. Orderinchaos 16:22, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Australian film categories

It appears the Australian project film categories have been re-arranged without prior talk or discussion or any form of warning - it would be interesting to see why and how such a process occurred - this note will be sent to the re-arrangers to request a civil and full explanation as to how such a process is done without actually going through a noticeboard first - specially when the creator of the categories is unavailable for comment: - SatuSuro 14:04, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Removed from SatuSuro talk page to here -

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films/Categorization.
Problem still exists - the issue was brought up here - and has not been clearly resolved in the ensuing activities:

As there is an issue of how a category of Austraian xxx which falls in the ambit of another project - it would be very good if other Australian editors who have experience in inter-project issues like this make any suggestions here.

I for one do not endorse the continued reversions from either side - however there needs to be a forum/location where discussion can precede reversion. No talk - no action - however it has happened - and the need for clear communication between projects is still as important to resolve this one as when I raised the issue last night. Please keep the discussion centralised and off personal talk pages as much as possible - thanks SatuSuro 00:53, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

You might want to bring this to WP:COUNCIL - it's one of their primary functions, after all. :) Girolamo Savonarola 03:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Having been involved in a few others - I'd have to trawl some archive for a few other examples where inter project issues never really were resolved in a way that would suggest than any project has either a policy or practice that might see such issues resolved either by a third party or by reaching concensus amicably - thanks for the tip - cheers SatuSuro 10:29, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Why hasn't this been sorted yet? As it is the Australian category is a messThe Wild West guy 19:02, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what's happening - I'm not one of the regular film editors. It doesn't help that for many Australian university and other students this is the start of exam period. Orderinchaos 03:54, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
As the editor who started this bunfight, I guess I'd better reply here to bring those up to speed wondering what all the fuss is about. To summarise what happened, I expanded the Australian films category to sort Australian films by genre. Some preferred the new category sorting; a lot didn't. At the time I didn't see any problem and still don't.
We currently sort Australian people, Australian albums, Australian musicians and much more Australian content in a similar fashion, but the sorting in this instance ran up against long established standards over at WikiProject Films. Where we go from here I guess hasn't been discussed. I'm happy to revert my "trillion" edits if that's what the community wants. I still don't agree with lumping all films into one master category by nationality, but I'm only one lone voice, and I guess from here the remainder of the wiki world annoyed by the sorting is either waiting for my reverts or deciding if it's worth debating to see what comes of it all. -- Longhair\talk 09:29, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for rescoping Gold Coast WikiProject

I've made two alternative proposals for rescoping the essentially defunct WikiProject Gold Coast to cover either South East Queensland or all of Queensland, excluding the area presently covered by WikiProject Brisbane. Any ideas or thoughts would be welcomed on the project's talk page. Orderinchaos 22:39, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Just to update this board - the end resolution was to create WikiProject Queensland for all areas outside the Brisbane City Council area, and all interested are welcome to join and help us out :) Orderinchaos 03:55, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Sydney Photo Request

I would post this at Wikiproject Sydney but I know more people read this. Does anyone have access to a photo (or to get a photo) of Hoxton Park Airport? I believe the airport is due to close early next year and it would be good to get a photo before that happens. Also, there's a request regarding Summer Hill at the WikiProject. JRG 08:47, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

The {{reqphoto}} template is now linked to an automatically updated table at Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/BotStatistics/Photographs to track Australian photo requests. The table has also been transcluded into Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Photography for convenience. I've added the photo request template to this article's talk page. It's only early days but the bot appears to be doing its' job ok. There is some lag with the updating of the table results however that is expected to improve.
The correct usage of the {{reqphoto}} template for Australia-related photo requests is as follows,
{{reqphoto|in=Australia}} (replace the word Australia with the relevant state of city of your request). -- Longhair\talk 09:54, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

New portal

I have created the New South Wales portal, and if anyone has spare time they could use to add to the DYK and "In the news" sections, it would be great if you could help out. Any queries to the talk page. Thanks, ~ Sebi [talk] 04:59, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

We've deleted state portals before. Is this going to be notable enough? JRG 08:48, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
It might not be needed, the Victorian one redirects [27]. But I do like the layout, and think it should stay. Phgao 08:52, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I wasn't aware of the deletion, but I think there are a wide range of topics that the portal can cover; it's quite a large state (not in terms of physical size), larger than Western Australia or South Australia, which both have portals. ~ Sebi [talk] 09:08, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
One of the main problems with local portals in the past is that they quickly become stale (see here for recent past discussion on the usefulness of the WA portal). Selected articles tend to remain "selected" for months at a time, and items such as latest news stories are rarely updated (I note the SA portal doesn't relay news, avoiding this problem; the NSW news item is already a week old!). I must admit I rarely visit portals myself, but if they prove useful to some and are kept current, there's no problem with them existing as a gateway to information. -- Longhair\talk 09:14, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I'll continue to update the Selected content and the DYKs, but I don't plan on maintaining a news section, so I'll remove it. ~ Sebi [talk] 07:38, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Canberra Meetup #1

Old Parliament House


You are invited to the next Canberra Meetup
10th November 2007, 2:30pm, Old Parliament House Cafe


This box: view • talk • edit

The Canberran Wikipedians are meeting up, and it promises to be a cracker of a get-together, so come along one and all! Confusing Manifestation 12:24, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

School deletions

I see we're back to a spate of Australian school deletions. While I'm not opposed to them per se, I think it's important that we adhere to WP:LOCAL and put a mention of a school in its local area article if there isn't enough information to have a separate article on it. This should possibly use the sources from the deleted article if at all possible, unless there's copyright problems or something like that. There's generally not source problems for mentions of schools within a geographic area article. Can those participating in the deletions please remember to do this and not just leave every article with nothing in there, but give each AfD a useful outcome even if the endpoint is to delete? JRG 05:28, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Cameron Reilly

Another set of eyes, please? I wouldn't know where to start with this one (which I found while project sorting), but if he is notable, I'd imagine others here would have ideas on improvement. Orderinchaos 01:46, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

This looks like a really blatant vanity article - complete with edits from User:Cameronreilly! The related article The Podcast Network (which has also been edited by User:Cameronreilly also looks like a good candidate for deletion as there's no claim of notability and it looks like an ad. --Nick Dowling 02:06, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
I put a bio tag on the talk page. It maybe interesting in a few years time, as a historical piece on early technology (after the demise of the pod casting fad) but at present I agree with the above. Maybe it could be 'whare housed'.petedavo 02:19, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
This SMH article suggests some claim to notability - but certinaly the articleneeds to bemade more encyclopaedic - I don't think we need to know the inspiration for his children's names!--Golden Wattle talk 02:22, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

The Ashes

The Ashes has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:15, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Aaah, Blnguyen's inevitable FA sourcing issues. I know nothing about Cricket and my prose could be better, but I'll try and make some minor improvements. Dihydrogen Monoxide (H2O) 07:52, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Afds

The updating of the listing of Candidates for Deletion by bot seems to have broken down again.--Grahamec 02:10, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Note WP 1.0 bot is not working automatically either (I had to "jog" it just then for WP:QLD and it is 8 days out for most projects) - must be a more widespread problem. Orderinchaos 22:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
If these bots above are running on the Toolserver, the 8 day lag you describe corresponds with the current replication lag of approximately 8 days. I know this excessive delay caused me much confusion earlier last week. -- Longhair\talk 22:27, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
The history of Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/AfD shows that there has been no bot update since 19 September, although others including User:Chris G (human) have manually updated it occasionally. It would be better taking off the claim that it is automatically updated.--Grahamec 02:44, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

John Ilhan

Folks, it's being reported in the media that John Ilhan (Crazy John) died this morning from a suspected heart attack. May be good to watchlist those articles. Sarah 03:11, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

On the topic of Crazy John's, this is an interesting edit, considering its source. -- Mattinbgn\talk 06:02, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
What's with the source? Is it an employee? I'm also wondering whether this is going to precede the demise of the other crazy John in 5 weeks' time? :-) JRG 07:42, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
The IP belongs to Telstra. Check the edit ;) Dihydrogen Monoxide (H2O) 09:46, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Mapit template

Per this notification, there is a discussion at which it is being proposed that this template be replaced by links to the toolserver list.

Orderinchaos 22:31, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

IPA and Australian English

There has been a series of changes to the IPA rendering of the pronunciation of Australian place names. User:Kwamikagami has made changes such as this and these have been reverted by a good faith IP editor User:203.94.135.134 here. To my untrained eye, the difference seems to be that Kwamikagami is using "standard" vowels and 203.94.135.134 is reverting to the Australian vowels. There is some discussion at Help talk:IPA English pronunciation key that may be relevant. It may be worth having some position on what the pronunciation of Australian names should be. Cheers, Mattinbgn\talk 00:02, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi, thought I'd give my motivations here.
A lot of non-Australian cities are transcribed with vowel distinctions that aren't made locally. For example, the o of Los Angeles is transcribed as /ɒ/, even though the sound [ɒ] does not exist in Angelino English, or more generally in GA. (This is /phonemic/ usage versus [phonetic].) I think that it is the superior transcription, because it covers the pronunciation of more than just the locals, without being incorrect for the locals. That's because the IPA chart that's linked to the pronunciation defines /ɒ/ as the vowel of hot; both Angelinos and Londoners pronounce the o in Los Angeles the way they do the o in hot, so both are able to pronounce the transcription correctly for their dialect.
I think the same should be done for all English words and place names, so that Brits, Yanks, and Aussies can all use the same transcription, without favouring any of them. Of course, if the local pronunciation is fundamentally different from what outsiders say, then we need to list both, just as we do for, say, Paris. To that end, we can use different IPA templates, which link to different pronunciation keys: /ˈpærɪs/ for "general English" vs. IPA: [paʁi] for the local pronunciation, or if you prefer, the format /ˈpærɪs/ vs. IPA: [paʁi]. But we don't need separate RP, GA, and Oz pronunciations of Paris, since that's merely a matter of automatic adjustment to your our individual accents. kwami 00:51, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
The problem I'm finding with these new changes is that Australian English pronunciation is very different to that of American and British pronunciations. I think with pronunciation generally for everyday things the changes are fine, but when it comes to the names of places and people, it is a different story and generalising these pronunciations is bad practise. --203.94.135.134 00:40, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, if there is no usage of the name outside Australia, of if there is a fundamental difference in pronunciation. The problem is, we need to be careful that people don't try to read the transcription in their own dialect and get it completely wrong. To this end there is a {{IPAAusE}} template that should keep things clear. I'm afraid just using {{IPA}} without further elaboration could cause a lot of confusion. kwami 00:51, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
You see I still have a problem, let's use your example of "Los Angeles", where I think local pronunciation should be used, not a generalised version. I can see you are trying to make things easier, and that's commendable, but as a reader I'd like to know what the local pronunciation is (in their own dialect), not my "standard" pronunciation, because I already know that. Same for the "Paris" example, I already know what my "standard" (English) pronunciation is, so it's not necessary for the article. What I'd like to see is the local pronunication only. I do agree on the point that having separate pronunications for each dialect is unnecessary, as Paris is a French city, not an English speaking city, so I think "only" the French pronunciation should be used. Using a generalised form is really the domain of wiktionary, a dictionary, not wikipedia, an encyclopaedia.
(I also perfer using the IPA link within the "pronounced" part because the other way makes it look a bit cumbersome.) --203.94.135.134 01:36, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I see your point, but for a lot of cities we won't know the pronunciation, local or otherwise. As long as it's clear which pronunciation we're including, I don't think it matters. I'd recommend using the IPAAusE template or something like it when being specifically Australian.
As for avoiding visible "IPA" links, there are templates {{pronounced}} and {{pronEng}} which are like {{IPA2}} and {{IPAEng}} except that they display /word/ rather than /word/. I don't think there's one for {{IPAAusE}}, but we can always make one. (I'll do it if you ask on my talk page.) kwami 04:20, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Okay, we now have a {{pronAusE}} {{pron-en-au}} template which displays {{pron-en-au|like this}}. kwami 07:49, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

May I make another suggestion? The Australian English phonology article, while not overwhelming, is probably beyond the comfort range of a lot of our readers. Also, if you're using it as an IPA key, you'll be under pressure not to make it any more in-depth than it is, which might cramp its development. Why not create a simpler key in Help space, something like Help:IPA Australian English pronunciation key? For the consonants you could pretty much just copy Help:IPA English pronunciation key, and you could carry over the example words from the phonology article. It would also be nice to give an extra column for the RP equivalents, for quick conversion. It would only take two minutes to redirect the AusE templates to point to the new key. kwami 17:37, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

May I also observe that the sound in wise and Kyneton is described phonemically as /aɪ/ even by Australian publications as the Macquarie Dictionary, which gives the pronunciation of Kyneton itself as /ˈkaɪntən/, just as Kwami did. (Not even Australians all pronounce the sound the same way, after all!) Some of his other changes, which were "reverted to AusE", only changed the IPA representation by removing syllable separators, which has nothing to do with Australian or international pronunciation, just what level of detail is employed on Wikipedia. I haven't seen any of his changes that should actually be controversial. JPD (talk) 18:11, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
On this, Macquarie has been using a pronunciation standard from about fifty years ago, which was developed using Cultivated Australian accents, which are closer to RP. The pronounciation of Kyneton as /ˈkɑentən/ is closer to what is spoken by Australians today, through a much closer IPA representation of sounds, then what is represented in the Macquarie. These modern symbols were developed through studies done by Australian liguists: there is a whole discussion wrt these on the talk page at Australian English phonology article. --203.94.135.134 23:52, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Agreed with this view. Orderinchaos 21:50, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
My impression is that Aussie dictionaries maintained an unnaturally close connection to RP for some time, and that recent dictionaries are closer to actual pronunciation. kwami 18:42, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the dictionaries used today are in fact *not* closer to the pronunciation of today, they still remain unnaturally close to RP and are closer to the pronunciation (as mentioned above) of about fifty years ago. --203.94.135.134 23:52, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Surely the main point is that both WP and the dictionaries are trying to provide a general phonemic description. While Australian broad, general and cultivated accents are growing closer to each other, there is no single thing that "is spoken by Australians today", and whatever we use isn't going to be a phonetic transcription for many Australians. The acceptability of the /aɪ/ in the context of Australian dictionaries may be debatable, but surely in this international context it is even more acceptable. At any rate, talk about pronunciation of 50 years ago doesn't at all explain the incorrect depiction of syllable separators as an Aus/non-Aus issue. JPD (talk) 10:01, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you are right, that both WP and the dictionaries are *trying* to provide a phonemic description. The problem is when people try to mistakenly apply these outdated phonemic transcriptions — assuming they represent their own dialect, as I have — to other languages or dialects. The acceptability of /aɪ/ in an generalisation of international pronunciation is probably OK, as just a representation of that sound, eventhough the correct IPA symbols have not been used. I think it should also be realised that the use of /ɑe/ is also a phonemic representaion (developed by liguists) of how the majority of Australians pronounce this diphthong. I assumed the depiction, whether it is right or wrong, of syllable separators was to make reading the transcriptions easier by breaking up the word, especially for people who found it confusing when reading those unfamiliar characters all squashed together. --203.94.135.134 23:14, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I realise that both /aɪ/ and /ɑe/ are phonemic representations. My point is that given this, saying one is more correct than the other is not necessarily helpful. The point is not to analyse how the diphthong phoneme is pronounced by the majority of Australians or any other English speakers, but to easily identify which phoneme it is.
My point about syllable separators is that they are a completely separate issue. I am not claiming that they have been incorrectly depicted - I actually think they are a good idea. What is incorrect is your description of their reinsertion as "Australian English IPA". JPD (talk) 09:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
OK, I think I see your point. As for the syllable separators, I'm not sure what you mean? What was wrong with the placement of the separator; Isn't 'Sydney' two syllables? --203.94.135.134 22:59, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Aboriginal groups - request

I am currently going through the Riverina article in an attempt to clean up the redlinks in it. There are more that a few of these redlinks that relate to Aboriginal groups. I know very little about these groups and therefore have no idea about whether these articles are ever likely to be created, if these links are using alternate spellings or transliterations or if they are sub groups of larger groups that can be redirected.

The groups are the Nari-Nari, Mudi-Mudi, Gurendji, Yida-Yida, Baraba-Baraba, Wamba-Wamba, Wadi-Wadi and Dadi-Dadi communities. Any help that others can give or some idea about where I can look (I live in a rural area so online sources are more accessable) to help clean up these redlinks. Cheers, Mattinbgn\talk 04:35, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

There are a few but, unfortunately, your best bet is to see if you can source a copy of N.B. Tindale's 1974 book, "Aboriginal Tribes of Australia" or Alfred William Howitt's 1904 work "The Native Tribes of South-east Australia" . Some information online from the SA museum, some specifically on the Nari-Nari . . . and should be the same on many of the other communities. I do note though that I cannot find all of these on the SA museum site. If they arn't there then perhaps they should be just unwikilinked - 09:36, 24 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Peripitus (talk • contribs)
Thanks. As you can probably tell, I am not so much interested in creating articles for these so much as seeing if the links can be redirected or removed. The Nari-Nari site is a great start. Cheers, Mattinbgn\talk 10:00, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Census Data

The 2nd release census data was released by the ABS today. This includes data for Urban Centre/Localities (UCL) rather than by state suburb. The new data can be found here. -- Mattinbgn\talk 09:51, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Excellent! This will be more useful for country towns (the state suburbs are still provided but we should only be using them for actual localities now) We also finally have labour stats. I've fixed Census 2006 AUS for dates and, in one case, a link. Orderinchaos 17:21, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Security Industry Registry

I have just created this article when it has been taken to AFD. Can people help. ExtraDry —Preceding comment was added at 21:34, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Sydney has replaced Norfolk Island

Norfolk Island was Australian collaboration of the fortnight from 30 September 2007 to 14 October 2007

  • 7 contributors made 22 edits
  • The article increased from 42,694 bytes to 45,224 bytes
  • See how it changed

The new ACOTF is Sydney, which was nominated as it recently lost good article status. Please help to improve it in any way you can. --Scott Davis Talk 13:56, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Darn - I didn't even know it had become ACOTF. Oh well. JRG 08:45, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Sorry - real life has been intruding rather heavily on my Wikipedia editing lately, and that will likely continue for most of the rest of the year, I think. That was the only one I've missed announcing here though, I think. I suggest watchlisting Template:Collab-australian if you want to make sure you notice. Amongst other places, that appears in the To Do list on this page. --Scott Davis Talk 12:42, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Norfolk Island

In the Template:AustralianPremiers, I think Norfolk Island and its chief minister should be included in this list, as it is an Australian state or territory with a Chief Minister, and it is the only one not on the list - it's inaccurate to have a list of parliaments of self-governing territories with one missing. Can I have some discussion on this (here please)? I'm yet to see any arguments in favour of why we shouldn't have them, and the discussion is being dominated by one editor - I'd prefer some more help. JRG 06:31, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Your claim that that you're "yet to see any arguments in favour of why we shouldn't have them" is rather disingenuous. Your attempts to edit the template to include Norfolk Island have been reverted on 5 occasions by 3 different editors and 2 have opposed you on Template talk:AustralianPremiers. I've posted quite a few arguments as to why it shouldn't be included. --AussieLegend 07:29, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
As I said above, the discussion is being dominated by one editor, and some help would be appreciated. Thanks. JRG 09:56, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
I tend to agree though that NF's parliament has nowhere near the power or autonomy that the NT or ACT legislative assemblies have, and putting it in a template (rather than a list or article) would confuse readers. Orderinchaos 10:21, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

We shouldn't be trying to judge this on the power, autonomy, importance, notability, etc of the various parliaments. That is a POVmine. We should simply choose the most natural and sensible scope. To my mind, "states and internal territories" is an overly complex and artificial scope. "States and territories" is much more natural. If that means Norfolk Island is included, then let it be. Hesperian 12:20, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

If one refers to the "states and territories" of Australia in a political context, they're virtually always referring to the states + the ACT and NT. I've never seen the alternative except on Wikipedia, and to stick NI in this table just makes Wikipedia look bloody silly. Rebecca 05:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Sydney has had it's time. Australia Day is the new ACOTF

Sydney was ACOTF from 14 October 2007 to 28 October 2007

  • Over 15 contributors made 101 edits
  • The article increased from 60,450 bytes to 63,937 bytes
  • See how it changed

The intent was to restore it's WP:GA status.

The new Australian Collaboration is Australia Day which was previously a collaboration early last year. Please help to improve it in any way you can. --Scott Davis Talk 12:55, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Gary Nairn

  • I and one other editor are in disagreement about Gary Nairn (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). He has stated on his talk page in reponse to my point Unfortunately I don't know how to bring it to some sort of 'jury' or open voting forum, and I'd like to spend my time editing and improving on subjects I enjoy means I can't be bothered fighting this anymore. I can only hope for a better cleanup of this in the future. - on his behalf I have brought the matter here for extra eyes to look at the topic. Can others review please?
In a way I have some sympathy with the latest editor's point of view and in other ways no. Nairn's chief of staff behaved in a way that was inappropriate, and while wikipedia might not be news, I think it inappropriate to remove this material at this time - or even to substitute the word argued for heckled, thereby toning the incident down. I did not introduce the material to the article but have provided the formatting for the in-line citation including adding the quote from ABC PM.--Golden Wattle talk 20:41, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
It seems highly relevant to me, although is something that in the shadow of time might be edited down, as things often are. If there's an argument being made of undue weight, my argument would be the piece should stay but that other bits of the article grow - we have a man who has risen to be one of the most prominent ministers in the government (albeit in a portfolio that doesn't attract a huge amount of public interest and is often uncontroversial) with an article that is about a screen long. Orderinchaos 21:31, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
Nairn's Chief of Staff's comments were extensively covered in the media and were raised repeatedly during Question Time. Moreover, as his electorate contains a large number of military personnel the comments are relevant to his bid for re-election. --Nick Dowling 09:39, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

UNSW wikipedia class project - immunology articles

As reported by SMH [28] - focussed on Wikipedia articles related to immunology.--Golden Wattle talk 04:56, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

David Pearce DRV

I have raised my concerns about the closing of this AfD at Deletion review. I have no problem with the decision just the closure process. -- Mattinbgn\talk 07:22, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Something going on there. I've commented over there as well. WWGB 08:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
The AfD has been re-opened for further debate. Let's hope for a consensus outcome this time. WWGB 10:17, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Anthony Chidiac DRV

Wasn't announced anywhere other than DRV itself so I am placing notice here - seems the AfD which concluded delete last week has been sent to DRV. See Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 November 2#Anthony_Chidiac. Orderinchaos 11:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

For info, the editors of this article have been judged to have been sockpuppets of the article's subject and all have been banned: Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Achidiac. --Nick Dowling 22:44, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Aus Portal

I'm very short for time at the moment (bah, exams), so can someone (anyone) please address the redlinks at P:AUS? I've seen portals delisted if it remains like this too long. Cheers, Daniel 04:52, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I've put in a featured article and featured image, I'm not sure I've done it right but it seems to have worked. Hopefully that will tide it over for a bit, I'll keep an eye on it. --Canley 12:08, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:Australian places

I notice that a fair number of Australian places are not tagged as part of WP:AUSPLACES. I have a couple of long and dull teleconferences coming up and am happy to tag them all while I sit through the calls. However:

  • I don't want to spam everyone's watchlists with dozens of minor tagging edits; and
  • The articles in question are usually already part of their respective State Wikiprojects. I am interested in people's views on whether the State Wikiprojects are sufficient tagging and whether also tagging them as part of the AusPlaces Wikiproject might be "WikiProject article support overkill".

Comments and suggestions welcome. If the consensus is not to tag articles as Ausplaces, I'll maybe try a start on the Sports Rorts article. Euryalus 06:41, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I am all for tagging all articles on places for AUSPLACES and the individual state projects. Each state WikiProject is wider than the places, and includes bios, organisations and other topics. Tagging them with "place=yes" allows the clear grouping of those articles. -- Mattinbgn\talk 07:51, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I've tagged about 200500 this morning. Sorry for the spam if they were on anyone's watchlist, but I tagged the edits as minor so they can easily be filtered out. Euryalus 22:41, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Talking Wiki

Hey everybody,

In a few days I'll be on my way, making a little trip around the world. I'll arrive in Australia midst december and think I'd love to "talk wiki" again with a few peeps; I shall be suffering from huge wiki-withdrawal by then. I won't be around for the meet up in Canberra yet, but if you have another one, please think of me and leave me a message on my dutch wikipage :-). Cheers! Ciell 09:40, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reactions I got; I've put the meetup page on my watchlist as well, so we'll have an international meet soon ;-). Ciell 19:43, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Newington College

There has been a large number of issues regarding this page; including some checkusers, allegations of Sockpuppetry/SPA's, several AfD's, an MfD aswell as a series of content disputes on the article. Recently we have had a lot of vandalism on the page. So i am requesting some sort of protection for the page. Twenty Years 05:45, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I just had a look. I don't think the vandalism levels merit protection or semi protection--Golden Wattle talk 06:14, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Whilst i accept and respect your views here. Of the last 20-30 edits (since early-mid Oct), they have all been vandalism, and associated reverting, bar a small cleanup by Loopla. I think semi-protection is in order to help us control the level of vandalism. Twenty Years 06:18, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

The recent history certainly shows plenty of vandalism, but I don't think the page needs protecting because:

  • Most of the vandalism was from one IP address on 30 October. This IP has now been blocked for six months.
  • The revert war between ExtraDry and Mitchplusone appears over - ExtraDry's userpage says he has departed Wikipedia (again) and the last edit warring was nearly a month ago; and
  • School articles are routinely vandalised by bored students. In my opinion the vandalism here is high for a general page but not that high for a school.

Other views welcome but I can't see the need for protection at this point. Euryalus 06:29, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Please do not make incorrect comments, My userpage does not say I have departed Wikipedia. It's comments like that Euryalus in which you accuse me of being another user that has departed wikipedia which has caused me not to use this username. ExtraDry 10:45, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
In the interests of not having this discussion sidetracked, I have stricken the offending words. The point remains that the content dispute seems to have ended a month ago. The rights or wrongs of it are irrelevant at this point. The fact that it is over is an argument against page protection at this point. Euryalus 10:59, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm only going to note again here that it's been fairly well established that the statement is not incorrect, and that there is very strong evidence to make that link. Orderinchaos 14:57, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Care to tell us what your new user name is DXRAW/Extra Dry? --Nick Dowling 22:44, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Not while you are accusing me of being another user that im not. ExtraDry 01:01, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I find this evidence too difficult to dismiss (more can be provided on request, that was only a brief summary). It should be noted that "avoiding scrutiny" is a clear ground under WP:SOCK and your threats to violate it, were they to come to fruition, will almost certainly see your editing rights removed. Orderinchaos 02:11, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
As well as the identical pattern of edits noted by Orderinchaos (which I'd also noticed previously), your intervention to save the DXRAW-created article on the obscure topic of the Australian military's Field Ration Eating Device is a bit of a giveaway as this was done only 2 hours after I nominated it for speedy deletion and it's highly unlikely that anyone who didn't have a personal interest in this topic would have had it on their watch list (which I presume explains the response time) or cared enough about this topic to abort the prod deletion without so much as contesting it (see: [29] ). If evidence of past disruptive behaviour is neccessary it wouldn't be too hard to dig up DXRAW's many bad-faith AfD nominations (including the nomination of many of the Wikimedia-related entries). I don't know if using successive accounts counts as sock-puppetry, but your pattern of behaviour seems to suggest that when one of your accounts gets a truely dire reputation you abandon it and create a new one (eg, DXRAW was abandoned after the bad-faith AfDs and now ExtraDry is being abandoned after you were blocked). --Nick Dowling 07:16, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

It's being abandoned not becouse of the block but becouse people cant get that idea out of there head that im related to antother user. ExtraDry 11:32, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Apologies for the inconvenience, but this edit tends to suggest you are the same account. Twenty Years 12:13, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I corrected a user which was incorrect, Just like you are now. ExtraDry 17:11, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I was going to comment that this discussion is heading away from the topic a bit much until I saw this last post. Even after twenty-two years in the RAAF with another 5 years in cadets before that I've never heard anyone give the thing a name and certainly not "F***ing Ridiculous/Retarded Eating Device". Maybe it's just a grunt thing. --AussieLegend 09:04, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Really, It is the only term I have ever heard it called. -- Mattinbgn\talk 10:44, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
If you feel that you need to change your name to avoid confusion then why don't you request an admin to change your user name? That way you keep your edit history and block history. --Nick Dowling 23:25, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Becouse I'm not the one that is confused. ExtraDry 00:49, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
So, you won't say what your new user name is because you don't want people to get confused about your identity. That doesn't make much sense to me. --Nick Dowling 09:06, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

For two reasons, One I have not created it yet & two so I don't get harassed. It's not surprising that so many people leave ie (DXRAW) when you come across all the abuse and attacks that people make against each other. When your on the other side of a computer people can be real dickheads. ExtraDry 09:19, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

To quote Monty Python, you're not fooling anybody. Orderinchaos 09:35, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Understand vandalsim is tedious and boring but there is an important principle that it has to be quite high levels to merit protection as wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopaedia that anyone can edit (not just registered users). If the IP address has been blocked then ... (noting that six months seems rather a long time for an IP block but ... )--Golden Wattle talk 06:33, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Is this a discussion on protection of the Newington College page or the bad faith history of DXRAW/ExtraDry? Newington College dosen't need protection. It needs a lot of work and the moment somebody tries to do that work we will see who DXRAW/ExtraDry is now. Most people seem to have just stayed away from the page because editing it is a waste of time. I can only hope that when Loopla ia finished making PLC Sydney the best school page she will start on Newington. Surely most users would defend her edits and efforts to make a a first class article. In the mean time sit tight and wait - DXRAW/ExtraDry will surface very soon. He just can't help himself. Mitchplusone 10:46, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Thats correct i cant help fighting sockpuppets & vandels and people who cant take a hint ie people who still call me the wrong name. Ie the user who goes by Mitchplusone & Archifile ExtraDry 06:02, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
Without commenting on either side of the various editing disputes on the article specifically, I think we'd all agree that anything which improves the article and brings it towards GA/FA standard will be a good thing. Orderinchaos 11:19, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that those interested keep a eye on Jinius, who has already had a go at improving David Scott (headmaster) and then thought better of it. Mitchplusone 10:25, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

The World Game Forum

TWGF - anyone able/willing to deal with deletion of this non-notable forum? I use the same username on both TWGF and Wikipedia and there are a few dodgy characters on the forum, so don't want to stir the pot too much. (See also The World Game Forum for previously deleted article) -- Chuq (talk) 09:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Deleted. Will salt if necessary. Hesperian 11:31, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
and also World game forum. -- Longhair\talk 21:19, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Request for Comment (St. Marks College)

Just a note, that St. Mark's College (University of Adelaide) has had some issues and is up for a Request for comment. (see here). Thanks. Twenty Years 07:08, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Ian Chappell

From WT:AUS

I have just nominated the article about former Australian cricket captain Ian Chappell for FA. I would appreciate any comments at FAC. Thanks! Phanto282 08:58, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Australian GAs

Currently 74. It was 59 60 days ago. Can we get to triple figures by the end of the year? It's worth a try I think. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:08, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Why don't we all suggest some B-class articles that are almost ready for nomination, maybe a couple from each project? That way we can have a concerted effort to get some more articles up to a GA standard? My nomination is Ashfield, New South Wales - this looks about 99% there, and can go alongside its Summer Hill, New South Wales neighbour which is also a GA class article. JRG 06:40, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
We could start with WikiProject Australia's top-importance B-class articles; they begin around halfway down this list. --bainer (talk) 06:53, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Woo, go us! I'm sure if we all pitch in we could make 100 - after I finish one now I'll take one from the list. — H2O —  07:55, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
.....77... Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:24, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Don't forget that some our Category:A-Class Australia articles are GA's also. The ones that are, are:-
The other 9 articles rated as 'A-Class' articles aren't (GAN, anyone?). Therefore, our total is currently 79 + 3 = 82. Eighteen to go! Daniel 23:10, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Harold Holt

Some urgent clean up required here for such a newsworthy topic right now. It is tagged as needing citations :-(--Golden Wattle talk 00:20, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Does WP:BLP apply? Andjam 04:35, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Presumably not? --Stephen 04:41, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, what's the chance that if he didnt drown that he would still be alive at 99? ... Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
The coroner pronounced him dead [30]--Golden Wattle talk 04:56, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
but The chinese do have some very unique medicines so it may be possible. If you ignore the rumours of a heart condition, vitamin deficiency, and shoulder injury he was a very fit & healthy person. Gnangarra 04:57, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Election candidate in need of cleanup

Is there currently a noticeboard for articles related to the federal election?

The article for George Newhouse could do with a bit of a cleanup (and has had a bit of a cleanup). There seems to have been contributions by a fan of the person who didn't cite sources, and some negative, but sourced, allegations by a new user. ({{sofixit}}? I wish...). Thanks, Andjam 04:30, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian politics —Moondyne 06:01, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Australian collaboration

Hi everyone. I haven't been very active lately, but I still show up sometimes. Thankyou to Longhair (talk · contribs) for the clean new look at the top of the Wikipedia:Australian Collaboration of the Fortnight page.

Australia Day has been the ACOTF for the past fortnight, and Spebi (talk · contribs) was the only editor to do anything of significance to it. Cabinet of Australia has been selected for collaboration for the next fortnight, with only two votes, and there are no further nominations that have not expired due to lack of interest. Possibly this lack of enthusiasm relates to the busyness of exams and other time pressures at this time of year, however they will be mostly over by the next selection date. If people want ACOTF to continue, please contribute to this article, and nominate some others, perhaps a topic from your favourite Australian wikiproject that is of high importance and is severely lacking. --Scott Davis Talk 13:53, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for all your work with relation to the Collaboration of the Fortnight Scott, you do a great job! I very much suspect you are right in your assumptions regarding exams and assignments, it would be a great shame to see this collaboration go the way of the good article collaboration.
I have made a new nomination and promise to contribute to the Cabinet of Australia over the next couple of weeks, it's been a while and I must confess to voting this year for articles and then not contributing when the article wins because of other commitments.
Maybe it's just the issues I seem to get involved in but I've noticed lately that there seems to be more hostility around Australian wikipedia articles and less collaboration lately, maybe we should focus more on going out of our way to give positive feedback to those who are making very positive contributions but some times fly under the radar, instead of engaging (on my part) in trivial arguments. Cheers, WikiTownsvillian 06:53, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
I like to contribute to the collaboration, but I guess that the more active participants participate, the more chance others are going to want to participate as well. It's sometimes better to work on an article yourself, but this being a collaboration, it's better to have other people other than the random IP fixing a typo actually actively contributing until the fortnight is over, if that makes any sense. I do appreciate your work Scott, it's a shame we can't get much actual collaboration to bring the article to featured status like the banner used to say. I'd be in favour of any means to help this collaboration recruit more participants. Spebi 07:19, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Can we make it that after an article has been ACOTF it is automatically nominated for GA or FA depending on its previous status? The first few won't make it near of course, but the whole purpose of the ACOTF is to bring the article to the next level, from the initial nominations we will learn more and more about what is expected by the GA and FA reviewers from articles which have supposedly gone through two weeks of work towards that goal, we will establish common precedents for articles that have been previous nominations and were knocked back for various reasons. Slowly those of us who participate in the AFOTC will start to automatically look out for the GA and FA qualities which will need improvement. Thoughts? WikiTownsvillian 07:32, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
The nominator of articles for GA or FA has to be prepared to address any issues identified in the review. As such, I'm not prepared to automatically nominate ACOTF articles for review. I think it would be quite reasonable to establish a culture that either the ACOTF nominator or the main contributors during effective collaborations might nominate the articles for formal review at the end (or even part-way through!). --Scott Davis Talk 21:16, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
There is no point nominating articles for GA or FA unless they comply with the manual of style, including at least one properly formatted reference for each paragraph. Nominator must be familar with all sources used, including off-line sources. If he/she doesn't address issued raised during the nomination process, the nomination will be quickly removed, as recently occurred with Qantas. There is no way that automatic nomination would be useful.--Grahamec 01:11, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
If I can make a related suggestion on the ACOTF, maybe a "to do" list on the talkpage would help. I'd often like to assist with the collaboration, but often, as is the case currently, I'm not really sure where to start. Lankiveil 12:46, 14 November 2007 (UTC).
Replying to Grahamec: But that is my very point, if manual of style is mandatory prerequisite for nomination then it should be one of the primary objectives of the ACOTF two week process, if that's not the case than ACOTF has to be changed in order to start addressing these issues. Is ACOTF about expanding the article's content or is it about improving the quality of articles based on wikipedia benchmarks? If the only barometer we use for success is how much the article has expanded and not using how much closer it has become to becoming an Featured Article then this leads to problems. As I said previously I realise the results of the ACOTF process at the moment are not addressing the kind of issues you are raising, my point about automatic nomination either during or after the ACOTF process is that we will learn by an independent source what we are doing right in ACOTF and what we need to improve upon.
Replying to Lankiveil: I think that is a great idea, but I would suggest putting the "to do" list template on this page (and other relevant wikiproject's talk pages) as well as on the article talk page (and remove it from this page when the fortnight is over) that way people who may not have a particular interest in the article which is featured may take a glance at the kind of issues that they are experiencing and might be able to assist with skills that they have picked up. I usually add the ACOTF to my watchlist but not always and even then just having the edit summaries appearing does not give the full picture as to how each ACOTF progresses. Thoughts? WikiTownsvillian 06:58, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Whats the point of collaboration if theres no improvement, I like the idea of the article either being nominated at GA or FA as part of the process. My thought is why limit it to 1 article we've got 40,000+ articles most needing some form of attention, why not expand it to 6 articles per fortnight, and limit to article already assessed as B class or better thats 1300 articles, at 6 per fortnight these will take 8 years. Gnangarra 07:23, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Probably because it's hard enough working on one article, let alone spreading things out over a half-dozen. So long as we concentrate on "higher priority" articles, I think we'll make decent progress. Lankiveil (talk) 11:05, 17 November 2007 (UTC).
I like the idea of limiting nominations to those that have already been given a B class rating, however this conversation started because we haven't had enough people contributing for one article a fortnight, so I don't see six happening any time soon unfortunately, but remember the whole of wikipedia is a collaboration, the ACOTF just highlights one for a period, it doesn't limit collaboration through wikiprojects etc. Cheers, WikiTownsvillian 11:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Brian Burke redux

I think it might be time to revisit the idea of creating a specific article on the ongoing corruption scandal surrounding Brian Burke in Western Australia. I raised the idea of this a couple of months ago, around the time of the ludicrous attempt to tie Rudd into it, but there was some resistance, and I got the impression people thought that an article it would focus on that silliness.

In the last few days, it has blown up again, with Labor MLC Shelley Archer and her party powerbroker husband Kevin Reynolds forced to quit the party, Liberal MLC Anthony Fels looking likely to follow suit within days, and the strong possibility that both Archer and Fels could be expelled from parliament and/or face criminal charges. This brings the number of casualties of this to five - and six if one includes Senator Ian Campbell. In terms of sheer political fallout, I honestly think it's more significant than anything since the original WA Inc affair twenty years ago. It encompasses too many people to just try and cover it in individual articles, and I think it's about time it got its own article.

Thoughts? I'm also still not sure what would be a suitable title - 2006-07 Brian Burke lobbying scandal? Rebecca (talk) 03:52, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Great idea. A for title, how about "Dark Arts" ;-) But seriously, the sorry saga has been bubbling along for years. For example, the Canal Rocks thing stated in 2000[31] and the Finance Broker business was in the Richard Court era also. Also Grill is both separately notable and a key player, so how about Brian Burke/Julian Grill political lobbying scandal? Perhaps we could start sandboxing some ideas and scope somewhere. —Moondyne 04:54, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
What about Western Australian lobbying scandal no fixed time frame, who wants to bet 2008 brings more details, 2009 before anything hits the courts(law not family). Gnangarra 07:11, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I just think that this could be a little vague. I think Moondyne's suggestion might be a bit more apt (especially since, as you point out, this is likely to drag on for another year or two). Anyone else have any more thoughts? Rebecca (talk) 00:07, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Definitely worth its own article if anyone can condense it enough.--Golden Wattle talk 00:28, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I'll start trying to throw something together. Rebecca (talk) 00:56, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm starting to plan this article out, but I'm quickly realising that I'm going to have write a section on WA Inc if it's all going to really make sense. This could be a bit difficult for me, as I was about four at the time it all went down, and I'm only familiar with the basic details of that scandal. I'm currently looking through the Royal Commission report, but it strikes me that it might be easier if one of the editors from WA (or someone else who knows a bit more about it) would be willing to throw together three paragraphs or so explaining what happened. Would anyone be up for this? If not, I can do it, but it'll probably take me a few days more. Rebecca (talk) 01:25, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Sydney railway station articles

Can someone please keep an eye on the Sydney railway station articles - an unregistered user who has been around for weeks but keeps changing IPs and never responds to talk page messages is adding incorrect information to some of the station articles - first it was phantom platforms that don't exist, now it's phantom terminating locations. I've been on here for a while trying to fix some of the stuff that's been added and I'm not doing any more now, but some watchful eyes would be appreciated to stop this. JRG (talk) 12:08, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Have you reported this to an admin? Blocking the IPs might slow them down. --Nick Dowling (talk) 01:04, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Links please, especially to the IP, and some of the articles. Gnangarra 01:07, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Here are a couple of the IPs: 121.218.224.114 (talk · contribs) & 58.172.147.243 (talk · contribs). Both resolve to Telstra dynamic IPs, which makes IP blocking difficult. Temporarily protecting dozens (hundreds?) of station articles doesn't look like a good solution either. Note that there are times when they are committing edits at a rate of more than one per minute, sometimes in blocks of 2-per-minute for about 10 minutes at a time. It really looks like they are copying and pasting into a pile of articles, then saving, then going on to the next block of articles. The problem is that unless you manually go through the articles and have access to the correct platform info, you don't know whether they are right or wrong. . --Athol Mullen (talk) 02:34, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't think a block would be a good idea at all, because the user (or users) actually have done a lot of work that I haven't had time to do - adding platform indications for stations that didn't previously have them. The problem was that half of the additions are wrong. JRG (talk) 03:20, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Yet another reason why all IP editing should be disallowed, in my opinion. --Nick Dowling (talk) 07:43, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Australian Army Recruit Training

I have proposed a merger of the above article into Army Recruit Training Centre (Australia). This proposal is opposed by the creating editor and third opinions would be welcome. Discussion is here. Cheers, Mattinbgn\talk 06:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Indigenous Intellectual Property Statement

A new editor Bruceanthro (talk · contribs) has been doing some good work on indigenous sites in Far North Queensland. I am concerned however at an intellectual property statement he has attached to some of those articles, such as Lake Euramo, Queensland. I understand his motivations and have some sympathy towards them, but I am unsure how they fit with Wikipedia licensing requirements and censorship guidelines.

I note there was an earlier discussion about indigenous culture earlier at Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 27#Template:Indigenous Australians/deceased which may have some bearing on this issue.

I have raised this with Bruceanthro on his talk page. This is not meant as a criticism of his actions but to seek clarification on its appropriateness. I am unsure if there is a better forum for this discussion; any advice would be appreciated. - Mattinbgn\talk 00:49, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


Also see Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles. -- Mattinbgn\talk 01:03, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

An editor should be free to make a statement about his/her contributions to the article on the talk page, however I believe it is not appropriate for an editor to make a statement on behalf of Wikipedia such as this: "...nor can it be considered to be Wikipedia's organisation's intention..."" The disclaimer at the top of the articles contravenes Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles and additionally WP:CENSOR as "Wikipedia cannot guarantee that articles... adhere to specific social or religious norms or requirements" Finally, article space should not have links to talk pages. --Melburnian (talk) 01:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Yesterday I Bruceanthro (talk) prepared an Statement of Intellectual Property to place into the talk pages of articles to which I add or contribute Aboriginal names, Aboriginal mythology and other Aboriginal 'cultural' content. I created a link between the top of a couple of articles and a copy of the Intellectual Property Statement within those article's talk pages.
Mattinbgn\talk queried the appropriateness of my seeking to includes a Statement of Intellectual Property into articles in this way, and he so intiated this discussion.
Melburnian (talk) (re)viewed the Statement of Intellectual Property I'd actually used in my talk page, and warned that it may contravene Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles plus WP:CENSOR. It was also broadly asserted '..article space should not have links to talk pages'.
.Garr simply intervened by removing the link I'd made between the Lake Euramo (Ngimun) article page and the Intellectual Property Statement I'd made. He inserted in the talk page a possible overaching clarification as follows "With the above [Statement] in mind - all information entered onto this site is done so in accordance with the GNU Free Documentation License. It may be freely redistributed, modified or reproduced, including sold.
Now, with thanks to all the above mentioned editors, I've now more closely read the text to the GFDL .. I've read the "..no disclaimer.." policy .. plus the earlier Aboriginal deceased persons debate plus other material referred to me, and I note:
i. my first concern/intent was to somehow pay homage, recognise, and properly attribute the prior 'authorship' (albeit oral and/or communal) of local indigenous names, stories, myths, knowledge being added to articles.
(this first intent would appear to be wholly consistent with, and merely an implementation of the current GFDL, and here I note particularly the apparent purpose and intent of the Secondary Sections and Invariant Sections provisions of the licence, which do somehow seem to be there exactly for purposes of this kind?
ii. my second concern/intent was to advise of the existence of Aboriginal knowledge economies from which the indigenous names, stories, myths, knowledge have been sourced, and to advise that any use that may be made of the content (of the full range contemplated by Wikipedia's GFDL) is both : (a) postiive in that, if properly attributed, may raise the content's value to it's performer, and (b) negative in that, outside of the Aboriginal economies and lores/laws, it can not be considered an authentic use of the names, stories, myth, knowledge ..
(this second intent is very similar (but not exactly the same) as parts of the Wikipedia: Content Disclaimers, particularly, assurances that
Any of the trademarks, service marks, collective marks, design rights, personality rights or similar rights that are mentioned, used or cited in the articles of the Wikipedia encyclopedia are the property of their respective owners. Their use here does not imply that you may use them for any other purpose other than for the same or a similar informational use as contemplated by the original authors of these Wikipedia articles under the GFDL licensing scheme. Unless otherwise stated Wikipedia and Wikimedia sites are neither endorsed nor affiliated with any of the holders of any such rights and as such Wikipedia cannot grant any rights to use any otherwise protected materials. Your use of any such or similar incorporeal property is at your own risk.
and, later, the warning that
"PLEASE BE AWARE THAT ANY INFORMATION YOU MAY FIND IN WIKIPEDIA MAY BE INACCURATE, MISLEADING, DANGEROUS OR ILLEGAL".
I apologise for the unusual(?) length of this posting, but I guess this is the point where I suggest and ask:
1. an intellectual property statement of the kind I had hoped for/intended is still a useful initiative (I also quickly read Wikipedia: Ignore all rules)that is wholly consistent with, and even seeks to implement Wiki GFDL licencing plus Wiki disclaimer?
2. an intelletual property statement of the I kind I'd hoped for/intended may, in fact, be an important elaboration on GFDL licencing plus overarching disclaimers .. necessary and appropriate to deal with 'borrowings' or 'releasing' of names, stories, myths, and other Aboriginal knowledges (including traditional ecological knowledges)??
3. given all of the above, are there any suggestions, or might there be any help, or other (better) way of achieving the orginal intent???
4. in the quick search that I did, I could find no prohibition of the kind suggested by ::Melburnian (talk) that space in article pages should not be linked (as I did) to talk pages???? Bruceanthro (talk) 14:16, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
The licencing requirement under which we add material (GNU Free Documentation License) is one of the most inflexible aspects of Wikipedia. We currently use version (1.2) which has been unchanged since November 2002. With each submission that we make as an editor, we commit to this licencing, and people who reuse the content have no commitment beyond what is contained in this license, which is linked at the bottom of every page. Although I empathise with what what you are trying to achieve (and I note that you are making many valuable, well-referenced contributions) I personally can't see a way of effectively implementing your proposal that is compatible with current Wikipedia licencing. With regard to my comment regarding linking to the talk page, this relates to the principles contained within Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. --Melburnian (talk) 02:21, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanx Melburnian (talk .. but please, please .. I am new to Wikipedia .. and I guess I am seeking advice and direction from yourselves and other editors!!
The GNU Free Documentation License actually looks very good to me (not sure what the problem is?) .. and I find myself particularly in favour of the 'secondary sections' and 'invariant sections' provisions of that licence, which look as if they might work very well to preseve Aboriginal prio-authorship of names, myths etc!!
I don't want to see the licence altered or changed .. rather I am now most asking if you or any of the other editors know how best to clearly and explicitly apply the 'secondary sections' and 'invariant sections' to particular content or materials placed within articles??
If a link to an 'attached' statement (contained within the article's talk page) offends some Wikipedia policy/practice (such a link need not necessarily be 'self-referencing') .. then, suggestions or advice on some alternative action/ approach could be very useful. I, for one, was particularly interested in what looked like an 'almost' consensus in the Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 27#Template:Indigenous Australians/deceased discussion, and wonder if perhaps a 'Notice' (similar to a notice on new fiction) of some kind my be useable and appropriate?
Finally, I wish to be clear that I also find the Wikipedia: Content Disclaimer to be very good .. and, again, I have merely sought to identify a need to be a little more explicit in relation to Aboriginal names, myths, cultural content.. to better assist readers and people wishing to freely access and use the material for either (or both) non-commercial or commercial purposes. It is, after all, a matter that some/many readers may not be aware of?!
I look forward to further feedback and/or advice on how I/we might proceed .. noting again Wikipedia: Ignore all rules) is identified as "Wikipedia's first rule to consider. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow.", and it may be there is a need that might be able to be met .. somehow?? Bruceanthro (talk) 03:42, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
If you read the finer details, you'll find that Wikipedia content is licenced under "GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts." (my emphasis)
Wikipedia has a long-established no disclaimers policy, as you're aware. We don't make exceptions because it would open a can of worms: this article contains images of Muhummad, this article contains images of genitalia, this article contains images or references to Indigenous people who have passed on, this article contains Scientology secrets, this article names freemasons, this is not legal advice, this is not a medical opinion, this article tells you the ending of the murder-mystery you're reading, and so on.
Everyone supports the "no disclaimers" policy, but everyone seems to think their own disclaimer should be an exception. No matter how you look at it, your content is a disclaimer. Prominently linking to it is not much different from displaying it. Sorry, but no dice. It's against the rules, and for good reason. Hesperian 04:08, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
INteresting discussion and I agree with Hesperian no disclaimers, but Bruceanthro highlights something that hasnt been covered by a wikipedia article and that is the Aboriginal knowledge economy is an area the hasnt been covered. Gnangarra 04:15, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanx Gnangarra, if it's OK, I might take up that suggestion and have a first crack at that Aboriginal knowledge economies article you recommend .. and see how things go with that!
With regards to Hesperian 'no dice' response to a request for advice and assistance .. I'm not sure whether to say thanx or not?!:
Hesperian and others (?) I indeed note, even at the bottom of this page, I 'agree to licence' my contributions under the GFDL, and, of the two GFDL use options specified in Wikipedia: Text of the GNU Free Documentation License#How to use this License for your documents, the page appears to automatically specify the first 'with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts' option only!
Having above identified the potential value of the second 'with invariant sections' option, which reads as follows:
If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the "with...Texts." line with this:
with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST.
I guess, as a novice, I'm asking HOW does one use this second option, and WHERE does one list the titles of the sections of an article intended to be preserved as 'invariant'? It is an option clearly specified within the licence, but HOW might one go about trying to exercise this and/or WHO does one ask to get find answers to questions of this sort.
Regarding the "long established no disclaimers policy", I noted during the Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 27#Template:Indigenous Australians/deceased discussions, that at least one of the general disclaimers was somehow updated to increase their coverage ...
Again, I am a novice new to this Wikipedia world .. please, if it is possible to see existing disclaimers updated, how is this done? To whom do ideas and needs get presented? :
Perhaps the General disclaimer might be able to be further updated to include 'traditional knowledge communally held' (I think the World Intellectual Property Organisation has good definitions of this kind of intellectual property equivalent to a trademark?!)
Perhaps the Risk Disclaimer might be able to be further updated to also explicitly address issues as to the 'authenticity' of content contained within articles??
Again .. I ask to see if there might be anyone who can advise and assist in relation to the above questions .. If Wikipedians sah 'be bold' (as it seems they do?!).. then please, I wish to be bold and do something to tackle some of the intellectual property dimensions of the Aboriginal names, stories, knowledges etc I may xontribute to articles! Can anyone advise and/or assist? Bruceanthro (talk) 14:47, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Not knowing what the proper protocols and processes might be, self-following up on the above, I have just posted the following request to upgrade the 'general disclaimer': Wikipedia_talk:General_disclaimer#Traditional Knowledge. I hope this is agreeable and finds support, following above discussion/s? Bruceanthro (talk) 23:34, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

That seems like an appropriate place to ask. I have also cross-posted this to the Village Pump to see if we can get some legal opinions on how compatible this is with the GFDL. Lankiveil (talk) 02:41, 24 November 2007 (UTC).

Update: the edit request made to see 'traditional knowledge' included in the general disclaimer has been 'declined'. It seems 'traditional knowledge' is not believed to be a sufficiently legally enforcible form of intellectual property to warrant inclusion within the general disclaimer. See here: Wikipedia_talk:General_disclaimer#Traditional Knowledge

It now seems, therefore, that Aboriginal names, myths, knowledge and other cultural content are NOT covered by the Wikipedia disclaimers .. which means, strictly speaking, the long established Wikipedia:No_disclaimers_in_articles policy/guideline no longer applies (see particularly Wikipedia:No_disclaimers_in_articles#What are disclaimers? ..

It must be said that it's turning out to be a lot of work to do what was orginally a fairly simple, innocent thing .. ie include an indigenous intellectual roperty statement of some kind. Now that it has become clear that the Wikipedia:No_disclaimers_in_articles does NOT apply to my efforts .. maybe I/we could revisit idea of an equivalent notice regarding indigenous content similar to the 'spoiler' notice used for current fiction (see here Wikipedia:Spoiler. What do you think? Bruceanthro (talk) 04:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Australian portal maintaining

Portal:Australia's Featured content parts are starting to become neglected. Thanks to the increase of FAs and GAs created lately, I'd like to start filling in the gaps so that the portal isn't left without any of its main content. If anyone has suggestions for articles, I'd like to hear them. Spebi 04:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The six above mentioned by Blnguyen work good :) Daniel 07:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

6 Australian FAs in November!!!

File:AusFAtotal.png

Variegated Fairy-wren, Dream Days at the Hotel Existence, Ian Chappell, 1999 Sydney hailstorm, Karmichael Hunt, Arthur Morris, Powderfinger.............. This is the first time that WP:AUS has made 7 new FAs in one month....the previous best was 4, which occurred in Oct07, Dec06, Aug06 and Dec05.



Hmmm. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:37, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Here are some graphs. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:13, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

*waves small Australian flag on plastic around enthusiastically* Daniel 08:47, 26 November 2007 (UTC)


Dihydrogen Monoxide ♫ 07:07, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons

Wikipedia hosts content attacking Aborigines talks about some racist content being posted on wikipedia and, according to the newspaper, was visible for several hours after PerthNow contacted wikipedia.

Flatley saga a twisted triangle also mentions wikipedia. Andjam (talk) 23:43, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Gah. At least the Herald Sun one is correct in its portrayal of the workings of Wikipedia (mainly because it quotes Angela), compared to the Courier Mail's "hacked into Mr Flatley's Wikipedia online sports achievements entry" and "webmaster deleted the entries several times...and [froze editing]".
Anyways, eyes on the fries, and I'd suggest semi-protecting Maddington, Western Australia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) if interest peaks from the news article. Daniel 00:23, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Maddington, Western Australia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - the page history shows that cluebot undoing vandalism by one editor but left other vandalising entries intact including the offensive remarks.--Matilda formerly known as User:Golden Wattle talk 00:48, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Please dont put a media notice on the talk page it will only encourage the vandals even more being told their efforts were in the paper. Gnangarra 03:54, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Sigh. I suppose just watching the page, paying particular attention to whenever it pops up, and perhaps semi-protection is best if the vandalism gets out of hand. And no media notice, either. Spebi 04:29, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I think a media notice would be appropriate in a few weeks time - that is kinda the point of it, right? Dihydrogen Monoxide ♫ 07:54, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
saying an article has been the subject of a media article is one thing telling the racist vandals that they get noticed by the media for such edits is just unnecessary encouragement. Oh and since it was added by an IP it could also be manipulation of wikipedia to sensationalise a story as well. Anyone for opening even more cans of worms Gnangarra 15:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
"Bona fide" vandals with the attention span of a goldfish are far more likely to notice media coverage through the media itself than through time-delayed notices in talk pages. With regards to someone from a media organisation vandalising wikipedia to generate a story ... would removing the notice from the talk page rob them of their story? (There have previously been incorrect accusations of the media vandalising articles, so please don't jump to conclusions. Then again, there was some real vandalism of an article to generate media coverage, but it was self-confessed vandalism). Andjam (talk) 00:09, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Template problem affecting multiple locality articles

There appears to be a problem with Template:Mapit-AUS-suburbscale that is currently showing up as a display problem on many locality articles- e.g. Hamersley, Western Australia, Kew, Victoria, Randwick, New South Wales etc --Melburnian (talk) 09:14, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Seems to have been a standardisation effort gone awry - the change is fundamentally good but probably a parameter or two wrong here or there. I've reverted the template for now to 6 hours ago. Orderinchaos 09:27, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
That's fixed it, thanks OIC --Melburnian (talk) 09:38, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

1998_Esso_Longford_gas_explosion

Could someone with a bit of free time hop on over to this article? The external links seem to have gone dead. Thanks, sh¤y 16:09, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

McLeod's Daughters

I have come across a situation where an editor has been making edits to articles on Australian television programmes like McLeod's Daughters which perhaps do not meet the required tone for an encyclopædia. Examples are:

These edits continually reinsert speculation on the future direction of these programmes, as well as adding material in a format that is very much inconsistent with the manual of style. Furthermore, this user has been repeatedly uploading images without source information, oftentimes repeatedly re-uploading the same image after it is deleted under CSD I4.

I have attempted to start a dialogue with this user, but did not receive any response at all. Given the articles that are being edited, and the actual content of the edits themselves, I suspect that we are dealing with good-faith edits from a minor that doesn't understand what all the fuss is over. For this reason, I don't want to go in and appear heavy-handed on the matter, but at the same time, I'd like to reduce the amount of bad edits coming from this user, and hopefully get them to invest their knowledge of these programmes into more useful and constructive edits.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how we should deal with the situation? Lankiveil 02:50, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd guess from Floss800's edit to a school, and a view of many others that your are correct about good-faith + a minor. Given that all edits (but one) are to article space and there has been no response to anything so far I can see that all you can do is try again and wait to see if things improve over time. The saving grace is that the articles being edited are, given other edits happening to them, not really much better or worse as a result of Floss's edits. - Peripitus (Talk) 11:50, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm not so concerned about the article edits, although the idealist in me doesn't want to abandon even Home and Away to hordes of preteens who don't know any better. What I am concerned about is the constant image uploading with no licence info; I got a friendly admin to salt an image that (she?) uploaded three times without licencing info, and she just went and uploaded it under a different filename. Good faith aside, I think it's really time someone intervened, someone with a bit more authority than myself. Is an upload-only block possible? Lankiveil 12:36, 4 December 2007 (UTC).

Bumper month for military history articles

While we're patting ourselves on the back for the record number of FAs and being the first project to earn a triple crown, I though that I should mention that November has probably also saw a record number of new articles on Australian military history created. No less than 30 new articles have been highlighted at Portal:Military of Australia, and the quality of these articles has been uniformly high. The range of topics covered has also been impressive, with articles ranging from HMAS Melbourne's collisions with Australian and US destroyers to the Army's newspaper and another very detailed biography of a senior RAAF officer. --Nick Dowling 07:21, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow that's very good! Of course the MILHIST/AUS has been a core part of the WP:AUS success this year. During the middle of this year there was not much going through the Australian FA pipe but we saw stuff like Issy Smith, Attack on Sydney Harbour, AHS Centaur and the Australian Defence Force.Blnguyen (bananabucket) 23:56, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
The military history folks really deserve some congratulations for this - in the space of a few months, they've done a lot to fill one of the big gaps in our Australian content. Some of the articles on the old bases were really quite interesting. Rebecca 00:21, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, and to be honest, wars etc are way more important than the cricket that I write about. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 00:23, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
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