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Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 25

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Proposal to ask for permission from Gold Coast City for use of image.

I found a image some time ago on the GCCC website.

I've had on on since under a "fair use" agreement. I just think it might be time to ask GCCC for permission on this.

I WILL need a Gold Coast based editor to do this for me, I come from Victoria.

Heres a draft-

START DRAFT

To whom it may concern:

I found your page http://www.goldcoastcity.com.au/t_standard.aspx?pid=1054 while doing research for the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, and thought your image regarding Miami,Queensland might be appropriate for inclusion in our articles concerning History of Miami, Queensland.

I am specifically seeking your permission to use this image: http://www.goldcoastcity.com.au/image_content/heritage_Miami2.jpg

I would like to include your image in these articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami%2CQueensland

Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) is a free encyclopedia that is collaboratively edited by volunteers from around the world. Our goal is to create a comprehensive knowledge base that may be freely distributed and available at no charge.

Normally we ask permission for material to be used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. This means that although you retain the copyright and authorship of your own work, you are granting permission for all others (not just Wikipedia) to use, copy, and share your materials freely -- and even potentially use them commercially -- so long as they do not try to claim the copyright themselves, nor prevent others from using or copying them freely.

You can read this license in full at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GFDL

This license expressly protects creators from being considered responsible for modifications made by others, while ensuring that creators are credited for their work. There is more information on our copyright policy at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

We choose the GFDL because we consider it the best available tool for ensuring our encyclopedia can remain free for all to use, while providing credit to everyone who donates text and images. This may or may not be compatible with your goals in creating the materials available on your website. Please be assured that if permission is not granted, your materials will not be used at Wikipedia -- we have a very strict policy against copyright violations.

We also accept licensing of images under other free-content licenses like some Creative Commons licenses - see http://creativecommons.org for this.

With your permission, we will credit you for your work in the image's permanent description page, noting that it is your work and is used with your permission, and we will provide a link back to your website. Please explicitly state under which license you grant permission.

We invite your collaboration in writing and editing articles on this subject and any others that might interest you. Please see the following article for more information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction

Thank you for your time.

Kindly, <senders name here>

END DRAFT

Nathannoblet 10:31, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Have you considered that the image is in the public domain? I am not a lawyer, but Template_talk:PD-Australia on Commons indicates that if a photo was taken before January 1, 1955 it is now in the public domain - so you can do what you like with it. With a Picture Australia search I found a high quality version of the image (with the Image Number which would be handy in any correspondence done, or on image description pages). The Senior Librarian of the Local Studies Library (details) would be the person to contact about this image.--Commander Keane 02:39, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
"I WILL need a Gold Coast based editor to do this for me, I come from Victoria."
I don't know why. You don't need to live on the Gold Coast to email the Council or send them a letter. Sarah Ewart 14:19, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, it is in the public domain (taken in 1935). Not needed. -- Punk Boi 8 23:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Median property prices in Brisbane suburb articles

A few people are going around and retagging lots of Brisbane suburb articles with a new infobox (which, incidentally, is pretty good, even better than my old BrisSuburbBox template), such as on Bracken Ridge, Queensland. My question is, a fair few of these seem to include a "Property Value" field. There are a couple of issues I have with this field:

  • It seems to be very time-specific, median property values can change (and wildly!) in a particular suburb. Is someone going to go to all of the hundreds of Brisbane suburb articles to change all of these every time a new survey is released?
  • Are property values really encyclopædic anyway? Wikipedia is not a real estate guide.

If I'm the only one that is thinking this way, I'll shut my mouth. I really don't think they have a place here though.

Lankiveil 02:13, 3 December 2006 (UTC).

I think it's an interesting piece of information. The source given is the Real Estate Institute of Queensland, which is probably an appropriate choice for a source (using a particular agency as a source would not be appropriate). The Institute gives the figure as the median price for 2005, which should be mentioned in the infobox. --bainer (talk) 02:41, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, if we are going to mention this information, I think that this is the best place to get it. My issue is less with where we get the information from, as it is with whether we actually include the information in the first place. Lankiveil 09:02, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I would like to invite you to post this at Template talk:Infobox Australian Place. The transition to a new infobox for suburbs towns, and local government areas has been taken in an effort to standardize the look and data included in Australian infoboxes. A look at the template's talk page will show just how many variances there were. The fields to include in the new infobox were debated before the template's creation and implementation. The property value field was a feature of the South Australian (?) infobox and after debate a decision was made to include it in the new box. Whether you will find a great level of support for removing it, I am not sure, but the discussion will be more fruitful there then here IMO. BTW the template development was done as a part of this WP (through WikiProject Australian places), and you will find that it's development was quite open to opinion from all contributors. The implementation is being carried out mainly through a bot that was developed to specifically carry out the transition. That is why it appears that it is a 'few people' doing the changes. SauliH 02:54, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a bad thing that it's happening, quite the contrary, it's a good, very flexible infobox, and full props to whoever took the initiative to develop it. Lankiveil 09:02, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I think it's useful if they're all taken at about the same time, although the risk of redundancy and out-of-date info and so on causes problems as you have highlighted. However, it enables me to see right away, for instance, that Banyo and Ascot are quite different suburbs despite being close together (as a Perth person Brisbane is interesting for me as it's the Australian city I know least about) Orderinchaos78 03:03, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I have an issue with the use of median property prices produced for/by real estate agencies. The methods they use are are based on sales only ie total sales/qty sold over a given period as such it becomes bias to type and quantity of housing sold. Take a Perth riverside burb like Bassendean that has a broad range of housing, from riverfront 1/2 acre mansions to 1950's-1960 1/4 acre asbestos houses or new 700sqm high desnity housing. All have the same land title, yet if any one type statistically dominates the sales during the period then the median price become bias.
Given this what encyclopedic value does the median price actually contribute to the article? Gnangarra 04:07, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I hadn't thought of this, but I guess it's true too. The suburb I used in my example is about 2/3rds middle-class detached housing, and 1/3 housing commission. However, because the housing commission is almost all rented by the government instead of bought and sold, the sample will be biased towards the nicer areas of the suburb. The median value would be dragged down a bit if the housing commission areas were included, but there's no way to objectively measure their value using real estate figures. Lankiveil 12:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC).
The archived discussion of the property value is here [1]. I had put it up for discussion of removal, which is what the vote was for. At best it received weak oppose to the removal. I still am not sure whether it is a great field to have or not. Probably lean on the remove. Gnangarra has a point, which we could get around if we could use a more stable indicator of property value. SauliH 05:43, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Finding a good metric for property values is not easy. See, for example http://www.rba.gov.au/PublicationsAndResearch/RDP/RDP2006-03.html -- Danny Yee 08:13, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Even better is if you can generate a link automatically that goes somewhere, based on say, postcode. (perhaps even something dedicated like geohack that could provide links to a number of different sources) That would be best, because then we can automate it, thus eliminating user error, large hard to read field values and general disorganisation.
The ideal source would be the same used by the shires to calculate rates, they get there values from state government dept that does the assessments, an area average would be more balanced as all properties are assessed including government housing. Gnangarra 14:07, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
It the Valuer Genral http://www.dli.wa.gov.au/corporate.nsf/web/Value+Watch this would have the info for WA if any one has access to a copy. A quick nasty Google search shows similar such information for each state. Gnangarra 14:34, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
domain.com.au seems to be pretty up to date... that's what Template:Infobox Australian Place suggests to use. But sometimes it says it's SNR (statistically not relevant) and has no figure.

e.g. example postcode search with Tewantin chosen If you use a reference you can say when it was last checked. It is theoretically possible that a bot could read the median house or unit value and put it on wikipedia... Zephyr103 10:22, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Australian literature redux

There's a call on the Matilda blog for improvement and expansion of Wikipedia's Australian literature articles. This was also mentioned on the ABC's Arts and Entertainment newsletter on Friday. --Canley 22:59, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Austalian hospitals

I recently upgraded the Template:Infobox Hospital making it more generic and less US-centric (I'm British), and I need some advice please whether I've correctly coded and given guidance on the 'HealthCare' parameter as it applies for Australia. At its broadest this parameter is meant to distinguish "Private" from "Public" hospitals (in US also Charity Hospital), and for the major English Speaking countries also automatically insert wikilinks to the relevant public health system. In the UK this therefore takes the value of "NHS" and will display "Public NHS". Likewise in Canada apparently virtually all hospitals are public and specifying "Medicare" will link to Medicare (Canada) and so display "Public Medicare (Canada)", or the relevant Province's scheme if there is a separate wiki article (e.g. see Toronto General Hospital).

My question therefore is does the same terminology and its usage apply for Australia, i.e. just as all public UK hospitals are under the NHS and for Canada under their Medicare, are all public Australian hospitals under Medicare - or is Medicare (Australia) only for those of lower financial means and everyone else needs cover their public hospital usage via separate private health insurance (i.e. more like the US system) ? (if the latter is the case then public Australian hospitals would need to be described just as "Public")

As an example, see this use for Concord Hospital, Sydney (where I was lucky enough to spend Elective time during my own training) David Ruben Talk 15:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, all Australian public hospitals are funded by Medicare. Well, sort of. They are funded by a bizarre combination of state government and federal government funding, which leads to all manner of wasteful cost-shifting and blame-reallocation. But it's still much more cost-efficient than what the Americans manage :) --Robert Merkel 00:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Many Thanks. David Ruben Talk 01:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Pink and mulesing

Pink (singer), influenced by PETA has advocated a boycott of Australian wool over mulesing and live export by Australia. Vandalism and unreferenced POV-pushing has resulted.

Cormo express is currently a redlink.

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to a featured article on mulesing. Andjam 09:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't see a nomination of mulesing in WP:ACOTF yet...--Scott Davis Talk 14:18, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

WP Victoria

Please help with this new project. Can someone please set up up? -- Punk Boi 8 00:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

For those interested, the project is here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Victoria. You might want to try putting it into the directory, too. Lankiveil 13:25, 22 December 2006 (UTC).
I am sure I speak for those of all of us at Wikipedia:WikiProject Western Australia bon voyage, happy christmas and enjoy the setting up for Wikipedia:WikiProject Victoria ! SatuSuro 13:50, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Australian collaboration of the fortnight - was Torres Strait Islanders, now Kangaroo

Merry Christmas everyone. Preparations got in the way so I'm a day late with the selection. Anyway, Torres Strait Islanders got off to a good start then stopped a couple days after selection. It more than doubled in size even though it's still fairly small.

It was WP:ACOTF from 10 December 2006 to 25 December 2006

  • 4 contributors made 11 edits
  • The article increased from 161 words to 369 words - 2.3 times longer
  • See how it changed

The new selection for the Christmas and New Year season is Kangaroo please help to prepare this already-large article for nomination as a featured article. There are several new nominations each with only a single vote so far. --Scott Davis Talk 12:53, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Eureka Stockade - review of featured article status

Not sure if anybody saw this comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australia. I missed it and I notice there has not been a lot of response.

Just in case not and people did want to comment or address the issues raised, here is the advice of the review again. It seems a pity that an Australian article risks losing featured status. I can see some issues. The NPOV seemed to be a singly held view in my opinion though and I believe has been addressed.--Golden Wattle talk 08:57, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Eureka Stockade is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 21:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

LGAs

Hi everyone, there has been discussion at Talk:Townsville,_Queensland#Arbitrary_section_break about how LGAs should be titled and what should be included. Generally there does not seem to be separate articles for Local Government Areas and Local Government Authorities, so in the interest of consistency maybe all of the articles should be changed to either one or the other, there seems to be a lot of articles with the title of the Local Government Authority for major Queensland cities, and Shires all over Australia, whereas major cities elsewhere mainly (but not exclusively) title the articles - City of... Could we please come to a consensus about this issue, at the moment I think City of..., Shire of... or Municipality of... is better because it is broader and details about the administrative Council can be a subsection of the article. Would like to hear your thoughts, Alec 08:06, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

If I could perhaps clarify some of the points Alec raised... I think the original question was whether ther should be separate articles for the council that governs a municipaliy, and the geographical area which falls within that municipality.
I think the question of "City of XYZ" vs "XYZ City Council" is largely solved by the official name of the LGA concerned, although this can add to confusion where "XYZ City Council" can also imply 'the council which governs XYZ". In either case, I think that all aspects of an LGA can be covered in one article unless there is sufficient information about the council, its history, politics, personalities etc to warrant a separate article. ... just my thoughts to get the ball rolling. Cheers
In the interests of keeping comments in one place, it might be best if responses are posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian places. Cheers. -- Adz|talk 12:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Missing articles on Australian films

I just discovered Category:WikiProject Missing Film articles/Australia, perfect for those amongst us who enjoy creating film-related articles :) -- Longhair\talk 10:29, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Happy new year

It just went past midnight ~7 minutes ago in Victoria, ACT, New South Wales and Tasmania. Hope you all have a good 2007 :) Michael Billington (talk • contribs) 13:07, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Happy New Year

I would just like to wish everybody a Happy New Year DXRAW 00:47, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Hobart/Tasmania WikiProject changes

Hi everyone, SatuSuro suggested starting up a Tassie wikiproject - I responded by suggesting it be "merged" with the Hobart WikiProject. As a result, we now have Wikipedia:WikiProject Tasmania, which covers all articles related to the state including all Hobart (and other city) articles. Some of the articles covered by WP:Hobart's were in other parts of the state anyway, so using the name 'Tasmania' is certainly more accurate. Longhair has assisted by fixing the {{WP Australia}} talk page template to point to the new project; other links to the project will be fixed over the next day or so. -- Chuq 02:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Just a gentle reminder for those who might not have noticed - please help by either participating or supporting! -
Wikipedia:WikiProject Tasmania
Wikipedia:WikiProject Victoria
Wikipedia:WikiProject Western Australia

SatuSuro 06:18, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Sweet nostalgia

Cute story in the Age [2] that fans of oldtime Aussie lollies might enjoy reading. (And probably good as a source on these almost folklorish items now.) --pfctdayelise (talk) 06:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

New collaboration of the fortnight is Mulesing

Kangaroo was WP:ACOTF from 25 December 2006 to 7 January 2007.

The new Australian collaboration is mulesing. Its nomination is at Wikipedia:Australian Collaboration of the Fortnight/History#Mulesing. Please help to improve it in any way you can. It has already improved since being nominated.

--Scott Davis Talk 10:59, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


White Christmas in Australia

Can anyone think of anything useful to do with some photos of snow and cross-country sking at Lake Mountain at Christmas? Regards, Ben Aveling 11:00, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. The two possibilities I can think of is talking about the weather in Australia (which is currently a red link :) ) or Christmas in Australia. Christmas_worldwide#Australia could do with some expansion (eg antipodean Christmas carols). Media organisations like to report on white Christmases, so you can get some reliable sources to go with your photos. Andjam 11:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Articles for deletion

People might want to check out Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wanker (2nd nomination) Jooler 17:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Greg Bownds, apparently an Australian professional wrestler. Regards, Ben Aveling 10:30, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

You can just add these to the List of Australia-related deletions, and to the Candidates for Deletion list above rather than posting them here. --Canley 00:11, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Chris Taylor / Craig Reucassel

Apparently on the January 7 episode of Chris Taylor and Craig Reucassel's Bloody Sunday show on Triple J, they complained that their Wikipedia articles were inaccurate. A couple of users have added this fact to their articles, but I think it would be more productive to get them up to scratch before next weeks show. Anyone want to assist? The show is available via podcast from here for anyone who wants to hear what they said (I haven't heard it myself). -- Chuq 00:34, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, I'm listening to it now. Craig says whoever wrote the article about him is making him look way smarter than he is, and that no way did he get a UAI of 99.95. He said he changed it and someone put it back. Chris says that he corrected the year he was born and the degree he studied at uni, and that too was reverted. They say they are amazed that there are people who are watching articles like this seemingly 24 hours a day. They noted the [citation needed] tag on the Today Today article about them having the cricket on in the background of the Bloody Sunday radio show, and said they could confirm this was true... but then they are concerned that their word is not reliable enough and that a university professor will have to look into the matter and confirm it. -Canley 11:50, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
The problem is knowing whether they're taking the piss or not. Saying that working on Channel 9 was "his life's dream" would send a red flag up for me, if I didn't know any better. Their comments about having to have a university professor verify their dates of birth before being inserted do have a point though. Lankiveil 22:11, 8 January 2007 (UTC).
It's funny ... with that comment about the uni professor they are taking the piss .. but its not far from the truth .. when a known comedian/media satirist tells you information specifically so it can go in their Wikipedia article, you do need a 3rd party to verify it. I had a look at the history of Chris' article - the year of birth was added in August 2006 sometime and hasn't been changed since then - so I'm not sure when he was doing his "testing". -- Chuq 23:27, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Liasing for an image of Lucy the Sheep

One image for anti-mulesing activism could be a photo of Lucy the Sheep, who featured in the 2004 federal election. A possible source of a photo is mentioned in Talk:Mulesing#Photos_of_anti-mulesing_activism . Would anyone be interested in liasing with the animal rights organisation mentioned? Andjam 11:52, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Canvassing

Would someone who is feeling patient please take a look at the contribs of User:Jrnetwork; they claim to be the webmaster of the authors - and are creating giant link farms - trying to make their clients use more bandwidth? --Peta 06:51, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I rewrote Hazel Edwards, removing dozens of external links and replacing with wikilinks. There was also a lot of duplication (entire paragraphs repeated), and dubious references (all Wikipedia articles to things like Antarctica and Hippopotamus). The actual external links section was full of barely related websites such as the Australian Antarctic Division, and I also removed the Category:Antarctica. That said, the article wasn't too bad (as in absolutely gushing with praise), and the subject seems notable enough for inclusion. Will keep an eye on the editor though. --Canley 10:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I had never heard of her, but then I saw that she wrote "There's a Hippopotamus On Our Roof Eating Cake" - you don't forget a book title like that! No notability problems at all IMHO. -- Chuq 11:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

A potentially useful resource

I've just stumbled across the australianbiography.gov.au website, and I thought it might warrant mentioning here. It has some detailed interviews with a bunch of important figures, some of who I still don't think we have articles on. If anyone's up for it, it could be helpful to a) make sure we have articles on all of these people, and b) try and incorporate some of the very useful stuff in them into relevant pages. Rebecca 04:09, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Here's the coverage. I've definitely missed a couple of disambigs but it's a start --Steve (Slf67) talk 05:43, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Lily Ah Toy, Northern Territory Pioneer; Faith Bandler, Civil rights activist; Charles Birch, Scientist and Theologian; Nancy Bird-Walton, Pioneer Aviator; Flo Bjelke-Petersen, Former Senator; Neville Bonner, Former Senator; Veronica Brady, Nun and academic; Eva Burrows, World Leader, Salvation Army; Jim Cairns, Politician; Betty Churcher, Art Educator and Gallery Director; Diane Cilento, Actor; Inga Clendinnen, Academic and Writer; H. C. Coombs, Economist; Zelda D'Aprano, Feminist and Political Activist; Bruce Dawe, Poet; Smoky Dawson, Entertainer; Elizabeth Durack, Artist; Malcolm Fraser, Former Prime Minister; Margaret Fulton, Cookery Writer; Rosalie Gascoigne, Artist; Jack Hazlitt, World War I veteran; Barbara Holborow, Children's Court Magistrate; Donald Horne, Writer and academic; Thomas Keneally, Writer; Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, Actor and Aboriginal Activist; Phillip Law, Scientist and Antarctic Explorer; Mungo Ballardie MacCallum, Writer and Broadcaster; Dame Roma Mitchell, Lawyer and Governor; Jack Mundey, Activist; Lowitja O'Donoghue, Senior Public Servant; Sir Marcus Oliphant, Scientist; Charles Perkins, Aboriginal Activist; Elizabeth Riddell, Journalist and poet; Bill Roycroft, Olympic Equestrian; Bob Santamaria, Political Activist; Peter Sculthorpe, Composer; Victor Smorgon, Industrialist; Shirley Strickland de la Hunty, Athlete and Conservationist; Bud Tingwell, Actor and Director; Albert Tucker (artist), Artist; Tom Uren, Politician; Ray Whitrod, Policeman

SFD

Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/2007/January/12 - regarding an issue in Western Australia roads - has salient issues arising that have implications for a lot of Australian stubs - please check! SatuSuro 15:26, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Potential copyright concern

Is the current state of Albert Solomon acceptable? It appears to be primarily a copy of Australian Dictionary of Biography online, with a note

1.This article is a reproduction of: Scott Bennett, 'Solomon, Albert Edgar (1876 - 1914)', Australian Dictionary of Biography Online, 2006, http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A120013b.htm Note: As soon as any change is made, it will be necessary to identify the original ADB text remaining by putting it in quotation marks, footnoting each section of it to the original citation, and removing the statement `This article is a reproduction of'.

It feels wrong, but I'm not certain which reason - breach of ADB copyright, or restriction on future editing on Wikipedia. Could a copyright expert please check? --Scott Davis Talk 08:22, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Copyright violation with no assertion of right of use, and restriction on further usage in contravention of GFDL. I've reverted to a prior version which unfortunately leaves a single line article. --Steve (Slf67) talk 08:59, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
This is an absolute copyright violation. We can use the Dictionary of Australian Biography because it's from the first half of the 20th century and is thus out of copyright. The Australian Dictionary of Biography, on the other hand, is very much still in copyright, and thus cannot be reproduced without explicit written permission. It is very important that the two are not confused. Rebecca 09:41, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Somehow I feel that simply pulling the text from an old source is 'wrong' too. Not for copyvio reasons, but because of the idea of wikipedia being the work of wikipedia editors, not some deceased academic. SauliH 14:52, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh, don't get me wrong, I detest it when people do that too. It's just that we legally can (not should) base articles off public domain work, which we cannot do in this case. Rebecca 06:19, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Robert Askin

If anyone has a bit of spare time on their hands this summer, it would be lovely if someone could take a look over our article on Robert Askin. For a fairly significant politician, this article is atrocious - it covers his rise reasonably, then goes into his pro-development policies, and then spends ten (!) paragraphs detailing rumors of his corruption. It doesn't even have a single word on how he actually left politics, and only a couple of paragraphs about what he actually did as Premier. I'd try and fix it myself, but I don't have access to the necessary resources at the moment, so it'd be lovely if someone else could have a go at fixing it up some. Rebecca 06:18, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Do we know why the image was deleted? He's dead, so a fair use one would be more than justified... JROBBO 09:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Stay in Touch article on vandalism

The SMH's Stay in Touch column vandalised an article to see what would happen. The column isn't too bad - I like articles focusing on the less glamorous work involved in wikipedia.

I then looked up the IP address involved, and noticed on User talk:203.26.177.2 a fair few warnings about previous instances of vandalism. It looks like it's a shared IP, so the vandalism probably wasn't by the author of the column. Should we trust these kind of people to write a newspaper? Andjam 10:22, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

According to APNIC the IP address is owned by John Fairfax Holdings, publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald, so yeah, it's pretty sad that staff at one of this country's major newspapers are vandalising Wikipedia - not just once or twice for "belly laughs" and "to see what happens", but on a regular basis. --Canley 14:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
They also vandalised mulesing. Too bad we can't see the edit history for what they publish each day! Andjam 12:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Category:Racism in Australia

What do people think of this new category? And what do people think of the fact that it contains such article as Pauline Hanson and Palm Island, Queensland? Hesperian 23:44, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

It will be used as a pejorative label on many articles and I do not want to imagine the disputes where people are arguing whether something/one is sufficiently racist to be placed in the category. I would support a deletion. michael talk 00:08, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Agree, plus there can not be a clear criteria for inclusion. I suggest it be put to CfD. --Bduke 00:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Agree with Michael entirely. Send it off to CfD. -- Longhair\talk 00:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
To quote Ms Hanson: "I don't like it." Maybe a rename to Category:Race issues in Australia? Takes a bit of the pejorative edge off the flat-out "racism" label. I would certainly support a category deletion though. --Canley 00:19, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Renaming only hides the devil under another disguise. Delete outright. -- Longhair\talk 00:29, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, a bit weasly isn't it! Then delete it I say. --Canley 01:46, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I ask myself whether there's a legitimate use for this category, and the answer, unfortunately, is "yes". This category is a legitimate area of interest and research, and can legitimately hold articles such as Equal Opportunity Commission, Racial Discrimination Act 1975, Koowarta v Bjelke-Petersen, Fight Dem Back, Alas Poor Yagan, Jack van Tongeren, 2005 Cronulla riots, Lambing Flat riots, Explorers' Monument, etc. In all these cases there is a broad consensus and understanding that the subject involves or is related to racism in Australia.

I think the problem here is the overzealous categorisation. I notice, for example, that The Bulletin is categorised into it. Surely there's a potential legal issue for the Wikimedia Foundation right there. I say keep the category, but largely depopulate it, and put some effort into crafting strict but sensible admission criteria.

Hesperian 02:08, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd concur that this is an unfortunately needed category. And as far as The Bulletin goes, if the Packers' want the kudos of publishing Australia's oldest magazine they have to live with the fact that it once was an obscenely racist publication with "Australia for the White Man" as a masthead! --Steve (Slf67) talk 02:20, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
I do not think that such a category is useful in the first place, other than a label to slap on something. Secondly, racial matters and perceptions can be highly subjective, and as I said earlier, I do not want to see all the petty arguments for and against the category's inclusion in particular articles. To avoid potential headaches, and a neutrality mess, categories like these need to be given the flick. michael talk 02:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Looking at the contents of the cateory at the moment then - where are those articles going to next? I think there is a need to think of that. SatuSuro 03:30, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the current category name can be seen to have pejorative undertones, but I believe a category of this nature is required. Perhaps we could refer to one of its parent categorys Category:Politics and race and extrapolate a new subcategory Category:Politics and race in Australia. However, the main issue, as Hesparian has pointed out, is to be very selective about the categorisation of articles. It is ludicrous, for instance, to place a geographic entity such as Palm Island, Queensland in such a category, whereas an article titled 2004 Palm Island Riot would be suitable.--Melburnian 05:32, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Probably there were too many pages in the category. But that's a case for reviewing it, not for emptying it or removing it. Racism in Australia a completely suitable topic for a category. Even if it wasn't, it's not appropriate to empty a category before it passes a CFD. Regards, Ben Aveling 10:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

food needed in Sydney

Can anyone in Sydney help these poor workers at Downer EDi? I didn't have the heart to warn them for vandalism. I sent them 57 Varieties of Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense instead. --Scott Davis Talk 11:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

ACOTF: Palm Island replaces Mulesing

Mulesing was ACOTF from 7 January 2007 to 21 January 2007

  • 18 contributors made 78 edits
  • The article increased from 1052 words to 1836 words - 80% longer
  • See how it changed

Thanks to all who helped. Palm Island, Queensland is the new ACOTF, selected with only three votes (in the event of a tie, the oldest nomination is selected). It has already received significant editing since being nominated, so please help to improve it further. --Scott Davis Talk 12:45, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikimania 08

Why not have Canberra as Austria's city of choice for wikimania 08 bid. Its a good third option between Sydney and Melbourne. Its also our capital city. Why not? Culverin? Talk 01:19, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Why would Austrians want to travel all the way to Canberra? --Steve (Slf67) talk 01:24, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
They might like to visit the Australian Institute of Sport, to find out more about sport in a country that was temporarily ahead of them in the 2002 Winter Olympics medal tally. Incidentally, has Canberra even held a meet-up yet (not that I'd be able to attend)? Andjam 04:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Ich reise die Welt zum Besuchen dich, Kanberra!! Back to serious business. It really should be Melbourne or Perth IMO. I might be biased on the Perth one, though. :) Orderinchaos78 07:52, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Australian article assessments

Is anyone willing to help out with assessments of Australia related articles? The backlog is currently sized at over 10,000+ articles. The assessment quality scale is here for those needing more information and willing to help. See you there. The growing pile of articles is available for your review at Unassessed Australia articles. -- Longhair\talk 12:36, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll chip in a bit tomorrow. Daniel.Bryant T Â· C ] 12:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I pick up on those I come across, I have tried to add {{WP Australia}} to article talk pages as I come across them. Typically stubs of low importance unfortunately. Paul foord 13:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I've done some for you then - all numbered articles gone, and some of the "A"s. I'll do more as I go on. To make it easier, would it be possible for a bot to go through any article with an Australia-related "Stub" tag on it and make the class automatically stub? If articles improve they can be reassessed - it's easy. But that would make this job a lot easier. Most of the articles out there are stubs with a couple of lines. JROBBO 13:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The Kingbotk plugin, for use with AutoWikiBrowser supports auto-assessment of Australia-related articles marked as a stub. I've never used that function myself, but it does work. The Kingbotk plugin also manages the many Australian sub-WikiProjects of WikiProject Australia, and assigns the relevant template(s). Running AWB in automatic mode may require approval at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval however. -- Longhair\talk 14:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

It might be worthwhile recruiting Australian bot operators to form an automation department for WP:AUS so that we have experienced users to perform such tasks.--cj | talk 15:26, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

What should happen when an article gets deleted, like this non-notable individual? Thanks, Andjam 11:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe that Mathbot picks up that the article is no longer there and removes it from the list. Mathbot's updates usually happen at least once a day but occasionally more often. --bainer (talk) 11:40, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
The talk page usually needs deletion if the only contents are WikiProject templates. The same goes for articles that are redirected to others. Marking these types of articles with the {{db-talk}} template will see somebody come along and delete them eventually. Mathbot doesn't perform deletions to my knowledge. -- Longhair\talk 12:04, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

archiving to paysite of The Australian newspaper articles

As at January 2007, [The Australian] is placing archived articles in Newstext; "a user-pays site, with a minimum purchase requirement of $AU17.50"[1]. So cites to such articles are not long or necessarily even medium term. While present situation exists finding hard copy cite asap may be less work. Comments? SmithBlue 13:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I think they will be available through the Wayback machine/ Internet Archive. Moreover hardcopies are available at major libraries with newspaper collections. I wouldn't cease citation if appropriate. Citation does not have to be of online sources--Golden Wattle talk 19:52, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Citations of news should have dates and titles so they can be found in libraries once the online links die.--Grahamec 04:13, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah simply cite the publication, date and page number as hard copy. Unfortunately some articles will be lost this way as not all of them actually go to print. We've had a number of problems with articles older than about 3 months which disappear never to be found again (not even in wayback) - I have generally endeavoured to use ABC and Fairfax links where possible for their durability. Orderinchaos78 13:02, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Tried the Wayback machine. It worked! Very surprised and relieved. Just put in old link and at bottom of list the desired article appeared. SmithBlue 15:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
{{cite web}} has archiveurl and archivedate parameters to record where it was archived to, and keep the original URL. {{cite news}} doesn't have those parameters. News.com.au seems to archive some articles to newstext faster than others - not sure if it's the ones they bought or the ones they wrote themselves. --Scott Davis Talk 10:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Encouragement to vandalism?

I have encountered on a talk page mention that there might have been a media outlet in australia that actually encouraged people to vandalise wikipedia... what as a project do we do with something like that? Ignore it? SatuSuro 02:39, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we should develop a form letter to send out, pointing out that as they obviously find Wikipedia so useful, they could help contribute to our mission by making useful edits on lesser-edited topics. Except for Chris & Craig (who I notice continue their fascination with Wikipedia editors). Waste of time there. :) --pfctdayelise (talk) 05:39, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Endangered languages

portal needs help

Does anyone know how to fix the embarrassing red links for featured article and picture on Portal:Australia? --Scott Davis Talk 10:04, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to Golden Wattle for a quick hack fix. --Scott Davis Talk 10:26, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiCast : Southern Star.

Hi.

I know this is not exactly WikiPedia related, but WikiCast a project aimed at creating free-content programmes for 'broadcast' is possibly needing some assistance from the Australian contingent on Wikipedia.

One of the ideas suggested for WikiCast was Southern Star a weekly news digest.

Your views on this and any offers of assistance would be greatly appreciated.

ShakespeareFan00 01:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

There is already Wikinews ? --Golden Wattle talk 01:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes there is Wikinews - but Southern Star was more of a news digest, it could also do analaysis which Wikinews doesnt. ShakespeareFan00 13:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Noble Park, Victoria

Noticed some rather interesting changes there during the course of today relating to some riots that allegedly occurred there. Not so much an active issue but one for the watchlists - and if anyone knows more about it and has verified reliable sources, it probably wouldn't hurt to detail what actually did occur. Orderinchaos78 14:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Didn't it involve a bunch of thugs trashing a video store? Does that really qualify as a riot? QazPlm 13:54, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Military of Australia feature candidate

It would be very helpful if some of the contributors here could possibly contribute to the Military of Australia portal feature status here. It so far has 6 supports and to the best of my knowledge all the current objectiions have been met. It is so close, just need some help getting over the line. Hossen27 09:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It made it.[3] Congrats to all who worked on it :) Cheers, Daniel.Bryant 09:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Leyland Brothers is the new Australian Collaboration

Palm Island, Queensland was WP:ACOTF from 21 January 2007 to 4 February 2007

  • 14 contributors made 214 edits
  • The article increased from 13 kb to 32 kb - 2.5 times longer
  • See how it changed

In addition, several new articles were created:

Please help to improve Leyland Brothers in any way you can. There are several new nominations on WP:ACOTF to choose from for next time. --Scott Davis Talk 11:12, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Johnny O'Keefe

The article on Johnny O'Keefe was deleted today as a longstanding copyvio. Some of the older Australians Wikipedians who may remember JOK, (touted at Australia's first bona fide rock'n'roll star) may like to fill in the gap now left behind in Australia's rock music history. -- Longhair\talk 08:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I have restored some earlier non-copyvio versions. IMO the copyvio should have resulted in reversion to the most recent non-copyright-violating revision; not outright deletion. Also, I have edited articles with User:Dunks58's (the apparent copyvio-er) before and from memory he did have his own music website, some of which he transferred into Wikipedia - I will check and see if there is any link. -- Chuq 09:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Old growth forests

As far as I can tell, neither Category:Old growth forests nor List of old growth forests contains any Australian entries. Please tell me we still have some old growth forests left. Hesperian 11:16, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it's just a matter of identifying them. There are are probably some articles in Category:National parks of Australia.--cj | talk 11:37, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Some are tied in with RFA's some are not... have left a message at hesperians talk page about this ...SatuSuro 12:48, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
http://www.daffa.gov.au/rfa http://schools.wafa.org.au/where.htm http://www.green.net.au/adan/index2.html are suggested lead ins re WA context - the Tasmanian one is a bit more complex SatuSuro 12:54, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Category:Racism in Australia again

I feel uncomfortable about recent additions to Category:Racism in Australia. We discussed this cat earlier this year - see Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 25#Category:Racism in Australia. I think some recent additions don't belong there. The conclusion was that as Hesperion put it we need to "put some effort into crafting strict but sensible admission criteria." Yet to be done and probably needed in my view.--Golden Wattle talk 23:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I recently scrubbed this category from 2004 Palm Island death in custody. The attitude some people seem to have is that if it involves black people, it must qualify as racism! I was on the fence last time, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that the category is worthless. Lankiveil 02:44, 13 February 2007 (UTC).

Hi, sorry to come late to the debate. I was the one who added the category Racism in Australia to the 2004 Palm Island death in custody entry, not having realised that it had been removed once previously. I'm looking forward to reading the link Golden Wattle put in above, but I would like to say first that the category wasn't added because it simply involved black people, and I definitely don't think the category is worthless. That to me would imply that either there is no racism in Australia worth mentioning, or that few people would be interested in reading entries falling under that category. As for whether the Palm Island riot was a racist event, I guess it depends who you ask. I have spent some time in Aboriginal communities over the past 12 months and there is not a doubt in their minds that the severe injuries sustained by Mulrunji were at the hands of the police; that the first pathology result attributing the injuries to a fall on the stairs was a cover-up; and that the use of SWAT teams against a community of unarmed men, women and children was an inappropriate use of force. Whether there were racist attitudes held by the police, police commissioner and pathologist involved depends on the likelihood that they would have taken similar action against a white man in custody. I think it unlikely, particularly given a lack of precedent with the SWAT involvement. Anyway, I will have a read of the previous discussion before saying any more. I'm all for coming up with an appropriate definition and strictly sticking to it. Sholto.mac 04:56, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for commenting. My problem with adding this category to things like that particular article is that it's never clear whether the incident in question was motivated by racism. Unless Hurley can be proven to have yelled "Die Darkie!!!" as he repeatedly punched Domadgee in the spleen, I don't see how you can claim that it's 100% "racism in Australia". As it is, adding that category to things like that is merely speculation - something that has no real place on Wikipedia.
I do like the idea of moving a lot of these articles to "Category: History of Racism in Australia" - things like White Australia Policy can be put in there. But before that happens, I think it should be clearly laid out what sort of articles need to be put in there, otherwise we'll be back where we started. Lankiveil 08:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC).

Still on racism

Never mind; the issue was rather more banal than I had thought. Archived. Hesperian 06:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

New search tool for Commons - Mayflower

Mayflower Commons search

this new tool has been created to do searches for specific words within media file stored on Commons. Gnangarra 05:53, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Sydney Royal Easter Show

Because its getting close to show time i think its time that this article got expanded. DXRAW 08:53, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Road transport in Australia is new Australian Collaboration of the Fortnight

Leyland Brothers was WP:ACOTF from 4 February 2007 to 18 February 2007

  • 7 contributors made 22 edits
  • The article increased from 279 words to 1045 - 3.7 times longer
  • See how it changed

The new collaboration is Road transport in Australia. Please help to improve it and any related articles in any way you can. Some of the articles that link to it contain rather inaccurate, stereotyped or stylised views of Australia. Unfortunately, Special:Whatlinkshere/Road transport in Australia appears useless while the current collaboration is linked from the {{WP Australia}} template. Also improve any of the related articles linked from this top article. --Scott Davis Talk 11:49, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

What to do with List of Australians?

What to do with this article? It's been around a long time (created September 23, 2002 [4]), and was probably once a useful index to Australian biographical articles. Today, I imagine the list is unmanagable and will never be anywhere near complete any time soon, if at all. The Australian people category and sub-category tree underneath manages the task much better IMHO.

What do others think about redirecting this list to Lists of Australian people, where a list of lists can be created and we do away with this list once and for all? -- Longhair\talk 10:40, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. JPD (talk) 12:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I am not a fan of lists. I don't think this one has a lot of meaning. Why not redirect to Category:Australian people--Golden Wattle talk 22:18, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I put {{prod}} on List of Australian politicians a few weeks ago as it was incomplete and unhelpful. The tag got removed and the list split into several shorter ones, but they seem to be just as unhelpful (except the link to the current members). It seems these lists were created when Wikipedia was much smaller, and aren't as useful as categories for lists of actual articles. I still support getting rid of them both. --Scott Davis Talk 11:24, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I've tagged {{prod}} on the incomplete List of former members of the Australian House of Representatives and List of members of State and Territory parliaments. --Scott Davis Talk 12:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
{{prod}} got rid of List of members of State and Territory parliaments. I've gone the AFD route for List of former members of the Australian House of Representatives and List of Australians. I may have to pull my head in from the SNOW - time will tell. --Scott Davis Talk 13:56, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe split into seperate lists eg "List of Australian [insert here]s"? --Candy-Panda 12:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

List of Australians was laid to rest today, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Australians. Shall we now redirect it to Lists of Australians and start afresh? -- Longhair\talk 09:37, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Vote 1 against a redirect. Any links to it should be fixed to point to a more accurate sublist, or removed completely. I also would like to point out that WP:LIST says "Lists should always include unambiguous statements of membership criteria..." (emphasis original). I'm happy with complete lists, but not happy with open ones were the criteria for inclusion include "has a Wikipedia article" or "is famous" or incomplete ones where only a subset of the eligible members are in the list. --Scott Davis Talk 11:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
RIP List of Australians. Long live Lists of Australians --Steve (Slf67) talk 12:02, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge Indigenous Australian culture and Australian Aboriginal culture categories?

Would anybody have any objection to merging these two categories? Yes I know they're technically different, but in practice people seem to have used them indiscriminately (and in fact wrongly). Rayd8 | User talk:Rayd8 01:12, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

As there have been no immediate reactions, I have moved this discussion into Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 February 19 Rayd8 | User talk:Rayd8 08:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Aboriginal Gods

I see there is a category of Aboriginal Gods (and the term is also used in a number of articles). As far as I'm aware, no such thing exists. There are creator-spirits, or culture-heroes, or dreaming spirits, etc., but nothing that can really be called a God in the European sense. So I think this is rather misrepresenting Indigenous cultures, and is therefore disrespectful to those cultures. I'm happy to volunteer to do a big clean up to expunge the term, but before I start any flame-wars, does anybody disagree with this? Rayd8 | User talk:Rayd8 14:42, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I concur with Rayd8's views and would support a clean up and renaming of the category - not sure what the name should be though--Golden Wattle talk 22:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I also completely agree. The term is inaccurate.--cj | talk 22:07, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
A couple of the articles in the cat refer to gods, so the cleanup needs to go a little deeper. There's also Australian Aboriginal mythology which contains a more complete(?) list. If the cat stays I'd suggest Aboriginal mythological beings. --Steve (Slf67) talk 22:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments - you're right - it will be a lot of work. But we have to start somewhere. At present the representation of this whole area in Wikipedia is quite misleading, and will certainly be offensive to some Indigenous people. It's important to tread very carefully when you're dealing with a belief system with thousands of active adherents. And the Australian Aboriginal mythology page also needs a lot of work! BTW can someone tell me if it would it be acceptable to Christians to have Jesus listed under "mythhology"? (This isn't rhetorical - I'm an atheist and I really don't know whether active Christians would consider that offensive). Rayd8 | User talk:Rayd8 03:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Probably yes, as much as I think that's a horrendous double-standard. Then again, I'm a baby-killing, god-hating, family-destroying atheist too. Lankiveil 02:46, 13 February 2007 (UTC).
many christians would view that as attempt to cast doubt on their beliefs. but i assume the main reason 'mythology' was used (apart from being fairly common usage, i think?) was, well, what else? until we can come up with something else i suppose we just have to pretend it's only meant to be descriptive? (note, 'religion' generally isn't used because it's too specific/ethnocentric)  â‡’ bsnowball  10:42, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
What about "beliefs", or something along those lines? Lankiveil 12:17, 13 February 2007 (UTC).
Something like "Australian Aboriginal beliefs" would seem to cover the beliefs of all Aboriginal people, which includes more than indigenous beliefs. "Mythology" as used in some areas of academia today seems to not comment on the historical truth of the stories, and in that sense wouldn't be offensive to anyone, but I suspect that most people would understand the more common meaning implying that the story has no basis in fact, making it hard to apply it to things with any sort of historical record. Having said that, I can't see anything better than "mythology" or perhaps "traditional beliefs". As for gods, I suspect the category was started out of ignorance and an attempt to fit in with the Cat:Gods by culture and Cat:Goddesses by culture categories. While "spirits" or "mythological beings" may be a better name, we will also need to address the question of how renamed category/ies should fit in this scheme. JPD (talk) 14:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
"Traditional religious beliefs"? Seems to cut out non-religious beliefs, as well as imported religions. Lankiveil 08:15, 14 February 2007 (UTC).
Thanks for all the valuable comments. While Mythology has a technical non-pejorative meaning, I think some people will still interpret it as meaning false beliefs, which is obviously inappropriate for a belief system which has many adherents. The litmus test of whether Jesus could be regarded as mythology attracted a few interesting comments (some in private) which indicated that at least some Christians would be offended by the term. So "Australian Aboriginal beliefs" sounds pretty good to me right now. Any dissent from that? Rayd8 | User talk:Rayd8 10:05, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
yes, the suggested phrase is almost meaningless & not in common usage. the term mythology is used in much of the relevant literature & the sense in which it is being used can be explained on the relevent cat & main article pages. that is if at all necessary, has anyone who might be offended acctually complained? expanding those rubbish stubs, although it does have to be done very carefully, would be far more useful.  â‡’ bsnowball  16:27, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that much of the relevant literature was written before the Anglo-Saxon authors had developed any respect for what is now acknowledged to be a living culture. Is anyone actually offended? Yes, very much so! This is why, for example, Mountford's classic work "Nomads of the Australian desert" had to be removed from bookshops after a legal injunction by Indigenous groups. What was acceptable in the sixties is not acceptable now. And Wikipedia should stand as an example of NPOV and equal respect for all cultures. I'd be happy to use the word mythology if Christians would be happy to have their religion listed as mythology, and I gather that does offend some (but not all) Christians. I don't think we should treat the beliefs of Indigenous Australians with any less respect than we accord to the Christian religion. Rayd8 | User talk:Rayd8 21:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Is this discussion about something different to the topics of Dreamtime and Dreaming? What about using one of those words for the category names instead of mythology/belief? They are well-understood and accepted terms, I believe. --Scott Davis Talk 04:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
probably not as not all of these people use the term 'dreaming'. i doubt moutford's book was removed just for using the word mythology? the term is used in contemporary literature (it means roughly 'non-historical', not 'bullshit'; amusingly enough the negative connotations do come from attempts to denigrate pre-christian european 'mythologies') and as i said, it's reference can be explained if there is a real problem. & again there isn't a better term.  â‡’ bsnowball  09:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Dreaming is good, but may not mean much to anyone not already familiar with Indigenous Australian culture, so it's less useful as a category. Having looked at the wikipedia entry for Mythology, I'm almost persuaded that it would be OK! It does have the advantage that it's widely-understood.Rayd8 | User talk:Rayd8 01:17, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Any article belonging in the category is likely to have a sentence describing dreaming including a link, so unfamiliarity with the term is not an excuse to not using it for (part of) the category name if it is most appropriate. Perhaps the category name would help people to learn about the term. --Scott Davis Talk 12:24, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Having considered the above discussion and done a bit of homework, I propose to replace the words "Aboriginal God" by "Aboriginal Ancestral Spirit", and words like "religion" by "Aboriginal traditional beliefs" (with appropriate redirects of course), and then cross the other bridges when we get to them. Anybody got any problems with this? Rayd8 | User talk:Rayd8 09:11, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Forgot to get my suggestion off Rayd8's talk page! Aboriginal beliefs for both myself - but then I have had an aversion to the use of ancestral and traditional for good reasons - it becomes ahistorical and non judgemental with the use of 'aboriginal beliefs'. Where I come (ie academic training) from - POV oozes out of the usage of 'ancestral' and' traditional' - in my opinion always better to go the way with the less of a moving target with fewer words. If there is evidence of belief of 'something that comes from before' from a particular spirit or being, it is not a god - it could be an ancestral spirit - but it is a part of a belief - better just an umbrella of 'aboriginal belief' - as to what it is it has regional variation and potentially multiple meanings - much better to qualify after from a simpler term- than get trapped by the potential arguments that arise from the position of whether something is traditional/ancestral or no... dangerous country for the wikipedia fellas SatuSuro 09:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your excellent comment, but there are two different things here:
  • What do we use to replace the word god in a sentence such as Baiame was an aboriginal god? Clearly belief is not appropriate here, so you have to use a word like spirit. Aboriginal spirit doesn't really work, as it's rather ambiguous. Ancestral spirit is what tends to be used both by the indigenous community and by academia. Things like culture hero would also be OK, but are less understandable by people outside the field. Aboriginal Ancestral Spirit isn't perfect either, but it's the best I can come up with.
  • What do we use to replace the word religion? I've proposed Aboriginal traditional belief and you've proposed Aboriginal belief. Both are OK, except that the latter has a slightly negative connotation, in that Aboriginal people may also believe in geology and physics as valid narratives as well as their traditional beliefs.Rayd8 | User talk:Rayd8 06:06, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
    • To me, "Aboriginal traditional belief" is from the dreaming/dreamtime. "Aboriginal belief" is vague without more context but could include Christianity, Islam, geology, ... as well as traditional beliefs. --Scott Davis Talk 12:12, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Spot on, Scott. Rayd8 | User talk:Rayd8 00:45, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Im disappointed no one has piped in with how indigenous canadians understand their world - or how the canadian project has dealt with this particular issue if at all - as there have been many oz anthros exposed to the issues of land rights and trad lands there and so on..SatuSuro 09:00, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Telectronics again

There is an editor who has been pushing his point of view on a series of related articles for slightly more than a year now. The latest skirmish is at Talk:Nucleus Limited where he has personally requested that I reveal "my identity and agenda" and questioned whether I was working for particular interests. I am not and have said so there. However, it is obviously time to bow out and let other editors take over. I came upon the series of articles following a request at this noticeboard last December. I have done my best but really am obviously not effective any more. Articles affected include Telectronics (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) Noel Gray (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) Nucleus Limited (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs). The firms and its principals are notable and have contributed to worldwide medical technology. They deserve better.--Golden Wattle talk 22:04, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Lists of people

There's a discussion above about a deleted article called "List of Australians". If that interested you, maybe you're interested in the discussion I just started at talk:Lists of Australians. Many of those lists need deletion or major work. --Scott Davis Talk 06:36, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Railpage Australia

Is anybody watching the edit war? SatuSuro 12:37, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Railway station article naming convention

There seems to be an undocumented naming convention where railway stations in Australia are named either xxx, City or xxx, State. Is there a reason for this disambiguation? Further, the xxx, City names are slightly misleading as they are often in the metropolitan area and often on the far outskirts of the city. I would guess that 99% of the articles under Category:Railway stations in Australia do not need to be disambiguated. Any thoughts? —Moondyne 12:45, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I guess the ", City" disambiguation appeared because it indicates that the station is in the metropolitan railway system of that city. As such, I don't think it is an unhelpful situation. I think a lot more than 1% of the articles need some sort of disambiguation. How many have a twin somewhere in the UK? JPD (talk) 11:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
It was done in response to the suburb naming conventions and has just been adopted that way. As far as I know there won't ever be any duplication issues under this system (except the to-be-opened Esplanade railway station, Perth has a closed duplicate in Perth on the Fremantle Line that was open for the America's Cup); about 99% of stations in Australia have been named this way (with the exceptions the iconic ones like Flinders Street Station and Southern Cross Station), and as per JPD above, it avoids duplications with UK stations, of which there would be quite a few, since a lot of Australian suburbs are named after places in England. I think it's fine that we keep it this way, so long as we are consistent. JROBBO 01:10, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
The xxx, City conventions refer to city and interurban stations. As Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney all have clearly defined interurban and city systems, this isn't a problem. JROBBO 01:11, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

TFA

For those of you (like me) that never look at the Main page, today's TFA is Banksia integrifolia. Hesperian 00:21, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Well done!--Melburnian 07:47, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Billy Thorpe

Sadly, British-born Australian rocker Billy Thorpe died early this morning (28 Feb) of a cardiac arrest in Sydney. The article on him is in dire need of a good wikifying: there are virtually no wikilinks, the article is written from too much of a first person/Australian perspective ("By the time Billy arrived on our shores...), and there are no references whatsoever (apart from those about his death). I'll be working on the article over the course of the day, can some AWNBers drop by and help improve the article to a much higher standard? Hope to see you there. --Canley 23:11, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

There will be obituaries in the papers soon for good source info to fix the article up. Nomadtales 02:11, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Cricket stub - 1877-78 Australian cricket season

I am normally an inclusionist - does anybody else think that 1877-78 Australian cricket season is just a tad non notable so far? I appreciate setting up templates but but but ...?--Golden Wattle talk 02:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the season is notable, but I also think it wouldn't do a scrap of harm to delete all these substubs, which don't say anything that's not in the title, and don't link anywhere except to each other. Hesperian 03:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Comic relief

Want to have your say at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alan Carpenter? Better get in quick! Hesperian 13:41, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Irrigation in Australia is new collaboration

Road transport in Australia was Australian collaboration of the fortnight from 18 February 2007 to 4 March 2007

  • 12 contributors made 49 edits
  • The article increased from 5.3 kb to 14.2 kb - more than twice as long
  • See how it changed. The article did not exist when nominated, so in some sense the entire article is part of the collaboration. Thankyou to all who contributed.

Another new "...in Australia" article this time is Irrigation in Australia, also created during its nomination period. Please help to develop it further. --Scott Davis Talk 13:07, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Anyone live in Western Sydney?

This should be for the WikiProject Sydney page, but since no one reads it I'll post this here. The North-West T-way is opening on Saturday, and it would be great to get some photos of the Transitway - it's free to travel on it on Saturday too. We are lacking in photos of both Sydney's transitways. Anyone up for it? JRG 01:07, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia an ABC top story

ABC News Online is currently running an article titled "Best Wikipedia pages edited over and over" as a top story. Interesting study, but I don't think it's very accurate.--cj | talk 10:41, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps .... reading through the study the statistics seem to work and the conclusions are valid based on the data analysis shown, although I'm concerned that there is no discussion of other possible rationales. - Peripitus (Talk) 11:20, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not so comfortable with the conclusions, particularly because their indicator of article quality is simply whether or not it has featured status. However valid an indicator that is, it is surely problematic when trying to demonstrate a correlation between quality and number of edits/editors. The article does acknowledge that the causality in both directions between quality and number of edits is relevant, I don't see how they have dealt with the fact that the articles they accept as high quality have necessarily received more edits simply through their exposure to the FA process. JPD (talk) 12:34, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
It also doesnt indicate what edits it considers, for many FA's the number of edits double just by spending a day on the main page, most of these are unproductive or they're reverts. Gnangarra 12:48, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
The actual article referred to in the ABC story [5] does say that they discount edits made while the article is on the main page, as well as bot edits. JPD (talk) 12:55, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to the original research. A blog entry which has also done some research on how articles are written and by whom is at: Swartz, Aaron (2006). Who Writes Wikipedia?. Raw Thought, a blog by Aaron Swartz. Retrieved on 2007-03-07. I found it interesting anyway. There is also a survey being conducted on the motivation of editors ... what motivates strangers from around the globe to collaborate and contribute to a public good like Wikipedia. Why would people come forward and donate their time, effort and knowledge? - see User:WikiInquirer and User:WikiInquirer/WikiStudy. --Golden Wattle talk 21:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Brian Burke scandal

I think this scandal is growing to the point where it warrants its own article, considering that it has now forced the resignations of six politicians from both major parties, may well claim several more, and could be seen to have ongoing political ramifications for a while. Does anyone have any suggestions for an article title? I'm not quite sure of what to call it. Rebecca 00:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it warrants coverage, but I also believe that we should wait a month or two until it's "over" in order to write it well. All too often Wikipedia is in haste to add content on events that fluctuate quickly, which can lead to pov-slants. michael talk 06:50, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure it'll be over for quite a while with the way the hearings are proceeding in WA. There's some precedent for starting an article while scandals are ongoing (c.f. the Sponsorship Scandal in Canada), and I think it's most relevant to create it now. In any case, I'm happy to write the article myself if someone can come up with a name, and I'm happy to have people checking it over for NPOV in case any sort of bias slips in. Rebecca 10:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
It certainly warrants coverage, but I think it would be succumbing to hype to create a specific article. There's no reason it can't be contained within the articles on Kevin Rudd, Ian Campbell and perhaps Australian general election, 2007, but principally Brian Burke.--cj | talk 06:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think the federal dimensions are anything close to notable, just this week's media hype, but the enormity of the scandal in Western Australia does. It's forced the resignation of three ministers ((Norm Marlborough, Tony McRae, John Bowler), two of whose careers - Marlborough and Bowler - appear to be over, one shadow minister (Anthony Fels), and there has been reported links to two more Labor backbenchers (Ben Wyatt and Shelley Archer) and the deputy leader of the state Liberal Party, Troy Buswell. It's become such a large scandal in its own right that it warrants an article to tie everything together. I'm happy to write it if someone can come up with a title. Rebecca 10:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, where have the links been drawn to Ben Wyatt? He is in the wrong faction to be involved, that's why I'm curious (he's more a New Right type of the Mactiernan/Roberts cut). Orderinchaos78 11:45, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
[6] [7] Not quite in the league of the others, but he's been drawn in to the scandal nonetheless. Rebecca 11:48, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Wow! Thanks for that. Orderinchaos78 12:50, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm kind of wondering myself. It may seem fine to add it to the relevant articles, but there is an absolute tonne of things you'd want to cover - enough to make a fairly long article (all from a quick google search, I'm sure I'd find many, many more if I had a half hour for it) Is it really possible to sum it all up in sections of relevant pages? I think a new article would be best here. --Michael Billington (talk • contribs) 07:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
It is a bit odd to be here - he's one of ours - the WA Project talk page would be just as interested ! ta, in case anyone has forgotten the project exists. SatuSuro 10:39, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
It's a challenge - one would need to cover his years in power as a starting point, and his ridiculously high opinion ratings during most of his time in office. At federal level everyone will have forgotten this in a month - Burke really is a non entity outside WA, and is larger than life here. The scandal's really been gathering momentum since 2005. Boundary issues are also a problem - contrary to media reports it's actually three WA ministers - the first one (D'Orazio) was more generally related to CCC business and less to Burke. Had more connection with the Spagnolo affair in City of Stirling (Stirling, Wanneroo and Joondalup are all up to their eyeballs in this). I would say at this point until we can untangle what is where (it really is a web of intrigue) and write a decent article on Corruption in Western Australia or such like, we should probably defer. Orderinchaos78 11:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't see any great need to tie it into either broader corruption in Western Australia or to the previous Burke/WA Inc scandals, except in the context of a background section, since they're not directly relevant here. It's for that reason that I also ignored D'Orazio above - that's a separate scandal altogether, and one that belongs in his article alone. The Burke-Grill-Crichton-Browne scandal, on the other hand, is not that hard to untangle, but it is big enough and complex enough that I think it really does warrant an article of its own. Rebecca 11:26, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
"Brian Burke!? Brian who? - Paul Keating (today). - Fred 13:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Also describing the PM as "all tip, no iceberg" and the "Desiccated coconut". A very funny interview. —Moondyne 13:48, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps expand Corruption and Crime Commission with some redirects, and that way you can include the D'Orazio affair also. —Moondyne 13:44, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I think that would be a strange place to put this content. We need an article on the commission, its powers, its history, etc - not a bunch of content on one specific scandal which was thrown there to avoid creating a separate article. Rebecca 23:31, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
It was Costello as "all tip, no iceberg" - just brilliant - one forgets how clever he was - it shows the others up dreadfully. This Burke scandal is however surely a storm in a teacup - notable only for newsprint column lengths / newstime devoted to it. Would it really pass the Wikipedia notability test, especially if you said current events belong in Wikinews - will this be notable a year from now? The challenge is surely to reference it in the Burke article, or the Corruption and Crime article as suggested by Moondyne, very briefly with links from the relevant bits of the articles on the various ministers sacked or resigned to that section only. Don't dignify the whole thing with an article. I am not trying to censor so much as try to have some perspective on notability.--Golden Wattle talk 20:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Now I remember why we tried to secede. :-) Rest assured this is a very, very, very big deal in Western Australia. Bigger than some silly imploding hospital, for example; probably almost on a par with your 2003 bushfires. Hesperian 23:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
My "silly imploding hospital" comment was grossly insensitive; apologies for any offense. Hesperian 14:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I really don't understand the reluctance to have a specific article, or why people keep focusing on the laughable attempts by Howard to take this federal instead of the major state-level scandal. This affects about ten different people at this stage - surely it makes sense to put it all in one place rather than piecemeal coverage all over the place. How does doing this "dignify" the scandal in any way? Rebecca 23:31, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree, Rebecca, but scoping it would be tough, and what should it be called? The CCC investigation isn't specifically about Burke. It started in November '05 as an investigation into the Busselton Council's handling of a land development at Smiths Beach, and gradually expanded into an investigation into government dealings with lobbyists in general. Hesperian 00:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Brian Burke backlash? Brian Burke redux? Brian Burke boomerang? 2007 Brian Burke retroaction? 2007 Election year silliness? 2007 Brian Burke repercussions? 2007 Brian Burke fallout? scandal, controversy, analysis, insert your favourite noun here. If someone just picks one, and we start it, we can worry about moving it a hundred times later. :) --pfctdayelise (talk) 01:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
As an amusing diversion (some would say byproduct?), a Liberal of the NCB camp has just been elevated to Federal cabinet, while three in southside Brisbane have had their offices raided. Orderinchaos78 03:56, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
"Burke's Backyard"! For me, I didn't mean to imply I was arguing for it not to have a its own article, just suggesting an alternative. Its well worthy of its own. Go for it Bec. —Moondyne 04:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Brian Burke political lobbying scandal. —Moondyne 04:07, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
In regards to Brian_Burke I have sub headed the CCC impact and only put in minor facts and cleaned up the referencing hopefully before anyone goes into great spiels in the article, so that'll help everyone stick to just the facts as they relate to Brian_Burke only and not digress. PS didn't know anyone was discussing it till I show something on my watch list. Regards petedavo 08:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Would anyone have any objections if I followed Moondyne's suggestion and created Brian Burke political lobbying scandal? (Or preferably if someone else did, because I'm turning 21 this week and very busy, but I can do it next week if no one else does.) Rebecca 09:01, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Thinking about this, I wonder whether its one of those events that really should be allowed to run its course, let the dust settle then look at the fallout. My reasoning is two fold, the first being sources currently the article would be written purely from the News media and "whats going to sell today" POV. The second being that the underlying issues/results haven't really surfaced yet nor will they during the next six months. Most of the important encyclopedic/historical information wont come until after the commissions findings and after the political grandstanding for both the federal and state elections has been extinguished. Certainly the individuals who have been named should have their articles updated with the events as they occur, even some who may have not previously warranted an article will need one. Just remember to tread lightly and refresh yourselves on WP:NPOV, WP:RS which is being replaced by WP:ATT and especially WP:BLP. This leaves three Questions: Gnangarra 15:53, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
  1. Can an article with the current available information comply with WP:NPOV and WP:BLP
  2. Will currently available sources stand up to WP:RS and its replacement WP:ATT
  3. Will this be an article or a collection news pieces
I think all of those are pretty much a given yes. There's a ton of reliable information out there, so sources are hardly an issue, and it's hardly difficult to extract the core facts from occasionally sensationalist articles. Rebecca 00:17, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Easy for you to say - you don't have to read The Worst. ;-) Hesperian 00:26, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
There's an interesting article in the links between that paper's editor and Brian Burke, surely... Orderinchaos78 09:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Today's Crikey draws some lines between Armstrong and Burke. Hesperian 10:21, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
All of this is interesting, but are there any major objections to my actually writing an article on this? Rebecca 05:40, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
  • No objections per se, I think there are other things more notable but there are plenty less notable articles. I hope this won't be significant a year from now (how boring but perhaps a boring life is what we hope for) but on the other hand Brian Burke has been around for a while. If you think it is worth breaking out from the Brian Burke article, go for it.--Golden Wattle talk 09:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
It ought to be possible to wrtite a bigger article than Printgate.--Grahamec 04:20, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Of the year

If anyone is looking for a listy project; we could use lists of the state/territorian of the year, so far we only have Victorian of the Year. --Peta 03:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I think Victoria is one of the only states that has its own award like this. The other states just have their state Australian of the Year award winner. JRG 12:30, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Isn't the Victorian one the Victorian Australian of the Year award as well? JPD (talk) 13:07, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

South Australia and Tasmania have such awards seemingly separate from the Australian of the year awards. WA seems to have one (as well as Young West Australian of the Year) but I can't easily find a link to the awards page, and also probably the other states - Peripitus (Talk) 01:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Reminder of item 2 Above

Talk:Lists of Australians - for anyone who might have missed it - the process is underway and the disctinctions between the use (or abuse) of lists vs categories is currently seeing lists being lined up - well worth the visit if you are unsure of which lists are being targetted. SatuSuro 01:31, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Article in The Age

Fast facts found online has an article on wikipedia which includes talking with four Aussie wikipedians. It's not a bad approach, as it avoids the article being the same boilerplate content.

Does the term "fast facts" sound a bit like "fast food"?

Wikipedia doesn't have a "mutual point of view" policy, it's a neutral point of view policy. It's an interesting substitution (the two words sound similar), but it suggests the journalist was just believing whatever was being said. Why didn't we tell him we all have PhDs in theology? Andjam 05:45, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


The lead under the image states Much of Wikipedia's appeal lies in the way it creates a community. It doesn't go onto expand on this point much in the article. While two of the four editors mentioned in the article met in real life ... I doubt whether they or anyone else would say that the appeal is about community - perhaps I am wrong. Although it avoided boilerplate content, I thought the article was pretty near useless and lacked interest. I also query its demographic assertions - what source is there that Anecdotal evidence suggests that those who contribute to the site are generally in their late 20s or 30s, have degrees and are mostly male (about 80 per cent by one estimation).? Perhaps it is the areas of the wikipedia that I contribute but from what I do know of my fellow wikipedians, I query the 80% and the narrow age limits. Perhaps the survey user: WikiInquirer is conducting at present on the motivation of editors ... what motivates strangers from around the globe to collaborate and contribute to a public good like Wikipedia. Why would people come forward and donate their time, effort and knowledge? will give us more insights. For more information on tthat survey and his methodology see User:WikiInquirer and User:WikiInquirer/WikiStudy. While his sample selection sounds good, it wil of course be only as good as the responses he gets. If everyone has PhDs in Theology ... or Peter Steiner (1993). On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog (cartoon). New Yorker, p.61, July 5, 1993. reproduced by the University of North Carolina (JOMC 50/EIS Research Initative). Retrieved on 2007-03-10. ... :-( Golden Wattle talk 21:07, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
I think that when someone writes an article on a subject which you are more familiar with than they are, it is always going to appear somewhat unsatisfactory. Having said that, I think that the article was quite a good overview of Wikipdedia in terms of introducing it to the public at large. A number of Australian Wikipedians were interviewed who made contact with the author through an email address placed on this noticeboard. I agree, however, that the "anecdotal evidence" about contributors is questionable, I too doubt its veracity. By the way, the line Much of Wikipedia's appeal lies in the way it creates a community is a quote from User:Angela rather than the author's assertion although its placement in the caption (of the online version) makes it appear so.--Melburnian 00:22, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Mark Textor

The Mark Textor article is a disgrace. It was written by Market maven (talk • contribs) (who also contributed to the related Lynton Crosby) and would seem to breach Wikipedia:Autobiography. It is self-serving and fails to mention any controversy of which there are plenty - that we allow such non-neutral articles is very embarrassing. I have put some links on the talk page. If anybody wants to take it up I would be very pleased. I will get to it at some stage but can't right now --Golden Wattle talk 22:52, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Note also the contributions of 165.228.99.187 (talk • contribs) - possibly related given the scope of the articles. Promotion of the firm in a favourable light seems to be the agenda, eg [8], [9] and [10].--Golden Wattle talk 23:01, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure the article could do with some improvement, but I'm actually glad that he hasn't touched on the controversies, as it may be better to have no content on the controversies than biased content. Market maven seems to have prioritised boring overview stuff instead of controversy, whereas many wikipedians thrive on controversy. Andjam 03:49, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I read it as an advert. I note also that a mention of Lynton Crosby was modified to reduce the controversial aspects by using weasel words, possibly justifiably but I really wonder. My concern is the breach of Wikipedia:Autobiography, the promotion in the John Howard article ... and the controversies if you read the links I have provided on the talk page are many. Biassed content would not be created if the first principles of wikipedia:autobiography had been observed - don't edit articles about yourself.--Golden Wattle talk 03:55, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
When making negative statements about a person in article space, it's probably a good idea to use inline citations rather than just listing references at the end of an article. With regards to "[reducing] the controversial aspects by using weasel words", are you referring to this edit? It has weasel words sure, but I don't exactly see it as reducing controversy. Andjam 22:15, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
I bleieve all my edits to the Mark Textor article are supported by inline citations - see diff.--Golden Wattle talk 02:36, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
My apologies - I was looking at the Lynton Crosby article, and you weren't responsible for the negative accusations there. Andjam 03:00, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
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