Talk:New Zealand

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Portal - Category - WikiProject - Stubs - Deletions - Cleanup

An event mentioned in this article is a September 26 selected anniversary

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Because of their length, the previous discussions on this page have been archived. If further archiving is needed, see Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.

Previous discussions:

• Archive 1 (12 November, 2004 to June 1, 2005)
• Archive 2 (June 2nd, 2005) to April 1st 2006)
• Archive 3 (1 April 2006 to 31 August 2006

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	To-do list for New Zealand:	edit  · history  · watch  · refresh
Checklist This is a list of things to do to get to FAC standard. Please cross off as completed. Expand lead somewhat Add choice of Capital city to the history section Government section need reorganisation, polishing Foreign relations should include discussion of involvement in Asia/Pacific institutions and other recent military operations. Flora and fauna should mention more about flightless birds with examples and actually mention the flora Economy should get refs and indicator stats like unemployment, breakdown of industries in terms of GDP, top export markets Demographics should also describe language breakdown, education and education levels Culture should be expanded to include fine and performing arts, contemporary arts including music, sport should be trimmed and merged into culture. Fill in more of the topics table Add photo and info on Nz's most important(capital) city Wellington

New Zealand has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

Contents 1 Aotearoa - translation 2 Northland - subtropical? 3 Islam 4 Motto 5 Ethnic Groups 6 NZ copyright 7 Where are the Maori editors of this article? 8 "New Zealand Aotearoa (Maori) New Zealand" 9 "Main article: Economy of New Zealand" 10 Date of Polynesian settlement 11 Query 12 About New Zealand's Economy. . . . 13 proposal for semi-protection 14 Citations 15 There is nothing about the world famous singers 16 Contradiction 17 Peer review - Wikipedia:Peer review/New Zealand 17.1 New Zealand 18 New Zealand's Offical Name 19 History 20 Society? 21 Geography 22 Sex was traded 23 Some - approximately 24 Subheadings 25 problem 26 Aussies as Minority group 27 Portuguese explorers 28 Copyright infringement 29 Wynton Rufer

[edit] Aotearoa - translation

'Land of the Long White Cloud' is not really a translation of the Māori, since there is no 'Land of' in the Māori. Ao=cloud, tea=white, roa=long. So I called it a paraphrase. Its not necessarily the only translation anyway. Kahuroa 06:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Northland - subtropical?

Why? Doesn't meet the geographical requirements, except maybe a few k's of the very far north which are in the less than 35 deg S zone, and temperature wise, not even. Or are we using the British definition of subtropical? If you go by the Wikipedia article subtropical Northland would be marginal = almost, at best, in terms of latitude and and even more marginal in terms of temperature - subtropical places are significantly warmer. They had quite a few frosts this winter by the way, even in the Bay of Islands. I think almost subtropical is more accurate than subtropical. Kahuroa 07:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey, its colder that tropical, so its subtropical, ok. Don't panic!!!! I'm just jivin'. Yes, Northland is indeed marginal. And yes, the Bay of Islands did have frosts this winter. We had one last week in Kerikeri in fact. Moriori 08:57, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Ha ha, I wasn't panicking really. I guess I like to challenge common assumptions sometimes. Maybe we should call Dunedin subpolar? Good for tourism? Ha ha. Cheers Kahuroa 10:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Nowhere in New Zealand is sub-tropical apart from Raoul Island in the Kemerdecs!

[edit] Islam

User 203.97.169.134 removed Islam from the list of religions in NZ, saying it was not considered a significant minority. The page Demographics of New Zealand lists it as one of the largest non christan religions according to the 2001 census.

The article's demographic list had an advisory: Please do not add your ethnic group (and your religion) here. How pathetic for someone to do that like they actually can block or ban any of us, even if the entries are backed or correct. Islam is regarded one of the largest non-Christian religions in the Statistics New Zealand population report. According to demographers who studied the rise of Islam in the western world (Europe, North America and Australasia), Islam is 1.5% of New Zealand's population and the majority composed of immigrants from South Asia (India or Indonesia) or Middle East countries. 63.3.14.1 13:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there are ethnic and religious groups in New Zealand. But to list them all is not going to add anything to the article - listing the top one or two is all that is needed in a general article like this. If you wish to add information about more of New Zealand's religious groups, an appropriate place would be a separate article on New Zealand ethnicity, already linked above as Demographics of New Zealand. Compare similar articles for other countries - these usually do not list religious affiliations if fewer than about 3 - 5% of the population belong to specific doctrines. Grutness...wha? 18:32, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

According to [1] 2006 cencus will be released in the next few days. We can hopefully update some numbers then. - SimonLyall 01:09, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Motto

We could add the NZ motto somewhere. Anyone agree? And is our motto still "She'll be right"? ^rossnixon 02:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

The motto use to be "Onward", but we no longer have a national motto. I suggest "She'll be right" be placed into the culture section if you want to add it to the article as an unofficial motto. --Midnighttonight Procrastinating on uni work... 03:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ethnic Groups

Quote from the Demographics section "At present, immigrants from the United Kingdom constitute the largest single group (30%) but immigrants are drawn from many nations, and increasingly from East Asia.". Several news reports have indicated that in recent years the number of Asian immigrants has declined since 2001 both in proportion of total immigrants and in absolute numbers. Whether this trend continues in future remains to be seen. Bjddavies2006 02:37, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

What about immigrants from South Asia? the Middle East? and other European or North American countries? There was an increase of US or American citizens purchased second homes in New Zealand in recent years. The increased travel route from New Zealand and/or Australia with Chile and Argentina of South America has provided a new cultural exchange and some migration between the two regions of the Southern hemisphere. Of course, the high porportion of Polynesians in the country's population reminds us the country is closely tied to the Pacific islands, than one thinks of New Zealand (or Australia) are (but not) purely "British". + 207.200.116.204 07:27, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

There may be an increase in immigrants from other areas, but they make up a small proportion of the immigrants overall. There is no intention of providing a list of every area from which immigrants to New Zealand originate.-gadfium 07:57, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Who deleted Greeks of the list for? Surely the Italians and South Slavs are the largest white ethnic groups in NZ, but the Dutch are on the list. There was waves of Germans and Scandinavians came to NZ after WW2, but wasn't mentioned. If you live on NZ coast ports, you'll meet a few fishermen from Portugal and Malta spend the busy season under labour contracts. I noticed Americans and Australians are quite a large group in the country, but except for their accents, aren't told apart from other Zedlanders. The drop in Asian racial immigration is a result of economic opportunity in those countries, be it Indian, Chinese or Indochina for that matter. The number of Filipinos, Malaysians and Indonesians has grown in NZ before it tapered off in the early 2000s. 207.200.116.204 01:22, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NZ copyright

Hi all. I'm curious about NZ copyright rules as regards to public domain + government agencies. In Wikipedia, we often come across documents from the US government, which are noted to be in the public domain (though I wonder if this 'taken by an employee of the federal governemnt and thus public domain' also applies to spy photos ;-).

Well, anyway, is there something in NZ law that is similar? Are *any* of the photos I find, for example on a Council or Transit NZ website public domain? MadMaxDog 07:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

The place to ask this question is on Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board.- gadfium 07:50, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Such things are usually "Crown Copyright" rather than Public Domain. Karora 09:07, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Additions of crown copyright are usually subjected to a Wiki policy going by the Orwellianly inapproriate name, "the Fair use Test". Wikipedia policy is heavily based on American law, especially adopting the American fair use test. Comment on the copyright page suggests this is because Wikipedias servers are on US territory. The fair use test is however used to both rule in and rule out images which are subject to the intellectual property laws of other nations, despite the Fair use principle appearing to have relatively narrow application outside the US, (unlike Crown copyright which is used through most of the Commonwealth). Also the Free use principle has been been used to attack the posting of crown copyright pictures, on the grounds that all images on Wikipedia should be able to be altered by any subsequent user. My own personal view is both these policies are inappropriate because 1. they tend to exclude non US material and 2. they imply fair use is legal, which it is not necessarily, and leave non US residents (and potentially some US residents) open to liability.

I don't really folow Wiki politics and after a breif discussion with those involved in the copyright policy were unwilling to tackle a problem beyond their legal knowlegde. The present situation is attempts to post Crown Copyright material are sometimes blocked by deletionist Wikipedians who keep referring everything back to irrelevant US law and Wiki policy based upon it, and sometimes allowed when they seem to potentially break NZ law merely because they fit withtin the US fair use exemption.

Oh and by the way someone has tagged this whole page for breach of copyright, without saying what.

End Grump :-) Winstonwolfe 07:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you about NZ Crown copyright and fair use, but I think we're pushing shit uphill. The copyvio tag was obviously vandalism.-gadfium 09:15, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

For a discussion about another licence which is not free, but it seems silly that we can't use, please see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Use_of_international_wheelchair_symbol. If someone can see a difference between these two cases, feel free to explain it to me on my talk page.-gadfium 08:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Where are the Maori editors of this article?

I don't think this article has any Maori articles, it is too biased towards the white man.

65.97.14.167 20:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you should look at the article history. You don't have to go back very far to see some Maori names.- gadfium 20:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

You don't even have to do that - have a look at the first comment on this talk page! Grutness...wha? 21:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Could you please expand on your comment that the article is biased? I don't think simply not having "Maori articles" equates to bias in itself. --Lholden 22:51, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Looks like a troll, that (US based) IP asked similar questions in other articles. See Special:Contributions/65.97.14.167 - SimonLyall 07:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "New Zealand Aotearoa (Maori) New Zealand"

The infobox says "New Zealand Aotearoa (Maori) New Zealand", is there any need for the second "New Zealand"? Brian | (Talk) 23:12, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

None that I can see, so I've removed it.- gadfium 00:19, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Main article: Economy of New Zealand"

New Zealand is a country heavily dependent on trade, particularly in agricultural products, as almost 20% of the country's output is exported (by comparison it is 21% for the United Kingdom, 49% for Finland and 83% for Belgium). This leaves New Zealand particularly vulnerable to slumps in commodity prices and global economic slowdowns. Is this correct ? It sounds contradictory?? User 210.246.24.30 00:30, 30 October 2006 (UTC) John New Zealand

The output figure seems far too low to me - although it does make sense in that our exports are based on a narrow range (i.e. smaller than many other countries) thus we are more vulnerable. --Lholden 01:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Date of Polynesian settlement

This article states that Polynesians first reached NZ between the 13th and 15th centuries; the articles History of New Zealand and Timeline of New Zealand history both say between the 11th and 13th. I've read many books on the history of NZ, and the date of first settlement remains a much debated question. James Belich suggests the mid-eleventh century, but admits it's only a hypothesis; other historians suggest it could have been as early as the 10th century, while others say it probably wasn't before the 13th. (I've never found anyone saying it could have been after the 13th, though, so I'd be curious to see a source for that.) In any case, I don't think Wikipedia can make categorial assertions. For now, I'm simply changing "Polynesian settlers arrived in their waka some time between the 13th century and the 15th century" to "Polynesian settlers arrived in their waka some time between the 9th century and the 15th century". Unless a source can be produced for the 15th century claim, though, that should probably be "some time between the 9th century and the 13th century". Aridd 15:59, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree our articles should be consistent. One of the problems is that archaeologists' ideas of the date of first settlement have changed over the decades. Accordingly, reputable books will give different dates depending on when they were written, but the older ones are no longer considered reliable. My source is H R Lowe Howe, The Quest for Origins, ISBN 0-14-301857-4, 2003. He's Professor of History at Massey University in Albany, and he's presenting the mainstream archeological view, as far as I can tell. I've heard almost exactly the same story as he gives at a conference of the NZ Archaeology Society. (I'm not an archaeologist, but I have enough of an interest in the matter to have gone to a public session of their conference about ten years ago.)

On pages 176-177 of Howe's book, he points out that from the 1960s to 1980s it was thought that Maori arrived and settled in 1000 AD or even earlier. The current thinking is that the 13th century is more likely, based on radiocarbon datings and direct archaeological evidence. Also, the eruption of the volcano Kahuroa covered much of the North Island with ash between 1300 and 1390, and there have been no human artefacts found beneath that ash layer. Artefacts can be found beneath ash from eruptions in the 1400 to 1450 period.

There is also the contradictory evidence comes from the dating of some kiore (Rattus exulans) bones to 2000 years ago, and the genetics show the rats came from eastern Polynesia. There is no known way for rats to have come to NZ without humans. It is possible that humans came at that point but didn't stay or didn't survive, but it seems very unlikely, since eastern Polynesia was only being first inhabited at the time. The dating has been challenged. A source more recent than 2003 may clear this up.

I suggest you make all dates consistent, but go with the mainstream figures of say 12th to 14th centuries. That covers the period from 1101 to 1400, and I think you wouldn't get much opposition from reputable archaeologists. Alternatively, you could say ""Polynesian settlers arrived in their waka in about the 13th century". If you have access to a University library, take a look at Archaeology in New Zealand, Dec 2002; v.45 n.4:p.289-292, which has the following abstract "Canvasses archaeologists attending the 2002 Russell conference for their estimates of the date of first settlement of NZ, comparing the responses to those from similar surveys taken in 1994 and 1988, and noting the trend over the years toward the acceptance of a more recent date. Graphs the answers to a second question regarding the century of first settlement of Pacific rats, or kiore." I can get a copy of this but I don't have time to go into the library for it for another couple of weeks.

Nobody has yet changed what I think I wrote in Cabbage tree (New Zealand) based on the (oldish, revived) documentary that said radiocarbon suggested 1000 AD was a likely time. Robin Patterson 05:48, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm suspicious that the documentary was based on Frankhauser's thesis of 1986. I'm not sure if more evidence has come to light since then, or radiocarbon dating techniques have improved (probably both), but archaeologists have changed their opinions.- gadfium 06:11, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I think we should in the longer term expand History of New Zealand to include a full section on the first settlement date, with at least as much detail as I've provided above. This could be a separate article, which could then also briefly address the many alternative theories of human settlement in New Zealand (most of them of no scientific credibility, e.g ancient celtic settlements). I'm happy to help, but not until my exams are over in a couple of weeks.- gadfium 19:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

/boggles at the impressive source material/ - cool, a short version for the main page, and extended detail as above for the History page. Happy to help, I know some good sources for the ancient Celtic stuff. Good luck with the exams. --Tirana 02:47, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Boggles even further. What "good sources" for ancient Celtic stuff do you mean? Moriori 02:59, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Howe is a good source refuting such notions. I hope that's the sort of thing Tirana has too.- gadfium 03:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Martin Doutré is the main architect of the Celtic claims, which are helpfully online and easily accessible to cite as an example of the "theory", which from the context draws a lot from his opinion of Maori culture generally. He links to the One New Zealand Foundation, and they return the favour. I found an astronomer from Auckland once, or maybe the Skeptics' Society, that ripped into the supposedly significant stone circles business quite well. Most serious academics don't touch it with a bargepole, but this Howe (or is it Lowe?) guy sounds like he's recent enough to at least have heard the conspiracy version, whether or not he wants to directly address it. --Tirana 04:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Kerry Howe. I've fixed the name above. His book is mainly about the fringe theories, but gives Doutre only one paragraph.- gadfium 06:11, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Also there are some funny late 19th century musings from Edward Tregear, who thought that Maori were a lost tribe of Jews I think. Throw in the Kon Tiki business, and we could have a whole section on unsubstantiated theories. The Tamil Bell deserves a mention somewhere, too. --Tirana 05:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Query

The FA on Australia begins "Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia ...". I'd like to know what New Zealand's analogous "official" title is. Thank you. Saravask 21:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The name's New Zealand. The Aussies had a constitutional convention at the end of the 19th century and decided on the name "Commonwealth of Australia". If you want to quibble about a long form of NZ's name, you could go for the Realm of New Zealand, as NZ is a monarchy and can be styled a "Realm". However, the Acts of Parliament that make up NZ's constitution refer to the country as "New Zealand". AJD 23:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not interested in quibbling -- I was just wondering. Since, as you state, "Realm of New Zealand" is not constitutionally enshrined, my concoction of a long form would seemingly violate WP:NOR. Thanks for the clarification. Saravask 01:45, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About New Zealand's Economy. . . .

1. How the hell is New Zealand's official unemployment rate between 3-4% and it's unofficial unemployment rate at 20%?! Are there still pockets of Maori who live with autonomy within the island who comprise this "20%?" If so, recall that they would NOT be counted toward any measure of unemployment, as only those who SEEK employment and cannot find it shall be considered unemployed for the purposes of economic discussion.

2. We're doing a group presentation on New Zealand for my Geography class, and I chose to focus on economics. I would direct you to the CIA World Factbook page on New Zealand for my next question (link on main page here). Note that oil consumption per day equals almost exactly production and imports (152k=32k+120k), which works out rather nicely actually. However I don't understand then why they also export roughly 30,000 barrels of oil a day, where otherwise they would be at product-income equillibrium (my term). Thus, somewhere along the line, they're being forced to tap into their reserves of 89.62 million barrels, (2002 estimate) no? My hypothesis is that this is nearly a consequence of a capitalist-enabled economy, and that individual firms undertake these decisions, and the exporting firms of the country do not contract with the importing firms because they figure they can yield higher profits by selling to some third-party with a greater demand. But would someone like to clarify the situation for me? I couldn't find anything on the internet. Actually, let me simplify the question to a more general one----

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Why do some countries import/export the same commodity? It's because of individual firms attempting to maximize profits right?

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MondoManDevout 22:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Not sure about the unemployment figures you got but when I worked for the govt a few years ago and looking at stats I noticed that the decrease in unemployment claimants was almost exactly mirrored by an increase in people claiming sickness benefit.

Regarding importing and exporting the same product, this can happen. In NZ high grade steel making coal is exported to Japan while low grade steam coal (i.e. for use in power stations) is imported. They may be included in the stats as just 'coal'. Similarly, fruit may be produced in the Southern summer and exported but imported during the Southern winter.128.153.221.145 04:07, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] proposal for semi-protection

there's been lots of blanking and vandalism by anon ips lately - suggest semi-protection - comments? --Danlibbo 04:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

the vandalism here seems to have been relatively light compared to the worst cases. I personally prefer semi-protection only when there's a significant concerted attack (ala the Colbertisms at Bear) and even then the semi-prot was removed after it died down a little. Ziggurat 04:21, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Someone is placing irrelevant remarks in the country box: see the current text for Anthem, Capital, Largest City, and Government. I tried to edit these but they don't show up on the edit page. So you might want to establish the facts in the country box and then protect it. ---WLH, 05 Jan 2007

There was major vandalism to the article a bit over an hour ago, and several people corrected pieces of the vandalism without reverting all of it. It's fixed now.-gadfium 05:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citations

Where have all the citations in this article gone? Atlantis Hawk 06:17, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Were there ever more citations than at present? To some extent, this article doesn't have citations because it's a summary of the more detailed articles, eg History of New Zealand. It does need to be referenced much more thoroughly, and indeed the more detailed articles need more referencing too.

What are you looking for with the "specify" tag? The History of New Zealand article quotes the New South Wales Judicature Act 1823 as the justification for the statement that NZ was administered in a limited manner as part of NSW. Do you think we should include that footnote in the main NZ article as well? I might be misunderstanding you here, because of all the unreferenced (but mostly unchallenged) facts, you seem to be querying one that is adequately dealt with in the subarticle.-gadfium 07:10, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] There is nothing about the world famous singers

but about sports of different types. why???? Who has deleted the information? There are: Kiri Te Kanawa, Dame Malvina Major, but the others I cannot remember now. Austerlitz 88.72.20.196 13:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget - Crowded house, Split Enz - Unsigned comment by Kiwi.piranha 05:31, 22 November 2006

because having a section of famous people who live in each country is ridiculous - you can create a list, but seriously, how many people, looking up New Zealand, expect a list of famous people in the article? imagine the page for the U.S.; half the bloody page would be celebrities --Danlibbo 22:56, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contradiction

This article claims that Zealand (Sjælland), the Danish island, is New Zealand's namesake, not the Dutch province of Zeeland. However, the exact opposite is stated at Zealand. Given the articles actually interlink I would think that maybe they would have agreeable information. Gorman 08:28, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you have read a vandalised version, although I cannot find a recent version which made this claim. The article claims (correctly) that New Zealand was named after the Dutch province, but the spelling was corrupted. It may also be that the link to Zealand is confusing; perhaps that should be removed.-gadfium 22:20, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree: the reference to the Danish Zealand should be removed. The page on Dutch Zeeland states that it is also called Zealand in English. James Cook was certainly not the one who corrupted the name - if it was a corruption. Throughout the journal of his first journey he uses the spelling "New Zeland" which is also used on a map by Alexander Dalrymple that had been published before him knowing the results of Cook's journey; however, Cook may not have known that map. The same spelling seems to have been in use by the British Admirality before that. On other maps from the late 17th and throughout the 18th century there are several ways of spelling the coastline's name: Zelandia Nova, Zeelandia Nova, Nova Zeelandia, Nouvelle Zelande, and Nouvelle Zeelande. It seems to me that the "a" was only introduced some time after Cook or one of his later journeys, but I haven't seen the manuscripts of those journals.Hase 18:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

New Zealand is named after the province Zeeland in the Netherlands and not after Sjælland in Denmark. The spelling in 'New Zealand' is not, as has been suggested, a corruption of Zeeland, rather, the traditional English spelling of Zeeland is Zealand. For more information on this, read my comments in the discussion pages of the article 'Zeeland'. A Zealandic Canadian, 01 February 2007

[edit] Peer review - Wikipedia:Peer review/New Zealand

I have asked for a peer review of this article. A copy of which is now below. --Midnighttonight (rendezvous) 02:25, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Zealand

Essentially a blanket peer review. As much information as possible to bring up to at least good article or featured article status. --Midnighttonight (rendezvous) 02:23, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

One thing you need to address is that there need to be more resources cited in the article. For example, how could I prove that New Zealanders are the 16 highest beer consumers? Every statistic like that has to be sourced. I would also make an attempt to find sources backing up the historical claims that you make about New Zealand. How would I as an American know where to begin to find the information that you listed about the history. It is not common information here and as such should be sourced. I am sure that people in other parts of the world would have no clue where you learned this to prove it. In the very least provide the sources that are used on the subtopic pages for this kind of information. Andrew D White 22:35, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll just comment on two things until I have a chance to look the article over properly:

• The lead needs a lot of work. The second sentence mentions Maori without introducing that it is the indigenous language of New Zealand. The sentence "New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Island form what is known by anthropologists as the Polynesian Triangle." needs to be incorporated into a paragraph, rather then sitting on it's own. There are also redundancies throughout the lead. I think maybe the lead focuses too much on geography. The economy, culture and history are barely mentioned.
• There are not enough references, as well, the referencing style is inconsistent. There are very few inline citations, instead there are simply external links at the end of sentences. These should be converted to inline citations.

I'll add more later. - Shudda ^talk 01:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC) Have done govt and culture:

• The government section isn't too bad. Covers everything I can think of, only thing is delist the major and minor political parties.
• The culture section:

• First paragraph seems ok.
• "Māori culture survives as Māori continue to support and develop their culture on their own terms and conditions - much as any other living and thriving culture does in the world." Does this sentence say or mean anything?
• The paragraph on the Maori language is good, however Language may need it's own section?
• The sentence on film probably focuses too much on recent films, doesn't really mention any local programmes (ie produced for NZ). Nor does it mention the broadcasting commission or film commission. Maybe needs to focus less on film & tv aimed at international audiences.
• "Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu is the longest Māori word. It is the name of a hill in the Hawke's Bay region of the North Island. The Guinness Book of World Records lists this as the longest geographical name in the world." This sentence is trivial, and if it weren't wouldn't it go in the geography section?
• I don't like the last paragraph at all. NZ's domestic music scene is so diverse "New Zealand's music is influenced by the indigenous Māori and immigrants from the Pacific region." is mentioned before the mention of British, American influences. Makes it seem like some influences are greater then others, but this is prob not true. Prob needs a good rewrite. May want to mention Flying Nun? Also, should prob remove "New Zealand music is a vibrant expression of the culture of New Zealand." seems rather POV.

[edit] New Zealand's Offical Name

The official name of New Zealand is the Dominion of New Zealand. The fact box should say this at the top. Somethingoranother 14:27, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Your information is a little bit out of date. See Dominion of New Zealand.-gadfium 18:24, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The official name for New Zealand proper and its territories is the Realm of New Zealand, and has been since at least 1947. --Lholden 21:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Realm of New Zealand is not the long name for "New Zealand", it is the name for the area in which the Queen in right of New Zealand is head of state. This includes New Zealand, Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau and the Ross Dependency Brian | (Talk) 00:24, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History

The history section is skewed a bit much towards 1840 and before. While this is a refreshing change from the more usual 'nothing happened before Abel Tasman' bias, there needs to be more on post-1840, and since space is limited, less on pre-European NZ and the Treaty. If no one has any major objections I will do a rewrite. I've already substantially rewritten the History of New Zealand page, and this section will essentially be a very compressed version of that. --Helenalex 21:52, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Not an objection per se, but just a note that I agree about the usual bias in many NZ articles where anything pre-European (or non-European) is invisible, so I am pleased to see that you seem to be someone who will take care in that regard. Kahuroa 18:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

A lot of the regional pages still have Eurocentric bias (Taranaki, for example), so if anyone knows a bit of local history, there is work to be done... --Helenalex 22:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. I've moved the history of naming to its own section, as it was very difficult to fit into the narrative, and I felt it worked better on its own anyway. --Helenalex 23:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone has stated that Cook named the Islands North, Middle and South. I have never read this before, and Cook actually thought Stewart Island was just a Penninsula (and that the Banks Penninsula was an Island) so this is obviously false. I tried to simply delete that sentence, but it was put back up by somebody. I'm new to wikipedia, but Id like to correct this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.207.191.160 (talk • contribs).

Those names for the islands sound correct, but I agree that it probably wasn't Cook who applied them. Anyone know who did? I'll remove the statement for now. -- Avenue 02:15, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I've added some sourced stuff - Cook didn't name the islands and I have no idea who did, but by 1840 the current ones were partly in common use. I suspect they were never officially named North and South (possibly Stewart's), but just acquired the names through common usage. --Helenalex 23:48, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Society?

I am thinking of adding a 'society' section which would include religion, class and the position of women. What do people think? What else should be in this section? --Helenalex 04:27, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

That's tricky, because it could take in everything from demographics to politics to sport. Might be worth having a look at similar articles on other countries, and see what is done there. Grutness...wha? 05:16, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be much real consistency - Republic of Ireland has a religion section, China is the only one I've seen with a society section, France has a miscellaneous section (!) and so forth. I meant 'society' in the sense of the structure of society, rather than as everything that people do. I don't think any of the subsets I mentioned above justify their own section, but they should all be addressed, even if only to say something like 'religion is not very important in New Zealand'. If anyone can suggest any other way to get these things in without creating a lot of very small sections or cluttering the intro, please do so... --Helenalex 22:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I think a section like that would have to be done delicately. Certainly we don't have a caste or formal class system. Surely things like ethnicity, gender equality, religion, wealth distribution etc could be covered in different sections. Rather then one called society. Maybe look at some FA articles on countries, see what they do. - Shudda ^talk 23:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Just looking at Canada, which is FA, and culturally similar to us. They have no society section, maybe we should not bother, and incorporate this into demographics, economy, culture. - Shudda ^talk 23:34, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks like I missed the bit on religion in the 'demographics' section. I might put a bit about women in the culture section, but you're right, a society section probably isn't necessary after all. --Helenalex 00:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Geography

"...running westward on the continent to the 135th meridian which included New Zealand." Call me old fashioned but I can't follow this. In the first place, shouldn't it be 'eastward' not 'westward'? And in the second place New Zealand would only be included if the meridian was about 179° east. 11:19, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

The description was rather lengthy - but it is east to west be "'all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean' and running westward on the continent to the 135th meridian which included New Zealand". This could be changed to "'all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean' inlcuding the islands of New Zealand" - or - we could reverse it to "the continent from the 135th meridian and "'all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean" which includes New Zealnd - it sjust that the first one is closer to the original. What do you think?Alan Davidson 12:10, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I see the problem - tortuous, old fashioned language. Unless you are going to quote the full text it might be better to simplify the whole thing into modern English - "all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean, including the islands of New Zealand" is pretty clear, but explain that it's a paraphrase. Actually, I can't see the old text now, it's gone! GrahamBould 15:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sex was traded

Sex was traded. This is documented. Do not censor. See The Penguin History of New Zealand Michael King isbn 0-14-301867-1 origyear 2003. Comment1 11:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some - approximately

It is an extremely minor point, but when stating the Tasman Sea is 2000 kilometres across, readers would understand it is not precise, and that it is a rounded approximation. Alan Davidson 09:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Subheadings

User:PDH has taken it upon him/herself to remove all the subheadings and all the {{main}}s that were underneath them, meaning that we now have large blocks of text and no links to a lot of pages (including Music of New Zealand, Cuisine of New Zealand, Te Reo Māori and Māori culture). A case could be made for the subheading removal, although I think it works far better with them in, but the links which went with the subheadings were really important. I'm going to reverse pretty much everything s/he's done, although if anyone thinks it was a good idea, feel free to make the case... --Helenalex 07:46, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello Gadfium! I see you are dealing with this issue at the same time as me. What you've done with the international rankings section works quite well, and seems like a good compromise on the subheadings issue. The table of contents was rather long... --Helenalex 07:57, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The effect of Peta's edit was to bring this article in line with the standard layout of country articles. In general, subheadings are avoided in well-written articles as they impact on prose flow, are a poor equivalent to well-rounded paragraphs, and enlarge the table of contents un-necessarily. Furthermore, in articles written in the summary style, their use should be negated by the general overview. Your concern about main links is a poor reason for reversion; if they are central to the topic being summarised, they can be added to the primary list; if not, then they need only be incorporated in the text.--cj | talk 09:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The polite thing to do would have been to raise the issue on the talk page before reformatting the entire article. It's not like this is one of those articles that no one cares about. Could you post a link to a country article which meets your approval? If it is obviously a better way to do it, I will change this page to conform to it. --Helenalex 10:35, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Not every edit needs to be discussed before its made – being bold is how things get done. The most obvious article to compare this one to, on several levels, is Australia. There's also Nauru and India.--cj | talk 11:25, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

In order to make this page conform to the ones you've listed, most sections would need to be reduced in size. This might be a good idea anyway - a lot of them are longer than they really need to be. --Helenalex 22:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I have experimentally reduced the History section and removed the subheadings, and I have to say, it works better. If no one has any objections I will do the same for most of the other sections over the next week or so. See, doesn't discussion work better than just jumping in and changing things without saying anything first? --Helenalex 04:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] problem

In the 2nd paragraph of 'government', it mentions anand satyanand as the head of state. Then it says that Dame Silvia Cartright is the Head of State.

This confuses me. Chessmanlau 00:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Chessmanlau (talk • contribs) 00:24, 14 March 2007 (UTC).

No, the paragraph states that women have held all four of the most important political offices in New Zealand at one stage (Sovereign, Governor-General, Prime Minister, Chief Justice). It doesn't state anywhere that Dame Silvia is head of state, because she isn't, the office of Governor-General is only representative of our head of state, HM the Queen. --Lholden 00:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Thx. Yeah i just realised that. Thx. Chessmanlau 00:35, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Aussies as Minority group

I can find no ref to the large numbers ( hundreds of thousands!) of Australians living permanently in New Zealand.While Kiwis in A/a seem to be a readily identifiable group, I wonder if the reciprocal is the case in NZ ? The article Australian Diaspora ignores this question, despite NZ being possibly the largest reservoir of expatriate Aussies ! Any ideas ? Feroshki 05:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

There aren't as many Aussies in NZ as you seem to think. For instance, the 2006 census recorded 62,634 usual residents of NZ who were born in Australia, and no doubt some of them had Kiwi parents and might not think of themselves as Australian.[2] (For example, 1.6% of Māori usual residents were born overseas, or about 9,000 people;[3] I suspect most of them were born in Australia.) The 26,355 people who identified as Australian at the ethnicity question are definitely Aussies, but that's only 0.7% of the population, and is less than the number of British, Chinese, Samoan, Indian, Tongan, Cook Island, Korean or Dutch people.[4] -- Avenue 08:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

For comparison, 428,000 Australian residents were born in New Zealand (2003).[5] -- Avenue 08:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Portuguese explorers

I have removed the following from the article for the time being:

The first Europeans to discover New Zealand may have been Portuguese explorers in 1522 led by Cristavao (or Christopher) de Mendonca, states Peter Trickett's new book entitled "Beyond Capricorn". [6]

because this theory is highly speculative, at least as far as exploration of New Zealand goes. There are in fact numerous theories about early explorers of New Zealand, including ones about Chinese explorers, none of which have great credibility with historians. We should not mention one such claim without the others, and we should explain the basis for each claim. This is not appropriate for the main New Zealand article. It is not even appropriate for the History of New Zealand article, although if a separate article was to be written along these lines, a link from History of New Zealand would be appropriate.

I have changed the New Zealand article to say that Tasman was the first known European explorer, as this acknowledges that there is the possibility of earlier ones. This is more or less the wording that existed in this article before February.-gadfium 21:26, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I see that my removal of the sentence cited actually failed, because Avenue made the same edit just before I did! He has since added a single paragraph to the History of New Zealand article which I think is sufficient to cover these theories.-gadfium 21:44, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright infringement

I'm assuming this is vandalism, since it doesn't specify where the page is supposedly copied from. How do we get rid of this? --Helenalex 05:13, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

reverted - has to be vandalism Kahuroa 05:34, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wynton Rufer

I'm not convinced that Wynton Rufer is internationally famous enough be be mentioned in the sports paragraph (hell, I'm not that convinced about Richard Hadlee either, but I can let that one go). We need to keep the list down to the super famous people like Jonah Lomu and Edmond Hillary, who even non-New Zealanders who don't know much about sport are likely to have heard of, otherwise it will get swamped when everyone decides to add their hero or their sport's biggest achiever. Wynton Rufer isn't even super famous in New Zealand. Perhaps he is a big name in the soccer world, but his page doesn't indicate that to be the case, so I'm inclined to remove him. --Helenalex 05:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

That's the problem with including a few people as examples: other people get added to the list. I'm happy for you to remove names, or the whole sentence, as you see fit.-gadfium 06:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)