Tearanz

Welcome!

Hello, Tearanz, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I see you may be a New Zealander (or at least, appear to be by your edits). There are several NZ related Wikipedia pages.

• Portal:New Zealand
• Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board
• Wikipedia:WikiProject New Zealand

Adding {{User New Zealand}} to your userpage will list you as a New Zealander.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! Kahuroa (talk) 07:49, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Welcome from me too. You are probably already aware of the discussion at Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board#Te Ara - Encyclopedia of New Zealand. I suggest at this point that you add links to about a dozen articles, and wait for further feedback. If you need assistance with syntax or advice on editing, you are welcome to ask here or on my talk page.-gadfium 08:53, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

As per Gadfium above, please feel free to edit and add references and links. I see little conflict of interest here, amongst other reasons because your prime function and benefit to a reader (information) is a free service. I very much appreciate it whenever I have references via your articles. The 1966 Edition has also been very valuable in many cases for a historical perspective of 40 years ago. Ingolfson (talk) 15:38, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the Te Ara link you provided to Wetland. I too very much welcome references via your articles, including the 1966 Edition. I currently edit in areas relating to fishing and fisheries, and find the Te Ara articles often impressive and amongst the more luminous on the web – using New Zealand examples but often illuminating the issues beyond the confines of New Zealand. --Geronimo20 (talk) 01:30, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

August 2008

Please review WP policies concerning WP:LINKSPAM. Adding multiple links to a single website is considered linkspam. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:32, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

These links were discussed on the New Zealand Wikipedians notice board in advance, and all agreed that they were advantageous. See Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board#Te Ara - Encyclopedia of New Zealand. You will also see several messages higher on this talk page thanking Tearanz for their work. I will restore the links.-gadfium 20:39, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Please point to that discussion. I could not find a discussion of any of the added links; merely a mention that it ight be good to do some cross-linking. No specific links were ever discussed, and as I note below, some of them are certainly inappropriate. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:49, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I was busy restoring the links when I saw Gadfium had the same idea. Keep the good work up! By the way, you really need to make sure you fill out the edit summary when you make changes to a page - it will give a positive impression when people look up the history of a page. When you're editing, the edit summary appears just underneath the edit window. Say something like "Adding link to Te Ara as discussed on New Zealand Wikipedians notice board" - Gadfium might have a better way of saying it. Kahuroa (talk) 21:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

That seems like a very good idea.-gadfium 22:37, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your support. Will definitely fill in the edit summary from now on. I'm happy to remove any links if they are deemed not to add sufficient additional information to the subject. It's a judgement call most of the time, so just let me know. Cheers. --Tearanz (talk) 01:29, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a link farm. We do not add links to other sites unless there is a strong reason to do so. Linking from Dicksonia squarrosa‎ to an encyclopedic article about the pteridophytes of New Zealand is an inappropriate link. So is linking the same NZ article from our article about the genus Lycopodiella. There should be a specificity and a significant quantity of useful information at the external site directly relevant to the article from which it is linked. Please examine WP policy on external links. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

In these two examples, the Te Ara link does appear to lack relevance to the Wikipedia article.-gadfium 04:55, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I think that's a fair call.--Tearanz (talk) 05:30, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Links on Maori Wikipedia

Thanks for adding the links to articles on the Maori wikipedia. Appreciate it that you even added edit summaries in Te Reo. Kahuroa (talk) 21:49, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Te Ara Wikipedia page

Hi TeAraNZ. I see that you haven't edited Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. I was wondering if you could comment on whether there are any inaccuracies in that article or comment on how it might be expanded (with acknowledgement of WP's conflict of interest policy, which you appear to be well aware of). Cheers, and thanks for seeing how the two projects can help each other. Mostlyharmless (talk) 05:39, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Kaipara Harbour

Howdy TeAraNZ. Would you mind looking at some doubts I have raised about some figures given in a TeAra article on the talk page of Kaipara Harbour. --Geronimo20 (talk) 00:51, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you, and thank you for the question. Jock Phillips, General Editor of Te Ara says: "The original source for this claim in Te Ara was Vaughan Yarwood, Between Coasts: From Kaipara to Kawau, p. 111. The figure of 3,200kms is confirmed in Wise’s directory, but they admit that this is inclusive of many inlets. Other sources say that the length is 800 km and when we did an exercise using string on a map this was about the length. So it sounds as if 3,200km may be rather an exaggeration. We’ll change it on the site to over 800 km."--Tearanz (talk) 01:54, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

New Zealand longfin eels

I don't know if you still monitor this page, but in case you do... the TeAra article on New Zealand eels asserts that longfin eels "are probably the world’s biggest eels". The maximum published weight of these eels is 25 kilograms, and there have been "rare" historical reports of them reaching 50 kilograms. The maximum published weight of the European conger is 110 kilograms. Regards --Epipelagic (talk) 23:04, 9 June 2012 (UTC)