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Bart vs. Australia

While there are lots of articles on "fictional Australians" such as Roo, which have no real connection with this project and should not be tagged WPA, it could be argued that this article, currently at WP:GAN, does refer to Australia, and should be tagged. What do people think?--Grahame (talk) 01:18, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

IThe test I use when placing project tags is "Is it reasonable to expect that WP:AUST would assist in maintaining the article?" In this case, I wouldn't think so and therefore I would not place the project tag on this article. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 01:38, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Urgent issue re ABS

The ABS are soon going to make sweeping changes to their site making most of our current links incorrect. As the fundamentals will still be the same, links using {{Census 2001 AUS}} and {{Census 2006 AUS}} will continue to work, as we can simply fix those templates once they make the change, but I noticed on going through a number of WA articles that quite a few articles directly link to hardcoded ABS context-dependent links. WA is mostly alright now, but I'd ask that you look for any direct context-dependent links to www.censusdata.abs.gov.au in your general editing area and either convert them yourself to the Census 2006 AUS template, or let someone know who can (I'm happy to help as far as I'm able.) Orderinchaos 03:44, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Will all of these be affected by this change? Somno (talk) 03:54, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Impossible to say yet as we don't know what the change is. Last time (mid-2007) they renamed the server. Orderinchaos 04:53, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

The 2006 links affected (may not be a complete list, I simply excluded any article that already had the correct infobox, so any with more than two links may have one incorrect one) are at this temporary location. Orderinchaos 05:13, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Category renaming notifications - consolidated edition!

Speedy rename notifications

Attention, attention; hear ye hear ye, etc., etc.! Category:Federal Politicians from South Australia has been nominated for speedy renaming. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:47, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the courtesy shown in bringing this to our attention. It is very much appreciated. Regards, Mattinbgn\^talk 23:48, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Category:New South Wales Federal politicians has been nominated for speedy renaming. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:50, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Category:New South Wales State politicians has been nominated for speedy renaming. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:53, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Category for discussion notifications

Category:People from the Blue Mountains, NSW has been nominated for renaming. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:17, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Category:Australian prisoners serving life sentences and Category:Australian prisoners serving multiple life sentences have been nominated for renaming. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:30, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Category:Australians imprisoned abroad has been nominated for renaming. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:36, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Now that I've gone to the trouble of setting something up, it seems to be redundant. :-)

The only stuff I've found over the last few days that you haven't already been told about are routine and uncontroversial: merge of "Australian fashion models" into "Australian models"; merge of "Australians of Bosnia descent" into "Australians of Bosnia and Herzegovina descent"; rename of "McLeod's Daughters charaters"; and a rename of "Central Highland Tasmania" to "Central Highlands Tasmania".

For those who like to self-serve, you can monitor changes to Australian categories at Special:RecentChangesLinked/User:Hesperian/Services/Category changes/Australia.

Hesperian 23:36, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much, it is useful. Central Highlands Tasmania is a little "controversial" in so far as a better name could be perhaps, Category:Central Highlands (Tasmania). -- Mattinbgn\^talk 00:51, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Category:Towns of the Southern Highlands NSW is proposed for renaming to Category:Towns of the Southern Highlands (New South Wales). Hesperian 01:06, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

This has been included at the appropriate place at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Australia#Australia-related Categories for Discussion. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 01:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I've moved the nomination for Category:Central Highland Tasmania from the speedy section to a full CfD in light of the recommendations that it be renamed to Category:Central Highlands (Tasmania). The new nomination is here. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

• Category:Aquarium of Western Australia has been nominated for deletion. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 07:16, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

FYI, I've just nominated the entire category tree beneath Category:Next Generation Adelaide International for deletion. -- Longhair\^talk 23:17, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Terry O'Connell

Does any one think Terry O'Connell would be notable enough for an article? He founded Restorative Justice and Behavioural Change Unit (NSW Police)[1][2] which then has helped overseas for Restorative Justice. Bidgee (talk) 12:19, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Newsbank has a 3000 word bio on him from the SMH. There are quite a few other articles, but nothing so focused on his life as that, although you could probably pull some together to source some more significant events. So with Australian Story, I guess he'd meet the GNC, at least. - Bilby (talk) 12:38, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Category notifications #4

• Category:1972 Adelaide International and so on up the years to Category:1998 Adelaide International‎ have all been nominated for deletion;
• Category:The Ranch albums was speedily deleted as an empty category;
• Category:Aquarium of Western Australia was deleted after a speedy discussion held over the weekend.

Hesperian 23:34, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Category:Shihad albums has been taken out of the Australia category tree, on the grounds that Shihad aren't an Australian band.[3] Hesperian 23:22, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Correct. Orderinchaos 01:28, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Victorian Heritage Register

It appears that our previous difficulties with direct linking to entries within this database [4] are now resolved following a web-site overhaul. Melburnian (talk) 02:15, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. Looking through this is really interesting - the entries seem to fit a far higher level of notability than some of the other heritage listings I've seen, and much more similar to the American equivalent which has its own WikiProject. Rebecca (talk) 10:51, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Recent AFL project edits

BrianBeahr (talk · contribs) has recently begun turning the AFL project on its side with edits a number of established editors don't agree with. Could another administrator further removed from the problem than I please keep an eye on this user thanks. He's trying to make his point at various talk pages, albeit after some prompting. It'd be great if one of our AFL experts also looked into his comments to decide if the edits are worthy (but poorly communicated) or outright disruption. -- Longhair\^talk 07:57, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I've just blocked the editor for 24 hours for edit warring at the St Kilda Football Club article. I feel the behaviour will continue upon his return. -- Longhair\^talk 08:17, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks like you're right about the behaviour continuing, sadly. Some rather extensive work has been done at St Kilda Football Club, but knowing nothing about the topic I'm not going to jump in and start reverting stuff. I'd love to be proven wrong, but it doesn't look like the user wants to collaborate constructively. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 13:32, 13 October 2008 (UTC).

I'm stepping back from this situation. It's getting heated. -- Longhair\^talk 00:50, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Discussion on Australian capital city population densities

A discussion on what density should appear in the infobox of Australian capital city articles has commenced at the WikiProject talk page. Orderinchaos 03:55, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

ACOTF stalled

Hi everyone. I rolled over the WP:ACOTF a bit over two weeks ago (part way through the third week of the previous collaboration), but didn't get round to announcing the change here. The current article is Griffith, New South Wales which has only had 4 edits in those two and a half weeks, perhaps because I didn't tell anyone it had been selected. Anyway, it would be time to roll the ACOTF over again, but there appear to be no valid nominations that shouldn't have expired already (even allowing for relaxed deadlines due to a sidetracked maintainer). So here's a double prompt to see if you want to do any more work on Griffith, and to nominate some new suggestions. Thanks. --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:47, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Bills Horse troughs

I found this trough on my travels today and a web search turned up some interesting fragments on an interesting story about a couple called Annis and George Bills who left money to fund over 500 of these troughs all over Australia. I can't help but feel it would be an interesting topic for an article. Does anyone have any more information about these troughs and the story behind them? Cheers, Mattinbgn\^talk 11:10, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

There's some information at this link (page 162 of the document, page 166 of the pdf) Melburnian (talk) 11:22, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Seems these troughs weren't just located throughout Australia, but also "Ireland, England... and possibly even Switzerland and Japan" if this newspaper article from a Sydney newspaper is anything to go by. Would make a great article. -- Longhair\^talk 12:16, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Just as a check the LISWA/henrietta search for horse trough, and horse troughs actually come up with a few photos and just one that is on the national heritage register - havent checked other states on that - well worth a start if anyone is going to - troughs in the broader sense in the pastoral regions of western australia are an important phenomenon - not sure the sources of info though. SatuSuro 14:51, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Would be a lovely article. This section brought back memories as I used to live next door to a Bills' trough in Wentworth! This website has the locations of several hundred troughs. •Florrie•leave a note• 06:21, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I actually photographed that trough in Wentworth without even noticing it :) -- Longhair\^talk 03:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I saw that photo yesterday when I was browsing some Darling articles. That was me in the Gaol Residence, many years ago. Neat place to live and exceptionally secure! •Florrie•leave a note• 12:57, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I have walked past some (at least 3) of these on a regular basis and never noticed. I must take my camera with me next time! -- Mattinbgn\^talk 06:33, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I often stop for a stretch to break a long drive in Woodend where your photograph was taken Mattinbgn, and have never bothered to wonder why the plague was in place on the trough on the roadside. There's an interesting bit of Australian history waiting to be written up here. -- Longhair\^talk 08:43, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I presume you mean plaque. :) Orderinchaos 02:40, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Either way works. The mozzies are bad this time of year :) -- Longhair\^talk 03:33, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

• I've kicked the ball and created an article Watering Trough as that seems to be the most common term for a water thingo. Within the article is a link to Bills Horse Trough which seems to be the best descriptor for an article name. I've contacted the person who appears to have contributed to all the research Mr.GEMMILL in Stanhope to collaborate. Time will tell. Phenss (talk) 11:49, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Yesterday during my long photography walk I came across an disused horse trough in Forsyth Street in Wagga Wagga (at the front of Collins Park) and I've got no idea on it's history but rather interesting but doubt it may link to the Bill troughs though. Image:Horse trough in ForsythSt Wagga.jpg (Servers are having issues with making thumbnails ATM). Having a look Wagga Wagga seems to have a Bill's horse trough but it's located at the Museum of the Riverina so I'll try and see if it's on display later in the week. Bidgee (talk) 10:18, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Just some more on the Horse trough in Forsyth Street. Looking at the Wagga Wagga City Councils historic database (Somewhat limited in public information however) it states this "Horse trough: Forsyth St (Last working horse, Milk Run, 1964)". If anyone has any info it would be a great help as I would add it to the image's description. Bidgee (talk) 00:18, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Well found it and got a photo of it. Image:Bills Horse trough.jpg. Bidgee (talk) 07:55, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

No word from an email to a Gemmill from Stanhope. Anyone close to Stanhope? HE is listed in the white pages. I'mm too far. thanks Phenss (talk) 01:17, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Perth Meetup

	Perth Meetup Next: 15 December 2024 (watch) Last: 2 November 2024
See also: Australian events listed at Wikimedia.org.au (or on Facebook)

• A Perth Meetup has been organised for the 29th November at the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum. Gnangarra 01:15, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

An appropriate place to hold a Wikipedia meeting? :-) JRG (talk) 04:34, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

National Library now linking to Wikipedia for more info on authors

Thought this news might be of interest to some people. Rebecca (talk) 12:20, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

How unfortunate considering the apparent poor quality of most of our articles about Australian authors SatuSuro 03:27, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Agree with SatuSuro - definitely room for improvement for most of them :-( --Matilda ^talk 03:38, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

It is certainly interesting from my perspective - they're pulling out content in real time, but only grabbing the lead, and they're loosing footnote formatting, turning it into fairly ugly in-line refs. I hope they plan to refine their code a bit. :) - Bilby (talk) 03:47, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

To follow up on Bilby's point - the NLA has [5] when you click through which links back to Donald Knuth.
Note the NLA does of course hold books by other than Austrlaian authors but I guess as the NL of Aus we would like the Aus articles to be of good quality if they are going to link there. --Matilda ^talk 03:55, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Category notification #5

Category:Victoria (Australia) cricketers has been nominated for renaming (back) to Category:Victoria cricketers. Hesperian 22:38, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

What about reversing the renaming of Category:Victoria (Australia) state politicians: where are these Canadian state politicians? I have been to Victoria, British Columbia and I know how insignificant it really is.--Grahame (talk) 00:47, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

You are correct of course, but it would just be wasting valuable pixels trying to get that category renamed. Common sense mustn't be allowed to interfere with the grand plan regardless of how ludicrous and unwieldy the result. Clarity and simplicity are all to be sacrificed against the goal of removing non-existent ambiguity and ensuring mindless uniformity. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 00:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

There is a very good argument that mindless uniformity - specially in categories is specifically going against what wikipedia should be aiming for as a major project - the assumption for example that the sum total of canadian, british, american, indian, australian and south african usages of anything are mutually consistent across all boundaries is in cultural difference denial (remember the bumper sticker Denial is not a river in Egypt ? ).

However those who appear to inhabit cfd domains appear to be universalists/global application of category names and practices - and seem to view the Australian project challenges with some disdain - whatever little island they inhabit, it is possible they think they can see the whole world from their little window. A pity for wikipedia that. SatuSuro 04:51, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Australian historic places

This WikiProject has just been started today, based on Rebecca's earlier suggestion on this noticeboard and the feedback provided. It would be great to get some help from people familiar with starting up WikiProjects and those interested in the topic - feel free to drop by! Thanks, Somno (talk) 04:03, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I've little experience with categories so hopefully someone can help - I'd like to set up a structure with the main category something like "Historic places in Australia" - first of all, is that correct, or should it be "of Australia"? Then under that, I was thinking "Commonwealth National Heritage List sites in Australia" / "National Trust sites in Australia", then separated into states. Does this seem correct? Thanks, Somno (talk) 23:55, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Will take this to the project talk page for my reply SatuSuro 10:24, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

CT:Tasmania

CT:Tasmania has been listed for discussion (and possible deletion as a cross-namespace redirect) at WP:RfD. I would recommend that anybody interested one way, the other, or neutral to comment about the redirect before RfD close. Thank you for your input. 147.70.242.40, temporarily at 147.70.242.41 (talk) 19:26, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Note that it currently points to Category talk:Tasmania Portal. Orderinchaos 20:42, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Images of National Party leaders

I thought the National Party released the images of their leaders to a free license compatible with Wikipedia? Why was Damiens.rf allowed to delete them? Is there a way to fix this? JRG (talk) 04:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

For further context, it looks like JRG is talking about a series of discussions on IFD starting here. From my admittedly uninformed position, they certainly look like poor closes (all seem to be unanimous or near-unanimous keep discussions). Of a bit of further concern is the way that User:Damiens.rf nominated Image:John McEwen.jpg twice, once in August, and again in October. It's not against the rules, but it certainly is irregular. In addition, the nominator seems to have quite the history of trolling and edit-warring. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 06:56, 27 October 2008 (UTC).

Although, JRG, it would help if you could elaborate upon "the National Party released the images of their leaders to a free license compatible with Wikipedia?" When did this happen, what licence, is there documentary evidence, etc? Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 06:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC).

I note that explicit non-commercial permission was given for the use of photos on wikipedia from the Australian Parliamentary Handbook, that are held under Crown copyright by the Commonwealth of Australia. The responsible Commonwealth agency, AUSPIC, gave written permission on 2 August 2005 for non-commercial use of the photos on Wikipedia. Please see the debate on the deletion of the image of Ian Sinclair of the National Party. While I would prefer 'unrestricted' licenced photos used where possible, for most Australian politicians this just is not achievable at this moment. I think use of these photos is justified, even under current Wikipedia licencing policies, unless alternative photos become available. I think the debate was closed too soon with not enough participation from Australian Wikipedians.--Takver (talk) 09:52, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Lankiveil - I thought I remembered reading here that someone had written to the National Party seeking images of their leaders and they had released a photo of Mark Vaile and the other former leaders on the OTRS system. It was different to what Takver refers to above. I wasn't familiar with what had happened but I was surprised that they all got deleted if that was the case. And I am not happy with the way that the John McEwen image was nominated again after there was a consensus towards keeping it. JRG (talk) 00:12, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Much as I wanted it to be true myself, that was either a hoax or at least unsubstantiated, as it later turned out. Timeshift would remember more details as he was dealing with that one. Orderinchaos 03:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Is there anything we can do to get photos of these people? It's a shame the Deputy Leaders of our country at certain times don't have images. JRG (talk) 06:50, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Update on Damiens.rf - he has been blocked for a week for edit-warring. Please keep a look out for him if he persists in disruptive editing after his block expires. JRG (talk) 06:52, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Input wanted on Francis Macnab

A discussion has started at Talk:Francis Macnab about how to cover his announcement of a new faith, see here. The sections dealing with it are rather long, and further we have had a request from the Executive of his church that we remove some sourced information about the public response of another church. Your input is appreciated. Blarneytherinosaur ^gabby? 23:21, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

ACOTF changed from Griffith to assessment

Hi Everyone. I think we've all been busy enjoying the springtime. Anyway, I got round to rolling the Australian collaboration again. Griffith met with limited editing attention. The longest standing most-supported suggestion to replace it has been a concerted effort to catch up on article assessment of Australian articles. As such, the category Unassessed Australia articles has been nominated for the next fortnight. I don't believe I will be able to generate meaningful statistics for this (maybe someone else can - please followup with a complete count if you can), but as of right now, there are 248 articles in the main category and more in the subcategories. Please help to assess these articles in support of the project, and nominate other tasks for the ACOTF as well. Thanks for your help. --Scott Davis ^Talk 06:09, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't want to appear negative, but can someone explain the benefit of this tagging? I mean, how does it improve the quality of Wikipedia in any way? WWGB (talk) 06:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

“ While much of the work is done in conjunction with the WP:1.0 program, the article ratings are also used within the project itself to aid in recognising excellent contributions and identifying topics in need of further work. ” — Wikiproject Australia Assessment Department, Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Assessment

--Scott Davis ^Talk 12:29, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I guess at the moment a lot of us are still doing more of the generation of new artices or vandalism patrols, rather than improvement of existing articles. Tagging helps the targeting of which articles should be improved. What be very useful would be a sort of cross-category boolean comparison - ie seeing all of the top importance but stub quality articles in a project. AWB can do it with its list comparison tool, but it would be good to have something inbuilt to the wikipedia website.The-Pope (talk) 13:55, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if anyone has ever actually used WP:AUS tagging to "aid in recognising excellent contributions and identifying topics in need of further work" or "help the targeting of which articles should be improved." If I feel like working on a WP:AUS stub, tagging makes it easy for me to narrow my field of candidates down to 38,907 articles... and as far as I can tell, that is all it does. Seriously, is there any evidence (as opposed to WP 1.0 shibboleths) that people are actually using WP:AUS tagging for anything? Hesperian 22:50, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I just use it as an AWB search term. It's basically a case of knowing which basket to dump the articles in, so that if they're not properly categorised we can find them. Orderinchaos 23:35, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Australia_articles_by_quality is an ersatz version of what you want, although finding the right page can take a while (60 is the one you're looking for). Hesperian: the lists for the various subprojects are more tractable. The lack of boolean categories on wikipedia is partly why I spend some time at Freebase (database). TRS-80 (talk) 10:40, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

There some discussion here with it petering out unable to find a use beyond WP:1.0 program. What I suggest is that the template has a default setting of low importance and start class where none is specified. Gnangarra 12:04, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Silent Policeman

What am I called?

I have always called these things "Silent Policemen" and, by not cutting corners, have been lucky enough to avoid them ripping out the underside of my car. Like reverse angle parking, they seem to be a NSW thing. Is there a formal name for them that anyone knows? Cheers, Mattinbgn\^talk 07:33, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

The NSW RTA refers to them as "traffic domes" (see page 21 of [6]). WWGB (talk) 07:47, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

That was quick! Thank you -- Mattinbgn\^talk 08:03, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I've always called them "Silent Cops" which, going by this photo, seems right. I always assumed that "Silent Policemen" was the formal name. When I first joined the RAAF in 1978, there were some of them in Laverton, Victoria, where I did my technician training. The Victorians called them "sleeping policemen". I think I prefer any of those to "traffic dome". They'd be better off calling them Chuzwozzas. There is some interesting reading on the issue here. --AussieLegend (talk) 08:06, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I always knew them as "Sleeping Policemen", but "traffic dome" is indeed the formal (and far less interesting) name. Euryalus (talk) 08:59, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I knew them as "Silent Cops", but when we lived in West Africa in the 1960s they were called "Sleeping Policemen", which we assumed was British.--Grahame (talk) 11:48, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Use to see them almost all over the Riverina in the 90s but have became extremely rare in some part. :( Bidgee (talk) 04:42, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Is someone going to write an article? Note from various council minutes (findable via Google searches) they are no longer approved traffic control devices - eg Mosman 2005. Here is an article on the subject:

Davis, Tony (17 June 2002). "Silent cops make a quiet exit". Drive. Fairfax Digital (Sydney Morning Herald). Retrieved 2008-10-31.

- did you know that they have become redundant (as well as a hazard) because diamond turns which allow approaching cars to turn across an intersection simultaneously were legalised in the 1970s?

It seems they date from the 1920s per :

In the late 1920s, the Police Department had placed some traffic domes at intersections as an experiment, but ran out of funds to continue their installation. Hence in 1929, the MRB took over the placement of traffic domes. They were used to control traffic, to assist in the "rotary circulation of traffic" and to keep vehicles to the outside of the curve

and they seem to just pre-date "The first set of automatic vehicle activated traffic lights was installed at the corner of Market and Kent Streets, Sydney by the Department of Road Transport and Tramways on 13 October 1933."

"RTA Thematic History: A component of the RTA Heritage and Conservation Register - 2nd Edition" (pdf). New South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority. 2006. pp. 68 of 128. Retrieved 2008-10-31.

traffic domes are in NZ too apparently [7]--Matilda ^talk 22:13, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• There is one on the heritage register (placed on there in 2005) for Kempsey (Cnr Rudder and Sullivan Streets, Crescent Head) which dates specifically to 1920 see page 149 of 771 page large pdf

  Statement of Significance: The silent cop is the forerunner of the modern day roundabout at the junction of three or four streets. The raised dome indicated that the traffic went around the dome and it took place of a traffic policeman hence the colloquial name; "silent cop" entered the English language. The traffic dome becomes a historic item in its own right.
  Historical Notes or Provenance: In the Kempsey Municipal Minutes of 1924; "Letter from Dr. McElhone suggesting placing dummy policemen at the intersection of the streets for the guidance of traffic. Moved by Alderman Land and seconded by Alderman Savage that the matter be referred to works committee." One silent cop at the intersection of Lachlan Street and Nicholson Street has currently been removed.

They were in the US at least as early as 1914 per [8]. This article also goes on to talk about sleeping policemen which I would call speed bumps and in New Zealand are referred to as judder bars. There is an article on Speed bump. --Matilda ^talk 22:29, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

According to this photo with the late Alan Waddell [9] they were also referred to as "poached eggs". (BTW, it's a pity Alan Waddell's article was deleted). WWGB (talk) 22:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

It has been userfied - User:Jerry/Alan Waddell -- Mattinbgn\^talk 22:59, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Aboriginal tracker article?

Does anyone know whether we have an article on blacktrackers (such as Jimmy James (tracker)? Is it under a title that hasn't occurred to me? --Roisterer (talk) 03:42, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

For a start try a more respectful label like Aboriginal tracker go to search and you will find they are mentioned regularly in wikipedia under that more appropriate name and no there is not an article - but use of blacktracker I would suggest you wont find much SatuSuro 04:01, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I would agree that Aboriginal tracker (for example) is a more respectful term; I just used the term listed in the Jimmy James article noted above. But yes, I'm surprised there is nothing on Aboriginal trackers, considering the important role they have played in Australian history. --Roisterer (talk) 04:54, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

In the Territory (NT) they're known as "Aboriginal trackers". Bidgee (talk) 04:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Also in the WA State library catalogue - there are mainly photos http://henrietta.liswa.wa.gov.au/search~ when you try that search item SatuSuro 07:26, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Excellent reference for Queensland on this subject - L.E. Skinner, Police of the Pastoral Frontier. Native Police 1849-59, University of Queensland Press, 1975 ISBN 0702209775. I have a number of sources for Victoria as well.--Takver (talk) 08:15, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I got one source "Explorers of Western Australia" that has some limited information but there already on some articles like Tommy Windich and Wylie (person). Theres also List of Indigenous Australian historical figures which covers a broader grouping. Quick check doesnt show any article specific to Aboriginal trackers/guides. Gnangarra 08:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Oral tradition and popular traditions of up to fifty years ago in western australia had it that a good tracker can see things that simply are impossible for the average city dwelling european ancestry australian to see SatuSuro 08:37, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

And Jimmy James is the focus of a biography, Lost and found : the life of Jimmy James, black tracker (see http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2457958) so it's not as if there isn't a lot of material on Trackers available. Methinks I might add it to the ACOTF suggestion list. --Roisterer (talk) 10:49, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Probably better to add information to the Native Police Corps article. At the moment it is mainly about Victoria, but we could probably have a section for each state about the Native Police Force.--Takver (talk) 12:23, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

...but that would be wrong. The use of Aboriginal trackers was more widespread than their use as a specific corps of the police force. Rebecca (talk) 13:25, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd argue that, the WA police force had "Aboriginal Officers" as a separate group well into the 1990's possibly as late as the turn of the century.[10] Gnangarra 11:55, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

C-class articles opinion needed for WP INDIA

Hi! We at WP:INDIA are debating the introduction of C-class articles for our assessment. Since WP:AUS has been using the C-class ratings for quite a while now, could someone from this project please weigh in on Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics#C class articles? We need to know:

1. If the implementation of C-class has been effective for this project?
2. Does C-class articles involve more red tape?
3. Are the lines of distinction between Start and C, and Start and B classes blurred?
4. Does C-class complicate the assessment process?

Eagerly awaiting feedback. Thanks, =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:08, 2 November 2008 (UTC) Cross-posting since the assessment talk page is not watched =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:43, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

• Please note that I've posted a slightly different notice to the assessment talk page. Notably, instead of the first bullet point above, we'd like know whether the implementation of C-class been worthwhile overall? If so, how? (Has there been evidence of an increase in the quantity or quality of output by the introduction of this grade?) Thanks, Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:15, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Category notification #6

Category:Australian political controversies has been proposed for renaming. Hesperian 22:38, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

IndexMundi

Does anyone have an opinion on how reliable this website may be? I would like to use it for elevations and the one I see for Thulimbah, Queensland is around the mark. Cheers, Mattinbgn\^talk 21:43, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

UBank editors

Per the AfD discussion concerning UBank I have been looking at some of the contribution histories for the IPs who have been editing that page. I am concerned that the viral marketing has extended to editing pages of competitors too. I didn't feel comfortable for example about this edit for example about Virgin Money [11]. I would appreciate if others would help to review edits by those who have edited UBank (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - thanks --Matilda ^talk 23:28, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I think people should read this article seems the article creator is of interest. Gnangarra 00:09, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Category notification #7

Plenty going on in category space at the moment:

• Category:Australian football (soccer) club stubs and Category:Australian football biography stubs have been nominated for renaming;
• Category:Coastal settlements in Australia and Category:Battles of the Iraq War involving Australia were both deleted as empty;
• Category:1995-96 Australian cyclone season, also empty, was blanked so that someone would notice and delete it;
• Category:Nature Conservation Act least concern biota and Category:Nature Conservation Act near threatened biota were blanked for the same reason, but I have restored these because the taxobox auto-categorises into them.

Hesperian 22:34, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Category:1900 in Australian rules football, Category:1899 in Australian rules football, Category:1898 in Australian rules football and Category:1897 in Australian rules football, all empty categories, have been blanked so that someone will notice and delete them. Hesperian 02:48, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Ditto Category:Port settlements in Australia. Hesperian 22:29, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Battle of the Coral Sea

We are trying to get this article to featured status. Jehochman ^Talk 06:48, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Armed Offenders Squad (Victoria)

It may be worth some more eyes on this article given its content and the name of the contributing editor - Xtine-nixon (talk · contribs) -- Mattinbgn\^talk 05:14, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

City proper/metropolitan area population breakdown for cities

I would like to draw attention to the issue which I have raised at: Template talk:Infobox Australian Place#City proper/metropolitan area population breakdown for cities & Talk:Sydney#Sydney city proper population. —NobleTripTrip (talk) 05:26, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Crikey, where are we supposed to carry on the discussion: there, there, or here? Hesperian 05:31, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Old stock routes

Came across an old stock route sign at Edward Street (Google Maps) during my off road mountain bike riding. Interested to see if anyone knows the history? Bidgee (talk) 05:37, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Survey markers

Anyone know the history of these markers? I've so far found two of these type markers with a lot more smaller ones located in Central Wagga. Bidgee (talk) 11:57, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I assume its a permanent mark (PM) as defined by the The Survey Co-ordination Act, 1949 (NSW)[12]] Melburnian (talk) 12:39, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Also, further info in this document. There should be a number under the lid. WWGB (talk) 12:53, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

• There is an article on Triangulation station which covers some information and provides a link to Benchmark (surveying) - I think the image is of a benchmark but I am not a surveyor! --Matilda ^talk 21:46, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

But be careful - there are inter-state variants - there are highly likely diffs for each state SatuSuro 22:25, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

There's one of these type things in my front yard (along the driveway, 2km from where I'm sitting, she's a big front yard :-), with the threat of a $100 fine if I interfere with it. I'll grab a pic tomorrow in the hope somebody can tell me exactly what it is... -- Longhair\^talk 09:58, 5 November 2008 (UTC).

Here's a pic. I guess its one of these survey marks as well, seeing as its titled as such :) -- Longhair\^talk 02:48, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks like an Victoria version of the NSW marker. Bidgee (talk) 05:27, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Dancing with the Stars (Australian TV series)

The Dancing with the Stars (Australian TV series) article seems to be nothing more than a page full of tables full of scorecards for each and every episode - is this encyclopaedic? Wongm (talk) 06:55, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Probable retirement from Wikipedia

Hi all, I have decided to retire from Wikipedia. There is one primary reason for this, but I thought I would share some comments on Wikipedia in the hope that some things can be done about this. I am sorry if these are generalisations (because there are exceptions to every rule here and I have been editing with some great editors who deserve a lot of credit - and there are lots of good editors) but this is how I feel at the moment:

I am primarily retiring because I am sick of disruptive editors running around destroying the good work that others have done. There seems to be a persistent stream of them - the first couple are thankfully gone but the current one has been left to run free. As an example, some editors spent hours helping Australian political and legal articles by adding images under old guidelines, only for that work to be destroyed by one editor in particular that has seriously annoyed me with his disruptive IfD nominations for reasons which aren't even valid reasons for deletion. Furthermore, he has persisted in edit warring; whenever he is confronted he merely blames others for his misfortune. He is starting to move on to free images now as well. He has also been allowed to persist in abusing other users and getting away with incivility. When I reverted (among other disruptive edits) abuse levelled at another user I get reported. That is the last straw. I cannot participate in a website where this sort of behaviour is tolerated. I came on here to add some meaningful content to the encyclopedia and I haven't had the chance to do that for months because of disruptive editors.

Some other comments:

• Subjectivity - I am also disappointed with the subjectivity of deletion debates. There are too many people who expect a Google search to come up with all answers to notability for an article and expect that if so many google sources can't be found that it is sufficient to delete an article. In many cases it is books and library research that would reveal otherwise. (Note I am not talking about obvious cases here or hoax articles). The entire process needs to be overhauled and more editors need to start doing some research on the notability of articles rather than relying on one's own subjective judgment.
• Lack of cooperation - I feel that editors are less cooperative about improving less-notable articles than they used to be. This is disappointing.
• Ownership of articles - there are too many articles "controlled" by one editor that deter other users from editing on particular pages.
• Image policy - Wikipedia's image policy is too harsh to take into account Australian conditions. American users simply do not understand the difficulty of obtaining photos of Australian political figures compared to how easy it is to get one over there. The policies, and overseas editors, need to take into account the regional differences.

Editing here is making me stressed, so unless someone can convince me otherwise or will be prepared to clean up Wikipedia (dealing with the first reason would be a good enough reason to stay), I will be retiring from here. I may return to edit some rail-related articles and some other things I have contributed to at some stage but it would be under another username.

I have enjoyed contributing to particular pages but I cannot sustain this in the current conditions. Feel free to reply here in the next 24 hours if you want to convince me otherwise. Thank you to those who at least have made this an enjoyable time here and good luck contributing to the Australian encyclopedia. JRG (talk) 02:16, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

As someone who has taken extended wikibreaks while trying to recover from abuse and outright stupidity from other editors, I would urge that you not retire entirely but take an extended wikibreak. --Athol Mullen (talk) 03:04, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I think sometimes it is important to remember it is only a website, however good or comprehensive it may be. Orderinchaos 03:56, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm sad to hear that editing Wikipeida has caused you stress. What I would suggest you should do is to change the set of topics your editing to something less contentious, broaden the scope of what you edit towards article where the getting the basic facts hasn't been done (away from Sydney and mainstream politics for sure) and your effort is more likely to remain intact and less controlled. You'll have less disputes and editing will be more enjoyable. Don't get too invloved over a web page. Try working through some of the WP Aus backlogs or have a break, but don't quit entirely. - Shiftchange (talk) 22:17, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I endorse all the above, take a break, and come back and continue your good work. Wikipedia needs people like you.--Takver (talk) 08:11, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia absolutely needs people like you, JRG. Under whichever username you please. Please don't feel pressured to hang around because of the comments here, it's your choice and your life. Giggy (talk) 09:28, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Breaks are always worth it - have one and then think about it again - well worth having a break SatuSuro 03:33, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Well - I'm making this definite; primarily because it has been nice to have a week without Wikipedia and I want to be here less. Thank you to all who made encouraging comments, I appreciate the good work you have all done and hope you can continue to make Wikipedia a great place to edit. I will be back at some stage in the future under a new username to edit rail and geographic articles where Damiens.rf has no expertise and no input. Please keep him in check - in the week I have gone he is continuing to edit war despite being told not to, and is having more images deleted spuriously. Allowing disruptive editors to roam free, I believe, will only lead to the downfall of this encyclopedia. Good luck everyone. JRG (talk) 06:01, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Talk:The Daily Telegraph (Australia)#Endorsing Rudd

Could someone familiar with Australian politics take a look at this section, and provide the equivalent of a WP:3O? I don't understand the politics behind it (Do I understand correctly that the Liberal Party is conservative? If so, that makes my Yank head spin), so I can't really help. There's one IP editor who is re-adding material every 2-3 days, and another editor who insists there be consensus first, but who refused to discuss anymore because the other editor is only an IP editor.

If I've chosen a bad forum, re-posting this to a better place would be appreciated. I consciously chose here instead of WP:3O because I think it important that the comment come from someone with Australian clue. --barneca (talk) 17:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

It would be appreciated if I was informed that this was placed here as I am one of the editors in question. Would appreciate comment from anyone familiar with the Daily Telegraph in Sydney. Largely speaking being a News corp paper it follows a conservative stance, in particular its pro Iraq war stance, anti NSW Labor stance, criticism of injecting rooms, and so on. Thanks. Michellecrisp (talk) 23:05, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Considering I told you on the talk page I was coming here, it's hard to imagine that you feel you weren't informed. Thank you to YellowMonkey for chiming in. Unless someone feels like providing a WP:4O or WP:5O, this can probably be considered resolved as far as the noticeboard is concerned. --barneca (talk) 23:55, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

New ACOTF: Isaac Isaacs

Hi everyone. The new Australian Collaboration is Isaac Isaacs. The previous one was a general attempt to clean up Category:Unassessed Australia articles, but I have no idea how to determine whether to report it was successful. The editors who worked on it might like to chime in. Thanks. --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:17, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

It was successful in eliminating the backlog, which was 589 unassessed articles when the ACOTF started and was down to zero about a week later. Alas, its gone back up to about 60 since then, presumably as a result of new Australian articles being created or tagged into the project. Euryalus (talk) 23:38, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Split of Cat:Australian politician stubs

I;ve proposed creating by decade stub templates and categories by birth as with other countries like United States, Norway. Given the active involvement I thought you should all know Count Blofeld 23:06, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Category notification #8

Category:Australian football biography stubs has again been nominated for renaming to Category:Australian football (soccer) biography stubs. Hesperian 22:27, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Australian commonwealth national parks and reserves images on Commons

Well just got to love our Australian Laws (So much for Freedom of Panorama!) which limits photographs to be used for non-commercial use. You can read more of this at Commons talk:Licensing#Category:Kakadu National Park and other Australian commonwealth reserves. Bidgee (talk) 03:57, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

The Monthly

Contributions from a new editor here. Every contribution is to add a link to columns from The Monthly into an article without any actual reference to the column in the article text. I don't know The Monthly well enough to determine if they are useful links or mere spam. Any ideas? -- Mattinbgn\^talk 05:29, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I have every back issue (paperback) to late 2005. If it can wait till I get home at 10:30pm EST tonight I can look them up. Orderinchaos 06:31, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd recommend the duck test if it quacks like a duck it is one, this one is .... Gnangarra 06:33, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I left a message(uw-spam1) on the users talk point out that their edits appear to be spamming, I suggest that the sources should be used to expand the articles , then cited as the source. Looking at the source I'd be reluctant to consider listing it as a spam site unless we were certain the editor was from the source, though I wouldnt hesitate blocking the editor if they repeat the action. Gnangarra 08:32, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for following up. Cheers, Mattinbgn\^talk 12:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

New articles

Wikipedia:New articles (Australia)#Possible Australia-related articles found by bot needs poking with a stick to get it moving again, if anyone knows how to do so. Cheers, Mattinbgn\^talk 01:42, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikimedia Australia membership now open

Hi, Wikimedia Australia is (finally) accepting members. :) If you are interested in joining, please look at m:Wikimedia Australia/Membership for info about costs and so on. cheers, pfctdayelise (talk) 13:42, 12 November 2008 (UTC) (interim WMAU secretary)

After having spent some time browsing around the various Wikimedia Australia pages, I'm left with the question "What will membership achieve?" --Athol Mullen (talk) 13:30, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, from WMAu's perspective, it will provide a firm base of people willing to contribute, as well as some starting funds to actually do something. From your perspective, it will give you a vote at the WMAu AGM, which gives you a voice as to the direction of the organisation. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 22:23, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

To paraphrase: "Give us your money, and we'll give you a say in how we spend it". Hesperian 22:58, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

One thing that isn't explained is "$20/year concession". Do you have to be a student, some one on a Government benefit, long term editors of Wikipedia? and what is needed to get the concession?. Bidgee (talk) 22:47, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Concession is as you'd get from most other organisations in Australia, any Centrelink, Vetrans affair, student card holders etc. Initially the decision was to accept in good faith anyone that claims the concession rather than there be a need to have the supporting card/document viewed. Gnangarra 00:14, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

In general the same standard used by most non-profits, political parties and associations. Essentially it allows people who can't afford the $40 to participate in WMAu affairs. Orderinchaos 00:51, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Is the money working capital for this new entity (Wikimedia Australia), or it a donation to Wikipedia itself? There was some mention of people being able to vote on how the money is spent, but there is no information and no rule on how this entity will be established and managed, who are (or if there are) key officials or how people can participate in the decisions, except by giving money and voting. Does not sound very transparent or collaborative. The business model appears similar to that of lottery tickets - buy a ticket and hope. Stellar (talk)

The incorporated association rules are at m:Wikimedia Australia/Rules for Wikimedia Australia Inc. Hope that is a little more transparent. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 00:58, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi, if you have not yet done so then I encourage you to read the WMAU Statement of Purpose. There are many kinds of activities that chapters can engage in, and how we choose which ones to do will certainly be influenced by what members want. WMAU is a not for profit association incorporated in the state of Victoria (but able to have members, and act, Australia wide). Joining WMAU is not a "donation" to Wikipedia (by which I think you mean the Wikimedia Foundation).

Here are some examples of activities that chapters have or may perform.

• Organise "Wikipedia Academy" events for academics/educators and/or the general public.
• Some Wikipedia content has been set on the NSW HSC English syllabus for 2009-2012. We can certainly work with teachers, classrooms etc to help them better understand how Wikipedia works.
• Reimburse editors who perform activities that benefit Wikimedia, e.g. attending some event/location to research it, giving talks about Wikimedia (outreach).
• Organise "Wikimania Australia" national conference type events.
• Organise workshops for editors on topics of interest.
• Support Wikinews reporters with accreditation for access to some events.
• Work with government, cultural and educational institutions to see if they can release works under a free license, potentially for use in Wikimedia projects, and/or use Wikimedia content in their works, and/or develop their own works within the Wikimedia projects.
• Organise(?) publication of Wikimedia material in other forms (eg books, CD ROMs).
• Lobby for copyright laws and governmental practices that increase the body of free cultural works, lobby to protect and expand the public domain.
• Contribute to Wikimedia technical infrastructure
• Stimulate and fund MediaWiki development

These are (almost) all things that other chapters have done. Of course we will not achieve all these things in the next year, but they are some examples of what is possible.

WMAU will be publishing monthly reports. Our first one covers August-October 2008 and is at m:Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Australia/2008-10.

I see chapter activities as locally-grounded ways of furthering the Wikimedia Mission. cheers, pfctdayelise (talk) 12:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Griffith Law School

Thought this would be a place to notify others, as previous discussions haven't been able to gather wide enough interest. Please comment on proposed merger of Griffith Law School if you're interested. thanks. Michellecrisp (talk) 23:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Category rename proposal

See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 November 19#Category:NSW Waratahs rugby union footballers. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:48, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Category notification #9

Category:Australian medley swimmers, Category:Australian freestyle swimmers, Category:Australian butterfly swimmers, Category:Australian breaststroke swimmers and Category:Australian backstroke swimmers have been deleted per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 November 15#Swimmer categories including both demonym and stroke. I missed this nomination earlier because the Australian categories were neither tagged for deletion nor mentioned in the discussion.

Hesperian 22:31, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

• Category:Venues of the 2000 Summer Olympics has been nominated for renaming to Category:2000 Summer Olympics venues. Hesperian 22:07, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Question for our Brisbane people

Anyone got a Brisbane UBD/Gregorys street directory for any time around 1996? I'm trying to get an idea of the state of suburban development in a number of places at that point in time and have been regrettably unable to source one myself (seems to be plenty of 80s era street directories on Ebay but almost no 90s ones...) Not actually looking to *obtain* the thing, but will probably just need to ask a few questions. Thanks heaps. Orderinchaos 02:21, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I think there's an old one from the early 90s lying around at my parents' garage... what info exactly are you after? Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:58, 26 November 2008 (UTC).

I have a 1994 Gregory's.--Grahame (talk) 12:12, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Basically the shape of the developed area of certain suburbs (and indeed the existence of some of the newer ones). I'm working on some stuff with electorates and electoral boundaries, but Perth and Brisbane are the two big challenges as they seem to be constantly growing in unexpected ways. Of course having lived here all my life, I know Perth pretty well and have street directories and personal knowledge covering almost the whole period, but I've never even been to Brisbane (I do intend to rectify that in the next 2 years sometime). Orderinchaos 13:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I have a Gregorys director from before the Commonwealth Games, in case that is useful. Wongm (talk) 05:11, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I have a few from 1980 to 1986, but the places in question seem to have been farmland at the time!! Orderinchaos 05:37, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chris Hurley

This nomination (by me) is likely to be controversial as there is no arguing that he meets the general notability guideline. However, I strong feel it should go, so I have listed it in full knowledge that most here may disagree. Thoughts, for and against are best left on the discussion page. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 06:40, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Northern Territory LGAs

Does anyone know what the status of the new Territory LGAs is? Articles such as Barkly Shire still show them as proposed, is this the case? -- Mattinbgn\^talk 03:49, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

My understanding is they went live mid-year sometime and we're probably just out of date, but I don't honestly know. Orderinchaos 04:36, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

"The Barkly Shire Council commenced operations on 1st of July 2008 with a formal ceremony coinciding with the Territory Day celebrations at the Tennant Creek Civic Centre" [13] Melburnian (talk) 04:49, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that would been a idea, check the website! Thanks! -- Mattinbgn\^talk 08:19, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Category notification #10

Category:Australian opera companies has been nominated for renaming to Category:Opera companies of Australia. Hesperian 22:42, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Not a category, but I thought I should mention that a number of articles were created recently on high draft picks from the recent AFL draft, and that many of them are currently nominated for deletion. Hesperian 02:01, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Not just high picks; down to picks in the 50s and 60s i.e. third and fourth round picks. Not that it matters much, WP:ATHLETE is a absurdly low bar and these draftee articles fail to meet even that. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 03:16, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

But including the top 3 picks and those with many non-trivial sources. Some people are claiming that WP:ATHLETE overrules WP:N, which is just as absurd. With 16 AFDs currently under consideration, with many having similar credentials, but not all getting equal responses, it will be a difficult task for the closing admin(s).The-Pope (talk) 14:01, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Category notification #11

Category:Australian B-movie actors has been nominated for deletion. Hesperian 22:15, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Categories in controversial articles

A new editor—Umterno (talk · contribs), whose account was created this morning—has had a run through the categories in some of our more controversial articles. Those with a background in those articles may wish to take a look at the changes. Cheers, Mattinbgn\^talk 00:07, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Most of them look like defensible, good-faith changes to me, but obviously making so many changes to so many controversial articles without getting consensus and without using edit summaries to explain the reasoning is a bit of a problem. I see you've already beat me to leaving a note on their talk page, hopefully this'll turn out to be a productive and good faith editor. I must say I'm impressed at how quickly the user has figured out how to install and use HotCat, too! Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 05:07, 5 December 2008 (UTC).

Seems "History of Australia" was overused and "Liberal Party (Australia)" has been changed to the more correct "Liberal Party of Australia" - not really much of concern. My guess is someone trying to rack up maintenance edits or getting practice (were either of these cats at any of the various requests for attention type venues?). Orderinchaos 06:10, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Australian stats, soon to be CC

(this message will be cross-posted to the Wikinews water cooler, Australian Wikipedians' Noticeboard, and the Wikimedia Australia mailing list)

This was hidden in a page labelled "Website changes coming soon" on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website, but I figured it's worth bringing out into the open. ABS statistics on its web site have been free-as-in-beer for a while now, but apparently as an attempt to capture the attention of people searching for free-as-in-speech information, "The ABS is poised to introduce Creative Commons licensing for the majority of its web content." From about two weeks from now, apparently almost everything on the ABS web site will be under a CC-BY-2.5 Australia license. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 03:49, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

And a link - http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310114.nsf/Home/Website+Changes+Coming+Soon#Creative%20Commons Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 00:25, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

If anyone has been heavily using an ABS report or dataset, we can archive this onto Wikisource, where improvements can be made to the structure to make it accessible. For example, instead of linking to a PDF from the Wikipedia article (which few people will open and read), we can copy the text to Wikisource, which will attract more readers and also simplifies fact checking when someone changes the cite text in the wikipedia article. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 05:51, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

It will be interesting to see if this includes the annual Year Book Australia and equivalent publications which contain lots of articles describing aspects of Australian society, structure of government, economic factors, etc - being able to copy and paste this text into underdeveloped articles would be a fantastic way to get them started. Nick-D (talk) 05:56, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

city centre/suburb

Hi. Could anyone interested please have a look at Talk:Adelaide_(suburb)#Requested_Move discussing the recent move of Adelaide city centre to Adelaide (suburb)? "(suburb)" appears dubious at best for the theoretical centre of an urban area. It probably helps to have some understanding of the culture and geography of Adelaide, but comparisons to the way similar situations have been handled in other cities would be helpful too. Thanks. --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:53, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Category notification #12

Category:Australian ODI cricketers, Category:Australian Test cricketers and Category:Australian Twenty20 International cricketers have been redirected to Category:Australia ODI cricketers, Category:Australia Test cricketers and Category:Australia Twenty20 International cricketers respectively. I have no idea if this has been discussed anywhere. Hesperian 22:39, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

That seems generally in line with WP:CRICKET team name guidelines and does avoid some confusion. Darren Pattinson for example is an Australian Test cricketer but not an Australia Test cricketer, i.e. a test cricketer from Australia, not for Australia. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 22:57, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

ACOTF is Melbourne Cup

Hi Everyone. Almost a fortnight late, I selected a new Australian collaboration of the fortnight as Melbourne Cup. It's listed as C-class and top-importance, so fits well with the above discussion, too.

The previous collaboration was Isaac Isaacs which was ACOTF from 10 November to 7 December 2008

• 7 contributors made 14 edits
• The article increased from 10,286 bytes to 13,883 bytes
• See how it changed

--Scott Davis ^Talk 13:06, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Category notification #13

Category:Molluscs of Australia is proposed for deletion. Hesperian 22:33, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

A strange arrow.

Anyone know what this arrow is? Photo was taken on the corner of Tarcutta and Johnson Street (Where the historic Lands (Dept of Lands) Building is located). Bidgee (talk) 05:15, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

It's a broad arrow marker, perhaps an alignment pin like the one described here Melburnian (talk) 05:29, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Electoral districts of New South Wales

Hi guys I want to have a go at getting the above list featured. It is a format that I am not sure will be appropriate...can you have a look and tell me what you think (below). if there is general consensus that the format is good, i might nominate it for ACOTF to get a hand...after all, there are 90-sumthing seats. .....Todd^#661 09:46, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Electorate	Member (member since)	Party (held since)	Swing	Electors Enrolled
Albury	Gregory John Aplin 2003	Liberal Party 1988	22.5%	42,982
Auburn	Barbara Mazzel Perry 2001[a]	Labor Party 1927	26.6%	47,765
Ballina	Donald Loftus Page 1988	Nationals 1988	9.5%	45,810

1. ^{^} Denotes a by-election

Albury, Auburn, Ballina,

Looks generally fine to me, and it's great to see other people giving NSW state politics some attention. However, can we please get rid of the middle names? None of these people are known by their middle names at all. Rebecca (talk) 11:02, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay by me, although I must admit I'm not sure if there's a standard format for these types of tables. Jonesy (talk) 11:12, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

There isn't at the moment - there are no equivalent lists at WP:FL. One thing which is missing, on a second look, is a column of the years in which the electorate was created - though that wouldn't be hard.

Another thing, though I'm not sure if it'd be possible without delving too much into WP:OR or making the table look crap, would be a column of major population centres in the electorate, or all the towns covered. It would certainly make the table a lot more informative if we could. Rebecca (talk) 11:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

(undent)Note on using middle names: When I first read the names in full in this list, I thought of Mark Brandon Read and Christopher Dale Flannery! -- Mattinbgn\^talk 11:26, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Looks generally OK to me, although I'm not sure what the "swing" column represents. I agree with Rebecca on middle names and on the need for a year in which created. Perhaps a general descriptor ("western Sydney") would suffice for the general area of the electorate. It should probably have a column with its physical size as well. Frickeg (talk) 21:54, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

so here are what you have suggested...

Electorate (year created)	Member (member since)	Party (held since)	Location	Swing	Electors Enrolled	Area
Albury 1880	Greg Aplin 2003	Liberal Party 1988	Riverina	22.5%	42,982	12,956 km2 (5,002 sq mi)
Auburn 1927	Barbara Perry 2001[a]	Labor Party 1927	Greater Western Sydney	26.6%	47,765	44 km2 (17 sq mi)
Ballina 1988	Donald Page 1988	Nationals 1988	Far North Coast	9.5%	45,810	890 km2 (344 sq mi)

1. ^{^} Denotes a by-election

Albury, Auburn, Ballina,

I've got rid of middle names, added a location & an area column. I have left swing there because it gives an important indication of the general demographics of an area I think. In the intoduction it will give an indication of what represents a large swing and what would be a "marginal" seat?

So the question is...this will need a big update after each election. Does that matter? Also, do you think ACOTF is the best avenue for this or is somebody willing to help. It could take a bit, there are 90+ entries as well as the old electorates. .....Todd^#661 04:39, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Looks great - I think that the "swing" column should be labelled "margin", though. And should the "margin" be per the last election or the last by-election (e.g. Ryde)? And what about instances (such as Albury above) where the electorate didn't exist and was then re-created? I'd suggest having either the most recent creation or having (using Albury again) 1880-1920, 1927. I volunteer myself to help with this, although I won't be available tomorrow. Frickeg (talk) 05:35, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Nice work on the new table - I like it a lot. I agree with Frickeg on 'swing'/'margin'. I think we'd need to use the margin of the by-election; the result in Ryde would look pretty silly if we have it listed with a massive Labor margin and an incumbent Liberal MP; might be worth noting that it was a by-election result, though, as it's a fair point. I also agree with Frickeg on the past electorate dates - and I'd be very happy to help as well. If you want to kick it off, I don't mind going through and doing a lot of it, although I'd probably have to leave fields like the 'region' one blank, as I don't know NSW regions quite so well. Rebecca (talk) 07:03, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

i've added it to my Sandbox feel free to edit it if you please. .....Todd^#661 06:32, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Re this list, do "member since" and "party since" relate only to the existence of the seat? I'm thinking of doing a version of this for WA, but our seats are far more transient than New South Wales's - it's not uncommon for them to change name every 10-15 years or appear or disappear completely, but the MPs are somewhat more continuous. Also has some relevance to NSW - eg Chris Hartcher. Orderinchaos 07:10, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

My suggestion here would be to have the "MP since" relating to the individual electorate (i.e. Chris Hartcher has been the member for Terrigal since 2007), as this list is primarily about the electorates, but with a footnote saying "Previously member for Gosford, 1988-2007". Frickeg (talk) 23:49, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Today's featured article

Today's featured article is on an Australian topic—Riverina. I am not sure who nominated it for the main page and if I had known I would have given it a bit of a lookover first. Some eyes on it overnight for reversion of the inevitable vandalism would be appreciated. Cheers, Mattinbgn\^talk 06:39, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Raul allows five articles at a time to use the WP:TFA/R request form, but he chooses the rest himself. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 04:08, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

200 GAs drive

Well last year we had a GA drive and got managed to get the century up by the end of 2007 (82 ->106 in December). This year we're in striking distance again (178). What does everyone think of trying to get to 200 by the end of the year, or Australia Day? YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:18, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea! Australia Day is a good target as the end of the month is probably too soon. Mattinbgn\^talk 03:24, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm in. However, it normally takes a bit of time to get through GAN once nominated, so the end of month won't work, as Mattinbgn mentioned. I agree that Australia Day might, though, but you'd need most of them ready for GAN by the end of December. - Bilby (talk) 03:33, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I'll go dig up last year's newsletter from this time last year and track down the writers of the said GAs and rally the troops. Having said that, does anyone want to resuscitate the newsletter? YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:41, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I think the drive would be a great idea, and I'd be happy to chip in with a few contributions. Would be good to get the newsletter going again too, though I'm not volunteering there! Rebecca (talk) 08:47, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Started the ball rolling with Eddie Illingworth. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:35, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Is Electoral district of Perth good enough to nominate or does it need something more? Orderinchaos 02:38, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. There may be a request for more referencing in the history section, just for reassurance that all facts are referenced, e.g. the para beginning "In 1911, the seat was won ..." and the last sentence of the section. Any information on Warnock's leaving and Hyde's election may be useful (was there a pre-selection contest?) -- Mattinbgn\^talk 05:06, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Not sure, as his maiden speech says that Warnock was his campaign director and clearly gave him extensive advice and support - it seems she simply intended to retire and supported a fellow progressive candidate, although that would be OR :) I'll look into the referencing issue. Orderinchaos 06:14, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

It would be nice to have something on those transitions. The race in 1993 was very close for the seat - might warrant another sentence - and there were major Labor preselection issues for the seat in 2001 - I wrote about them in Adele Farina, who was one of the losers. Rebecca (talk) 11:11, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Count me in; I should be able to (hopefully) get 2 or 3 Aussie VC bios through GA by Australia Day. Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 02:42, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. Guess I'd better get back to GA reviewing at some point to help out on that side too. Orderinchaos, I have some suggestions; I'll put them on the talk page of the electoral district article. Somno (talk) 05:02, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I think the one thing that stands out is lack of demographic detail, since things like financial trends, larger than normal religious/racial/sexual minorities in the electorate might lead to a different focus on certain issues and so forth. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 07:58, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Not sure how one would get that - can do it based on 2005 boundaries from the 2006 census, but obviously that wouldn't reflect its present boundaries which cut out a fair bit north of Walcott Street. Orderinchaos 08:03, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

What about Augie March? Giggy and I were planning to get it to FA before Christmas, but with his going away and me pretty busy with other stuff, that might not be do-able. We could use it to temporarily inflate the GA count =). Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:50, 9 December 2008 (UTC).

Yes we can, we've had seven new GANs crawling onto the list. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 05:22, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

In that case, done! (it feels a little like cheating, but eyh...) Maybe this can be inspiration to finally scrub up Nundah, Queensland so it'll get through the GA process. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 13:28, 10 December 2008 (UTC).

Excellent idea! Count me in. I'll continue helping out on Canning Dam. I was hoping to raise John Cade but I've run out of useful references. I could definitely work on Yarra Bend Asylum tho - I have plenty of useful, interesting material and references for that one. and I'm willing to help on others. Shelbypark (talk) 10:47, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I've been thinking about scrubbing up a batch of my lengthier older articles and throwing into them into the mix: Shelley Archer, Steven Pringle, Loraine Braham, Leisha Harvey and Werriwa by-election, 2005 come to mind. Anyone have any major feedback on those five, besides the need to update the first three? Rebecca (talk) 11:11, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Had a quick look at the biographies. I think most of the important stuff is there, but there are some possible structural and prose issues. Shelley Archer's lead should mention more of her earlier career, and the article seems skewed by recentism. The sections in the biographies are not "standard" (Braham's seem too informal, or something like that, I can't quite work out what it is that's bothering me!), although as far as I know, there is no "official" standard -- I'm basing my comments on other bio GAs. The articles don't have images, which isn't a GA requirement, but reviewers will mention it. There are some phrases that are too informal or tabloid-like (e.g. "sparking a bitter battle" in Harvey's article) and some repetition in Braham. Braham is unreferenced, and I think the references in the other articles should have page numbers. I can help with that part this weekend by looking 'em up in Factiva. Can't offer to do more than that though, because I'm planning to fix up Ben Cousins, which is a mess, and Vegemite if I get around to it. Somno (talk) 01:00, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

If htey nag for photos, you can turn them down, poltiely but relatively easily, as most likely the photo would just be a mug, rather than illustrating anything that is hard to imagine anyway. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:06, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I noticed this GA drive from YellowMonkey's talkpage. Would this ice hockey article count under this GA drive? He's an Australian-born hall of famer. (Yes, I know, ice hockey is probably as popular in Australia as cricket is in the US). Maxim_(talk) 21:24, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes it is tagged with Australian project.--Grahame (talk) 23:53, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I nominated Palace Hotel, Perth. Grateful for any feedback. –Moondyne 01:26, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Looks like a GA to me. There is a banking "museum" in the building; is that worth mentioning? I wonder if BankWest will continue to occupy the hotel once they move out of the tower? But that's not happening until 2010 (last I heard) anyway, and quite irrelevant to this article at this point in time. Somno (talk) 05:04, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I nominated Canning Dam Grateful for any feedback--Mdavies 965 (talk) 13:13, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I nominated Tommy Dunderdale. I'll be grateful for any feedback. Maxim_(talk) 17:21, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Unified page

Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Australia#WP:AUS_GA_drive_-_200_GAs. Thank you, Cirt (talk) 07:19, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Help out as a GA reviewer

Note: You can also help out by pitching in to clear the ever-present backlog at WP:GAN, specifically by reviewing articles above those GA candidates in the queue of the subsection where WP:AUS-related GACs are waiting. This will help to speed up the process, while helping other uninvolved editors get their articles reviewed too, and also hopefully it will be fun for you to learn about the Good article criteria and review process.

Additional note: Please pick GACs to review of articles you have not been involved in as a significant contributor, articles unrelated to WP:AUS, and also of users you don't generally encounter. In this regard you will be an impartial GA reviewer, and learn more about a wider range of topics as well.

Cirt (talk) 03:37, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Kokoda 'track' or 'trail'?

A discussion of the name of this battle has recently begun at Talk:Kokoda Track campaign. All editors are invited to participate in the discussion. Nick-D (talk) 07:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Seeking comment on merge of New South Wales Centre for the Advancement of Adolescent Health

comments welcome :) Michellecrisp (talk) 06:34, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Newsletter is back!

WikiProject Australia newsletter Issue 2, Volume 1 — December 16, 2008

Welcome! WikiProject Australia is a WikiProject, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Australia and Australia-related topics. This newsletter exists simply to notify Australian Wikipedians of ongoing events within the project and relating to Australia on Wikipedia. 200 GA Drive Last year, an informal pact/commitment was made late in the year to aim for 100 good articles by the end of the year. As a result, a net increase of 24 GAs was achieved in December 2007 and the GA count hit triple figures, ending the year on 106 GAs. This year seasonally adjusted, the GA production has been slower than in last during the May-November periods (see graphs below). At the start of the month, our WikiProject had 178 good articles. Another GA Drive has been organised, with the hope of reaching the double century by the end of the year or Australia Day 2009 at the least. As of 16 December, there are 180 GAs and 15 currently nominated, primarily in response to the GA appeal. Everyone's help is requested to make the drive a success. 2008 Summer Olympics photo drive Following the 2008 Summer Olympics, some Australian Wikipedians attended the various welcome home parades for the athletes, with one objective being to help create free images of the athletes. Previously, less than ten had photos. However, there are now over 100 athletes that do have photos, but unfortunately in some cases, they have not yet been identified. Help is requested for this purpose at the link above. Wikimedia Australia After much hard work in slogging through paperwork and government regulations, Wikimedia Australia was incorporated on 6 August, and membership was opened on 12 November. Its stated purpose is to be "an independent, not-for-profit organisation, whose primary aim is to promote equality of opportunity to access and participate in the collaborative creation of Free Cultural Works, especially educational works, and works about Australia, its culture, natural environment, and Australian news and media". It will be developing a joint publication with Creative Commons Australia, and members are in the process of spreading the Wikipedia message, with Wikipedia being introduced into the curriculum in some courses in Australia next year. The first AGM is planned for 11 January 2009. Casliber Well known Australian Wikipedian and polyglot FA writer Casliber, known for his writings on Australian wildlife among other things, has placed first in this year's arbitration election and appears certain to be appointed. Quality watch Mattinbgn is rather camera shy, so here is Harry Trott. 2008 saw a major feat for WikiProject Australia: 100 articles were promoted to featured article status. This is huge not only for the project's individual members and those who helped achieved such an impressive statistic, but for all of Wikipedia. Everyone involved has given readers from all around the world a chance to learn about Australia and relevant topics online from the best of sources. Congratulations to Mattinbgn, who wrote the 100th FA, Harry Trott. Also of note was the promotion of national icon Sir Donald Bradman, which then appeared as the main page FA on his 100th birthday. WikiProject Australia's maiden featured topics arrived early in the year, with Dream Days at the Hotel Existence and Powderfinger albums, both about the band Powderfinger. New South Wales and Music of Australia became featured portals. A further 13 featured lists have been produced. Recent events January-February: The first two Australian featured topics promoted. 25 Jun: One hundred Australia-related articles have been promoted to featured article status. 6 Aug: m:Wikimedia Australia is incorporated. 27 Aug: Featured article on Don Bradman appears on the front page on his 100th birthday. 8 Dec: Drive for 200 Australian good articles begin. Details. Main page Talk Notice board Portal Articles Current collaboration Complete to-do Article quality FA GA Subprojects Miscellanous Newsletter discussion This month's newsletter was written by YellowMonkey and published by TinucherianBot. If you wish to stop receiving it, receive it in a different format, or submit items for consideration next month, see our co-ordination page. Issue 2, Volume 2, December 2008. See newsletter archive for previous issues, or view this issue directly. Newly-promoted content (since 1 September) Good articles Paul McDermott (comedian) Blair Anderson Wark Hughie Edwards South African War Memorial (South Australia) Cyclone Graham Emilie de Ravin Percy Herbert Cherry Frog cake Joseph Maxwell Clarence Smith Jeffries Not Quite Hollywood Stanley Goble Ernest Albert Corey Jeff White George Julian Howell Aeroplane Jelly Kew Asylum George Ingram Bruce Kingsbury HM Bark Endeavour Featured articles SS Mauna Loa Richard Williams Faith Leech Sandra Morgan Kevin O'Halloran Bob Windle Ian O'Brien Bill Brown Harry Murray Morotai Mutiny Guadalcanal Campaign Recent collaborations Isaac Isaacs Melbourne Cup Griffith, New South Wales Quentin Bryce HM Bark Endeavour Howard Government End of November 2008 statistics Here are some statistics for WikiProject Australia in terms of 2008's good article and featured article promotions. Summing it up: 116 featured articles, and 178 good articles. So far this year, a net 36 FAs and 72 GAs have been added. The areas of FA growth were cricket (+12), military history (+7), swimming (+5), Powderfinger (+4), birds (+4), Silverchair (+2), Holden (+1), Wiggles (+1). These areas have been traditional strengths of the project, and this year, Abraham, B.S. has started another strong tradition, with a series of articles on Australian Victoria Cross awardees (1FA, 8GA). It would be great to see a wider range of Australian topics represented at FA in future. Two FAs were sent to Featured article review, but Bilby was instrumental in renovating and saving both Shrine of Remembrance and Waterfall Gully, South Australia. Australia-related featured article production Australia-related good article production

Can anyone think of anything else that should be added? If not I will go ask for a botmaster to deliver it for me. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 06:19, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Great job; I can't think of anything else that needs to be in there. --Roisterer (talk) 10:31, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Last call for further submissions! YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 02:23, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Australian place naming convention

I've noticed some edits to an article that I created[14][15] and a page move[16] that don't seem to be in line with the naming convention for Australian places. Has something changed that I'm not aware of? --AussieLegend (talk) 16:52, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

There's a fairly fluid standard for rivers, other than that we use brackets for disambiguation instead of comma. But "Gloucester" is a bit strange, as I'd say the default assumption would be the English one - (Gloucester, New South Wales) would make more sense. Orderinchaos 11:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Even more strange, "Gloucester" doesn't refer to the town, it refers to the source LGA, as do these. --AussieLegend (talk) 13:39, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

That is a little odd. I'd suggest using region names personally, e.g. Hunter or Illawarra, unless the location is particularly well known. Orderinchaos 13:52, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Category notification #14

• Category:Parishes of Australia is nominated for renaming to Category:Church parishes in Australia;
• Category:Hillsong is nominated for renaming to Category:Hillsong Church.

Hesperian 22:29, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Australia newsletter,December 2008

The December 2008 issue of the WikiProject Australia newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. This message was delivered by TinucherianBot (talk) 06:39, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Nice, except I got it twice for some reason. And where is the link that I would use to unsubscribe (if I wanted to?). Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:48, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Anybody from the Gold Coast?

2009 Beach Cricket Tri-Nations series is an opportunity to get some photos of recently retired cricketers from 10 years back, who don't have photos. From seeing a bit of this lark on TV, there is not much of a crowd - usually a few rows deep, and the ground is small, so it should be good for action shots from relatively close range. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:17, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Centro Karratha

I've just undeleted this article about the main shopping centre of Karratha, Western Australia. I remembered that there was an article about the shopping centre before, and I was curious about why it was deleted. It turns out that it was deleted after an IP editor plonked a clearly inappropriate speedy tag on it over two years ago. Having said all that, I'm not sure if we should even have an article about the shopping centre, or whether it should just be merged into the main Karratha article. What is usually done with shopping centre articles these days? I see that it's listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Perth/Shopping Centresand Template:CentroAustralia ... oh dear. The article as it is right now needs a major cleanup, and I'd be inclined to merge it with the main article about the town. Graham87 06:32, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

After a bit of research a merge is clearly in order. I've merged all that I could easily reference - Peripitus (Talk) 07:47, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good here. Graham87 07:53, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

A new ACOTF

I have just noticed that Aboriginal tracker has just been made the new ACOTF, but that Scott hasn't posted it here yet. In the interests of being able to say "First! First!", here it is. Looks like there should be plenty of room for expansion on this one for the motivated Wikipedian... Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 12:13, 22 December 2008 (UTC).

Great stuff. I'm not sure how much free time I will have over xmas/New Year but I'll certainly be looking to contribute as well. --Roisterer (talk) 23:07, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice Lankiveil. I had enough trouble finding the time to do the basic minimum to choose a new one and move the nomination to ACOTF/History. I've eventually done the personal notices on voter's talk pages, and finally got here and found you'd done this bit for me - thanks.

When I read my WikiProject Australia newsletter, I noticed that HM Bark Endeavour which was ACTOF in August-September has achieved Good Article Status. Well done and thankyou to those involved!

Merry Christmas everyone. --Scott Davis ^Talk 10:52, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Wolfgang Seguin

I noticed someone slapped a [WP:Australia]] scope notie on this fella's talk page. I am absolutely clueless as to why this was done, as nothing in his bio indicates a connection. Any ideas? Madcynic (talk) 13:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Inserted by Satyrbot - presumably a mistake based on an article category...fixed now - Peripitus (Talk) 13:48, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you :) Madcynic (talk) 14:04, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Category notification #15

Category:Australian expatriate footballers in England and Category:Australian expatriate footballers in Japan are nominated for deletion. Hesperian 22:27, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Category:English-born footballers who played for Australia is proposed for renaming. Hesperian 04:34, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

William Ellis Green

The famous cartoonist has died today, and has a very poorly written bio at the moment. There are a lot of news articles available today to source and improve the standard of the article, so please help out if you can. Harro5 08:21, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Category notification #16

Category:Australian canoers, Category:Canoers at the 1956 Summer Olympics, Category:Canoers at the 2000 Summer Olympics and Category:Olympic canoers of Australia have been nominated for renaming from "canoers" to "canoeists". Hesperian 03:10, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Unknown sign

Anyone have any ideas on what this sign is? I originally thought it may be some type of distance marker but why the 2 numbers? Bidgee (talk) 12:50, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Australian War Memorial photos now labeled as being in the public domain

As the latest development in the saga over the copyright status of photos in the AWM's database, all(?) photos from World War 1, World War 2 and the Korean War have been recently labeled as having a copyright status of 'Copyright expired - public domain' in their individual records. This is in line with the guidance on copyright the AWM has placed on its website at: [17]. Nick-D (talk) 05:51, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Great to see the saga maybe over! Bidgee (talk) 05:53, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe not - some Australian State libraries still claim their turf over PD images - maybe someone should forward the info to the various state libraries that try to make out of things that are not really theirs to claim SatuSuro 06:01, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Talking about the AWM that is! ;) Still got a long way to go with the libraries (Australian, State and even the local libraries) giving us access and use of PD-files. Bidgee (talk) 06:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't PD override anyone saying that "this belongs to us" even when the photo is pre-1955. I still wonder what the basis for the AWM is, although I'll be glad to use some. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 08:33, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

The basis was the digitization has a new copyright, this may not have been substantiated in a court in Australia yet however. There may also be extra metadata that is subject to copyright. You can make your own copy of the public domain material. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:54, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

We have an issue raised on Commons. See: Commons talk:Licensing#Australian War Memorial website. Bidgee (talk) 13:54, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. Nick-D (talk) 21:38, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

new ACOTF: Australian plague locust

Aboriginal tracker was Australian collaboration of the fortnight from 22 December 2008 to 4 January 2009.

• 4 contributors made 18 edits
• The article increased from 937 bytes to 5003 bytes - 5 times longer, and had not even existed when originally nominated
• See how it changed

Thenew collaboration is Australian plague locust. Please help to improve the article in any way you can.

Thankyou to all who contribute to these collaborations, and a happy and prosperous 2009 to all. --Scott Davis ^Talk 11:54, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

And a happy new year and a big thanks to you, Scott. While my involvement with the Collaborations tend to wax and wane depending on time constraints, I think I can speak on behalf of everyone by stating my appreciation for the great work you are doing administering ACOTF. --Roisterer (talk) 22:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Category notification #17

• Category:Australian historic places is nominated for speedy renaming to Category:Historic places of Australia. Hesperian 10:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

  Oops, probably should have mentioned that here myself. ;) Somno (talk) 01:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

• Category:Commonwealth Games medalists for Australia and four similar categories are nominated for renaming from "medalists" to "medallists". Hesperian 05:53, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

• Category:Australian country-rock groups is proposed for merging into Category:Australian country music groups. Hesperian 03:45, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

• Category:AIDS-related deaths in Australia is proposed for deletion ("merger with its parent" is the euphemism in play here). Hesperian 10:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

  Am I going blind or the discussion somewhere not immediately obvious? I can't seem to find it. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 10:57, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

  Good question; I think this may be an incomplete nomination. I'll remove the tag. Hesperian 11:44, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

  No, it's there now. It is a multi-category nomination and I guess it took a while for the nominator to finish all the tagging and post the rationale. Hesperian 11:46, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

  Thanks, got it now. A different sort of rationale ... -- Mattinbgn\^talk 12:02, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Should these category notifications continue?

For those who weren't around a few months ago, I started providing these category notifications as a pragmatic solution to the problem that Australia-related categories were been proposed for renaming or deletion without our knowledge, and thus we were denied participation in the discussion.

I would now like to ask for some feedback on whether this is working for you. I am happy to continue, but I don't want to clutter up this board with pointless notifications that no-one reads. I'll accept any feedback, but mostly I am interested in whether I should

1. Continue as I have been, posting every proposal here;
2. Continue, but use my judgement on whether something is important enough to post here;
3. Stop.

Hesperian 03:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The notifications are useful though the majority are uncontroversial. Thank you for posting them, and if you're happy to keep doing it I'd suggest option 2 - posting ones you think are worthwhile and ignoring the ones that are just routine. Euryalus (talk) 04:51, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Euryalus.--Grahame (talk) 06:02, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Your posting of these listings is much appreaciated, thanks very much for taking the time to do so. I would go for Option 1 myself, if it isn't too much trouble. It can be hard to tell when a change is non-controversial; see National Parks in Australia vs. National Parks of Australia. However, if the posting becomes too much of a grind, I am happy with whatever you feel like doing. Cheers, Mattinbgn\^talk 06:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Re "too much of a grind", #1 is easier for me than #2, because it requires less thought. Hesperian 10:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The people who put the cfd are never going to bother - so the point is for the project to have a sense of what they are up to I'd support 1 and or 2 if you are ok in keeping doing it. It is a valuable resource against invisible forces changing the face of the project without letting anyone know SatuSuro 07:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd suggest to use your judgement to list only the very controversial ones here, all/most others should be listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Australia#Australia-related Categories for Discussion (not necessarily by you, but by anyone who sees them) - which would then be picked up by the bot to go in the box at the top of this page, as per the AFDs. Those of us interested n the deletion process probably have that Delsort page on our watchlist anyway. Would be nice if project notification was some how automated based on the article's project tags. The-Pope (talk) 08:27, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Very much appreciated as a service - most of them are uncontroversial and there isn't too many of them, but on seeing them here I have gone and contributed where I have something to contribute. I'd go with Option 1 too on the same general lines as the others above. As per Matt, thanks for putting in the time and effort :) Orderinchaos 08:42, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

ACOTF template

Its location is up for discussion again here. There has been a pre-emptive claim of canvassing already but as a matter of interest, I feel it is appropriate to at least make a note here that a discussion is taking place as this is the main forum for discussing the operation of the collaboration. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 19:55, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Category notification #18

Category:Australian adoptive parents is nominated for deletion. Hesperian 00:11, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Hobart meetup, Monday Jan 19th

Hi all,

Since a few of us will be in Hobart for Linux.conf.au next week, we decided to have dinner one night. See Wikipedia:Meetup/Hobart for details and to mark yourself as coming. And please spread the word to any Tassie editors you're aware of.

thanks! pfctdayelise (talk) 05:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Category notification #19

Category:Bill Brown, Category:Colin McCool, Category:Doug Ring, Category:Ian Johnson, Category:Lindsay Hassett, Category:Ray Lindwall, Category:Arthur Morris, Category:Neil Harvey, Category:Ron Hamence, Category:Sam Loxton, Category:Don Tallon, Category:Ron Saggers, Category:Bill Johnston (cricketer), Category:Sid Barnes and Category:Ernie Toshack are nominated for deletion. Hesperian 10:07, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The combined deletion discussion can be found at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 January 13#Categories for individual members of "The Invincibles". -- Mattinbgn\^talk 10:10, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Category:The Invincibles is nominated for renaming to Category:The Invincibles (cricket). Hesperian 03:39, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Australian Collaboration Of The Fortnight

Hi,

I've deliberately been tardy selecting a new ACOTF so far this weekend. My reasons are:

1. There have only been a few edits on Australian plague locust since it was selected.
2. There are three current nominations, each of which has only a single vote, and the oldest (hence default selection) is a red link at the moment: Centenary of Federation of Australia. Kakadu National Park is a substantial article, the main need is a wider range of references.

Cheers. --Scott Davis ^Talk 22:20, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

2009 Tour Down Under

Has anybody else out there spotted the error in the official program? Carlos Sastre's picture on the profile of Gerd Steegmans Rather amusingly dreadful. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 08:43, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Australian Bureau of Statistics have gone Creative Commons

DYK that the Australian Bureau of Statistics have gone Creative Commons. Full details can be found at The Australian Census goes CC Kathleen.wright5 08:55, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I did drop a line here when the change was first announced, but I think you'll have to jump back an archive or two to find it. It was also discussed briefly on the Wikimedia AU mailing list. I think general consensus can be summed up as "Awesome!" Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 23:43, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

A really good thing is that the Australian year books are now CC. These are huge and authoritative summaries of what the government did in each year (albeit written and published by the government) and would be of value to many articles. Nick-D (talk) 09:24, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Invite to Canberra Meetup #2

--.../Nemo (talk • Contributions) 13:30, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

ABC Opinions piece on proposal for flagged revisions

Hi everyone. I'm not keeping across proposals for managing anon edits, but I noticed this piece on ABC Online: Vandals prompt Wikipedia to ponder editing changes. It's open for discussion there and thought you'd like to know. Blarneytherinosaur ^gabby? 03:25, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

A few Wiki-bagging comments on there. I'll keep one eye on it, others may want to as well. -- Chuq (talk) 03:50, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I pointed out that Roland Perry who has appeared as a cricket panellist on the 7:30 report and an expert pundit on NewsRadio and his books are in the ABC shop has more errors than Wikipedia. Pity they wouldn't publish my URL link though, he makes one error per page in some places.[18] YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 04:06, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Counterattacked. The article itself has errors. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 04:16, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the ABC mod is not going to print my post pointing out that WP does not have 2000 admins. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 04:38, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

The article is linked from the front newspage with a picture, so it is probably getting a lot of page views. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 05:01, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Request for quick advice

Dear friends—A senior WPian who's a good WikiFriend of mine is preparing a unit for English-language students in an East Asian country with the putative title of Contemporary Australia: a very short introduction. Despite searching, s/he has been unable to locate a good reference book for this purpose to put the factual stuff into perspective, beyond our good article here on Australia.

Can anyone recommend such a book? Tony (talk) 13:08, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

That's a hard one. There's lots of books on specific subjects and I'm sure there will be many partisan suggestions. in the meantime, apart from Lonely Planet, I could only suggest this one. Perhaps a look around a local book store might help. --Merbabu (talk) 13:17, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I believe they're adult students, probably young adults. Tony (talk) 13:26, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

YEs, i was trying to add something light-hearted. But, your question makes me realize I need to see what's available nowadays. --Merbabu (talk) 13:35, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Melbourne Public Transport Crisis Taskforce

Well, everyone in Melbourne would have heard about the current crisis on the train network. However, Wiki does not have sufficient coverage. Therefore, I created User:Punk Boi 8/PT Crisis Taskforce to try and improve this. More details are there --  Punk Boi 8  talk  23:15, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

[[suggest reading WP:NOT#NEWS I'm sure Wikinews would appreciate some coverage of the recent weather in Melbourne and Adelaide, but its too soon to refer to it as a crisis within the context of an encyclopaedia 4 days of 40+ deg will always affect infrastructure, being to close or personally affect by the cancelled services isnt sufficient reason to write it into many articles. If the Vic government announces major changes or judicial enquiries into the way the infrastructure failed to cope with the extremes of the past few days then cautious inclusion of material would be reasonable action. Gnangarra 00:05, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry then. Please ignore this thread. --  Punk Boi 8  talk  01:53, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

• While on Melbourne, photographs of buckled lines, the fires and anything else that can be associated with the weather would be of benefit to future articles both here and on Wikinews, for that matter Wikinews doesnt have anything on the current fires, maybe an opportunity for someone local to try their hand at writting an article. Gnangarra 08:13, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

FA Australia

Is it just me or that FA going out of control and becoming unencyclopedic? YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 02:30, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

No, it's me too. What's with the culture section? From which a new sports section got split. And a pic of Nicole Kidman? --Merbabu (talk) 02:33, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

As it stands the article wouldn't pass a FA review. Large chunks of text including the entire 'States and territories' section are uncited and there's definetly been a build-up of trivia. I just removed the toolong tag though - 85kb hardly seems excessive for a FA on a medium-sized country. Nick-D (talk) 02:44, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I inserted the tag perhaps as a reaction to the build up of trivia. About a year ago (from memory) it was on the short side for a country article, but it covered the essentials in a balanced weight/treatment to all topics - now sections are bloated. So, perhaps the tag was the wrong response, but it was a reaction to a problem. --Merbabu (talk) 02:47, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I see what you mean. While the article's length isn't excessive, it's miss-used at present. For instance, I don't think that Australia's Etymology requires three paras (a couple of sentances in this article would be more appropriate), the economy section is smaller than I'd expect and the Culture section is grossly bloated (and almost entirely unreferenced and a bit POV). Nick-D (talk) 02:51, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The changes (yours and mine) aimed at slightly addressing these large problems have just been reverted by the one editor.--Merbabu (talk) 02:58, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I've created a good deal of this apparent mess of trivialities, and I agree the Culture section has become bloated and needs restructuring. Subsections for Film, Music, Fine arts etc. could help (like those found in other country FAs such as Belgium and Germany), but I know Merbabu is opposed to this.--GarrieFerron (talk) 31 January 2009 (UTC)

2008–09 Australian region cyclone season

I'm the only Australian editor trying to keep the 2008–09 Australian region cyclone season article in check but I've increasingly found it hard to keep local time and dates in the article with it being reverted by editors who are mainly based in the US and forcing UTC time and dating within the article which is confusing to anyone who reads the article. Say like Tropical Cyclone Ellie made land fall midnight on 2 February but the article had/has "During the afternoon of February 1, Ellie made landfall between Mission Beach as a Category 1 system and weakened into a Tropical Low." which is a UTC date not an Australian date. I've had US editors trying to force this (Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Style#Storm article organization) as a policy which is clearly not. Bidgee (talk) 20:19, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Really shows that they don't support keeping the Australian dates and times in the article[19]. Also Hurricane Katrina can have both US local and UTC dates and times yet an Australian article can't? Bidgee (talk) 20:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Bidgee - UTC is not confusing Australain time is confusing. As we use UTC within all of the Seasonal articles as its a lot less confusing then local times especially when we have storms that cross timezones and the seasonal articles are a Summuary of the storm. Finally why do you want to inlcude Australian Time so much - we try not to use any other times within the seasonal articles esspecially the WPAC onesJason Rees (talk) 22:31, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Any Australian or anyone who has an understanding of Australian time has no idea that the article is in UTC time and dates, don't know on how to convert UTC to Australian time to the relevant time zone. Please explain on how Hurricane Katrina can have local time and dates yet an Australian Cyclone article can't? I've not known any Australian article not having Australian time, dates and format (layout, spelling ect) other then 2008–09 Australian region cyclone season which seems that editors who are not from the Australia are trying to keep Australian views way from the article. Bidgee (talk) 22:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Also the only response I got about Hurricane Katrina was that IP's were to blame yet it (the article) has had the same US local times for 3 years (maybe more)[20] and I've not seen any attempt of anyone putting it to UTC time yet as soon as I fix the Australian article to how it should be I get reverted. Bidgee (talk) 23:13, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

To be fair Jason, using terms such as "afternoon" to describe a landfall that happened at midnight at the place in question seems faintly ridiculous. Surely, there is information value in using local times to demonstrate the flow of events. A storm impact at midnight will have a different effect on the community response than an impact in the afternoon. I understand the need for some consistency, but surely not at the expense of misleading readers. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 23:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

To quote from Manual of Style:

"When writing a date, first consider where the event happened and use the time zone there. For example, the date of the Attack on Pearl Harbor should be December 7, 1941 (Hawaii time/date). If it is difficult to judge where, consider what is significant. For example, if a vandal based in Japan attacked a Pentagon computer in the US, use the time zone for the Pentagon, where the attack had its effect. If known, include the UTC date and time of the event in the article, indicating that it is UTC."

A cyclone hitting Australia should therefore be recorded as doing so in Australian time, with UTC time and date also recorded as a standardised measure. This isn't confusing, its commonsense. What is confusing is claiming the cyclone made landfall in the afternoon (UTC), then describing how people struggled to deal with it in the dark (because it actually made landfall at midnight AEDT). Euryalus (talk) 23:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Lovely, my edits get classed as Vandalsim[21]. Bidgee (talk) 23:17, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, now this is getting out of hand, all that needed to be done was have a nice little discussion about what the pros and cons for using AUS time versus UTC. Recently, Bidgee has changed the date numerous Tropical Cyclone articles which affected Australia to the Australian style. However, the creates inconsistency with that section of the project as every other basin uses the month-day-year format, not day-month-year. This needs to be agreed on with the Australian Project and the Tropical Cyclone Project before those kinds of changes can be made. Concerning the "confusing" issue, it might not be confusing to Australians, or those who are familiar with Australian time, but to the rest of the world, it can be confusing, which is why UTC is preferred as it is consistent throughout the world. In response to your accusation of there being no attempt to remove the local time from the Katrina article, I can't really help out with that one as I was not around (on wikipedia) at the time that article was created. Euryalus, your comment does put things into a much better perspective. If you look at it in that way, then using local times makes sense. Hopefully this is understandable and I'm not contradicting myself. Cheers, Cyclonebiskit 23:27, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I've never been against the use of UTC. I'll rather have say "Tropical Cyclone Ellie made landfall midnight (AEST) 2 February 2009 (14:00 UTC February 1, 2009)", rather then the current UTC format. Also date formats should be based on the Country's format not what suites the project. With the Katrina article don't you (I'm talking about the whole TC project not you as an editor) see it as acting backwards by removing my edits yet leaving Katrina as is? Bidgee (talk) 23:38, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Now that sounds decent but can we have it the other way around as UTC is the priamry unit used by the warning centers and most summuarys are written in UTC following the warning centers data. Jason Rees (talk) 23:55, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll rather Local time/date (UTC time/date). BoM may use UTC but most of the time (excluding Satellite images and Radar images although the radar pages have all local times) the BoM uses local time more often. Only non-public warnings (IE: public can still access them but not really aimed as the public as it's used for shipping ECT) use UTC. Bidgee (talk) 00:03, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I feel that would be confusing to jump suddenly from UTC to AST to UTC as the summuarys are genrally written in UTCJason Rees (talk) 00:13, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

JTWC can probably stay as just UTC but the TCWC's in Australia already use the local times. Only time I feel that Local time/date (UTC time/date) should be used is when a Low is noted, TC formed, locations it was close to (not always possible), issuing of advices (BoM mainly), forecast track/movements (again not always possible) and the landfall. Bidgee (talk) 00:19, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Bidgee that would be far to confusing IMO as do you actually realise hwo many timezones we would need to include? - Eight Jason Rees (talk) 00:56, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

No you have the wrong idea I'm not saying adding all of the time zones! If a TL/TC is in Queensland we use Queensland's time (AEST), if it's in the Northern Territory we use the NT's time (ACST) and if it's in Western Australia we use WA's time (Which is AWDT). Say if a low or cyclone formed in Queensland we keep the times as QLD but if it moves into the NT we then start using NT time (We don't change any of the QLD times when it's moved into the NT). IE: LOCAL Date/Time (UTC Date/Time). Bidgee (talk) 03:38, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Would it be the same for the TCWCs in Jakarta and PNG and wat about the Central Indian ocean? Jason Rees (talk) 03:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Again local time (Whether it's Jakarta, PNG, Christmas Is or Coco Is) and UTC would be used. Bidgee (talk) 05:11, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Plus for a specific situation if it arises, if let's say a storm hits two timezones, I think one would have eg AWST, AWST, AWST, AWST (ACST), ACST (AWST), ACST, ACST. Orderinchaos 05:01, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok that sounds ok to me - to use the local time of the warning center. Also for the record i have spoken to the main Author of Hurricane Katrina (Hink) and he says he used local time because it was important to use apparently Jason Rees (talk) 14:49, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) A mild diversion:

• Captain Cook's log records his first sighting of Australia as 6am, 19 April 1770.
• However, Cook measured days from midday rather than midnight, so it was really 6am 20 April.
• Also, Cook hadn't adjusted date and time for having circumnavigated the world, so his log was 14 hours behind UTC instead of 10 in front. In UTC it was really 8pm 20 April, which Cook (had he known) would have called April 21.

The point? Disputes over Australian time zones are as old as the hills and sometimes need lengthy explanation. In this cyclone instance I'd suggest local time/UTC in that order, giving context to events with standardisation following. Euryalus (talk) 00:23, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

As an Australian who has lived in a cyclone area and is well aware of how the time of day is important, I fully support local time/UTC in that order. Part of the story of Cyclone Tracy is that it occurred in the early hours of Christmas Day, not in the middle of December 23 (UTC). --Bduke (Discussion) 00:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Now this is crazy! Even the dates of news articles are being converted to UTC! Nonsense, and if applied across the board would create chaos. Every Australian newspaper would be shown as published the day before the date on the masthead. What if someone notable died as a result of the storm, would we record his/her death as the date per UTC? Honestly, a large dose of common sense needs to be applied here. The outside world does not revolve around the style decisions of a WikiProject. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 03:23, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed! Australia uses times like 2:50pm AEDT (My time zone) and we don't use 03:50 UTC. Bidgee (talk) 03:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

As for keeping dates uniform throughout cyclone articles, how about keeping dates uniform throughout Australian articles? It makes more sense to use the local date and time in Australian format and UTC in brackets. Readers may not be going from cyclone to cyclone article and thinking "Ooh, the times are different, I don't understand!" but might be going through Australian articles; e.g. view the article on Darwin, view the article on Cyclone Tracy... Besides, as said above, if you don't know what time of day it is in the area when the cyclone hit, how can you understand the impact or response? Somno (talk) 04:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Invincibles appeal and update

Since there are now a few people writing biographies and writing them on a hard drive before uploading in chunks of 20+ kb, it is probably good to write down future work plans so that two people don't spend ten hours writing something on a hard drive and then kind that the work has been duplicated.

Future plans and progress

• Blnguyen (talk · contribs)
  • Jim Burke (cricketer) - same as Benaud
• Mattinbgn (talk · contribs)
  • Warwick Armstrong - at LoCE
  • George Giffen - the next one!
• Dweller (talk · contribs) - although I normally work "live", rather than from sandboxes etc
  • Invincibles FT
• The Rambling Man (talk · contribs)
  • Whatever Dweller (talk · contribs) tells me to do.
• Daniel (talk · contribs)
  • General copyediting, no specific articles. Leave me a note on my talk for a general copyedit. Daniel 02:41, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
• Phanto282 (talk · contribs)
  • Lindsay Hassett

GACs and FACs

WP:GAC: Ian Craig and Brian Booth

Invincibles

Our future featured topic:

Name	Class	Comments
Australian cricket team in England in 1948	GA	Dec 2009
1948 Ashes series	GA	Mar 2009
First Test, 1948 Ashes series	GA	Feb 2009
Second Test, 1948 Ashes series	FA	Feb 2009
Third Test, 1948 Ashes series	FA	Feb 2009
Fourth Test, 1948 Ashes series	FA	Dec 2009
Fifth Test, 1948 Ashes series	FA	Oct 2009
Keith Johnson	FA	Aug 2009
Bill Brown	FA	Passed September 2008
Sid Barnes	FA	Jan 2008
Arthur Morris	FA	Nov 2007
Donald Bradman	FA	Jun 2008
Neil Harvey	GA	Jun 2007, Nov 2008
Lindsay Hassett	GA	Nov 2009
Ron Hamence	GA	Passed June 2008
Keith Miller	A	passed A-class review Feb 2009
Colin McCool	GA	Passed April 2008
Sam Loxton	FA	Passed Nov 2009
Don Tallon	FA	Passed April 2008
Ron Saggers	GA	Passed May 2008
Ray Lindwall	GA	Passed January 2008
Doug Ring	GA	Passed January 2009
Ian Johnson	FA	Passed July 2008
Bill Johnston	GA	Passed June 2007
Ernie Toshack	FA	Passed March 2008
Bill Brown with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	GA	Passed Feb 2009
Sid Barnes with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	GA	Passed January 2009
Arthur Morris with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	GA	Feb 2009
Donald Bradman with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	FA	passed FAC
Neil Harvey with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	FA	Passed Feb 2009
Lindsay Hassett with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	FA	Feb 2009
Ron Hamence with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	FA	Feb 2009
Keith Miller with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	GA	Jan 2009
Colin McCool with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	GA	Feb 2009
Sam Loxton with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	FA	passed FAC
Don Tallon with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	GA	Feb 2009
Ron Saggers with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	GA	Feb 2009
Ray Lindwall with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	GA	Feb 2009
Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	FA	Feb 2009
Ian Johnson with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	GA	Feb 2009
Bill Johnston with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	GA	Passed February 2009
Ernie Toshack with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948	FA	Feb 2009

Captains

Name	Class	Comments
Australian national cricket captains	FL
Dave Gregory	Start
Billy Murdoch	Start
Tom Horan	Start
Hugh Massie	Stub
Jack Blackham	Start
Tup Scott	Stub
Percy McDonnell	Stub
George Giffen	Start
Harry Trott	FA	June 2008
Joe Darling	GA
Hugh Trumble	FA
Monty Noble	Start
Clem Hill	FA
Syd Gregory	Start
Warwick Armstrong	GA
Herbie Collins	GA
Warren Bardsley	Start
Jack Ryder	Start
Bill Woodfull	GA
Vic Richardson	Start
Don Bradman	FA	June 2008
Bill Brown	FA	September 2008
Lindsay Hassett	GA
Arthur Morris	FA
Ian Johnson	FA	July 2008
Ray Lindwall	GA
Ian Craig	FA
Richie Benaud	B
Neil Harvey	GA
Bob Simpson	B
Brian Booth	GA
Bill Lawry	B
Barry Jarman	Start
Ian Chappell	FA
Greg Chappell	B
Graham Yallop	Start
Kim Hughes	B
Allan Border	B
Mark Taylor	B
Steve Waugh	B
Adam Gilchrist	FA
Ricky Ponting	B

Australian Cricket Hall of Fame

Name	Class	Comments
Australian Cricket Hall of Fame	Start
Jack Blackham	Start
Fred Spofforth	Start
Victor Trumper	Start
Clarrie Grimmett	Start
Bill Ponsford	FA
Donald Bradman	FA	June 2008
Bill O'Reilly	FA
Keith Miller	B
Ray Lindwall	GA
Dennis Lillee	Start
Warwick Armstrong	GA
Neil Harvey	GA
Allan Border	B
Bill Woodfull	GA
Arthur Morris	FA
Greg Chappell	B
Stan McCabe	GA
Ian Chappell	FA
Lindsay Hassett	GA
Hugh Trumble	FA
Alan Davidson	GA
Clem Hill	FA
Rod Marsh	Start
Bob Simpson	B
Monty Noble	Start
Charlie Macartney	FA
Richie Benaud	B
George Giffen	Start
Ian Healy	Start
Steve Waugh	B
Garth McKenzie	Start
Bill Lawry	B

Open Tasks (please add)

• Lindsay Hassett still largely incomplete
• main article, Sam Loxton need rounding off. Loxton needs info on political career
• Keith Johnson needs finishing off

Rest should be at GA standard and should only need polishing off. Improvements required are

• Formatting for consistency, references etc
• Ordering grouped footnotes in numerical order
• Copyediting
• Wikilinking/explaining/feedback on jargon, making it more user friendly for general readers.
• Tweaking/adding pictures and so forth

Please help! A giant addition to the WikiProject's FA/GA collection. It's almost there! YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 03:00, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Cricket knowledge is not needed and for point 4 of the general cleanup is actually more suitable to help make the article more user-friendly. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 03:04, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Illawarra Steam Navigation Company under GA review

Copied from WT:AUS

Hello there, the article Illawarra Steam Navigation Company which falls under the auspices of this Wikiproject, has come under review as part of GA Sweeps and a number of problems have been identified and listed on the talk page. If these problems have not begun to be addressed by seven days from this notice, the article will be delisted from GA and will have to go through the WP:GAN process all over again to regain its status once improvements have been made. If you have any questions, please drop me a line.--Jackyd101 (talk) 13:59, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I've had a crack at fixing this up, but the quality of the prose was quite poor. Any assistance in getting this article back up to scratch would be much appreciated! Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 12:25, 5 February 2009 (UTC).

Good ol Bilby, Mr Fixit, the article looks a bit random and incomplete and seems like it effectively has to be written up. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 23:59, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Category notification #20

• Category:Australian track and field athletes is nominated for renaming to Category:Australian athletes by event.
• Category:21st century Australian television series debuts and three similar Australian categories are part of a massive multi-nomination for speedy renaming from "Xth century" to "Xth-century".

Hesperian 03:05, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

• Category:Hospitals in Rural/Regional Victoria is nominated for replacement by a more broadly scoped Category:Hospitals in Victoria (Australia). Hesperian 12:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Kate Carnell

I notice this article seems to have quite a negative POV. It may be worth someone familiar with her history to look over or in any case to keep an eye on? -- Chuq (talk) 02:47, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

If anyone wants to work on this article, I can supply copies by email of academic reviews of ACT politics over the period she was Chief Minister, which may help in neutralising POV and finding what were prominent issues in the ACT at that time. If you're interested, just drop me an email. Note that I have no opinion either way on the subject due mainly to lack of knowledge - I haven't actually read the source documents I have in my possession although I use them all the time for WA and other states. Orderinchaos 09:59, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Bushfires in Victoria

Looks like a major disaster with at least 14 dead and perhaps a lot more. See here from details. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 11:14, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Yep but the death toll could get to 40.[22] :( I say this event could get called "Black Saturday" by the media. I needs some helpers at 2008-09 Australian bushfire season‎ with cleaning up and sourcing. 11:17, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

See also February 7 Victorian bushfires. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 11:35, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I was about to add that until my computer crashed for the 100th time today due to the heat. In the process in editing an satellite image from space ATM. Bidgee (talk) 11:38, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I have left a suggestion at Wikipedia:In the news section on the Main Page/Candidates that probably needs tidying. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 11:40, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Robert Trimbole/Trimboli

An edit war is taking place at the Robert Trimbole article over the spelling of his surname. Can another admin please monitor this article thanks as I'm a regular editor to the article and consider myself involved. -- Longhair\^talk 02:32, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Prod

Has found its way to a Victorian list:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFA_Dispatch SatuSuro 04:16, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll have to agree with the Prod. It's more of a "How to" or a "Guide" rather then an article but parts of it could be merged into the CFA article. Bidgee (talk) 03:21, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

List of Australian ports problems

I see from its discussion page that this allegedly complete list has been queried before, but has received little attention. I had to add most of WA's principal ports, including two or three which handle far greater tonnages than Fremantle, Melbourne, Sydney, etc. There seem to be some quite minor marinas, etc (eg, Hillarys) while places like White Bay and Cockburn Sound don't get a mention. I guess all the major Sydney facilities are just lumped into Sydney Harbour. But how come none of the WA ports were gazetted? And what other shortcomings does this list have besides many useless links? Cheers Bjenks (talk) 17:19, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Bushfire and Wildfire merger.

An editor wants Bushfire and Wildfire merged however I feel the articles should be left as they are. Bidgee (talk) 00:24, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

A link to the discussion for those who want to contribute: here --Merbabu (talk) 02:59, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

200 Drive

Main page: WP:AUS/GA

Since the drive started we are now up to 187 and there is a large pile of articles in the queue. Good work everyone! Roll up, roll up! 200 by Australia Day! YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 02:47, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

199 up! Just one more to go! YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 06:04, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

And we have 200! The promotion of William Bostock raises the tally of Good Articles in the scope of WP:Australia to the strived for milestone of 200! If I may say so myself, some very good work all around and everyone should be commended for all their efforts. =) Abraham, B.S. (talk) 15:17, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Well done again folks. Everyone seems rather glum about it though....YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 02:01, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

If only because Augie March hasn't made it yet! Although Giggy's expert handling of the grilling we've gotten has been superb! Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 11:14, 27 January 2009 (UTC).

Personally I like the idea of the drive, but can't get excited by it when more than 40000 Australia-related stubs exist. - Shiftchange (talk) 11:26, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, there'll always be stubs....YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 03:36, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

You seem to have set some sort of record for scoring the whole top 5. Hopefully they will soon be reviewed.--Grahame (talk) 12:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah that is annoying me. That's what you get for writing about unpopular things. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 23:03, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

The pov I wanted to make was that with good article or better rated pages within WPAus representing 0.53% of the current total, compared to Stub quality articles at more than 60%, I believe there should be an emphasis towards reducing the ratio of incomplete (preferably mid to top importance articles, towards C or B class) rather than focus on pushing often obscure articles towards FA or even GA. I'm just saying this because recognition that is often rightly deserved of those who are the "main authors" of FA and GA articles, is often expressed while my point is often overlooked at Wikipedia, as I think your response might have indicated. I would support any drive to get 60% of articles to GA or better but I personally would be more pleased to see this project's stubs decline to less than 1%. Do you think that will ever happen? - Shiftchange (talk) 08:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I tend to agree personally with that view. Problem is it takes so much work to write FAs/GAs that entire areas are being ignored or left to sit - I have *thousands* of articles I'd love to improve to start class (or write from scratch) but don't have the time, and I seem to be the only person watching many of those areas (primarily in the politics and geography fields). Orderinchaos 09:03, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately I can't see any way of getting 60% of articles to GA/FA because the vast majority of articles do not have proper sources available, but nobody bothers to apply the GA/FA proper RS criteria to deleting articles, a lot of which are self-sourced and spam, more or less. And generally, with people creating articles for every first-class footballer, etc, no, because most FC sportspeople do not even have a decent biographical summary article written about in a compilation book or whatever, and most only have a raw statistical chart on some Sports Database. Same for most suburbs and settlements there is only a machine-generated stats sheet on ABS that is readily available. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 23:58, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't seem to think it's possible that 60% of articles can get to GA/FA. I'm trying to get many Tasmanian articles to either B-class or GA standard. Although there isn't much support. Aaroncrick^{(Tassie talk)} 10:19, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Category notification #21

Category:Australian Anglicans is proposed for... um, something. Hesperian 22:31, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brendan Sokaluk

This discussion is likely to be controversial and will require some watching. I have strong views about biographies of living people, ones I doubt are shared widely, but I feel it is important to at least raise the topic for discussion. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 00:02, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think your views are *that* uncommon - after all, Corey's article is gone. :) Orderinchaos 00:12, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

One victory amongst a plethora of defeats. :( . I expect this discussion to go through the whole alphabet of AfD, DRV, RfC, AN/I, OMGWTFBBQ, the works! sigh ... -- Mattinbgn\^talk 00:24, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Someone just recreated the page (as a neutral sentence or two, suprisingly) so I've re-deleted the article and salted it. There's a DRV at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 February 17. Nick-D (talk) 07:33, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I have some queries about the editor Burning Ring of Fire (talk · contribs). At the very least he/she is a Single purpose account. Nothing wrong with that I guess but the SPA shows an interesting grasp of Wikipedia policy and procedure for an account created less than 24 hours earlier. Even more interesting is the username with a clear link to the subject of this article, especially given that at least one of the threats made against the subject was "put a ring of fire around the bast*** and let the bast*** burn." Is this a sockpuppet set up to disparage the subject? Of course, BRoF, with his/her vast experience here at Wikipedia will ask me to AGF but I say if it quacks...

I agree. It's highly unlikely that a new editor would be talking about when its suitable to send AfD debates to DRV on their first day of editing: [23]. Nick-D (talk) 10:47, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

But whom is missing the sock ? Peripitus (Talk) 11:05, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, hence my not taking it any further at this stage, but it looks for all the world to me like a bad hand account of an established editor. Short of a fishing expedition using WP:CHECK (frowned upon, but "Checking an account where the alleged sockmaster is unknown, but there is reasonable suspicion of sockpuppetry is not fishing") I don't know if we will ever find out unless the editor expands his interests beyond the bushfires and Mr. Sokaluk and a pattern emerges. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 11:18, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Now blocked as a bad hand account. Still no idea who the puppet was. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 11:49, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Now now, the name obviously means he's a country and western fan. Andjam (talk) 10:14, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

On a more serious note, does the fact there's a suppression order in Victoria mean that we should avoid any mention of his name, even outside of article space? Andjam (talk) 10:19, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

No. The suppression order currently in place only prohibits Sokaluk's image or photograph from being published, and his home address [24]. His name, initially suppressed, is now common knowledge. -- Longhair\^talk 10:59, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Something smells

Any thoughts? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Corp - My checks on clusty and google first pages show nothing - for either corp or corps - seemed odd - anyone point me to my mistake in not finding anything - a company name change or something i have missed - thanks SatuSuro 12:31, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

The page creator has only made that one contribution, there's no primary or secondary references supplied, noteability is not established, and this yields nothing, though curiously this bizarre search result has the phrase "Omer Feldman announced Gene corp", though it is a page full of nonsense. I'd say it warrants a speedy delete. Timeshift (talk) 12:41, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

The company does exist, but it wasn't founded in 1998 as the article states, more like June of 2008. It's also a proprietary limited company, not a public company. -- Longhair\^talk 12:45, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

That search indicates the company is Tasmanian based but a search at business.gov.au indicates a Victorian based company. The original version of the article provides contact details in the form of an email address and a phone number. A check of the domain name (genemail.com) couldn't find an IP address and the telephone seems to be disconnected. Andrew Fire, who is supposed to be on staff, is still a faculty member of the Stanford School of Medicine.[25] --AussieLegend (talk) 13:38, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I can to same conclusions, considering this has WP:BLP implications to Andrew Fire as is clearly and blatantly false I just deleted under WP:CSD#G3 Pure vandalism. This includes blatant and obvious misinformation Gnangarra 14:00, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that - well I think I'll leave it to the lions - teaches me to not dabble in the orphans area too much :) I was considering trying to improve it - but will leave to others what they might do SatuSuro 12:54, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I've proposed it for deletion. I can find nothing of any value online, and I'm not about to purchase any company documents to learn more. -- Longhair\^talk 12:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I support the deletion after seeing the difficulty of finding anything to verify any form of notability SatuSuro 13:07, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Another

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_February_19#.22Doctors.22_categories I am sure the Australian college of Physicians would not be amused for one SatuSuro 05:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Crikey, I've been made redundant. What the heck: Category:Australian doctors has been nominated for renaming to Category:Australian physicians. Hesperian 23:38, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Never - it was getting messy - physicians smizhishens - ambiguity ruled - the latest is Medical doctor as a compromise suggestion SatuSuro 04:43, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I should talk to some medical doctors. Orderinchaos 05:56, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

A typically poor CfD discussion heading down the path of a sub-optimal solution based around the principle that consistency, rather than accuracy and acceptance of diversity, is the overriding requirement of a category naming system. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 07:41, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Must say it was a very good vote and comment as well. Bidgee (talk) 08:09, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Victorian Bush Fires...

I've opened a section on this page to discuss the article's scope and its name. here I think it is important enough to add here to get a broader opinion.

My view is that the article should focus on the disastrous fires of Saturday 7 Feb and not any bushfire in Victoria that has or will occur in 2009. Perhaps an appropriate name change can help that. --Merbabu (talk) 07:44, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Marlo Morgan

I don't know much about the subject, but the article Marlo Morgan and its subsidiary Marlo Morgan: discrepancies look very problematic. Most obvious is the non-encyclopedic tone. Both articles seem to be attack pages on a book, go into trivial timeline detail, and general POV. A look at the articles' histories suggest a single editor was responsible for most of the content. I don't have the energy or time to drill down into the apparent issues. These are indicative of the articles' tone:

• Here is a list of the discrepancies that Morgan asserts as facts. Although the list is not complete, it is still long enough to require a full page on its own so as to keep this article to readable length.
• Uncomprehensively for someone who professes thinking of others and telling the truth as an essential part of her “message” (and a means for developing linguistic exchange and telepathic powers: The reason (...) (they can do this is because) they never tell a lie, not a small fabrication, not a partial truth, nor any gross unreal statement. No lies at all (...)” - p.63)
• Thus in two double-steps of an efficiency-proven viral marketing technique[41] known as modified limited hang-out[42], she: 1- asserts her assumed honesty, suggesting that she never pretended to be that which she elsewhere repeatedly says to be; 2- reporting the blame for the confusion on the one who asks her for credentials of honesty; 3- offensively lies about having had no complaints from the people whose culture she uses as material for her own social success; 4- with another blatant lie she closes the loop around the critics by assimilating them with what her targeted audience rejects. [Huh?]

Can anyone else comment? --Merbabu (talk) 04:34, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that the book, and possibly its author, are notable, but the articles are awful. I've just speedy deleted Marlo Morgan: discrepancies as it was an attack page with massive NPOV and BLP issues and no good version to revert to. Nick-D (talk) 04:43, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that the article author is closely associated with the Marlo Morgan Down Under Campaign, run by a Mr Robert Egglington from the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation, at Clontart Aboriginal College in Perth.[26][27] Whatever, its 99% WP:SOAPBOX material and should be radically chopped back into a bio-stub. Djanga 05:34, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Watch out Nick-D, this was the response from the main contributor the last time someone dared to even PROD it. If it was such a controversial, yet best selling book, shouldn't the discrepancies list just be a section of Mutant Message Down Under, with the balanced alternative (positive?) view covered as well?The-Pope (talk) 06:23, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

And what about this response on the editor's page. --Merbabu (talk) 06:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I deleted the article as its prose was libelous and a clear WP:BLP breach and there was no acceptable version which it could have been reverted back to (note that this policy states that "If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, containing primarily unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step, followed by discussion" and "Summary deletion in part or whole is relevant when the page contains unsourced negative material or is disparaging and written non-neutrally, and when this cannot readily be repaired or replaced to an acceptable standard."). The book would easily meet WP:BK, but the article's content was not usable in any form. The editor is welcome to take this matter to WP:DRV if they'd like the article restored. Nick-D (talk) 07:33, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. That was the best way to go. --Merbabu (talk) 07:41, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I've started on the bio article. I think stubbing and starting over is probably the best course of action. Kevin (talk) 08:25, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree - little of the current content is suitable. Nick-D (talk) 08:51, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Concur, and stubbed. --Stephen 21:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that Nick-D (talk) 09:35, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Queensland election

Some commentary about a (deleted) Wikipedia article by Antony Green can be found here. Nothing exciting, but it does reinforce that articles on candiates are widely read. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 01:47, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Mmm, interesting. But I still think the deletion was correct - the place for the information that was on the page is the candidate's website, not Wikipedia. Frickeg (talk) 02:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

It's good to think that Antony Green might read the odd article I wrote, particularly as I once sat next to him at a dinner where he looked upon the wine when it was red and we got into a spirited discussion about preference flows in the 2002 SA election. --Roisterer (talk) 06:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Was there anything unique or interesting about 2002 SA pref flows? Timeshift (talk) 06:17, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

IIRC (I too had a few drinks that night), in the Electoral district of Cheltenham, due to the number of candidates and the way preferences had been organised, the Democrat candidate (Cheryl Glenie according to the ABC site) could have won with 10% of the vote (as long as Labor polled less than 45% and she had her nose in front of the Ind Labor candidate after preferences). About a week prior to the election a poll showed Glenie with about 12%, Labor 45% and Ind Lab 12%. As it turned out the Dem's vote collapsed to under 7%, Ind Lab to under 10% and Labor rose to 48%. Green was relieved he didn't make any big public statements about the Democrats winning Cheltenham. --Roisterer (talk) 06:59, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I used to be in Price with Murray De Laine before it got redrawn into Chelt, and then ended up in Ralph Clarke when he got turfed out by Rau in the redrawn Enfield. I remember both Green and Jaensch predicting that Clarke would win at the start of the campaign. Unfortunately for Clarke, because half of the electorate was reditributed, he hardly got any votes in the new western half of the electorate. Especially with the massive Asian and otehr immigrant population there who always vote ALP without following politics and didn't even know what the deal was with Clarke and de Laine being turfed for Weatherill and Rau. Rau doesn't even live in the electorate, not sure if Clarke did.....YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 23:55, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Big mess relating to a 19th century novelist and an Australian entrepreneur

See Talk:Andrew Picken#Note. It would be good if some Australian editors could keep an eye on this. I'm about to cross-post this to WikiProject Literature. Graham87 03:32, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Category notification

I'll do my own dirty work as I nominated them :P

• Category:Western Australian suburbs navigational boxes -> Category:Western Australia suburb templates
• Category:Western Australian Local Government Areas navigational boxes -> Category:Western Australia Local Government Area templates

Both to improve consistency (see their parent categories) and to fix an odd name I never really liked. Orderinchaos 00:21, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Discussion at this location. Orderinchaos 13:09, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Merger proposal of splayd into spork

Never realised this was what they were called elsehwere....have at it. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:05, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

PD-Australia again

There seems to be a dispute as to whether PD-Australia does stretch back to 1955 or whether it needs to be pre-1946, juding by the challenge at the following FA - Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Donald Bradman with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 - help/clarifications needed. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 02:36, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry mate, but Jappalang is correct. It's like this:

1. Once upon a time, the Yanks didn't have automatic copyright. If you wanted to copyright a work, you had to actually register it with the US Copyright Office. In effect, this meant that the US didn't recognise the copyright of foreign works.
2. Then the US signed up to the Berne convention, which meant that they had to recognise the copyright of foreign works.
3. This would have meant that many foreign works that were in the public domain in the US would go back into copyright. The US didn't like that idea, so they decided that the Berne convention wasn't retroactive.
4. "You cheating bastards!", cried every other country in the world, and the US was shamed into backing down. URAA is the backdown.
5. Under the URAA, US copyright was restored for all works that were still under copyright in their home country as of 1 January 1996.
6. Now here's the punchline: the US doesn't recognise the rule of the shorter term, so the duration of those copyrights is determined by US copyright law not Australian copyright law. The US uses "life plus seventy".

In this case, these photographs were still in under copyright in their home country on 1 January 1996, so the US restored copyright, and because of the stupidity of the US not recognising the rule of the shorter term, they remain under copyright there, even though they have since fallen into the public domain here.

Hesperian 03:09, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

So in other words, {{PD-Australia}} is irrelevant and might as well be deleted right? YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 03:21, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Does that mean things like {{PD-India}} don't work as well, and the 60 year rule there only works if it is 60 years old in 1996 and only pre-1936 stuff works? YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 03:24, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

In its current form, these templates are merely informative, because they don't take a clear position on whether the material is in the public domain in the United States, which is all that matters from a legal viewpoint. Strictly speaking, our pre-1946 PD-Australia photographs should also be tagged with {{PD-US-1996}}, and our post-1946 PD-Australia photographs should be deleted or a fair use rationale provided.

Actually, forget part of what I just said. According to Commons:Commons:Licensing,

"Wikimedia Commons accepts only media

• that are explicitly freely licensed, or
• that are in the public domain in at least the United States and in the source country of the work."

So PD-Australia may be legally irrelevant, but it remains relevant to deciding whether these images fall within Common scope.

Hesperian 03:53, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

• Who cares what the Americans think... let's leave the images as they are. The images were created in Australia and that's all that really matters for what most people care. No one is going to complain here and we're just giving ammunition to the copyright nazis that run this site. Stop being so darn paranoid about copyright for once.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Lonelygirl16 (talk • contribs) 13:01, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Easy for you to say; you're not legally liable for the material on the WikiMedia's servers. Hesperian 13:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    • No one is going to sue. Stop whinging about it. Just use common sense. That's not hard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lonelygirl16 (talk • contribs) 12:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
      • Ah, the She'll be right mate defence. How very Aussie. Hesperian 12:31, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
        • What, and you are an expert on what will practically happen? You are acting like a complete idiot. Why can't Wikipedia users use some common sense. They always have to be morons over the most petty things. Get a life.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Lonelygirl16 (talk • contribs) 10:39, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
        • It's more of a "Don't get your knickers in a knot" about a minor legal technicality when, as far as I know, no-one is being taken to court over the fair use of images on Wikipedia. - Shiftchange (talk) 23:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
          • You are the only person here who claims to know what will happen. Hesperian 11:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Department Store store lists.

I honestly believe that the lists of Australian department stores on here (such as List of Myer stores) are a mess, with the 'opening 2010' parts unext to them. I believe there should be a MoS guideline added to try and tidy this up. This is one idea I had...

---

New South Wales

• Sydney Central Plaza 8 floors including mezzanine, Sydney 47,000 m² (Originally Farmers)
• Centro Bankstown, Bankstown (2 floors) 10,150 m²
• Westpoint Blacktown, Blacktown (2 floors) 10,000 m²
• Westfield Bondi Junction, Bondi Junction (4 floors) 17, 924 m²
• Castle Towers, Castle Hill (2 floors) 14,300 m²
• Westfield Chatswood, Chatswood (4 floors) 23, 620 m²
• Westfield Eastgardens, Pagewood (2 floors) 13,500 m²
• Westfield Hornsby, Hornsby (2 floors)
• Westfield Hurstville, Hurstville (2 floors)
• Westfield Liverpool, Liverpool (2 floors)
• Macquarie Centre, North Ryde (2 floors)
• Westfield Miranda, Miranda (4 floors) 24,000 m²
• Westfield Parramatta, Parramatta (4 floors)
• Westfield Penrith, Penrith (3 floors) 20,114 m²
• Centro Roselands, Roselands (3 floors) 23,900 m²
• Warringah Mall, Brookvale (3 floors plus mezzanine) 14,000 m²
• Myer City Centre, Albury (2 floors) 10,053 m²
• Charlestown Square, Charlestown (2 floors) 12,840 m²
• Dubbo (2 floors) 7,200 m²
• Erina Fair, Erina (1 floor) 12,132 m²
• Orange City Centre, Summer Street, Orange (2 floors) 7,600 m²
• Wagga Wagga (2 floors)
• Wollongong Central, Wollongong (3 floors) 12,150 m²
• Stockland Green Hills, East Maitland (2 floors)
• Top Ryde City, Ryde (2 floors) 10,550 m²

Bottom of article references

---

In this, I added the annotations to the bottom of the article as footnotes. If anyone else has any ideas, please raise them, but I think these articles are a mess. This also applies to Harris Scarfe, and David Jones Limited. Thanks --  Punk Boi 8  talk  06:43, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd suggest WP:NOTDIR we arent a store directory for retailers. Gnangarra 06:57, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

They seem alright to me, as lists. Most individual Meyer and David Jones stores are major businesses, and when they're opened and closed they receive serious coverage in the business sections major newspapers, so lists of stores appear justified. Nick-D (talk) 09:42, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Nick. Tablify them so they're less ugly, and reference them (especially the "to be opened" ones), and it's a useful and encyclopedic thing to have. Shows their geographic reach, the amount of stores they have, etc - there's a few things that it's useful for beyond a mere directory. Rebecca (talk) 10:50, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

On a related topic, List of Myer stores has recently been nominated for deletion. The discussion of this is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Myer stores Nick-D (talk) 10:54, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

FYI, the article has been deleted, and I've opened a DRV suggesting that it be relisted. Editors who wish to comment may do so at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 February 28 Nick-D (talk) 23:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Article rename

Just a note that I'm requesting a rename of Australasian funnel-web spider to Australian funnel-web spider. You can have your say for the rename/move on the article's talk page. Bidgee (talk) 00:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Just curious

Is the Australian section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles/Other_categorization_schemes in any way linked to any of the pages of this project at all or is it a stand alone embarassment of a laundry basket of some very dubious requests? It seems most could be rejected over a number of issues. SatuSuro 05:27, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

ooh boy that page does need a Spring errr Autumn clean! Bidgee (talk) 05:32, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - very interested for others to comment as well - and perhaps something to suggest a way of getting of rid of most? SatuSuro 09:52, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I would remove them all and replace it with a link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/To-do. I would check the ones I wasn't familiar with to see what links to them and if there is more than 2 links I would assume they are legit and place them on the WPAus/To-do list. For the others I would do a google search and if they get positive results also place them on the list. - Shiftchange (talk) 14:15, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

That may be a bit extreme. I think that WP:RA is basically for non-editors to request articles; our to-do list is more likely to be generated from within the project. Myself and others have chopped the list back a bit, removing some obvious non-notables. Its probably just something we need to keep an eye on. Djanga 15:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Roland Perry

The article on Roland Perry (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has had most of its content removed by the new editor Cmorepipping (talk · contribs) with the reasoning "The update before removed a collection of inaccurate defamatory items concerning the author and his work." While the article has some balance issues, the content was not sensationalist and was all reliably sourced. As a (semi) involved editor, it may be better if someone else works with this editor to resolve his problem. YellowMonkey (talk · contribs) is the main contributor to the article. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 23:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The article does seem unbalanced, with 1 bio paragraph and 6 paragraphs of criticism. Is the level of criticism in the article proportionate to reviewer criticism? Kevin (talk) 23:40, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

YM has done most of the research and I would tend to agree with YM that most critical commentary of his work has been less than complimentary. However, Perry's books sell and sell well so they are obviously meeting with some level of acceptance in the marketplace. If there was reliable data on Perry's sales, it would go some some way to balancing the article. YM has blogged on the topic here if you need some background. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 00:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll read up. I sometimes think I'm the only Wikipedian without a blog. Kevin (talk) 00:31, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

No blog for me either! For more info see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 26#How many errors does it take for a source to stop being reliable?? and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket/Archive 55#How many errors does it take for a source to stop being reliable?? for some earlier discussion. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 00:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, main thing is that leading cricket writers from Wisden etc, such as Frith and Haigh who have won book of the year etc, all regard him as hopeless and crooked. But the mainstream guys don't know anything. In his book about the Invincibles released last year for 60th anniversary, he basically paraphrased it from Jack Fingleton's Brightly Fades the Don, although in all of his other books, he also (hagiographically) carries Bradman's claims that Fingleton is a pathological liar etc, and here is bludging a tribute to Bradman supposedly from a hater. (In some of his books he states it as a fact that Fingleton is a liar and a crook, now he bludges off him). The Miller's Luck is basically lifted from Dick Whitington's bio. Also in Perry's bio of Warne, he keeps on defaming John the bookmaker controversy and Salim Malik saying they were working together to trap Australian cricketers, without any proof of course. Gideon Haigh also directed me to email a South African professor about some info he had about Perry's dodgy practices but hte prof didn't reply. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 02:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The last local meeting of the Australian Society for Sports History that I went to, I asked the convenor Bernard Whimpress, Adelaide Oval curator, and Jenny Thompson, the Cricinfo correspondent now living Australia what they thought of Perry and they thought he was cack. So did the other folks there. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 02:49, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

As a cricket fan myself, I can confirm that what I've read of Perry's material was sloppy at best, but I agree that the article is unduly negative - some more neutral information on sales figures and the like would go a long way towards balancing it out. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:24, 3 March 2009 (UTC).

I know. I don't where to get them though. Obviously the book reviews by experts trump reviews by general guys at the newspapers who review all of the books and don't know the content, which is why they aren't in there. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 03:11, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Category notification #22

• Category:Goodson-Todman game shows is nominated for renaming to Category:Television series by Mark Goodson Productions;
• Category:Information Technology companies of Australia is nominated for renaming to Category:Information technology companies of Australia.

Hesperian 10:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

• Category:Shane Warne is nominated for deletion. Hesperian 22:14, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Novels Collaboration of the Month: Shantaram (novel)

Hi everyone. The Novels WikiProject has selected Shantaram (novel) as its Collaboration of the Month. Australian editors are invited to help improve this article towards featured article standard. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 00:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Article Alerts

Is there a consensus to add more automated alerting to the header here? --Stephen 00:28, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks promising, and likely to be more accurate than our manual efforts of the past. We could remove the massive section of this noticeboard titled 'Candidates for Deletion' (above) and place the bot code there. I've got some free time this evening and I'll happily poke around with what the bot has to offer to see how it fares for our project. -- Longhair\^talk 10:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Looks very promising, and could give us some good visibility on what's going on in some of the darker corners of our project. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 14:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC).

Those interested in monitoring alerts may watchlist Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australia/Article_alerts. Most subprojects also have their own alerts configured for those who do not wish to monitor the entire Australia project. -- Longhair\^talk 06:48, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Category notification #23

Category:Australian porn stars is nominated for renaming to Category:Australian pornographic stars. Hesperian 22:15, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

It has been pointed out that my notifications are redundant to the new Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Article alerts page. I am going to stop spamming this page, so if you want to know about these things, be sure to put the article alerts page on your watchlist. Hesperian 22:27, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

2008–09 Australian region cyclone season (Again)

An editor there is forcing the US centric dating format[28] against what the area it covers uses. I don't have much time as I'm running late for work. I created a talk page discussion at the 2008–09 Australian region cyclone season talk page. Bidgee (talk) 19:50, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Im just trying to have consitency Bidgee through ALL articles releated to the Cyclone season Jason Rees (talk) 19:56, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Undone. Australian articles use Australian forms of English. If your WikiProject mandates otherwise, then your WikiProject is unacceptably US-centric, and needs to be fixed. Hesperian 22:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm being reverted. So we're going to have an Australian article that uses US dates throughout <shrug/> Hesperian 00:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

The belligerence and uncooperativeness beggars belief. Next thing we will have american spelling in Australian articles. SatuSuro 07:58, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I've changed it back. The text all using Australian format and the tail end US - not only enforcing US dates but the lack of consistency looked silly. - Peripitus (Talk)

For an Australian article the relevant date standard and timezone should be used. I believe we've been through this with this editor before, which is disappointing. WP:ENGVAR is very clear on this, and I believe that any changes made in violation of the principle that "An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the appropriate variety of English for that nation." ought to be reverted (and I plan to do so). Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 11:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC).

Except WPMOS clealry states that the style of the first editor should be used which is the american dating Jason Rees (talk) 12:48, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

(EC)What you found is irrelevant since "Strong national ties to a topic" has more weight. Not only Australia uses (Papua New Guinea and Indonesia use the same format as Australia) DD/MM for that article. I'm sure you wouldn't like me changing the US articles to DD/MM/YYYY and using your reason Jason. There should be no US centric POV in the 2008–09 Australian region cyclone season article. Also it seems strange that you post here for the second time which leads me to believe that you're stalking my contributions. Bidgee (talk) 13:00, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

What bollocks. You've got to be willfully misreading it on purpose. Hesperian 12:53, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Not Bollocks - im not misreading what has been Spammed on to my talkpage - not really bidgee Jason Rees (talk) 13:11, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

No you're reading on what you want to read. I do have to agree with those who say there is US-centric editors here forcing on what they want and not what should be used for the Country or Region. Spamming? FFS it's a discussion thats showing you're wrong. Not really? Thats not an answer as it's either you are or your not but when no one has told you there is a discussion here really points that you're stalking my contributions, so I suggest that you stop doing so. Bidgee (talk) 13:20, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Wat Bollocks. Bidgee since you posted here the first time i have had this page watchlisted so i am not Stalking you. I have also known about this disscusion as i was told aout in on IRC. Also i am not misreading the MOS as i have checked it out with other editors. Also if you are so concerned about me using American dating then maybe you should check the other articles releated to the AUS season Jason Rees (talk) 13:25, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Watchlist or IRC? It can't be both. Well even the first time you were not informed about it. What "other editors"? US based? I will be in the coming week checking to make sure that any relating Australian articles are in DD/MM/YYYY format. Bidgee (talk) 13:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

This discussion is unnecessarily belligerent. No one is forcing a US POV on the articles. There are other countries covered by the articles, so even the Australian regional articles need to be NPOV. I have no objection with DMY format as long as it does not lead to edit wars. The other way - MDY - is the norm in the of the basins of the Northern Hemisphere (especially in the most affected countries like the Philippines, Taiwan, and India). Also, no editor is forced to write in US English or Australian English because they may be unfamiliar with the other form. Frankly, there aren't many editors from Australia working on those articles, so no one can really check them. Potapych (talk) 14:11, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok, this is getting out of hand once more. I don't know what the reasoning behind the sudden changes with the date formatting. For several years, all tropical cyclone articles, including ones related to Australia, have been using the MDY format without a single issue. However, without any discussion or sufficient reasoning, all dates for TC articles related to Australia were changed to DMY. Although it is not stated directly on the WPTC page, we've had a general consensus to use UTC throughout all TC articles, save when major cyclones impact land. The use of UTC is because dates can change when a storm crosses into a different time zone with local time but UTC is uniform worldwide. The reasoning against UTC in Australian articles is that there is a ≥9 hour difference with UTC. However, UTC doesn't specify a time of day (i.e. Morning, Noon, Evening, etc...) which applies to local time. My understanding as to why this got out of hand so fast is that it wasn't properly discussed beforehand. With a change that makes the format of an article significantly different than it has been for several years need to be thoroughly discussed with both parties (meaning WPTC and the Australian project. As for calling Jason-Rees, myself, and others who use the MDY format as US-centric editors is rather rude (in my opinion). I use the MDY format as I'm from the US so it's my preference, however, I don't want to let that get in the way of a consensus to use another format. But, this consensus has not been closed so the edit wars take place. Lastly concerning this statement by Bidgee (talk · contribs), " I will be in the coming week checking to make sure that any relating Australian articles are in DD/MM/YYYY format." please do not change any of the date formats regarding TC articles until this discussion is closed with a proper understanding with both parties. Just because an article is related to Australia, doesn't mean is has to be in Australian format, if you feel that way, I can call you an "Australian-centric editor" as you do not feel the need for this discussion to take place. Cheers, Cyclonebiskit 15:34, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Seems that you're confused on the issue. Not my problem if you've been dealing with Australian tropical cyclone articles for the past few years and if little if any Australian editors have edited that article as that has now changed. US-centric editors isn't rude when I've had to fix US spelling and date formats in an Australian focused article. Put it this way If I was to edit a US article and someone had used dd//mm/yyyy I would change that to the US format (I've had to do that in the past). I'm only an Australian-centric editor when it comes to editing Australian articles to make sure they have the format and spelling in which is relevant. Why don't change anything when the MOS clearly states the use of the relevant format for that country? Bidgee (talk) 23:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

This has absolutely nothing to do with UTC. Hesperian 22:23, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Your correct, this issue is dragging on. Is there any particular reason why cyclone articles must have the MDY format? I thought Bidgee has made clear why DMY was best for Australian cyclones. - Shiftchange (talk) 21:38, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

My $0.02 from what I said elsewhere, I agree with the Australians right to choose DMY vs MDY. I personally don't mind. I think we have some WPTC articles with DMY, but I'm not sure. I do mind and hope that they use UTC dating, but as far as I have seen, that isn't much of an issue. ♬♩ Hurricanehink (talk) 22:59, 5 March 2009 (UTC)\

The article Timeline of the 2008-09 Australian region cyclone season still contains US date format. WWGB (talk) 04:45, 7 March 2009 (UTC)