Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Riverina

IBRA Riverina

The IBRA regions, with Riverina in red

G'day. Here, have a pretty map. I've recently been working on articles on biogeographic regions of Western Australia; see for example Esperance Plains. I needed to create maps for these articles, so for the sake of consistency I created maps for every IBRA region; see Commons:IBRA. Do you folks know that there is an IBRA region named "Riverina", defined as

An ancient riverine plain and alluvial fans composed of unconsolidated sediments with evidence of former stream channels. The Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers and their major tributaries, the Lachlan and Goulburn Rivers flow westwards across this plain. Vegetation consists of river red gum and black box forests, box woodlands, saltbush shrublands, extensive grasslands and swamp communities.[1]

Hesperian 12:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Hey - that is a pretty map. Of course the damn bit of squiggly red line to the left of the main mass (along the Murray River I assume) might throw some of what we have done askew (except that we have debated the question to a final stage already) - especially because it encompasses an area which is also referred to as Sunraysia &/or Mallee and moves into South Australia. Seriously though - if you don't mind me being a bit critical of these maps in general (not just yours) I always find them so hard to work with when you want to pinpoint locations (towns, places, communities etc) on the edges - simply because there is nothing in them to easily identify exactly where all the edges stop and start. Rhetorically - the question seems always to be that I can take a look at the map and make a pretty good guess that Albury is in the middle bottom of the big red mass but for example is Bookham on the right hand edge or isn't it? --VS ^talk 12:55, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for feedback, VS. Can you suggest how the maps could be improved, without losing the sense of being a simple location map rather than a detail map? Hesperian 11:34, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Pleasure Hesperian - I was being a bit rhetorical as I so boldly stated but if I was to properly ask and answer the question I would probably commence by suggesting that any and all of these maps would work better if they allowed a static two step zooming in process (a little like you can with Google Earth but with only two steps) and then on the edges of the area being zoomed in a sort of hybrid map that included the major towns or roads or rivers etc appeared so one could actually put the image into a greater context than just noting that the area is somewhere in the middle of NSW. Having said all of that - I can fully understand how much more work this would be. However the reason I said the above and then this bit is because when we (the editors working on Riverina) attempt to deliberate an area such as the Riverina we invariably have to make guesstimates which would be assisted greatly by your IBRA map if it gave us pinpointed edges. I note that my fellow editors may have different opinions. (PS I am also working on Template:Sunraysia and we strike has the same sort of problems there.) --VS ^talk 12:14, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Certainly the IBRA information needs to be factored into the Riverina article. We already have a section on the bioregion from the NSW perspective - can't check yet if this coincides - assume so and we just need ot add reference ...--Golden Wattle ^talk 20:16, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, didn't notice that; yep, they are the same, except that your link defines the region in terms of IBRA Version 5.1, whereas mine is IBRA Version 6.1. Hesperian 11:34, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Riverina-importance

I note that some of the other Australian WikiProjects have ranked their articles in terms of their importance to the sub project rather than to WP Australia as a whole. Do we want to head down that path and if so, what would we rank as Top, High, Mid and Low. Riverina would be classed as Top but what else? --Mattinbgn/ ^talk 05:35, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment As I am involved (and indeed assessing) in some other projects - eg: Wikipedia:WikiProject Townsville I can concur with Matt's overview of other projects. To be frank I initially started assessing the Townsville project in relationship to WP Australia as a whole and was then asked (and agreed) to consider my rankings in relationship to the sub-project. Whilst this does provide the situation (quite often) of two different importance gradings for the same page (but only terms of the importance not in terms of class) I can understand the point of the members of that sub-project that they wish to draw attention to certain articles within the sub-project and thereby gain all of the benefits of that attention. However there may be a relatively big difference between WP Townsville and WP Riverina (with due respect to the Townsville group) and that is that Riverina has at least 320 articles and Townsville has only 129 - with the fact appearing to be that size of area and thus number of potential articles in my view is likely to be considerably larger for Riverina (indeed there will probably be hundreds of pages already on wiki which could and should be claimed as Riverina articles already). To conclude therefore I do not mind which way the consensus shifts here - although it will mean re-grading all of our articles, and if that occurs, yes Riverina would be top importance, and so would Wagga Wagga, Albury, Griffith, the various rivers, etc, as might be for example Tim Fischer etc (who is not even claimed as WP Riverina at this stage but should be). I'd be happy to further discuss.--VS ^talk 06:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Further to the above comment I have just gone through and assessed the last 17 Riverina articles that remained unassessed at today's date. Having done that I note (interestingly) that in fact none of the Riverina articles are assessed for Riverina importance at all. This becomes obvious when you look at the table on project page - So we are left with this question of Matt's which is really quite important - do we grade according to the value we place on an article in terms of the Riverina or in terms of the value of important for WP Australia? For my vote it must be the former - that is grading with regards the value of the article to the Riverina - otherwise why the heck does the current project have an automatic categorisation of Unknown-importance Riverina articles. I would like to begin work on this soon because if we don't we will be constantly chasing the tail of more and more articles. Thoughts please?--VS ^talk 08:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree, but can't we have two ratings: see Talk:Riverina. I have left that as Mid rating for WP:Australia and made it Top rating for Riverina. It doesn't show on the tag but it appears on the Riverina category as Top.--Mattinbgn/ ^talk 10:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• Sorry Matt - I obviously should have made my point clearer - thank you for making yours so. I agree completely with your conclusion - we can and should have two ratings - just like Riverina (and like I have done for about 70 or so WP Townsville articles). I will start to do the same as you have done - some of our ratings will no doubt be worth further discussion but for the majority I think we will be closely aligned. That said I wonder if we could use the following code for Riverina articles because I know from experience that this will allow scripts to work without one grade change affecting the other (by this I mean that some of the automatic grade systems in place will adjust the wikiproject specific importance rating if the Wiki Australia rating is changes unless we use this code):
  

{{WP Australia|class=|importance=<!-- Wikiproject specific tags --> |Riverina=yes|Riverina-importance=}}
I have adjusted Talk:Riverina as an example. --VS ^talk 12:25, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Gotcha, cool. Sorry I am a little slow on the uptake today. --Mattinbgn/ ^talk 12:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

 Done Riverina Class B's (11 as of today) assessed. (I note for the record that if a town/location has a relatively stable population that I am assessing at least at Mid Level importance for Riverina.)--VS ^talk 13:02, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, but I would have places such as Mairjimmy, New South Wales, Coree, New South Wales and Barnes, New South Wales at Low. I assume that is what you mean by stable population. I agree with the assessments to date and good work on the assessment so far.--Mattinbgn/ ^talk

1.  Done All but Bs Cs Ds Ms and Ts for Riverina Class Start pages.--VS ^talk 14:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
2.  Done Set up assessment template to include importance ratings and assessed Bot's auto-compilation - all seems to be in working order.--VS ^talk 14:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
3.  Done All stub-class articles rated for Riverina-importance. --Mattinbgn/ ^talk 02:31, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
4. Great job Matt - I think we working in unison just now  Done and I think that's all of them. I will run the Bot through to get a newest count on the template.--VS ^talk 06:21, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Steve. The updated table looks good and to my mind seems to show we have made a lot of headway since we started unofficially on the Riverina project as weel as guidance on what to do next. On another point, going through this has given me a chance to think about the Riverina article again. It may be worth taking it to peer review to set it up for an attempt at WP:FAC. It would be great for the project to have a featured article. What do you think? --Mattinbgn/ ^talk 08:06, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

• Agree with your comments Matt. Have also claimed 31 additional articles to Riverina this afternoon so the table jumps from 318 to 349.
• Would be most happy to support an attempt at FA - and the kudos for WP:Riverina would be brilliant.
• In that same vein, would be happy to work with you directly over the next month or two - on getting other articles to GA - specifically that we tackle in order the cities of Wagga, then Albury, then Griffith? Interested?--VS ^talk 08:17, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep, sounds like a plan. It shouldn't be too difficult to find high-quality sources on these places to get them up to speed fairly quickly. --Mattinbgn/ ^talk 09:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Collaborations

• Pending assessment of Wagga Wagga, suggestions are:
  • Albury, New South Wales
  • Griffith, New South Wales
  • Gundagai, New South Wales
    • Gundagai seems to me to be almost at GA standard now and could be done very quickly. Some details on the climate, on governance via Gundagai Shire Council, demographics from 2001 census figures, transport links and in my opinion that's about all it needs prior to listing. -- Mattinbgn/ ^talk 02:22, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area

--Golden Wattle ^talk 02:09, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

• • Hay, New South Wales - Reasonably strong on geography and history, but needs some work on sections such as culture and industry. -- Mattinbgn/ ^talk 02:22, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Suburbs of Wagga

Hi there, I have been working through suburbs of Blacktown using PeterJeremy's suggested Suburb Skeleton.

An example of an article fleshed out fully from online reference to government websites is Blackett, New South Wales. Any comments regarding using the same "template" for "Suburbs of Wagga"? Garrie 05:10, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

The suburb skeleton should work well with the Wagga suburbs. The indigenous heritage is likely to be similar for suburbs and notable residents would be difficult but otherwise it would be good. - Mattinbgn/ ^talk 08:07, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I guess for notable residents it would only come up if someone has a particular house/building that is well known, otherwise they are all just "from Wagga". I know that there are significant (heritage listed) properties around Gurwood Street, but if any of them are closely associated with (wikipedia-)notable people I don't know.

Sorry, have been a bit meatworld-busy lately and haven't contributed as much as I would like.Garrie 23:07, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Riverina-geo-stub revisited

Is there still interest in a stub types for locations in the Riverina? I'm not quite clear how well-defined or "official" a region it is, but it seems to be the best-categorised of the NSW regions, of whatever sort. As the parent is over-sized, I think I'll float this over at WP:WSS/P... Alai 20:35, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I must admit, my knowledge of the intricacies of stub-sorting is fairly minimal and I am not sure what creating a Riverina stub will do over and above categorisation of articles in Category:Stub-Class Riverina articles. That said, I am certainly not opposed to a new stub type. The region is entirely un-official although a number of State government authorities covering some or all of the area traditionally known as the Riverina use the term. Consensus amongst editors on the boundaries of the region took some time to get, but this has now been stable for some time. If you are looking for some official boundaries, then perhaps using the boundaries of the LGAs in Category:Local Government Areas of the Riverina, New South Wales will define a stable area. Hope this helps and good luck.-- Mattinbgn\ ^talk 22:42, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry, the intricacies of this are fairly minimal, if not to say, not very intricate. :) Basically I was just thinking in terms of following whatever scope the permcat Category:Riverina uses, without worrying too much what that actually is. I'm not sure there will be any huge pay-off from this if the 1.0 flavour category is consistently up to date, but it is possible that there's some that are tagged with {{NewSouthWales-geo-stub}} (which as I say, is currently a little large for stub-sorter tastes) that'd be picked up from the Riverina category, or that its existance will prompt people to retag them as they find them. (Someone explain to me again slowly why we have these by-topic and by-wikiproject systems running in (sometime) parallel...) Alai 23:30, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Gundagai - collaboration nomination

For your information Gundagai, New South Wales has been nominated by User:Roister for Wikipedia:Australian Collaboration of the Fortnight. All has been quiet for some time on the editing front for this article and it would be good to develop it to the next level. The 75th birthday of the Dog on the Tuckerbox even passed without event :-) --Matilda ^talk 04:09, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

• Hey Matilda - I was thinking exactly the same thing when I saw the celebrations on television.--VS ^talk 07:23, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Hey guys. I got fed up when she came back in August and so I just blocked her two primary IP ranges for the term of the arbitration ban, so we should be reasonably safe (fingers crossed). Sarah 14:58, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

• the collaboration is ACOTF at the moment for those who weren't aware. I am feeling a bit stuck - it is no where near where I want it to be - especially the history section which is bitsy. :-( Help would be very much appreciated --Matilda ^talk 04:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Margaret Court?

• The bot page is interesting - why is Margaret Court (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) getting so many hits - have I missed something? --Matilda ^talk 23:46, 15 September 2008 (UTC)