Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 48

It looks like we have been reported as being too efficient with early results of the Orange state by-election, 2016 and related articles^[1] At the time, Antony Green also reported that Donato had won the seat (as he does again now).^[2] It looks like we have to wait until Monday to have a final result declared. For the federal election, I prepared one or two articles like this, but kept them in Draft: namespace until it was clear they belonged. I don't know if that would have made any difference to this report. If the result is not declared until Monday (or later) is his appointment (and pay) backdated to last weekend, or will we need to report that he assumed office on 21 November (or later)?

Is there somewhere else to record when Wikipedia is the news? --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:44, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

You could use {{Press}} on Talk:Orange state by-election, 2016. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:51, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Added there and talk:Electoral district of Orange as that is the page that provided the screenshot. --Scott Davis ^Talk 23:17, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, this was my doing—I misinterpreted the finalisation of the primary vote count and its match with the 2CP count as essentially the end of the count, so I started doing some of the updates as I mistakenly assumed the declaration would occur later in the day (Thursday) as scheduled and just was a formality at that point—lesson learnt. I also underestimated media and public interest in a state by-election which normally goes by without much attention. By the time I heard about the rumour that the Nationals had won the preference distribution, I was in a cinema, but reverted it all as soon as I was out. Interestingly (luckily) it looks as if it will all be correct anyway, and it's the "bye-by Shooters" and "Wikipedia jumps the gun" articles that have ended up incorrect! Regarding the term date, it should still be 12 November as the date of election, despite any eccentricity of the count or delays in declaration or swearing in. --Canley (talk) 00:58, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

We learn from experience. I have a feeling I did the same to the first one I changed after the federal election, before discovering to be more careful and wait for formal declarations. I just got corrected from within the WP community before the press caught on. Yes, we jumped the gun, but "Verifiability, not truth" supported the edits as they were appropriately sourced. --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:22, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

These things happen - it had been effectively called for Donato when it was added, and the brief change in the lead that sparked the media interest was the result of a counting error that led to it being re-called for Donato in fairly short order. No big deal in my book. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:08, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

You must not come to Wikipedia and preach about trivial matters. Wikipedia must never, under any circumstance, be a voice for a particular view. This is why we are so popular with internet users. This is our cardinal rule. Please adhere to our policy. It works best that way.

We do not aim to contain all expression found elsewhere. This isn't anarchy, we have rules. Wikipedia is not here to promote things or make our readers contemplate a topic nor is it a form of personal communication. When this happens, it breaks all of these policies.

This type of editing is extremely poor quality and should be removed immediately. Its just a quote farm - a long list of quotations said about various things. This is trivia because anyone can say anything about anything. There is no value to that information from a referencing (building an encyclopedia) point of view because it is of very little consequence. Its not knowledge on the topic of the article. Its imparting knowledge of what was said about something. That is peripheral, off-topic and too trivial and therefore doesn't belong.

We aren't here to document the activities of any organisation in detail. We provide a summary of information, not little bits and pieces, not lists of activities, political positions or quotes. We don't want to copy and paste what was said about things into Wikipedia, except rarely and with good reason. This is laziness and can be a form of fraud where editors game the system to procure a vehicle or platform for ideological dissemination. When you let this stay it devalues all the other good editing we do. Its makes a mockery of the WikiProject Australia. When editors do this they are displaying a lack mutual respect. Its incivility. Some contributors are unable to constrain themselves from their deeply held religious views. Biased edit histories disprove any notion of neutrality. This editing is not done to improve our encyclopedia. It is done solely for the purpose of showcasing religious views. Help stop the biblethumping and push this dribble away. Please don't underestimate this threat and support me on this. - Shiftchange (talk) 02:28, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

My approach to biased articles is to attempt to restructure them and add balancing reliable sources. Whole scale deletion of content with a large number of independent sources is problematic, I have also found at times the existing sources useful in rebalancing an article. -- Paul foord (talk) 23:45, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

My approach is remove what doesn't belong. That is the solution to our cleanup backlogs. We don't have time to pretend biased editing is useful and ignoring it is failure. I don't feel obligated to fix other editors mistakes, especially not decades into the project when our policies are firmly set. This is how we assess our peers' contributions. Any edit away from our assessment criteria should be corrected by its removal with pointers to our policy unreservedly. - Shiftchange (talk) 02:06, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

If there is significant independent media coverage of campaigns run by such organisations as the Australian Christian Lobby, and such organisations are reported to have significant political influence, then labelling reference to those campaigns and political influence 'trivia' and removing links to those sources is counter productive. Putting it in a critical encyclopedic perspective is what users want, where that can be done from the independent reliable sources then that should be done. Paul foord (talk) 05:28, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/The 5000 Challenge and the wider Wikipedia:WikiProject Oceania/The 10,000 Challenge are up and running based on Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge for the UK which has currently produced over 2300 article improvements and creations. If you'd like to see large scale quality improvements happening for Australia and Oceania like The Africa Destubathon, which has produced over 1600 articles in 5 weeks, sign up on the page. The idea will be an ongoing national editathon/challenge for Australia but fuelled by a contest if desirable to really get articles on every state/territory and subject mass improved. After every 100 articles done for Australia this would feed into the main Oceania one. I will start a 1000 one for New Zealand or even a sub 1000 article challenge for a state of Australia or something like Rules Football if there is the support. I would like some support from wikipedians here to get the Challenge off to a start anyway with some articles to make doing a Destubathon for Australia and Oceania worthwhile! Cheers.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:14, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Given that City of Bankstown has now merged to become Canterbury-Bankstown Council this template will need to be updated. Template:City of Bankstown topics. LibStar (talk) 08:30, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Can someone do some work on Australian Classification Board and Australian Classification Review Board. I was also told by とある白い猫 that some of the content may need to be split into a third article, Classification of media in Australia. I would rather someone familiar with these Australian agencies work on this rather than someone like me, who's completely unfamiliar with them. (I'm American, by the way.) — Gestrid (talk) 22:00, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

My suggestion is this (just to clarify and verify). You have two different "sister" agencies. Each should have their separate article for the separate history (who run the office, how much funding it got and other such bureaucratic operation). And a third article to discuss their joint work classifying games, movies and whatever else they classify. Both articles have content (#Controversies, #Classification decisions) on this so they would be merged to this third article where issues are more prominently discussed with the role of each agency since I expect there will be some overlap. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 11:47, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

I think we should change the logo of WP:AUSTRALIA. This was previously discussed here. The final vote was 2-2 and I think we should discuss it again and see if we can come to a conclusion. Catmando999 Check out his talk page! 00:57, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose changing the logo. There's nothing wrong with it, and nothing to gain by changing it. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:56, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose no reason provided, no inadequacies in current logo demonstrated, pointless distraction. - Shiftchange (talk) 04:30, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Completely agree with both Mitch Ames and Shiftchange. --AussieLegend (✉) 18:34, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose I was not going to comment as I have nothing new to add, but since a previous discussion is described as a vote and the results tallied, I pile on the bandwagon as I also see no reason to change. "If it's not broke, don't fix it". --Scott Davis ^Talk 12:08, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Same as above. Hughesdarren (talk) 12:23, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose The logo seems fine as is, as are the points of others who have come here JarrahTree 14:16, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Australian editors' opinions are requested at Talk:Queensland#drum line program to kill sharks. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:00, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

I think it would be better suited on Drum lines. Although if Queensland was the first jurisdiction in the world to deploy them it may be of historical significance. - Shiftchange (talk) 13:53, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of copying Shiftchange's comment to Talk:Queensland#drum line program to kill sharks, so that the discussion is all in one place.

Please add any further comments to Talk:Queensland#drum line program to kill sharks rather than here. Mitch Ames (talk) 22:59, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

What's the consensus on the correct form in "Australian English"? I notice we have both in use in article titles. I usually write it as 2 words myself, but I have no idea for why I do. The Queensland Heritage Register uses both forms (which is what triggers my question). Or doesn't it matter? Kerry (talk) 14:30, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

The Macquarie Dictionary only lists "courthouse" with no alternative spelling, which is odd because "court house" is pretty common as a proper noun. I'd suggest "court building" as a generic descriptor. Hack (talk) 14:46, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, we should always use "courthouse" for the common noun. In proper nouns we could look for an official version in each case. For instance, Berrima Court House. This can get tricky where there is no consistency in the sources, e.g., the WA Heritage Council describes the "Albany Courthouse", while the Royal Association of Justices WA chooses "Albany Court House" (but "Bunbury Courthouse", "Mandurah Courthouse", etc! But perhaps the truest "official" source is the administering authority, the Attorney General's Dept. My search there showed that their consistent preference is for "Albany Courthouse", etc This option provides consistency within WA while allowing other states to differ. Note, however, that a historic (only) building may be administered by a heritage authority which may have settled on "Court House", and we should go along with that. Bjenks (talk) 02:10, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Queensland Supreme Court website is using "courthouse". I'm thinking this is the best way to go, given the Macquarie Dictionary support. Not that I am going to rush out and rename everything, but incrementally I'll try to move towards standardising "courthouse". Kerry (talk) 09:06, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

No worries with the common noun—"courthouse" is also endorsed by the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors. (In their 1965 edn, the first I bought, they prescribed "court-house".) But that does not carry over to proper nouns which are spelled according to local usage and/or documentation. Bjenks (talk) 09:49, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

The article Just Jeans has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

unreferenced and non-notable

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. 103.6.159.83 (talk) 17:16, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Cheryl Grimmer - http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/crime/stunning-breakthrough-in-cheryl-grimmer-abduction-and-murder/news-story/b6fa2f7cf0bef6565fc30cfd5dee697a

Paul Benjamin Austin (talk) 05:00, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Greetings Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 48 Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:

• Fix and improve Mr.Z-bot's popular pages report

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, Stevietheman — Delivered: 17:52, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

If anyone is interested in writing some articles that are "most wanted", I have generated a list of "topics most redlinked" for Australia, for each of the various states, and can do so for any other Australian category if anyone desires (just ask, or run the tool yourself).

You can find these lists at Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/The 5000 Challenge#Missing articles. If you create any others (relevant to Australia), please feel free to add them there. I think most people would prefer to write articles in their favourite topic areas than just pick a totally random topic from a list. And I hope there are some folks out there interesting in racing car drivers (which seem to feature prominently in these lists). Kerry (talk) 14:18, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Are there any guidelines for how big a shopping centre should be, in order to be notable (apart from the GNG)? The background to this question is: there is a discussion here considering whether North Rocks Shopping Centre should be deleted for lack of notability. One reviewer noted its floor area of just over 21000 square metres and one-floor layout as factors in being non-notable. I can't find anything to indicate whether that should count for or against, so I thought the experts here may be able to point me in the right direction... --Gronk Oz (talk) 10:13, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

there are no guidelines but consensus is increasingly showing smaller one storey centres tend to be deleted. LibStar (talk) 10:22, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

I can't see why the number of floors matters; that's more a question of the price of real estate. Inner city shopping centres tend to be in towers, regional ones tend to be on one level. I'd be expecting to see the centre to be large (whether tall or sprawling), hosting a number of the major large stores or have some unusual kind of tenant mix, the sort of place you would go from "something special", not just the regular weekly groceries. I think a lot of smaller shopping centre articles could be merged into their suburb/town article. The larger centres tend to get newspaper coverage of opening, expanding, refurbishing etc, being bought and sold, so probably can pass GNG. Kerry (talk) 14:35, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Interesting, the notion of an Australian wheatbelt exists apparently, as well as the belts in states other than WA.

A recently updated disambiguation page - Wheatbelt claims from usage in articles: -

SA near Kyancutta

Vic near Sea Lake

and for the continent, a whole rainfall range area has been recently identified at Wheatbelt_(Australia), utilising two online sources of 'authority'. The plot further thickens when there is evidence that at Trove (http://trove.nla.gov.au/) that the term for the Australian wheatbelt, if it exists in name on the web, simply has never been referred to as such, at least not in a general search.

So what to do? I reserve my doubts as to the veracity of the usage of the term in the SA and Vic articles, and the usage of the term at the new australian generic article. I would much prefer to see other informed australian editors offer their understanding of where the term starts and and ends, and where the body of evidence shows and allows for an encyclopedia article and title as such in a wide and general usage.

A similar looseness of usage can be found with the word Nullarbor - where imagination and the propensity to make 6 out of 2 + 2, has the nullarbor starting at Norseman and ending at Port Augusta, whereas in fact, the real nullarbor is a lot more confined in its actual reach. In the end I suppose it is whether fellow editors want to allow ranges of things from picked sources, to be allowed in an online encyclopedia, or we stick to the general term as it has been used in time to be understood as what it is generally accepted. JarrahTree 23:50, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Writing as a South Australian with an opinion, I don't think I hear the term "wheatbelt" often enough to consider that it is in common use, but I wouldn't claim I have never heard it, either. I would imagine it is a band across the state south of Goyder's Line, but I wouldn't have any idea how wide it could be considered to be. South Australians would never consider the Nullarbor extends east of Ceduna nor as far north as the APY Lands, but otherwise, there is not often a need to be much more precise in common use anyway. --Scott Davis ^Talk 10:50, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Followup thought - I would read an article on Wheatbelt (South Australia) to see what it was defined as, as I don't think there is a clear definition (and I'd expect it to be far larger than just near Kyancutta), but I was surprised there wasn't a meaningful article at APY Lands or at least a redirect to a geography or anthropology/sociology article rather than the legislation article I piped to above. --Scott Davis ^Talk 11:19, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Because I wanted to see others comments - rather than pre-judge what I suspect to be the equivalent of a hoax article - I would like to challenge any editor to find anything on trove that specifically refers to the Victorian or South Australian wheatbelt in either a book or journal article JarrahTree 11:35, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Both http://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q=%22Victorian+wheatbelt%22 and http://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q=%22South+Australian+wheatbelt%22 return multiple entries (in books, newspapers, journals, archived websites) for me. If they really don't return any results for you, let me know and I'll post a sample of the links. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:25, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

On that basis they need to be added to something to clarify that the alternate usages exist as the general trend and bulk is for western australia - however the next challenge - more than just Vic or SA - to show that 'Australian wheatbelt' term has been used over time and is not a recent web invention... go mitch ! JarrahTree 14:13, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

The 2nd edition the Macquarie Dictionary, first published 1981, reprinted 1991, defines wheat belt as "that part of the country, usually a long, broad strip, in which conditions are ideal for growing wheat. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 6th ed, 2007, defines wheat belt as "a region where wheat is the chief agricultural product". There's no mention in either case of any specific state.

Given that the article is Wheatbelt (Australia) with "Australia" being a disambiguator (cf Wheat belt (North America) ) rather than part of the proper name "Australian Wheatbelt", I don't think it is fair to insist that the specific term "Australian Wheatbelt" has been used, but http://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q-field0=&q-type0=phrase&q-term0=Australian+wheatbelt&q-field1=&q-type1=not&q-term1=Western&q-field2=&q-type2=not&q-term2=West&q-field3=&q-type3=not&q-term3=South returns some hits, including newspaper articles from as early as 1924. The results may not be complete, because forcing the search to remove the words "Western", "West" and "South" (to exclude "Western Autralian wheatbelt" etc) may hide otherwise valid results, eg the perfectly valid (hypothetical) "While heading west across the Australian Wheatbelt".

I do note, however that Encyclopædia Britannica, both the 1986 printed version and the current online version, has two definitions for Wheat Belt:

• "principal crop-growing region of Western Australia", with no mention of the rest of Australia
• "the part of the North American Great Plains where wheat is the dominant crop"

However Britannica's Australia article online does include "Wheat is the country’s leading grain crop and is grown in every state, with production concentrated in the wheat belts of the southeast and southwest", and the Teens version includes "... a [railroad] line connected Melbourne and Port Melbourne, and 1871, when the inland wheat belts were being developed". (The 1986 printed version of the Australia article does not appear to use the term "wheat belt" in the agricultural section - it says "Wheat is usually grown in the medium rainfall belt in all states ...".)

Mitch Ames (talk) 02:01, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I fail to see why EB becomes part of the equation.. all your material above is derivative, as is the article in question, the problem is there is no evidence that the term(s) are in actual fact in common usage or understanding or wide usage to actually allow for inclusion as an entry in this encyclopedia. The article (wheatbelt australia) clings to 2 websites as sufficient proof. The reality is over time WA has been the main place for the term usage and its inclusion into books, place names etc... The victorian and south australian and australian terms are not widespread or understood or known, and should be subsumed, imho into an article that ratifies the fact of limited usage - they otherwise come over as WP:UNDUE emphasis on an exception to establish a usage, where that is probably not a good way to go JarrahTree 02:29, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I fail to see why EB becomes part of the equation.. — Encyclopædia Britannica (current/online) is an example of a current reliable source that uses the term "wheat belt" for other parts of Australia. (I don't think that the space between the words is significant in this context; if you do, please say so.)

all your material above is derivative — The appropriate term here is secondary source, as in "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources".

The article (wheatbelt australia) ... — The article is "Wheatbelt (Australia)" with a parenthetical disambiguator, so - as I explained - I don't think references to the the exact term "Australian wheatbelt" are strictly necessary, hence my citing of reliable sources (older physical books, not just "recent web inventions") that use the term "wheatbelt" in contexts that cover the whole country, not just WA.

You asked for evidence that "'Australian wheatbelt' term has been used over time" and I gave you some.

I'm not saying that the article is perfect as it is, and I'm not disagreeing that wheatbelt might more commonly refer to WA. However I don't think that WA can lay exclusive claim to the term. Feel free to update the article if you think it appropriate, just be sure to cite references that support your new wording and/or do not directly contradict the above-mentioned reliable sources. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:11, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I changed the inbound link to each of the SA and Vic redlinks to point to the Australia articel instead, and removed those red links from the dab page. There's no real difference between the surrounds of Taldra and Meringur which both have (unused?) grain silos next to former railway lines. --Scott Davis ^Talk 05:10, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

A couple of days ago, ABC local regional radio I think it was, used the term Victorian wheatbelt in a programme about bumper grain harvests, possiblt Landline - sorry cannot remember the details, but the term stuck because I had read the above discussion the day before. Aoziwe (talk) 13:29, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps once determined they could also be added to List of Australian regions? Eno Lirpa (talk) 13:18, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Missing the point - this discussion has not seen any bright spark actually come up with sufficient number of WP:RS to actually justify enough evidence to create the viability of separate regions to be adequately identified or determined as specific wheatbelts.JarrahTree 14:02, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

First you wanted "anything on trove", which I provided; then you wanted "over time and is not a recent web invention", which I provided; then you wanted "evidence that the term(s) are in actual fact in common usage or understanding or wide usage" and I pointed out that I'd just given you secondary sources; and now you want a "sufficient number"! How many references exactly do you want?! What about these:

• South Australian and Victorian wheat belt farmers on the state of grain growing
• Living in the heart of Victoria's wheat belt
• Victorian wheatbelt waiting for autumn break
• Pastures in the Victorian wheat belt : their role and management
• Pounds, shillings and suspense : the South Australian wheatbelt and the Great Depression 1929-1939
• "... every Australian wheatbelt town ..."
• "In the Australian wheat belt..."

Or are you just going to keep saying that no truly reliable source would use the term wheatbelt for anything other than WA? Mitch Ames (talk) 23:44, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

This is a totally pointless exercise taking up a vast amount of space on a national noticeboard. Either put the items in the appropriate article, or move on to something else JarrahTree 00:09, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I will just note that the decidedly Leninist bent to Student unionism in Australia noted on the talk page is still there. Can someone who can redraft an article better than me please fix it? Paul Benjamin Austin (talk) 09:34, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Please take a look at Killarney, Enoggera#References. As you will see, citation [4] has a red error message "Check date values in: access-date and date". But when I look it, I can't see anything wrong. In particular, [4] and citation [3] immediately above it are both Trove-generated citations for newspaper entries on two successive days, both generated and hence access-dated today. Apparently [3] is fine but [4] is not.

[3] <ref>{{cite news|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article174760141|title=Family Notices|date=1 April 1887|newspaper=[[The Telegraph]]|issue=4,518|location=Queensland, Australia|page=4|via=National Library of Australia|accessdate=23 December 2016}}</ref> - no errors

[4] <ref>{{cite news|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article175119645|title=Family Notices|date=31 March 1887|newspaper=[[The Telegraph]]|issue=4,517|location=Queensland, Australia|page=1|via=National Library of Australia|accessdate=23 December 2016}}</ref> - errors

I can't fathom what the problem is with [4]. Any advice most welcome. Is there something obvious that I am missing? Kerry (talk) 03:47, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Looking at my diff, it was something to do with the "space" character between 31 and March and December and 2016. It appeared as a non breaking space & n b s p ; in the output code. I just rekeyed the dates from my keyboard to fix to normal space. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:58, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@Graeme Bartlett: You can use &amp; instead of the & when typing entity codes, like this: &nbsp; - Evad37 [talk] 04:09, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

+1 Yep. Comparing the accessdate copy-pasted from [4] with it typed-out from scratch: {{#ifeq:23 December 2016|23 December 2016|same|different}} → different. BTW, for future reference, Help talk:CS1 is a good place to go for answers if you have problems with {{cite ... }} or {{citation}} templates. - Evad37 [talk] 04:04, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

In this case we need feeback to the NLA/Trove website people who coded the algorithm that is producing the erroneous template. Its not enough that it looks correct on the screen! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:14, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, true for this case now that we know whats wrong, but in general the Help talk:CS1 page is good for figuring out why error messages are showing up in citations, or why stuff doesn't appear as you think it should. - Evad37 [talk] 04:30, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for finding it. Curious, even knowing what the problem is, I cannot "see" the nbsp in the version-with-the-problem in either editor. But I don't think the problem isn't in Trove in itself (I don't think they are generating the nbsp in the citation - they don't normally). I think the problem is that when Trove is rendered in Chrome (the browser I use), the nbsp has been added in the rendering process. My "copy" of the Trove citation in Chrome copies the nbsp and then my paste into the Visual Editor retains the nbsp. This copy-and-paste from Chrome-to-VE retaining invisible characters has been a cause of other mysterious errors before; this looks like yet another one. I'll report it in the VE feedback. The workaround is to use CNTL-SHIFT-V to paste into the VE as that strips the invisible characters. I did look at the CS1 help of course, but the problem was not one of the many listed (no mention of invisible characters). Is there any way to get either editor to display the invisible characters (which seem to break lots of things)? Kerry (talk) 02:54, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Request for someone to create, or advise on how to do it: Create Wikipedia article for Sallys Flat. Wikiedit says of the place "Sallys Flat is located in the Australian state of NSW. The latitude -33.001222 and longitude 149.567131 are the decimal geo-coordinate of the Sallys Flat". Sallys Flat (Sally's Flat) has a long history and sprung up as a small gold-mining village in 1872 at the same time as nearby Hill End boomed. It produced gold for many years but was not a large producer. Residents in late 2015 were suddenly surprised to find it on an Australian Government shortlist for nuclear waste dumping ( http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-16/sallys-flat-resident-murray-price-and-an-anti-nuclear-sign/6943180). However the Government soon found the idea unpopular with locals and dropped it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.173.27.252 (talk) 05:05, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Sallys Flat, New South Wales has been created, needs more work still. --Scott Davis ^Talk 10:23, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Does anybody know much about construction comanies? What should be added to BMD Group to remove the PROD tag, or is it entirely non-notable despite being used by state governments across the country for bridges and road upgrades? --Scott Davis ^Talk 12:19, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

G'day, the article about Tom Wills, an Australian cricketer, has been nominated for a peer review. The review has been open for several months without comment, so if anyone is interested in reviewing, I'm sure that the nominator would be greatly appreciative. The review page can be found here: Wikipedia:Peer review/Tom Wills/archive1. Thank you for your time. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 04:15, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

The Glenn Lazarus article has some potential autobiography problems - an IP claiming to be Lazarus himself made sweeping positive changes and added "Content not to be changed without the EXPRESS written consent of Glenn Lazarus. www.glennlazarus.com" to the article. This was then later changed by a new account apparently claiming to be Lazarus' wife to "Please refer proposed changes to www.glennlazarus.com".

The edit summaries and such have a bit of a threatening tone so it'd probably be good to have some more eyes on that article (and to go through the changes made by the IP and the account). The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:16, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

This noticeboard is probably not the last resort - any watching admins with a good sense of WP:LEGALTHREAT should probably ramp up the protection of the article, please. Thanks to The Drovers Wife for the heads up JarrahTree 06:35, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

On past form, Glenn is a big fan of Wikipedia. WWGB (talk) 11:07, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

even if it is him , the self promotional additions raise WP:AUTOBIO concerns. No article subject controls the content on their own Wikipedia page. LibStar (talk) 11:14, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Folks, just letting you know that the 1Lib1Ref campaign is running again from 15 January - 3 February. This campaign targets librarians asking them to add one reference to some unreferenced material in a Wikipedia article to improve article quality. Slogan: Imagine a World where Every Librarian Added One More Reference to Wikipedia. While this is not a great time of year for such events here in Oz, I guess it makes sense in the northern winter.

The intention is that the librarians flag their additions to articles with the tag 1Lib1Ref in the edit summary; they are also encouraged to use that tag on social media to encourage (or shame?!) other librarians to get involved.

So why am I telling you? Three reasons.

1. There is a program of events running in Brisbane with the State Library of Queensland of awareness-raising, edit training, and mentoring for 1Lib1Ref. See WMAU Upcoming Events for dates. If anyone in Brisbane wants to be involved as a mentor, please get in touch with me.
2. Please consider talking to your local library about getting them involved in some way. Even just letting them know it is happening is a start. If you want to do any training or other presentations, I do have some training material etc that I have developed I can share with you.
3. On-wiki, please keep an eye out for any edits with the 1Lib1Ref tag and be nice to them. Thank them, send some WikiLove, and/or gently fix any mistakes they might be making. I think we can assume they will all be good faith editors, albeit inexperienced. Many will be doing this for the first time so let's make it a nice experience for them.

Thanks for anything you can do to help. Kerry (talk) 03:33, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Kerry for all you are doing for this campaign.

Is there a Wikimedian in the vicinity of Grafton, NSW who would be available to assist with a #1lib1ref talk, workshop or one-to-one assistance?

--Pru.mitchell (talk) 11:49, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

A librarian at State Library of Queensland was just telling me that there was good source material on Indigenous communities in Queensland. Good, I said, but when I checked it out, the website is more than good, not only is it good quality material, it is CC-BY licensed AND the info on each community comes with citations. So if anyone is interested in creating/expanding the relevant Wikipedia articles, jump on in and take advantage. I'm still busy with my Queensland Heritage Register projects at the moment (another Qld Govt CC-BY source material situation) or I'd be doing it myself. Kerry (talk) 04:08, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Australian editors are invited to comment at Template talk:Western Australian elections#italics. Although the specific template is Western Australian, it would apply to all Australia election year templates. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:52, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

My 10c is that MOS:EMPHASIS says "Emphasis may be used to draw attention to an important word or phrase within a sentence, when the point or thrust of the sentence may otherwise not be apparent to readers, or to stress a contrast". I think this is a situation where we are stressing a contrast. The 2017 election is not like the other elections because it has not yet happened and therefore probably should be emphasised. It may be obvious to the reader (if they are WA residents who would presumably know if they had voted already that year or not) or they may need to click through to see what the difference is, a difference that is evident in the first sentence ("will be held on ..."). I notice that we use this italicisation in other templates, e.g. infobox Australian place has fields to show the neighbouring suburbs/localities. If we look at Cottesloe, Western Australia (a coastal suburb), we see that Indian Ocean is shown as the western neighbour while Peppermint Grove etc (with no italics) are other neighbours. Thus the reader is alerted that the Indian Ocean is different to the other suburb names. This seems to be common practice in these infoboxes. I see no problem with using it in a navbox because it is advice about navigation - "you can click on this but it might not be exactly what you are expecting it to be (i.e. a past election)" - if anything, it encourages the reader to be alert to the lede when they read the article that something is not as they might expect. Kerry (talk) 08:32, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Take a look at the history of Arthur Morgan (Queensland politician). This article on the Queensland Premier from 1903 to 1906 isn't exactly a hot topic and is edited sporadically by active editors. However, since 11 January, it has been edited by 5 new accounts, one of which User:Gyoza Rain has been blocked for sockpuppeting and the other 4 have not edited any other article. Am I right to be suspicious? I note the sock master has a track record of editing Korean pop music articles (a far cry from Queensland Premiers) so not exactly a case of "looks like a duck". Most of the edits are just messing with the existing content although the most recent edit added new material. Kerry (talk) 09:28, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

My first thought was that I might be seeing a school assignment or similar but then I realised schools/universities are still on holidays, so that seems unlikely. Kerry (talk) 09:31, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

The pattern does look peculiar, and the last edit by Marchenko11 was copied directly from adb.anu.edu.au/biography/morgan-sir-arthur-7652. So I reverted it. --Gronk Oz (talk) 12:02, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

This is one of the top cited publications on Wikipedia without an article according to WP:JCW. Searching on Wikipedia reveals possible matches under alternate titles, but I'm don't know enough to say for sure that these are the same publication.

So if one of you project members could take a look at this, and create an appropriate article (or redirect), that would be much appreciated! Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:53, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I have been asked to create articles on government gazettes in Australia (and also other old journals). Hopefully a librarian is going to send me some more info in another week. The search you list does not appear to have that journal as any kind of alternate name. These gazettes are having their digitised form made available on Trove, so full text searches will be possible. We can expect the number citations using them to increase. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:02, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

It looks to me that The South Australian Government Gazette is the article you want. It doesn't say a whole lot and I don't know why the title has a "The" in it. Kerry (talk) 02:07, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

So, I see, Graeme just created it! That's why it already exists :-) Should have checked the history first. Kerry (talk) 02:13, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

And if Category:Government gazettes of Australia is an indication, we have them for NSW, Qld, SA and WA already, although they may not all discuss Trove coverage yet. Kerry (talk) 02:10, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Graham Bartlett is correct - there has been a GG section on Trove as Pending for months now JarrahTree 02:12, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I heard that the NSW GG would be the first cab off the rank (I think because someone, possible SLNSW, is funding it). My impression that, while they would like to have them all ditigised, the age-old problem of funding is the issue. Kerry (talk) 02:15, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

The South Australian Government Gazette is available in digitised from Auslig. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:50, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

My recent edit at Jack Pollard utilised the up and running version of the NSW GG today JarrahTree 06:24, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Graeme Bartlett meant Austlii not Auslig. --Scott Davis ^Talk 04:14, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi all,
For the "Sum of all Paintings" project on Wikidata we're seeking to find all available digitised catalogues (metadata, not necessarily images) of paintings in any kind of GLAM. We've found a bunch of GLAM websites in Australia already but perhaps you know of others we've missed? Please add as many as you can think of to this page, ideally if you can also indicate the number of paintings in the collection, and the URL that can be used to scrape that metadata: d:Wikidata:WikiProject_sum_of_all_paintings/Location/Australia. Wittylama 10:35, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I've added the Australian War Memorial which appears to have a web catalogue of nearly 18,000 artworks in their collection. --Canley (talk) 10:50, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Art Gallery of Ballarat (d:Q2881135), formerly Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, could be added. Has an extensive collection of Australian art. Collection page here. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 01:15, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Mattinbgn however their website doesn't have a list of works in the collection :-(

"This section of our website contains detailed information about a small sample of works in our collection. It is not a comprehensive listing of the collection. If you are interested in a particular work or artist not listed here, please contact the Gallery."

They've only got 14 artworks listed online, which is not enough to scrape. Wittylama 10:02, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Australia Day is taking its annual hit from the vandals and those with non-neutral opinions about alternative names. A little more monitoring by neutral editors would be helpful. Mitch Ames (talk) 05:41, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

With Australia Day coming up this week, it's a good time to practice a bit of patriotism. Inside of running around like a lunatic with a flag wrapped around you, why not contribute to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/The 5000 Challenge?

At the moment, we have only about 130+ achievements reported (new Australian article or expanded Australian article). As the system is set up, there are flags to wave for the various states, where the content has a connection to a state. At the moment, my rough count (by running my finger down the screen muttering "1 .. 2......3 4 5 ...") reveals 11 Australia-wide articles, 7 for NSW, 12 for Victoria, 74 for Queensland, 1 for WA, 24 for SA, and none for Tasmania, Northern Territory or ACT (ok, it doesn't add up but I said it was a rough count).

What has happened to all our Australian content writers? Still on holidays? Is the inauguration of Donald Trump arousing such strong emotions that you cannot edit? I know that WA is 2 hours behind the times, but that hardly accounts for the shortage of new/expanded articles on WA topics by our usually very active WA-ers.

The challenge commenced on 21 November 2016, so why not scroll through your contributions (you know, that link on the top right of screen) and remember what new/expanded articles you worked on since then and add them to the Achievements section of the challenge page.

And thanks to those of you who have been listing your efforts on the challenge page! Kerry (talk) 09:05, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Not sure how this works or what counts. Does this diff count? Aoziwe (talk) 12:34, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

@Aoziwe: As far as I know, it's entirely self-assessed. But I would definitely say Yes to what you did to Stephen Crean (indeed, I would say it was a lot more than enough). With a target of 5,000 new/expanded articles, I don't think you should set your bar too high! Kerry (talk) 09:24, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Kerry. Aoziwe (talk) 10:50, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Is there a bonus prize for the editor who manages the most different flags on their contributions? As a parochial South Australian, I have been surprised at my own breadth of significant contributions. --Scott Davis ^Talk 10:22, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Prizes? Well, not that I have heard about, but I guess we have plenty of time to think about it (we just broke 3% so we have a way to go). Certainly we could lash out with some barnstars for a range of worthy achievements. Maybe something like the "Widest Brownest Land Barnstar for the least parochial editor". Maybe "Sandgroper Kickstarter Barnstar for the first WA achievement by a local" (any claimants yet?). Or something similar for the Northern Territory. I hope I am in a strong position for the "Most Bendy Banana Barnstar for Queensland achievements". 14:41, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello! What do y'all think of having a bot go through and automatically assess all stubs? --SwiftyPeep (talk) 02:41, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

not unless it is a very smart bot - sub projects exist and are under-assessed - and it is likely your proposal will only do the main Australian part - I havent seen a bot assess sub projects as well to date anywhere JarrahTree 03:08, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughts on the matter. Bots that we can use are at Category:Autoassessment bots (Excluding YoBot, who is currently blocked). You have a very good point on subprojects however, I don't see that as a reason to reject this proposal as it could still be helpful even if it's only to the main Australian one. Cheers! --SwiftyPeep (talk) 03:54, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I think there are plenty of reasons to use automation for assessment. While new articles trigger a quality assessment (usually that it's a stub/start class because new articles tend to be small initially, there's nothing else really that automatically triggers any kind of subsequent review as the article develops over time. If nothing else, bots could be initally used to create lists of articles whose current human-assessment is significantly different from the machine assessment (e.g. a stub that looks like a B class) which would then serve as a trigger for human reassessment. I think if projects and subprojects were to work with the bot developers, I can't see why the bots couldn't be customised for specific projects and subprojects. I am thinking here of the Australian Roads that have certain expected sections and their road junction list. I think a bot could spit out an assessment of an article and a report of things that prevented the article from achieving the next level, e.g. "for B-class needs history section". We don't have an infinite human resource to do these assessments so a tool that focuses human effort on articles that seem to have the greatest need for re-assessment would be making best use of the human resource in terms of achieving accurate quality assessments. If the tools can indicate the issues that prevent an article achieving a higher rating, then that gives contributors a more obvious task to do rather than the more nebulous "make it better" (like the difference between citation-needed and refimprove templates - the first tells you where the need it, the second lets you guess). I think the main thing would be for the bot to add its ratings under its own banner on the Talk page and not to mess with the human ratings. Kerry (talk) 15:12, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

I'd also like to see a trigger for re-assessment when the text of the current article is >50% (or some other arbitrary threshold) different to the text of the article at the time it was last assessed. As Kerry said, new articles tend to be Stub or Start, but not reassessed even if the author doubles the article a week later. --Scott Davis ^Talk 23:48, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, but the problem lies in identifying the "article at the time it was last assessed". The WikiProject Australia banner on the Talk page does not appear to link to the specific version of the article as assessed, nor include a date/time. So as a human, you have to look at the history of the Talk page for an edit summary that suggests it might be responsible for the present tagging, confirm that it was the edit that added the current assessment and then knowing the date/time of the assessment, go to the history of the article and find the version that most recently preceded the assessment. (Aside, if the article was being actively edited at the time of the assessment, it may be that the assessment took place on the not-most-recent version but one of the slightly earlier ones - we have no way of knowing what version was showing on the assessor's screen at the time). Now, to do that automatically is an interesting problem. The main problem lies in identifying the edit on the Talk page that created the last assessment. It's possible by just working through each successive version of the Talk page to find the one that first adds the WikiProject Australia tag (let's assume we are only interested in this project for the moment), but it is somewhat harder to work out if any subsequent version has modified it. Assuming you have identified the last edit to Talk in relation to that project's assessment, it should be easy enough to find the version of the article at that time (and not possible to know if that is the one that the assessor is reading if the article is being actively edited). Once you have that version of the article, it's relatively easy to run a check of certain metrics of that version versus the current version, such as number of bytes, number of citations, number of intermediate edits, as a big change in any of these suggests a need for re-assessment. So, I would say it's probably impossible to do this perfectly but I think the accuracy should be good enough for the practical purpose of triggering a human re-assessment. The main thing is to reduce false positives (articles that are declared as showing a lot of change since last assessment when it is not the case) as that wastes human reviewer time. It is less of a problem (I think) if an article doesn't get re-assessed when it should have (given we may not have enough human resource for the re-assessments in any case. This is why I would have the tool look for considerable change to the article in the first instance and dial it down over time as progress is made on the re-assessments. Kerry (talk) 01:04, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I admit I didn't think about the challenge of determining when the article was last assessed. It's pretty simple for the vast number of articles with exactly one edit to the talk page, and an adequate approximation would be the last edit to the talk page for any pages with only wikiproject banners on the current version. If a date was added to the wikiproject template, and filled in by bots, I'd expect most humans who re-review a page would update the date at the time they change the rating, so the set of more challenging pages to identify is smaller. --Scott Davis ^Talk 01:33, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Raised the importance of Susan Kiefel to High in common with other Chief Justices of the High Court. 167.123.240.35 (talk) 02:46, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Further to Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 48#1Lib1Ref - happening 3 weeks ...

At approximately 10am today, the final day of the campaign, the State Library of Queensland passed their target of adding 1000 citations to Wikipedia articles as part of the Wikipedia Library’s #1Lib1Ref campaign which calls on every librarian to add one citation to an unsourced fact in Wikipedia. Many of the librarians at the library had not previously contributed to Wikipedia. In the case of the State Library of Queensland, I know at least 2 of their librarians who contributed over 100 citations each, one of whom made their first edit as part of this campaign.

Wikimedia Australia supported the SLQ initiative with Visual Editor training and several mentored group sessions over the 3 week campaign.

Great work, State Library of Queensland! Thank you to the Australian Wikipedians who sent welcome messages and thanks to these edits. Kerry (talk) 09:31, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

The library got pretty excited about 1Lib1Ref with comments and photos here on Twitter. Kerry (talk) 09:38, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Is the "Ask a librarian" still operating? I don't see the link anymore on talk pages. --Micha 11:33, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Should still be there for article talk pages – {{WikiProject Australia}} hasn't had any edits to that part of the code since June 2016‎. Is there a specific page or pages where the link doesn't show? - Evad37 [talk] 11:43, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Now I can see it. Was on the wrong page. - Do you know where I can get information about the success? For example how often the service was used? --Micha 12:04, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

It is very unlikely that we would be able to retrieve that sort of information - as the librarians could be at any of the participating institutions, and are not otherwise tied to the links JarrahTree 01:05, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

JarrahTree is correct. Micha, When I first proposed to the National Library reference desk staff (I was their social-media manager at the time) that answering wikipedia editors' reference enquiries would be a beneficial project, the idea was that the librarians would come ON to Wikipedia - the librarians of the National library of Israel do this with the Hebrew wikipedia (documentation). However that was not possible for a variety of reasons in Australia: one because the staff couldn't log the enquiries through their centralised system (not dissimilar to our OTRS) which is required as a publicly-funded organisation; but also because there is no 'australian specific' section of the wiki. Israel-Hebrew is a logical combination for their staff to be able to justify their time - but Australian library staff cannot justify time answering questions from any English speaker about all potential topics. So, as a result, we ended up with a system where the 'ask a librarian' external-link was placed on the talkpages of articles with the Wikiproject Australia tag. This is not particularly visible and, more importantly to your original question, simply sends the wikimedian to the Library's existing public enquiry website. It does NOT specifically track the origin of the enquiry as 'being from wikipedia' (although it is encouraged in the documentation that wikipedians state this fact, so it can be recorded un-officially) and furthermore the link to the relevant STATE library is provided as well as the National library for each time this template is shown (meaning the statistics of usage are potentially split across up to 8 libraries). From the library's perspective their work-activities have not changed, there's just now some links to the service on Wikipedia which hopefully encourage more use of it. I no longer work at the National Library but the results when I was there the actual usage wasn't very much. My assumption is that this is because a) the link is not very visible, b) requires the wikipedian to go to the mental effort to 'leave' wikipedia to a different website, and c) the interface of that website requires you to fill in a dozen fields (click 'enquire now' to see what I mean) which is normal for libraries to track abnormal for wikimedians to be asked these questions (like 'postcode'). Does that help answer the question? Wittylama 14:40, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi all,

The background:
As some of you may know, the Australian productivity commission recently handed down a report into Australian Intellectual Property law (Report), and one of its key recommendations was the introduction of the principle of Fair Use - to replace the current Australian system of Fair Dealing. This is not the first time a government inquiry has recommended this (e.g. the 2014 Australian Law Reform Commission's report Copyright and the Digital Economy).

As Australian Wikimedians, we have (arguably) some of the best practical experience in the country working with a Fair Use framework - as it is the method by which all the company logos, album covers, film posters etc. appear on English Wikipedia articles. Ironically, we have very limited experience in working with the Australian Fair Dealing system (that's the "Part VB of the copyright act" you might have seen on university handouts for example - it's a "statutory license" meaning that schools PAY for this, even for the use of free-access websites). This current system is deeply opposed by the Australian public education sector (see for example the "Fair Use And Why Australian Schools Need It" documents published by the Copyright Advisory Groups (Schools and TAFEs)) and the Libraries sector (see the Australian Libraries Copyright Council submission into this enquiry). Given Wikimedia is all about free-access to the sum of human knowledge, by rights, the Australian schools and libraries sectors are those who we ought to be supporting as best as we can.

Now, unsurprisingly, the Collecting agencies of Australia are opposed to this change - See for example the counter-arguments from the CopyrightAgencyLtd or Australian Copyright Council. They are, as expected, talking about this in the context of preserving the rights (and revenues) of Australian content creators and using emotive arguments about struggling authors to push this point. This is notwithstanding that one of the Fair Use checks is whether the usage would undermine the commercial value of the work in question. On the flip side, there has been a fair bit of support for the idea - from obvious places e.g. EFF but also from more general sources e.g. IP-Watch and these two articles by Fairfax Economics columnist Peter Martin & .

The suggestion:
Australian Wikimedians, through the vehicle of the English Wikipedia, have a massively visible platform for awareness-raising about the role of Fair Use - because so many Australians are benefiting from Fair Use every day when they read our articles, without knowing it!
Wikipedia is neutral as a matter of core policy, but we are also deeply activist as a matter of supporting free-access to knowledge.
So, I'm wondering if the Australian Wikimedia community would be interested in "getting involved" in this area of public policy advocacy??

Specifically - here's the idea I thought might be practical, and powerful. I'm asking your thoughts about whether you think it's a good idea in the general sense. Please don't pre-emptively shoot it down on technical minutiae, I'm aware that some software (as well as communications) work would be needed to make it happen.

For all the media files on English Wikipedia that are a) are in the category Category:All non-free media, b) when they are viewed from an Australian IP address, c) by a non-logged in user,
we overlay them with a graphic that says something to the effect of:

This image is illegal to view in Australia under copyright law
Click here learn why and how you can change that. Show me anyway.

Clicking the 'learn why' would take you to a page (on meta?) describing Fair Use etc, and linking off to the lobbying campaigns of our allies (petitions, contact your MP etc.). The 'show me anyway' would dismiss the graphic and show the original Fair Use image.

The idea here is to make Australians aware that they are already benefiting from Fair Use. Furthermore, unlike the SOPA blackout this can be targeted to only people who are affected (Australians viewing Fair Use content), be dismissible, and run for any period that allied organisations are making lobbying efforts (rather than a fixed 24 hours). Clearly, this idea (specifically the start/stop times, and the wording) would need to be coordinated carefully with organisations who could do the 'heavy lifting' of communicating with the press such as the ALCC - they are the lawyers, not us. Also, it would require the support of WMF-Legal as I imagine filtering a banner/graphic on the basis of IP-range has privacy policy concerns, not to mention the act of political advocacy in general.

Obviously it would be importantly also to have the support of Wikimedia Australia (i'd say actually that it would be mandatory) but this would first-and-foremost be an on-Wikipedia action and therefore would require the consensus of Australian Wikipedian editors.

If this is a super-dumb idea, please don't shoot me. But if it's a good one that needs some tweaks, please say so. I just think we're in an excellent position to lobby for some improvements to Australian copyright law because we already have the platform and already have a massive category of Fair Use content that Australians are accessing every day.

Sincerely, Wittylama 15:44, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Witty lama for your well thought out response to the issue. I do hope others respond as well. I do think that it is well worth considering. One small problem is at this time of the year many Australian editors disappear from here into shopping hysteria like the rest of the country.... there might be a delay of responses... JarrahTree 23:36, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm not an editor, but an academic working on copyright reform, and work for civil society organisations that are active on the issue (Creative Commons Australia and Digital Rights Watch). We would welcome the support of WP & Wikimedia in advocating for the public interest in upcoming copyright debates. Bringing the importance of fair use to the attention of Australian users is an excellent idea. There are some legal issues - i.e. that some uses of the non-free media may already be permitted under Australian fair dealing law, but it's still an important point. The other really useful point that the WP community can make here is to show that fair use is not uncertain: that with a few guidelines, it's actually relatively easy to apply the legal rules to different situations. Nicsuzor (talk) 23:48, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

While I support introducing fair use in Australia, I don't think that Wikipedia should get involved in national politics in this way. This is a contested issue (this article on The Conversation does a good job of discussing the debate), with some content owners raising legitimate concerns about the Productivity Commission's recommendations - see this op-ed, for instance. As such, we cannot assume that Australian Wikipedia editors as a group support what the Productivity Commission has proposed. Wikimedia Australia and individual editors should advocate for this change, but Wikipedia shouldn't. Nick-D (talk) 07:58, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

hi Nick-D, thanks for taking the time to comment. I'm not assuming that all Australian editors as a group already support the introduction of Fair Use to Australian law - that's why I'm asking what people think (of both the general principle and of this specific suggestion) here. This thread is to seek some form of [initial] consensus in that regard. I do assume that because we're already practitioners and beneficiaries of a Fair Use system, that we would be more informed about its benefits/risks that the general Australian population: if any group of non-lawyer Australians can speak about how fair use works in practice, it's us!

I know that political lobbying has been done (eg for Freedom of Panorama legislation) on various language editions of WP, but I don't know if there's ever been any geo (IP) targeted advocacy before.

I should also note that the Producivity Commission report recommends a whole range of things to do with IP, not just Fair Use, (including things like confirming that 'circumventing geoblocking is not a copyright infringement' - see page 28 of the report for a summary table of all recommendations). However this suggestion here that Australian WP editors might like to get involved is specifically and only related to Fair Use - given that it is the thing that we already promote by default in Australia through our use of it on en.wp. Wittylama —Preceding undated comment added 10:58, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I see this as raising two question, one is how the Wikipedia community reacts to the potential changes and how Wikimedia Australia reacts to the potential changes. In an ideal world they should be the same but WMAU is bound by the requirement of representing its members the larger the members base the stronger the voice WMAU can speak with, everyone is welcome to join WMAU. I'll watch this discussion with a keen interest to see what evolves as a WP contributor, as a member of the community, an outreach project leader and as President of WMAU. As yet WMAU has no agreed position and any members of the chapter or committee are speaking as individuals. Gnangarra 11:05, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

" ... WMAU is bound by the requirement of representing its members ..."
@Gnangarra:Which "requirement" in particular? Mitch Ames (talk) 13:00, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia Australia is an Incorporated member organisation and charity it represents the interests, and furthers aims of its members, this is the primary purpose of all incorporated associations. Gnangarra 13:04, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Further comments at User talk:Gnangarra#Wikimedia Australia's primary purpose, if anyone's interested, because it's off-topic here. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:19, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Personal attack noted and deleted, Merry Christmas Gnangarra 00:10, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

My refutation of this accusation of personal attack is at User talk:Mitch Ames § December 2016 Mitch Ames (talk) 02:53, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Gnanarra. You're quite right - there are two potential (and partially overlapping) communities who could "do" something in this regard - the Chapter and the Editing Community - each with its own tools and constraints. WM-AU has previously been involved in submissions to government enquiries (e.g. our Submission on Australian Digital Future Directions paper in 20009) - which does mention Fair Use in passing - but the time for official comment/submission to this current enquiry is now over. At this point it's a question of publicity and lobbying (both in the positive and negative senses of those words) by interested stakeholders to encourage the Federal parties to actually turn these recommendations into a Bill, and then to actually vote on it in parliament... The Copyright industry is most certainly already doing this (see for example their "free is not fair" campaign). So, yeah, aside from this on-wiki suggestion, it would be good if WM-AU as an Chapter could do something in supporting this - perhaps a press-release or letter of support that our aforementioned allies could help to bolster their own work? Wittylama 12:13, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

• I think this is an excellent idea, and I'd love to see it carried out. Am not a very active Wikipedian, so I'll watch for feedback from others. --Sanglorian (talk) 00:38, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

• Again, not a regular editor here, but someone who has worked closely with Wikimedia over the years and now works on copyright reform. If Wikimedia Australia does agree to support this suggestion, the organisation I work for, the Australian Digital Alliance could provide support in terms of materials to link to. We already have a series of CC-licensed videos and have plans for fair use mythbusting documents. If you want a partner, we're interested. Damph (talk) 12:12, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

• I'm supportive of a change to our regulations. But if we do write a message, I don't think it should state that *viewing* an image hosted under US fair use on US-hosted Wikipedia is *illegal* for Australians unless we have a strong legal opinion that says so. I doubt it's true. --99of9 (talk) 04:30, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks to the people who have commented here. It seems that, while there's certainly not an overwhelming or vociferous support for the idea, there is a general degree of positivity for the general concept across the comments (with the exception of Nick-D which I acknowledge). I agree with Nicsuzor and 99of9's points that the *wording* of any such notice (and landing-page) would need to be carefully constructed to be both 'good design' and 'legally accurate'. Perhaps an good text to overlay would be, simply, "FAIR USE" and people could click through to find out what that means (or click the 'x' to dismiss the overlay and see the image itself).

I particularly thank Damph for offering that the Australian Digital Alliance could be the formal partner/supporter of this concept. And, I believe, if this idea would work it would be absolutely crucial for an external professional organisation that is *already* active in this lobbying-space would be the leader. This is not an area that Wikipedians or Wikimedia-Australia is capable of "owning" even if we wanted to, but it IS something Wikipedia can direct attention to the existing work of others like the ADA.

This leads me to three questions:

1. Would WMF legal department (e.g. User:Slaporte_(WMF)) be able to say that the idea of geo-targeting an overlay on Fair-use tagged images, for the Australian IP-range, to logged-out readers, for a few weeks(?), is both technically possible and legally allowable within of the Wikipedia terms of use/privacy policy?
2. Would Damph be able to say that the text of the landing page could be written by the ADA and public-facing communication be coordinated by them - and what is the timeframe for starting/finishing any such campaign?
3. And if these first two questions were "yes", how would Australian-Wikipedians here recommend that a fair community-consensus for approval or rejection of the proposal be reached?

Sincerely, Wittylama 13:03, 23 January 2017 (UTC).

Hi all - in response to Wittylama I can confirm that I've talked to the ADA Board and we are very keen on the project if you are. I think launching in March would be best. Public consultation on the proposed PC changes closes next week, so that will be the period when the government is making a decision about any response. We can certainly provide a landing page, which we would edit in consultation with WM-AU. It would be on a fairly slim website, with the aforementioned fair use videos, a few fair use fact sheets ("what is fair use?" "mythbusting" etc) and probably a call to arms for people to write to or phone certain parliamentarians. Does that sound like what you had in mind? Damph (talk) 23:34, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

The colour poster on this page "1920s poster for the Group Settlement Scheme" is totally incorrect in the context of this article. This poster is dated around 1913 for a different land settlement scheme - the Ready-made Farms scheme of the Midland Railway Company. It has nothing to do with the Group Settlement Scheme at all. The image is sourced from: http://www.carnamah.com.au/ready-made-farms. The solution is to remove the image, then the article will be more correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Copeboox (talk • contribs) 11:22, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

I suggest you take this up with the State Library of Western Australia, from which the image was sourced. --AussieLegend (✉) 12:07, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

removed image - the Midland Railway Scheme was totally separate from what is known as the group settlement scheme - JarrahTree 12:14, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Following their success in having group sessions for #1Lib1Ref (over 1000 citations were added, hurray for SLQ!), the State Library of Queensland is hosting a Qld Wiki Club afternoon from 12 noon to 3pm next Monday 6 March at The Edge at the State Library of Queensland in sunny Brisbane. The Edge is not in the main State Library Building but in an adjacent building (see map).

There are a number of iMacs available for use or you can BYO laptop. The theme is Qld Women (in honour of International Women’s Day), but all are welcome regardless of what topic you are working on.

My apologies for the short notice but I only learned of it when I returned from holidays. If you can interested in coming, can you RSVP me with an indication of whether you will BYO or use one of their iMacs as that helps with the room setup.

Thanks Kerry (talk) 07:35, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I am in the process of creating some stubs on notable Qld Women for the Wiki Club session on Monday for use by the less experienced contributors, using the Australian Dictionary of Biography as the single citation (edit summary will mention Wiki Club). Can you all please resist your enthusiasm to improve them until after Monday 6 March 2017? Thanks Kerry (talk) 02:53, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Editors are invited to contribute at Talk:Fremantle West End Heritage area#Requested move 6 March 2017. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:38, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Today as I worked through my watchlist I found a number of articles with really messed-up citations. So like a good citizen, I tried to fix them by clicking the URL and retrieving the fields like title, author, source date, etc. My problem is that many (all?) of our NewsCorp only allow a few articles to be retrieved each day and then you hit the paywall. This is increasingly impacting on my ability to both manage my watchlist and create new content. If it was just one newspaper, I'd probably be willing to pay for a digital subscription, but unfortunately it's many different newspapers. Are other people experiencing this problem? If you know of a solution, please let me know here or by email as you prefer. Kerry (talk) 07:13, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

A lot of this content should be available online through the likes of Factiva and EbscoHost which are available with a library card from the NLA or pretty much any state library system in the country. Hack (talk) 07:22, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm finding it to be a real problem with citations to The Australian now that their paywall is so strict and widely applied. Hack, is Factiva's database updated frequently? I've generally treated it as a historical resource, but I might be able to get more from it! Nick-D (talk) 07:48, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I tried to use the online The Australian available through ProQuest via the State Library of Queensland but all I have to work with is a naked URL, e.g. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/safe-schools-coalition-mps-label-review-a-joke-storm-out-of-briefing/news-story/4a1b1726f14d02366517c85dc50ab050 (from George Christensen (politician) an article full of minimal citations that I have been cleaning up all day until I ran into the paywall).

Giving ProQuest the URL as search string doesn't work (unsurprisingly), using keywords "safe schools coalition mps label review a joke" as keywords (extracted from the URL) produces hundreds of results or nothing at all. My problem here is NOT that I am looking for any article on the topic but for a specific article that was cited. Kerry (talk) 07:57, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that every story in The Australian over recent months includes those words ;) Nick-D (talk) 10:04, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I always access news sites that provide a limited number of articles to view using my browser's "private/incognito" mode. It works for the NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, The New Yorker, etc, but I haven't used that method for The Australian or other News Corp publications. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 08:26, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Great idea, but alas not for The Australian it seems. I went straight to the paywall in incognito mode. Kerry (talk) 09:04, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Assuming you already have the URL of the article, you can simply paste that URL into Google's search and then click the first result – voila, you will have avoided News Corp's paywall. Try it with the URL for the Safe Schools article mentioned above as an example. Jenks24 (talk) 09:05, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

When I do it, I get the paywall. I tried using other browsers, same thing, I hit the paywall. Were you already hitting the paywall when you tried it as describe above, because if not, it worked because you hadn't used up your quota of free hits. Kerry (talk) 03:42, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

You could try viewing the Google cache of the article. Hack (talk) 03:50, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Using the URL didn't work (as soon as Chrome sees a URL, it immediately load it and hits the paywall), BUT if I typed in the key words from the URL, then the Google cache result for the desired URL worked beautifully. Thanks for idea! Kerry (talk) 04:10, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Maybe try clearing any cookies relates to these sites and/or clear your cache. Another potential away around this, once you can view the article, is to take a screen-shot of the entire article, e.g. using the Screengrab! program on Firefox, then uploading the screen-shot to an image-hosting site such as imgur.com and linking to there for the citation.Nqr9 (talk) 02:01, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that publishing even an image of the page would have copyright issues. Mike (talk) 05:04, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Usually just going into developer console, highlighting the paywall and deleting the element usually works, but it might be too much of a hassle.--Dark-World25 (talk) 21:13, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Hope this discussion doesn't get lost in the noise above, but the ABS has announced that the official release of 2016 census data is scheduled for Tuesday, 27 June 2017 - see here. As thousands (tens of thousands?) of articles use ABS census data, updating these articles will be a massive undertaking and some pre-planning and preparation may assist in this work.

I am not sure what part of, if any, Wikidata project could play in this updating, but this may be a project that it could assist with. I understand that ABS data is released under a Creative Commons licence - see here. Happy to hear the thoughts of those much more au fait with Wikidata, the ABS and licencing than I. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 00:53, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I believe it should be possible to get a datacube from the ABS (which will be suitably CC-licensed) and then strip it back to the stuff we want and then ingest that into a set of Wikidata property values. It is then just a simple matter of updating the population for every state, lga, town, suburb, locality to call on the relevant Wikidata property to provide the population information in the articles. While it is "simple" intellectually, it is likely to be a truckload of work in practice. I suspect we will need to modify the Template:infobox Australian place to have the option of using the Wikidata property for the population or to supply it manually (as there will inevitably be situations where the automated result fails, is wrong, etc). We will probably also need a templated sentence for use in the text to provide the population data with the same automatic-vs-manual options. In an ideal world, I would prefer if we didn't throw away the 2011 census data but save it for a population table or similar. When I update anything to 2011 data, I usually save the old 2001/2006 data in the History section. It would be nice to have tables or graphs in the article showing population data from 2001 to 2016. But yes we need to plan all this and it's good to start this discussion now. Kerry (talk) 04:29, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

It should be possible to keep a history of the various population figures on Wikidata, see the entry for New York City for instance, which gives figures based on the US census. What may help is linking the various Wikidata items to the Census' own suburb identifiers (for instance, Chermside West, Queensland = code SSC30358), it should be possible to get a fair chunk of these by having a bot go through the articles and pulling them from the URL used in the reference for the census figures. The two main problems would be ensuring the data quality of the code-gathering process, and getting a suitable property set up at Wikidata to store this value. Then, once the census comes out, it should be easy enough for us to automatically add a "2016" value for population using the value of that particular property.

Sounds simple in theory, but probably there's a few spanners that would be thrown in the works in practice. The (potentially spicy) discussion about whether we then source the infobox data here at Wikipedia from the figures from Wikidata could then be approached. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:04, 3 March 2017 (UTC).

I've been working and preparing for this release on this for some time in Wikidata, putting in the 2011 census population with a "point in time" qualifier of 9 August 2011, and a link to the censusdata reference. The advantage of this is that it links each Wikidata entity to the SSC or other ID. The IDs will change for the 2016 release but the ABS provides a key to link across years. Once the ABS releases the data the quickstatements tool can be used to import the data fairly quickly. So I think the main tasks are to work out out how to make a Wikidata call in the infoboxes, then it should be possible to just update the populations with an import into Wikidata, and the Wikidata calls in the thousands of articles should update automatically. --Canley (talk) 09:28, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I can answer part of that. The template call {{#property:p1082}} should should return the value for property p1082 (population) for the article it is in. For example, a little experiment shows me that the property value for Bundaberg is the string "70,540±0". I don't know at this moment how we strip off the "±0" but I am guessing there is a way. So this is the call we would need to put the pop field in the infobox. Similarly we would have to extract the "point in time" and "reference URL" from the property value to get the pop_year and the pop_footnotes. We would probably want a template to put in the lede para to write out this information in a standard sentence. I think that where we have the population data in Wikidata this should all work fine. The problems are more likely to arise when we don't have population data in Wikidata. Kerry (talk) 11:04, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Take a look at Template:Wikidata for more information on all of this. Kerry (talk) 11:06, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Great, thanks! I just experimented with it too and it worked really well. I'll investigate further about showing qualifiers and other details. Regarding the "±0", I have been removing them if I see them (they were originally applied by default to integers but that seems to have changed recently, or you had to include the ±0 to stop it from assuming a range of ±1), but I have seen a bot removing them for integer fields where there is no need for a tolerance range. --Canley (talk) 00:28, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

@Canley: Ahh, this is really excellent. Is this sort of thing what you had in mind for everywhere? Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:46, 3 March 2017 (UTC).

Ah, Glenorchy, I did that a few days ago! Yes, exactly that, but for EVERYWHERE! I have been adding populations, postcodes and areas for suburbs to Wikidata manually so far, but I've been building up a database of populations, postcodes, LGAs, electoral districts and divisions for every place in Australia. I have done some tentative bulk imports already such as all Tasmanian postcodes; cleaning up names, type of settlement and descriptions; and ACT electoral districts which have all worked well, so I should just bite the bullet and do it I suppose! I've been mainly concentrating on the electoral stuff so far which is probably why I haven't done it yet. --Canley (talk) 10:18, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Some estimate on the scope:

• I extracted just over 5,000 entities which were subclasses of human settlement in Australia from Wikidata. Can probably use Petscan to pick up Wikidata entities which are not properly classified using the categories.
• The 2011 census releases contain about 8,500 SSCs.
• Australia Post lists 9,786 places with postcodes.
• The Infobox Australian place template is transcluded 10,937 times on the English Wikpedia.

--Canley (talk) 10:36, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I have the following comments based on the experience of starting a number of articles for suburbs and localities in South Australia as well as adding to articles started by others. Firstly, SSC usually have no resemblance to gazetted suburbs and localities and would appear to be based on ABS logistic requirements - please refer the article that I started for the locality of Custon, South Australia where I found that Custon and two adjoining localities share a SSC. Secondly, the same issue exists with postcodes as these can be shared by a number of suburbs and localities rather than by one specific place - a good example is localities on Kangaroo Island. Finally, I found that the only reliable useable data published by ABS is the population of LGAs. Regards Cowdy001 (talk) 19:50, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

It would be fantastic if we could take the opportunity of the 2016 update to ensure that our use of SSC census data is factually correct - because the SSC district boundaries have so little in common with the actual gazetted boundaries of the places our articles are on, using that figure without further explanation can lead to highly misleading results. A bunch of people have flagged this problem over the years and struggled to work out what to do about it, but (IMO) Cowdy001 is the only one so far who has come up with a good solution - see Ballast Head, South Australia for an example, which explains in a footnote that one SSC figure in fact refers to the total of ten localities on Kangaroo Island. I'd love to see that approach get rolled out nationwide. The Drover's Wife (talk) 20:32, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, that's a really good way to approach it and I agree this would be the time to standardise how this situation is handled. The ABS works out the confidence value for the accuracy of SA1 boundaries, so perhaps we could set a threshold for use of the SSC (as "good enough" for representation of population or area) such as acceptable or higher (> 75%)—74% of SSCs meet this threshold in the 2011 data, 65.4% if threshold is good or higher. I can also work out which GLs/SA1s have been aggregated into SSCs, so that we know which articles to include the agreed text notes on. --Canley (talk) 23:17, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Agreed re SSCs - once you get out of the metro area or even to the outskirts of one, they stop making much sense. In general they *do* work in urban areas though, although there can sometimes be disagreement between a suburb's boundary and the shape of a CCD. And in rural areas, only significant towns get their own CCD (and for those, it's better to use the Urban Centre/Locality population anyway). Orderinchaos 04:37, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

The article Manufacturing in Australia is out-of-date, mostly unsourced and has poor wording at times. This topic area is really not a speciality of mine. Would anyone with more knowledge on the subject matter be able to assist? AusLondonder (talk) 08:05, 19 March 2017 (UTC)