Portal talk:New Zealand/Archive 2

Selected article suggestions

 * Can we have Military history of New Zealand or ANZAC Day (or similar) up, on the week of the 25th April ? Brian | (Talk) 10:30, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * No problem. The ANZAC day article seems to have only Australian pictures, so I'm going for Military History, but there'll be another opportunity next year for ANZAC Day. I was thinking of using the NZ forces in Iraq picture to illustrate military history; would that be a problem? We had Battle of Gallipoli as the selected article in August last year.-gadfium 18:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Agathis australis (aka Kauri) ~ Papeschr 07:00, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Jonah Lomu ~ Papeschr 07:00, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Tamati Waka Nene ~ Papeschr 07:00, 29 March 2006 (UTC) (actually nominated earlier than now)
 * All now in the queue.-gadfium 08:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Selected picture suggestions

 * Image:Mmp-poster.jpg (Electoral reform in New Zealand)
 * This is a fair use image, and also is primarily text. Should it qualify as a selected picture?-gadfium 09:29, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * That's a good point about fair use, forgot about that! Which probably means it can't be used.  But I don't think being primarily text should rule anything out.  It is, afterall, featured pictured not featured oh-golly-doesn't-that-look-beautiful!  --Midnighttonight 09:37, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd like others' opinions about text images becoming selected images for this portal, and also about using "fair use" images. I'm willing to use fair use images to illustrate a news story, but I don't think they should become selected images.-gadfium 04:58, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Selected article suggestion
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu should be made the Selected article :-) --LeftyG 02:29, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
 * It needs a picture before I'll consider it. I nowiki'd your smiley above as a leading colon makes the text indent. Here's another way to do a smiley: .-gadfium 03:46, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * There’s always a Unicode one at U+263A (though not as large it can be used anywhere) ☺ Barefootguru 07:28, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Confused-tpvgames.gif]] NO NO NO!! Not everyone reads wikipedia in a unicode font! Use images from: Emoticon [[Image:Misc-tpvgames.gif]]
 * PS: gadfium's template was broken so i had fun repairing it  ~ ~ Papeschr 12:47, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Cinema of New Zealand illustration
This article is due to be the selected article on the portal page next week. Which picture should we use to illustrate it? Some of the contenders are:
 * Image:Goodbye Pork Pie Poster.jpg
 * The article describes Goodbye Pork Pie as the coming-of-age of New Zealand cinema, and it's fairly well known in NZ, but probably not well known overseas.
 * Image:One Were Warriors.jpg
 * Another movie fairly well known, probably better known outside NZ than GPP. Distictively NZ.
 * Image:LOTRROTKmovie.jpg
 * Very well known internationally and used to promote NZ tourism, but isn't actually set in the country we know.
 * Image:Kongcomparison.jpg
 * Topical, but probably not associated with NZ to most people overseas.
 * Others? The Piano? The Whale Rider?

Please comment on which picture you'd like to see.

I'd also like some photos for the Cuisine of New Zealand article. I'm serious about putting up Image:Vegemiteontoast large.jpg if no one can provide a better picture.-gadfium 18:35, 1 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I like the idea of Image:Goodbye Pork Pie Poster.jpg- as it was NZ's first notable film, but whale rider, will also be fine, as it was a world hit. Brian | (Talk) 07:25, 2 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I would go with The Whale Rider--Konstable 10:33, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The Whale Rider. It is distinctively New Zealand, and well-known. ~ ~ Papeschr 12:05, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Queue implemented for New Zealand Portal
I've put a queue system in place for the selected article (and will shortly put it in place for the featured picture). Wikipedia will automatically update these articles at midnight on Saturday UTC (1 pm Sunday local time) Sunday UTC (1 pm Monday local time), assuming I've set it up correctly. Rotation of items in DYK will still need to be done manually, and I'm not quite game to try and set up an automatic update of ITN a month in advance.-gadfium 04:30, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia believes it's still week 3. Maybe it uses a Monday-based week, although it counts Sunday as the zeroth day.-gadfium 00:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Category:Living people
For biographies of contemporaries, you may want to use CategoryIntersect.php with "New Zealand people" ∩ "Living people". -- User:Docu

Wikinews New Zealand Portal
Would any one mind if I put a link to the wikinews portal (n:Portal:New Zealand) on the portal page? (eg next to the Maori Wikipedia link) Brian | (Talk) 00:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * We already have that link in the current events pane. It shouldn't be in both places, but I have no objection if it gets moved next to the Maori Wikipedia link.-gadfium 05:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * How about repacing the "Other connected wikipedia" with:

I left wikiquote, and wikionary out has they don't have New Zealand cats (etc) Ihe template is in my userspace (User:Brian New Zealand/nzp) if it gets used will have to be moved :) and the Related Wikimedia removed and put on the portal has a title Brian | (Talk) 11:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Brian, I think your suggestion is excellent and it would like to see the links at the bottom of the page. I am ready to start contributing a lot of pictures and images from now on and it would make it easier for me (and no doubt others) to find those resources by having those links - also I think it looks more polished than the one link we have now :) Tom Webb 21:25, 5 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Since this proposal has been here for a few days without opposition, I suggest Brian goes ahead and makes the changes.-gadfium 22:06, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I have moved it to Portal:New Zealand/Related WikiMedia, and have made the changes. Feel free to "polish" it Brian | (Talk) 00:22, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Featured portals
Now that Portal:Australia has become a featured portal, I asked User:Cyberjunkie what it might take for this portal to follow suit. Please see the conversation at User talk:Cyberjunkie, and feel free to comment here.-gadfium 05:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I added archive links to Featured Picture Section. Tom Webb 10:02, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I decided to trim the Selected Picture links down to just the archive, and not have links to the last few pictures as we do with the last few articles. This is because the pictures by themselves are less meaningful without the writeup than the selected articles are. I see that the Australian portal doesn't have the last few articles either, but I think this is worthwhile for people who don't visit the portal regularly to see at a glance the range of articles we show. The cycle of four topics, with a city and a bio every fourth selected article, and the display of the last three, so there's always a city and a bio there, is deliberate.

The Australian portal also has "Read more..." to link to the selected article and the article associated with the selected picture. This was also introduced on the main page recently. Should we do so as well? It seems some people don't realise that the bolded link at the top of the writeup leads to the full article. I'd be inclined to add (more...) at the end of the last para than put the link down by the archive link.

Of the four things I suggested on Cyberjunkie's talk page were needed before we tried for featured portal. we've now done three of them: The fourth item, making the edit links more visible in each pane, Cyberjunkie thought unnecessary. I suggest we go for the nomination in a few days when we've agreed on Brian New Zealand's template change suggested above.
 * Link to the selected picture archive from the selected picture pane
 * Get more people involved
 * Update ITN more frequently

Finally, as a courtesy, and also as a way of promoting the portal, I'm going to start dropping a note on the talk page of the users who contributed largely to the selected article / took the selected photo / wrote the paragraph with the new DYK. If someone else would like to assist or take on this task, that would be great. It will require a few minutes every Monday afternoon / evening, and a bit more the first time to think up some suitable wording. I was thinking the note could thank them for their work, point them to the portal with a few words of explanation about what a portal is, and suggest that they nominate other articles / pictures / DYK facts at the appropriate place. If they've written a DYK which meets the Main Page DYK standards, it might be worth pointing them at that too. If someone's already received a similar note for an earlier selection, they need to get a trimmed down note for subsequent ones.-gadfium 18:51, 5 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Gadfium, I am happy to assist with keeping the ITN updated (probably daily) on a regular basis. Is there a 'standard' that I should adhere too? I added a couple yesterday (Lee Tamahori), etc.


 * Also I must say I'm sorry, as I tried to be helpful last night by adding the link to picture archive as per CyberJunkie's suggestion, and noted this morning from overnight edits that I fouled up the portal's look. Thankfully someone corrected that overnight! At least we now have another suggestion ticked off the list. I support the idea of showing (more...) on the featured article as well, as I believe that newbies to Wikipedia may not 'know' that there is more to the article (I know I thought that the featured article was just that - the paragraph of the front of the Portal page!). I would like to assist you with DYK suggestion. Can you point me to what is involved and I'll see what I can do.


 * Any assistance in helping me to help out is welcome. I want to see NZ Portal as a 'premier' portal when people look at Wikipedia. Also when and if Wikipedia want to publish a DVD then I would like all the NZ articles to make the grade by being the best that they can be and exceeding the Wikipedia standards. Tom Webb 21:45, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Tom, you're doing great on ITN. The instructions are in comments at the top of the ITN markup. If possible, add a bolded link to an article which has been updated with the story, but if we're going to move to near-daily updates, that's not likely to be feasible in all cases. For example, the earthquake you've just added isn't worthy of an article 2006 Hawke's Bay earthquake, and probably isn't worth adding to the Hawke's Bay article. If we had a List of earthquakes in New Zealand article, it would be worth bolding a link to that, but it isn't worth starting such an article. Accordingly, I suggest you unbold the link to Hawke's Bay and reserve bold links for when the article has been updated in accordance with the story.
 * I may have been a little hasty here. In fact, it would be nice to have an article or list on Earthquakes in New Zealand, although it certainly wasn't necessary to write one just for that news story. I came across a couple of helpful sites yesterday when I was expanding Napier earthquake: and . I suspect there's plenty of material out these if anyone wants to tackle it.-gadfium 19:56, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Most stories should be copied to the Current events in Australia and New Zealand. The story will often need slight rewording to give it more context - I would expect people there to recognise Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin as NZ cites, and Helen Clark as our PM, but otherwise the words "New Zealand" should probably be in the story on that page. Also, they require a link to an external source (or Wikinews).


 * You might like to add your name to the list of maintainers at Portal/Directory.
 * Have added my name to the list - thanks for that.Tom Webb 00:28, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I'll come back to talk about DYK and user acknowlegements later this afternoon.-gadfium 00:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the posting Gadfium. To clarify - the ITN items should be 'major' items that could be added to the appropriate article that is highlighted? If that is the case then I will only add 'newsworthy' items that would add something to the main article highlighted. That would possible mean that I would also have to add that ITN item to the main article as well? Tom Webb 00:28, 6 February 2006 (UTC)


 * How major a news item should be to appear on ITN is not currently defined. If we want to have near-daily updates, then we will have to include some news stories that are not worth adding to articles. If an ITN story refers to an article which has been updated to include the story, then the link to that article in ITN should be bolded. (Usually you will have to update the article yourself, although sometimes I've been pleasantly surprised to find a current event already in the relevant article. It looks like the Lee Tamahori article was in that category, unless you were one of the anons who updated it. Sometimes you might have to write a substantial article just so you can include a news story in it - I wrote Gay rights in New Zealand despite having no expertise in the area, just so I could link to it from the ITN story about gay sperm donors.)


 * The bolding is a hint to the reader that they can find out more about the news story by clicking it. This convention comes from the main page ITN section. We have lower standards than the main page, however (otherwise we'd be recyling a handful of articles on 19th century architects as our featured article on the portal page), so it's acceptable to have some stories which don't have an updated article. These stories should still refer to Wikipedia articles as background, but the links shouldn't be highlighted.


 * If possible, include a picture with one of the news stories. There's a sample image markup in the comments at the top of ITN which might even be suitable for the next news story.


 * As a suggestion, any story which leads the national news for the day in the major newspapers or tv news is probably worth considering for ITN. I have chosen to ignore murders and other crime stories in the past, no matter how much publicity they get, but mass shootings such as Aramoana would of course be included. I've included relatively few sports stories as I have little personal interest in sports. My personal criteria are not policy, however, it's up to you to decide what's worth including, and you'll maybe get feedback if anyone dislikes your choice of stories. I don't recall anyone ever telling me they didn't think a story I put up was worthwhile, but I don't recall any praise either. (I have had praise for the portal overall).


 * Looking at this morning's Herald, the first story is on the man accused of murdering a NZ academic in England, the next relevant story is "Peaceful start to Waitangi day", and under "National News" there's an Ombudsman ruling on prison site notifications. I'd ignore the first, leave the second until tonight when a more general story on the events of Waitangi Day is available, and if I really wanted a story immediately I'd use the third. I'd also check stuff.co.nz, and maybe radionz.co.nz, newstalkzb.co.nz, tvnz.co.nz, and scoop.co.nz. Often one site will have news the others don't cover.


 * If we are updating ITN more frequently, we may want to make the pane longer so we can fit in more stories at a time. Of course, the pane automatically stretches to accomodate its contents, but the balance between sides of the portal page may be thrown off. We can adjust this by making the selected article blurb longer, or we could move one of the other panes on the right side - maybe the categories one - to be a full width pane at the bottom of the page.-gadfium 02:11, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Yay! We made Featured portal!-gadfium 07:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Courtesy notes
As I suggested in the section above, I plan to drop notes on the talk page of the user who contributed the photo used in selected pictures, and the user who made the major contribution to the article in selected articles. I've now done this for the current selections: see User_talk:Sperling and User_talk:Robin_Patterson. For future messages, please suggest improved wordings here.

I was also planning to drop a note for items we use in DYK, but the newest item was added by Grutness, who's one of the maintainers of this portal, and I would have felt funny leaving him such a note. Please also suggest suitable wordings for DYK notes here. The message used for the front page DYK, which inspired this strategy from me, is as &#123;{UpdatedDYK}}-gadfium 07:54, 6 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I've dropped a note for the New Zealand mud snail used in DYK at User talk:Phantombantam. I've thanked User:Lisiate for Michael Joseph Savage, and User:Geocachernemesis for the current picture (although he hasn't edited since mid September). I won't bother listing future courtesy notes here.-gadfium 23:37, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Oceania
I've put down some thoughts about this proposed portal at Portal talk:Oceania. Please come and comment.-gadfium 05:53, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Picture wanted for Music of New Zealand
Can someone get me a better picture for the Music of New Zealand article? I think I'll remove the article from the list of proposed selections until it has one.-gadfium 22:05, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Topics section
It's been raised as an objection at Wikipedia:Featured_portal_candidates/Portal:New_Zealand that we need a topics section. I'd like some feedback on whether this is necessary, and on the suggested layout below. This is shamelessly cribbed from the P:AU page. Feel free to add to it.
 * I personaly don't like it/ or see a need for it, but.... Brian | (Talk) 09:21, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Also if we are going to have Republicanism, to meet NPOV we should have Monarchist page. (I'm not sure if we currently have an article on that, I know we have one on Monarchist League of New Zealand if need be I could have a go at strating one). Brian | (Talk) 09:30, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
 * If there's an article on Monarchism in New Zealand, then the portal should give it equal space. The Monarchist League isn't quite the same thing, and the Portal isn't responsible for lack of coverage of NZ articles. The Australian Topics section includes Republicanism but not Monarchism.


 * However, the simplest solution is to drop the item from the Topics page, and I'd be happy with that.-gadfium 18:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

The two existing featured portals dealing with geography - Portal:Australia and Portal:London - both have topic lists. I think we should fall into line.

I see that there's a very similar list at New Zealand. Is that better than the list below, or should we merge any topics from there into this one? If I'd seen the other list earlier, I'd have just suggested that we adopt it. One thing I don't like in the other list is the inclusion of Rogernomics, which is a very short article which doesn't make a link between the policies of the 1980s and the modern economy. I'd prefer to substitute Reserve Bank in that position if we adopt that list. With this substitution, that list is my recommendation.-gadfium 05:17, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
 * The one on P:AU was taken straight from the Australia article and is pretty inadequate. The one you've formulated for New Zealand is much better. --cj | talk 06:43, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I think we should fall into line agreed :), I like the last change (the rmv of Republicanism, and the adding of the other two) I think if you think it is ready, add it :) BTW: I belive that the Reserve Bank is ab better article to add Brian | (Talk) 07:39, 6 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I like it, but it goes too far along the screen at the moment. Where will it be placed?  That does change the design a lot. --Midnighttonight 07:50, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I've added it. I'm not quite sure what Midnighttonight means by "it goes too far along the screen" - it's too wide? It should resize to fit your browser window width. Are you saying you think it would look better in a single column instead of right across the page? We can play with that, but let's give it a week or two in its current position. The full column width in the portal page is a little less than the full page width here on the talk page.

I'll get rid of the draft from here in a day or two, as it only confuses matters. If anyone wants to make changes, they may as well make them to the one on the portal page.-gadfium 08:23, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay one more thing It it possable that we could try and keep the bottom of Things you can do and did you know level with it ? (on the portal page) Brian | (Talk) 08:27, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, we can't force the bottom of panes to align using the present method of layout. It would be lovely if we could just put some code into the div style, but other than using absolute heights (which would be horrible, and would get us thrown out of featured portal candidates in an instant) I don't know of anything.


 * We could get it to work - I think - if we put the middle portion of the portal page into a table with two horizontal cells. This appears to be how the main page works. Once the layout of the main page has been finalised - it looks as if the WikiProject Usability/Main Page/Draft will succeed - we should consider changing portals to have a similar feel.-gadfium 23:11, 6 March 2006 (UTC)


 * And yeah, I meant as a column. But it is placed differently than I imagined, so ignore me.  Oh, and, Other, is well weird.  Order of Merit can go under Government, Maori should go somewhere more prominent (maybe change culture into society and have it in there, and then put Gay Rights into that as well), and get rid of Order of New Zealand as that is really a subpage of Order of Merit --Midnighttonight 08:30, 6 March 2006 (UTC).
 * I've added New Zealand Honours System under "Government" as that is more general than Order of New Zealand. "Other" is no more, "Society" has been created for its remaining items, and I've added a couple more items to that section. While this discussion is active, we may as well have a copy of the Topics list here for convenience, so I'm transcluding it to replace the previous draft.-gadfium 23:11, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

browsebar with graphics
I was wondering about adding little logos to the thing at the top of the page: New Zealand

to get something like this: browsebar_graphic

Any objections, suggestions, hints? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by Papeschr (talk • contribs).
 * It's been discussed before, but I recall that there was a problem getting it to work properly with different screen resolutions. Obviously (if I'm remembering correctly) that problem's been solved. I'm happy for this version to be substituted.-gadfium 07:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Do you have icons for all the things or only those shown? --Midnighttonight 08:32, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


 * If someone can round up the graphics, perhaps they could show us a proposed version here.-gadfium 02:15, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Nope, I have no graphics, I was fishing for some from the community. - Papeschr 04:53, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Portal of the Week
We are the current Portal of the Week, at Portal:Browse. The Portal of the Week is updated irregularly, so we may be there for longer than a week.-gadfium 18:35, 28 March 2006 (UTC)