Portal talk:New Zealand/Archive 3

NZ FAC - The Catlins
Apologies for the cross-posting, but I thought you'd like to know that Featured article candidates/The Catlins is now up and running! Grutness...wha?  02:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Main page
Nice to see a New Zealand artcle as the featuted article on the main page Brian | (Talk) 09:34, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

agreed —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.4.150.41 (talk • contribs).

Closest Neighbors
"The closest neighbours to the north are New Caledonia, Fiji and Tonga." Isn't austrailia New Zealand's closest neighbor? also, i recommend mentioning Peter Jackson (the director) and how he was from new zealand. furthermore, mention the maori more in this page - Bagel7


 * The previous sentence in the introduction mentions Australia. These are the neighbours to the North. Australia is to the West and West-North-West, certainly not to the North.


 * This is not the general article on New Zealand. This is a portal which showcases the wide range of articles and pictures we have about New Zealand. Māori are listed as a category under the "Categories" section, and under "Society" and "Culture" in the "topics" section. The New Zealand people category is listed both in the "Categories" section and at the very top of the portal page. We don't have a list of the most prominent New Zealanders on the portal because it would be difficult to decide the order of them and how many to list. I probably wouldn't include Peter Jackson in the top ten, but clearly you think he's one of the most important. We'll probably make his article our featured article of the week later this year.-gadfium 01:31, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
 * i dont think hes the most important, i just thought he would be a cool guy to mention. sorry, i didnt relaize the difference between a portal and an article - Bagel7

New Zealand Collaboration of the Fortnight
When the New Zealand Collaboration of the Fortnight starts, will it be possible to add Template:New Zealand Collaboration Notice to the portal, this produces

Yes, It is bright and colourful, so the Colour might need to be toned/ changed to the Portal colour scheme, before it goes up. (or another template is made, with the portal colour scheme, and without the images, that could be done as the template is a self refence one anyway) Brian | (Talk) 08:57, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I have added a link to the WikiProjects pane, and I'd be happy for that pane to link directly to the current collaboration, but I wouldn't want to see anything like that template on the portal. As a comparison, the Goings on page advertises the various collaborations, but it does so with simple links, not bright banners. I have no problem with the banner being added to this talk page and updated each fortnight.-gadfium 09:57, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree :) I did not meen for that banner to be added like that. More along the lines of Portal:New Zealand/COTF added to the WikiProjects panel. This produces:

Brian | (Talk) 12:46, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
 * BTW I have set it up, so to update both templates, we only need to edit Template:NZCOTF article Brian | (Talk) 12:48, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

viewing problems
At the moment I'm having problems with the portal viewing, I have an idea what may be causing it, I think it is using the tags, I am going to experiment, but to do so I will have to save it. If it does make it look better, than I will leave it, if it doesn't then I will revert it. --Midnighttonight 08:33, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * It didn't work. Is anyone else experiencing viewing problems? At the moment, the ITN starts below DYK with everything else on the right column below it screwy and the stuff at the bottom is screwy too.  I am out of ideas.  I use Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Windows XP SP2, on a 1024x726 sreen--Midnighttonight 08:37, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * okay, I add another  tag in there, and that sorted it out for me.  Can everyone else see the page properly? --Midnighttonight 08:53, 6 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I could see a seriously screwed up layout. Purging the page cache fixed it. Somehow MediaWiki got a bad layout, and was continuing to serve that up even when the contents changed. There's a subtle little "purge cache" link at the bottom right of the page which fixed it. If you see similar problems on any other page, then press "edit this page", then change the url from "&action=edit" to "&action=purge" and press enter.-gadfium 08:56, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

On this day section?
I see that the Aussies are considering an "On this day" section for their portal. Would it be a good idea for us to set one up? I think the way to go about would be to get the Category:Years in New Zealand (which is nominated for NZ collab up to shape, then go through and add them to dates. A long term project I know, but it is do-able (especially if we then nominate it as NZ collab after Years in New Zealand muhahahahaha ). --Midnighttonight 09:25, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I think we will have such a section eventually. Just before we reach 2 million articles, someone will create 366 stub "day in New Zealand" articles, and when they are all cleaned up and populated, we'll add them to the portal.


 * Seriously, there are reservations about "year in New Zealand" being too large a task for the NZCOTF, so I think we should wait a while before adopting this proposal.


 * I fixed a link in your comment above.-gadfium 09:30, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * fair enough and cheers. something to keep in the back of the mind then. --Midnighttonight 09:31, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I too would like to see this eventually, but it's a long-term aim, I think. I'd be very happy to see individual decades dealt with as COTFs... perhaps a viable intermediate step would be to set up a dozen "Anniversaries this month" templates for the portal, which could be added to as time goes on and the years pages get more information, and eventually split out into individual days. Grutness...wha?  10:43, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I also like this one day. We can always get today in history from the nzhistory.org.nz site :) Brian | (Talk) 10:45, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea to have the on this day section here eventually. It is a long-term task, so you might want to set up an anniversaries catelogue and start building.--cj | talk 07:53, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Portal:New Zealand/Anniversaries page started. Brian | (Talk) 02:14, 20 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I notice the Aussies link their items to the relevant Year in Australia page, see e.g. Portal:Australia/Anniversaries/January/January_1. Should we do the same (e.g. link to 1840 in New Zealand)? -- Avenue 04:35, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think so. Brian | (Talk) 07:16, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Category
Since we've got several subpages of the portal I've created Category:New Zealand Portal for them (if you're wondering about the naming, all of the portal categories are changing over to this new format rather than the old Category:Portal:New Zealand style). Grutness...wha?  01:23, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Anybody here interested in rugby union
If so, could you please help bring Portal:Rugby Union to Featured status. I don't know much about that mark up stuff, so I wanted an "expert".-- HamedogTalk|@ 08:21, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

this does not give me the right information i asked for —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 218.101.106.145 (talk • contribs). , 22 August 2006
 * What did you ask for?-gadfium 09:13, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

New Zealand domain names
I am currently holding wikipedia.co.nz, wikipedia.org.nz, wikinews.co.nz, and wikinews.org.nz. I would like to transfer these domains to Wikipedia instead of risking them expiring and being taken. Who should I be talking to?CiaNZ 03:43, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The Wikimedia Foundation (info@wikimedia.org) would probably be a good place to start. If they aren't the right address, they'll know who is. Grutness...wha?  05:28, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Featured articles
I've added a new pane with a list of New Zealand-related featured articles. Who knows, maybe it will prompt someone to write some more. We could change the name to "Featured content" and add appropriate featured pictures and lists too, if someone is willing to do the work of making a list of what featured items are relevant. I'm aware of the following featured pictures: There are probably more. I would suggest that we link to the pictures rather than display them in the pane, to avoid making the portal page too large.- gadfium 23:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Image:Old saint pauls 2.jpg
 * Image:Wellington City Night.jpg
 * Image:Lake mapourika NZ.jpeg
 * Image:Poumatua2.jpg
 * I'd like to see the pics displayed -- at 150px wide they shouldn't take too much bandwidth? Papeschr 22:19, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
 * If there are more than these three four, then why not have one of them at 300px wide, and the others as links, with the one displayed being rotated. Image:Wellington City Night.jpg isn't going to look very good at 150 px. In fact, it might be better to display this one as a panorama, like so:


 * That's 54 kb, probably acceptable. By contrast, the current selected picture is 31 kb, and the whole portal is currently around 144 kb. Tweak the "height" parameter above and preview to try different resolutions. A height of 230 pixels makes the image 112 kb which is too much, I think.
 * Image:Poi circles.jpg (Picture of the day/September 28, 2006) may, or may not, be a NZ picture. Poi are definitely NZ, but I don't know about the picture itself.  I have left a message at Image talk:Poi circles.jpg --Midnighttonight remind to go do uni work! 04:58, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * According to Commons:Image:Poi circles.jpg, it was taken by a Vancouver photographer. I looked at his Flickr account, and he doesn't appear to have any other NZ-related photos. The subject is a friend of his. I tracked the friend, who has taught poi in Europe... In short, I don't think the photo was taken in NZ.- gadfium 06:09, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Page design
Hello! I'm wondering about the portal page design. While I get the point of the red borders, I think they could be thicker and of a less striking tint to avoid eye destruction. Also the capitalised horizontal list in small caps at the top is typographically somewhat hideous – let's make the initial letters small caps too if not get rid of the small caps altogether? –Zinjixmaggir 01:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Both the border width and the list at the top are fairly standard. The border width is specified at Portal:Box-header; if we wanted to change it we would have to make a local copy of that which is generally considered a bad idea. You could suggest on its talk page that an additional optional parameter be added to allow the setting of border width.


 * The colours can be tweaked at Portal:New Zealand/box-header though; feel free to have a play there, but revert any changes which significantly detract from the page when you've finished.


 * The list at the top is from Template:Browsebarcountry, and most country portals have it. As with the border width, you should suggest changes on its talk page rather than be too bold in editing it since it affects many portals.- gadfium 03:03, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your kind help. I changed the colour now – a vast improvement to my eye, what do you think? The actual RGB value may not be accurately heraldic but when it goes to lines as thin as these I'd say the visual experience of red matters more don't you think. I'd also want to edit the italics.. I'll also request a change on the bar template. –Zinjixmaggir 11:22, 19 October 2006 (UTC)