Talk:Legal aid in New Zealand

My recent changes
I've just made a series of changes to this article correcting material which was either not supported by the source provided, misrepresented the source (including by presenting opinion as fact), or was referenced to an opinion article. Please see the individual edit summaries for my concerns. Nick-D (talk) 05:28, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Concerns of legal profession
This section needs to be removed, because: (a) it is entirely POV. No attempt is made to convey differing points or view or motivations. (b) it's systematically confusing about which 'proposals' are talked about, when numerous different sets of proposals and counter proposals are mentioned in the rest of the article. (c) it reinforces the current recentism of the article. Stuartyeates (talk) 23:11, 26 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The section you have deleted expresses concerns of the legal profession which are valid since they are the most affected by them - and the most qualified to comment. If you delete them, the article then expresses the POV that there are no concerns about recent changes to legal aid - and makes the article very one sided.  The legal concerns section adds balance. What you have done is remove that balance. Mainjane (talk) 23:40, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. While the legal profession may raise issues, they are not independent - primarily because they now not getting paid as much as they were from the legal aid fund. Material like this has been removed before by several editors after it was inserted into the article by a now-banned editor as a result of his POV pushing, lack of balance, failure to adhere to WP:BLP, WP:COATRACK etc etc. It's well worked ground now. Clarke43 (talk) 23:47, 26 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The Government which has made the legal aid changes is not independent either. It is motivated by the desire to save money. If you followed your line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, we could not add anything about Government policy or decisions anywhere on wikipedia. No one source is independent - balance is achieved by adding different perspectives. Removing legitmate concerns on a subject does not further the aims of wikipedia. JaggerAgain (talk) 00:11, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

No one is doubting that these are valid concerns held by the lawyers. No one is doubting that they can be touched on in the article. The three issues as I laid out above relate to (a) NPOV which is about balance of differing view points (b) exactness and (c) recentism which is about the balance between the old and the recent. A whole long section from one vested parties view on a set of currently proposed changes Stuartyeates (talk) 00:46, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
 * It simply doesn't make sense to admit the legal profession has valid concerns, acknowledge that they can be "touched on in the article" and then delete them entirely. If the lawyers concerns are valid but there is some other aspect of the article you have concerns about (such as 'exactness'? whatever you mean by that) then edit accordingly. Deleting relevant material you admit is valid just leads to edit warring. You need to adopt a less confrontational approach to your editing. JaggerAgain (talk) 20:28, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm confused here - this wasn't material JaggerAgain put up? Is JaggerAgain and Mainjane the same person with two usernames? Regardless I'm 100% behind 'Stuartyeates' on him removing the material. I did it before him, and Nick-D before that. There is no reason to leave a chunk of material on a page that is clearly pushing one POV. The original editor who puts it up needs to incorporate it in with other material, with perhaps a new single sentence, rather than just putting up a whole new section to push one POV. The fact when previous editor 'Offender9000' put material up here like this that went unchecked caused major problems with articles, which have led to big clean-ups. Such gross abuse of WP to push one person's POV cannot be allowed to happen again. Clarke43 (talk) 21:00, 27 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Since you're 100% behind Stuartyeates, and since he has already agreed that the lawyers' concerns are valid - that means you also think the lawyers concerns are valid. Besides which lawyers are not pushing a point of view here any more than the Government that made the changes is pushing a point of view. Frankly it is quite bizarre to have an article on legal aid without any comment in it by the legal profession. Those that keep deleting this section are clearly imposing their own POV on this article. JaggerAgain (talk) 05:54, 2 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Legal aid in New Zealand is ~ 80 years old, but 4/5ths of the current article is about the political / lawyers unions games of the last 15 years. This is not a sound approach to building articles, which are meant to be balanced (see Recentism). I've already added some historical material. I propose (a) approximately halving the coverage of all events since 2000 (b) talking about the corresponding Poor Prisoners Defence Act 1930 (an Imperial Act that the 1936 act appears to be based on) (c) including some pre-1936 attempts to establish legal aid (search papers past for 'Poor Prisoners' Defence Act'). Thoughts? Stuartyeates (talk) 07:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

JaggerAgain - you do not seem to be taking advice and seem bent on edit warring - this is now the 4th or 5th time you have reverted the same material. This editing style reminds me of a former editor who got banned for exactly this kind of activity. As I said above I do agree that some of the lawyers comments should be up here - as perhaps a sentence. Trying to tip the balance of the article towards the recent opinions of some of the lawyer community isn't the way to go about things. Clarke43 (talk) 08:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Clarke43 - You are the one hell bent on edit warring. If you agree that the views of the legal profession should be in the article - then stop deleting them - that's what causes the war. I suggest that from now on you make your case on the Dispute Resolution page JaggerAgain (talk) 05:22, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Convert to stub?
Looking back at the history of this article I can easily see how it has taken its current from. I note that the various projects rate it as a C class - so we could be putting our efforts into more important articles. Perhaps the best way forward is just to revert the article to a stub? An editor can then come along at some stage and create a whole new article from the ground up. This will enable them to completely cover the topic of legal aid in NZ - leading to a nice NPOV and balanced article. Clarke43 (talk) 09:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It would be inappropriate to do this until the current WP:DRN process has been resolved. None of the involved editors should be touching it until that's over. In principal you're right though. Stuartyeates (talk) 09:55, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

It suggests on the DRN page to continue discussing things on the talk page here.... so this is just a proposal to perhaps avoid us all getting bogged down. Rest assured I wasn't about to leap into the article and make slashing changes without consensus! Clarke43 (talk) 10:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Outcome of DRN
The outcome the the DRN was: Closing as moot. All parties on one side of the dispute have been indefinitely blocked as sockpuppets. I believe we now have a consensus for a significant reduction in the coverage of recent issues. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:53, 3 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Great. As above I suggest we convert it back to a stub, then an authoritative article can be planned and built from there. Trying to cull the material in there now, when there is such a tip of balance towards the modern will make it really tough. Clarke43 (talk) 22:31, 3 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I have stubified the article. Stuartyeates (talk) 22:21, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Excess detail on legislation
This article as it currently stands is not user friendly. It is simply a summary of various pieces of legislation relating to Legal aid over the years and provides almost no insight into how the system actually works. Old legislation should be under the history section. So as per the the warning that it may be too technical for readers to understand, I moved basic information from a number of old Acts into that section - and then deleted much of the unnecessary and irrelevant material. Dewritech then added it all back apparently assuming that my edits were vandalism. What does anyone else think? Outsidetherocks (talk) 19:14, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It's an encyclopedia, it's not meant to be user friendly and nor is it meant to focus on legal aid as it stands today (see WP:Recentism for a full explanation of that). Having said that, there is certainly scope to improve the coverage of legal aid as it is currently stands. Note that this will require WP:Reliable sources, not opinion pieces or politically-motivated gambits. Editors are wary about this article because it has an unfortunate history; I apologise if you've suffered because of that. Stuartyeates (talk) 22:40, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. But so far I haven't added anything. Are you OK with the logic of the deletions I made? Outsidetherocks (talk) 08:59, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * No, I don't agree with your deletions. I do agree with the restructure though, putting the material that is no longer relevant to today's legal aid in a history section makes sense. Stuartyeates (talk) 09:32, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
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Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.legalaid.org.nz/for-law-firms.html http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10612187 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10788417. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and, if allowed under fair use, may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, providing it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Sennecaster (talk) 20:26, 28 March 2021 (UTC)