Template talk:NSW GNR

Articles that need fixing
This template was created because the NSW Geographical Names Board reorganised its website, breaking more than 1,400 links to it from Wikipedia. As of now, the following articles still need repairing by conversion to use this template:
 * -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 13:34, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Note that some of these articles have multiple links. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 07:43, 3 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Wollangambe River - I replaced the existing ref with the template, but the ID appear to be wrong - see Talk:Wollangambe River. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:42, 11 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I found a few of these. This one has been fixed a s well. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 08:00, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Date?
I just put the template on two articles chosen at random (Kyogle, Mangoplah) and both linked to an extract showing today's date. It's possible, but unlikely, that both source pages were only written today. The only other date is "Status: Assigned [date]". Some clarification of the use of the date parameter in the template may be required, or have I missed something? Mitch Ames (talk) 13:31, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Fixed. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 13:45, 30 July 2013 (UTC)


 * When the date value is specified, the template appears in the article (normally as a ref) as an unqualified date, eg a preview of Yanda County shows as:
 * Normally an unqualified date like that (10 Jan 1969) would indicate the date of the reference material, but the reference material is an extract of a record that need not necessarily be dated the same date as the place name was assigned. Eg it is possible that the Description or LGA might change after the name is assigned (and the extract doesn't appear to show the date of the register entry). I suggest that the template should explicitly display (in the article) what the date means. Eg:
 * The GNB glossary suggests that the date might indicate something other than "assigned", so we probably can't just hard-code that. Perhaps the solution is to have a parameter status whose value should simply match the Status in the GNB extract - possibly with the documentation advising that the date format should be standardised, eg "Assigned 10 January 1969" instead of "Assigned 10th January 1969". Mitch Ames (talk) 14:21, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The GNB glossary suggests that the date might indicate something other than "assigned", so we probably can't just hard-code that. Perhaps the solution is to have a parameter status whose value should simply match the Status in the GNB extract - possibly with the documentation advising that the date format should be standardised, eg "Assigned 10 January 1969" instead of "Assigned 10th January 1969". Mitch Ames (talk) 14:21, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The GNB glossary suggests that the date might indicate something other than "assigned", so we probably can't just hard-code that. Perhaps the solution is to have a parameter status whose value should simply match the Status in the GNB extract - possibly with the documentation advising that the date format should be standardised, eg "Assigned 10 January 1969" instead of "Assigned 10th January 1969". Mitch Ames (talk) 14:21, 31 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Actually, I'm not even sure that the "assigned" (or other status) date belongs in the reference at all. If it's relevant to the article it should probably be in the article itself - typically the reference text describes the reference itself, not its contents. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:44, 3 August 2013 (UTC)


 * The template calls cite web and I haven't had success in adding clarification to the date display as you earlier suggested. Hard-coding "Name assigned on" results in the citation displaying "Name assigned on." when  is not specified. Adding code to eliminate this results in cite web's code generating an error. I tend to agree with you about not including date at all. It was only included because many existing citations used the date parameter. It might be best just to remove it. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 06:00, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Keying on Reference instead of id?
I am interested in looking into whether the process can be streamlined by using the facility to download every record in the GNR database. This provides two spreadsheets in a Zip file, which seems to contain all the information in the GNR's Place Name Search screen - except for one. The only item missing (as far as I can see) is the "id" which is currently required as the key for this template.

It does provide a different identification key, called the "Reference". For example, Raymond Terrace has a Reference of 48388, which is also displayed on the GNR's Place Name Search screen. Is there any way to use that Reference instead of the id, which would avoid the need to delve into the GNR's web site just to copy-paste that id across? --Gronk Oz (talk) 03:12, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * We need the id to get the url for each place's extract. Since we can't pull the id from the spreadsheets, there seems no way to achieve what you're suggesting. Copying and pasting the id is not that difficult. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 03:47, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the prompt response, . A pity about that; I can't imagine why they ended up with two different reference/id keys (oops, I'm slipping back into my past life as a database admin...)  Copy-paste it is, then!  --Gronk Oz (talk) 06:53, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * How's this for a non-prompt response ? It turns out there is a way.  The url "id" is a fairly primitive hash of the "reference" number in the spreadsheets.  I'm just figuring it all out and checking it so that I can put up a set on Mix'n'match for wikidata.  But the same method could be used to convert inside this template too if it speeds things up to have a second "reference" parameter as a different input option. --99of9 (talk) 06:51, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Sounds great, . --Gronk Oz (talk) 08:10, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Here's the conversion (concatenate the following):

First digit 1	JP 2	Ma 3	an 4	uj 5	TR 6	SX 7	KW 8	Mn 9	It

Second digit 0	jL 1	Kq 2	qw 3	IO 4	ck 5	Yb 6	lp 7	jt 8	Ql 9	wG

Third digit 0	Wy 1	vq 2	lM 3	wp 4	BK 5	oe 6	Fx 7	Xt 8	jz 9	Zx

Fourth digit 0	rX 1	ZT 2	Km 3	sE 4	WA 5	qb 6	tL 7	Ul 8	sy 9	xO

Fifth digit 0	GH 1	JP 2	Ma 3	an 4	uj 5	TR 6	SX 7	KW 8	Mn 9	It

Anyone want to code this up into the template? (I'm still working on getting a Mix'n'match set up) --99of9 (talk) 05:39, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ I have now implemented this and updated the documentation. Feel free to test or critique. --99of9 (talk) 06:32, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

ID
They seem to have changed the search process. I can't see how you find the ID now.--Grahame (talk) 08:00, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It was working fine. Why did they have to change it? At least the old links still work. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 11:13, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
 * and clicking the old display page with a search gets you to the new search page. boo Dave Rave (talk) 05:21, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Dead links
Today there has been a report that the link created in Sydney by this template is now a dead link. I have tried various other locations including those in the documentation page for this template Template:NSW GNR/doc such as Raymond Terrace which do not work. This template now appears to be useless Fleet Lists (talk) 01:59, 26 October 2020 (UTC)


 * The links are dead, so you don't need to do anything about them. Firestar464 (talk) 03:10, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Since getting the reply above, looking at the previous section, it appears that the template needs to be changed which I can not do, to do a search at address to get this template functional again. Fleet Lists (talk) 03:43, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * again ? gosh darn it Dave Rave (talk) 03:49, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * the coding layout wouldn't be hard to o, again, but the code id code is different, so that's 1800 plus lookups and edits to do. Dave Rave (talk)
 * Per WP:DEADREF dead links should not be removed so, even though the template is not working right now, it should not be removed from articles. As indicated elsewhere, the changes have been in place since at least March but the old links worked until quite recently. All we can hope is that somebody can work out a new way of accessing the data. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 04:23, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I emailed the contact page, awaiting a response Dave Rave (talk)
 * We've been upscaled to the IT dept for a response Dave Rave (talk) 02:40, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Since the template was not working at all, I have fiddled its so it accepts the part of the URL after "https://proposals.gnb.nsw.gov.au/public/geonames/" as the id. Of course all the old links don't work--Grahame (talk) 01:07, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * They also seem to be trying to prevent direct access to their search page--Grahame (talk) 01:19, 24 December 2020 (UTC)