User talk:Fanx/Archive 1

Archived Talk page - created on my 5th Wiki-birthday. Fan |  talk   01:06, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Dead Parrot
Are you saying there are indigenous (wild) parrots at 47 degrees north?

No, I'm not aware of any high-latitude parrots in the Northern hemisphere. I was referring to the Kakapo (New Zealand parrot) that lives at 47° South - specifically on Codfish Island, off the coast of Stewart Island. The Kakapo is seriously endangered (although recovering), and although the birds were once more usually found in lower (further North in the Southern hemisphere) latitudes they were also indigenous this far South.

Also worthy of mention is another New Zealand parrot, the Kea which is the world's only alpine parrot and is found in mid 40's latitudes as well. As the Kea is well-suited to life above the snowline it could be a candidate for life among the fiords.

Incidentally, Kakapo are also bred on another sanctuary - Chalky Island, which just happens to be in the New Zealand region of Fiordland. Keas also range into Fiordland so I suppose that both species could find themselves "pining for the fiords".


 * Excellent trivia. And I thought I wouldn't learn anything new today! :) However, I'm guessing that the New Zealand parrots live in a milder climate than one would expect in Norway (other than their apparent "climate of fear" of extinction, but that's another story). Wahkeenah 12:34, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
 * And unlike African and/or European swallows, I don't suppose they carry cocoanuts? Wahkeenah 12:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

LOL - not coconuts, but Keas will steal your boots and anything else they can get their hands beaks on. New Zealand certainly has a much milder climate than Norway - Oslo (in the South) is already at 60° North and probably far too cold for the Kakapo. I can't think of a day recently when I didn't learn something from wikipedia. Fanx 12:48, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
 * They wear boots? Wahkeenah 13:00, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Living at up to 2000 metres above sea level, they'd be mad not to. They'll also steal car keys so I guess they can drive as well, but they prefer to vandalise cars to actually stealing them. Keas have been known to remove a windscreen from a car by tearing the mounting rubber to shreds. Fanx 13:12, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
 * They've been watching too many Hollywood movies about bad behavior, and they're parroting it. Wahkeenah 13:16, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Courtenay Place
Great work cleaning up Courtenay Place, Wellington. It looks much better now. --Roue2 20:15, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I have fond memories of the place and didn't like seeing the poor state of the page Fanx 20:20, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Spelling of murder suspect's first name
According to the Suffolk constabulary and CPS statement here the spelling is "Steven". I think they are more likely to be right than press reports, which will go only from what neighbours think. He is normally known as "Steve" and both people called "Stephen" and "Steven" abbreviate their name as "Steve". However, since the statement includes the precise date of birth, my presumption is that they have checked the spelling too to make sure it is right. Sam Blacketer 23:12, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Berta A. Dreyfus Intermediate School 49
Why do you think that this article should be deleted. Many other articles about schools are like this. Please reply on my user page. Tut74749 22:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Auckland Harbour Bridge
Your tolling change sounds reasonable. However, you provide no reference and delete another reference. Can you please give references for your statement? Thank you, MadMaxDog 00:33, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Bollywood
No friend, I didn't delete at all, thanks for the info. There was just a problem, with users tagging the article because of unreferenced stuff being featured on the article. In your recent edit, I just toned it down, because it was too much for an encyclopedia. I'd already faced problems because of POV issues on that page. Also, it needs a reliable source to support the claim, and google is just a search engine, not a reliable source. Also, youtube, is a bit WP:UNDUE to mention. Anyway, I think it's good, so it's there. Thanks, Shahid  •  Talk 2 me  23:43, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

DH Season 4 in NZ
YOu recent updated the Episodes section of Desperate Housewives Season 4 to say "Welcome to Kanagawa" is to air this coming Monday (14/4). My TV Gide said last week however that DH would not be on the next two weeks (This week the movie Fun with Dick and Jane is in its spot and next week another movie will probably be too), so ep 10 should air on 28/4, not 14/4 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.154.153.12 (talk) 06:08, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

You are right - the hold-up is a hangover from the writer's strike and NZ is indeed going to have to suffer two weeks without Wisteria Lane. Fanx (talk) 09:30, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Compulsory Voting
You win. The ECPR link works. I am sorry for my mistake. --Pochi II (talk) 15:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Yodelling in the Canyon
Well, now we have a reference, it can go in. I'm busy elsewhere generally with other articles, but I will list it for a cull/sourcing as appropriate. This seems to be one of those articles where people just stick in their own heard/invented terms willy-nilly, without regard for verifiability. Thanks for the reference, I can use it elsewhere. -- Rodhull andemu  15:37, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

the electoral alphabet
yeah, let's colab. What I want to do is: add two more seat results in, and do a blurb about the seats that don't have one, clean a few blurbs up and drip in the 2002, 1999 and 1996 results. That's hopefully before the results from 2008 are through, because then they'll need to be done again. what do you reckon needs done? plan 8 (talk) 08:22, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

1. the swing column sounds like mean work. I don't have any serious objection to it, except that swing is best calculated in seats after boundary changes, when someone has gone through and worked out a provisional result based on the new boundaries ; in New Zealand, that doesn't seem so important. Still would be interesting.
 * a'ight:

2. the roughly same entity thing is tricky; I thought about it, and now I think we should just treat every new name as a completely new thing. Otherwise, you'll end up being stymied by boundary changes; for instance, Hunua becomes Clevedon becomes Papakura; Port Waikato stays in place four times, becomes Hunua. Nightmarish.

3. I find this (NZ electorate) vs. (New Zealand electorate) thing odd, because (a) as far as I can tell the pages for Auckland Central (etc) are still called just Auckland Central, Taranaki-King Country, Hutt South, etc. And, because, you know, when you're typing, it's easy shorthand to just say something like The seat was created in 1996 from a merger of the Island Bay and Miramar seats, safe and happy in the knowledge that everything redirects to the right place anyway.

4. the thing that needs doing is getting all the macron pages {Māngere vs Mangere) standardised, in place, redirected, etc. Yeah, I think that matters a bit. cheer plan 8 (talk) 09:25, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * your new templates are nice, and myself a nonpartisan panel of one other agree it looks less visually horrific than the other ones, but I fear if you update the box for 08, you might have to go back and retrospectively change the 2005 ones as well.

while I think about it though, can you reformat the United, ALCP, Kiwi Pary and Democrats' colours to distinguish them more? when you put them in a tiny box alongside a name, they often come out too dark or too similar to other parties'. also, non-related as this is, the place name pages of New Zealand are a mess, all commas and brackets and different sort styles chur plan 8 (talk) 21:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

NZRP v RONZP
Hi there - no worries, I stand corrected. There was some contention a while back about this so I reverted on site.

However, I think NZRP is the same as RONZP - I suspect the candidate probably got the party's name wrong, as their members often get confused between whether they are the "New Zealand Republicans" or "Republic of New Zealand Party". --Lholden (talk) 01:52, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

List of New Zealand Prime Ministers by term‎
Thanks for fixing this - I've been meaning to do so for a while, as I know my original calculations were a bit out (I put together a spreadsheet to calculate the figures... I think I've lost it). Now we known its 9 days until the PM passes Eddy Stafford. --Lholden (talk) 22:16, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Editing new pages without others interfering
If you are editing a new page and you would not like others to edit it until you have finished the initial set of edits (as you apparently did for Index of New Zealand political party meta attributes, you can add to the first line of the page. That will let others know that you are working on it. When you have finished your edits, just remove the tag. Truthanado (talk) 00:06, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Index of New Zealand political party meta attributes
Hi. I'm confused about Index of New Zealand political party meta attributes. The article appears to be one of two things: 1) Documentation of colours for use in Wikipedia pages. In which case it should not be in the article namespace, and should probably be in the Wikipedia: namespace, possibly as a subpage of WPNZ, or on the meta wikipedia if you are targeting wikipedias beyond English language.

2) It is attempting to document colours used by political parties, in which case it requires references, and would appear to be original research in that the RGB colourspace had not been defined in the day of most historical parties.

Cheers, dramatic (talk) 08:09, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

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WikiProject New Zealand/Election 2008 taskforce
Hi, since you are doing a lot of election stuff, I though I would draw your attention to WikiProject New Zealand/Election 2008 taskforce where efforts are being coordinated. PS I hope you like the location maps I'm adding to current electorate articles! dramatic (talk) 21:43, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

NB: (page moved to WikiProject New Zealand/Election 2008 taskforce)

I've updated all those New Zealand electorates which did not already have final results, using a python script (which is available at User:Gadfium/scripts). The script does not add the changes from previous elections. You are welcome to add those changes, as I do not expect the script to be run again on the 2008 data.- gadfium 03:58, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Coromandel (New Zealand electorate)
I updated the data according to the special votes made available through the electionresults.govt.nz website for Coromandel. I spent a hell of a lot of time doing that. Why on earth did you revert it to information that is no longer indicative of the result??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.155.228.156 (talk) 10:35, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

PS: The table should be organised in the fashion deemed by the electoral commission. This means, candidates organised by surname and then the same for the parties without candidates. You are more than welcome to remedy the UF problem in the table, I'm not sure why it did that.


 * No, the table is organised in the "fashion" of standard wikipedia election results and is not trying to mirror elections.org.nz layout (which in turn is derived from the voting form layout). If you want to include updated special vote info then please add that info without trying to redefine the way the table is laid out. Fanx (talk) 17:18, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Fine, if you want to be pedantic about it then let me point this out. Hugh Kininmonth, Huey Rurehe, and James Redwood should not have any figures in the candidate result change. They were each first time candidates, so they have not garnered a change in vote. To acknowledge a change is to ignore the principle that a candidate stands as an individual for an electorate, party membership is secondary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.155.197.176 (talk) 21:57, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, they're getting them in any case as the swing represents the candidate vote the party was able to muster for it's chosen representative in the seat - to dispose of the swing percentages for most of the candidates, leaving only the incumbent and a couple of perennial no-hopers would render the whole thing meaningless. In that case we might as well do away with the winner's majority since it doesn't measure like for like either. A party puts up a candidate - I don't care if it's a dead dog - but the vote he/she/it gets as a candidate is equally a vote for the party they represent as for the person (or dead dog), so in this case it represents a candidate vote for the "cookie-cutter sacrificial lamb party member who was persuaded to die honourably in the hope of something better next time" candidate. Sometimes a candidate's personal popularity (or notoriety) comes into play, and under MMP voters have much more liberty to vote tactically and on issues other than the straight party-line voting that was the case under FPP. But let's face it, if Sandra Goudie had stood for the Labour Party she wouldn't've won, equally if Hugh Kininmonth had stood for the National Party he wouldn't've lost.  Fanx (talk) 01:39, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

P.S. The election result tables were designed (by me) using the UK elections result pages as a template, the layout and ordering by number of votes received isn't me being pedantic - it is me sticking to wikipedia standard layouts. The most significant data (number of votes cast) is used to determine the order of candidates and parties - it is the same most significant data that actually determines who won the seat and the election. Take a look at any other country's election results and see for yourself. McCain isn't listed above Obama except in the phone directory.

WikiProject New Zealand/governments
Hello, I note that you have contributed to WikiProject New Zealand/Election 2008 taskforce and have an interest in New Zealand Politics, are you willing to join me in re-creating WikiProject New Zealand/governments? It is no longer in use and New Zealand politics articles in general need substantial improving. Drop me a line if you want to help: There is work to do! Kiwiteen123 (talk)

Problem with NZ parlbox
I've just posted an issue with the NZ parlbox on Talk:Henry Ell and now I see that you might be the person who knows how to address this wee problem. Can you help? If not, can you please bring this to the attention of the right person? Thanks heaps! Schwede66 (talk) 08:24, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Auckland Meetup 5 on 9 May 2010
You are invited to Auckland Meetup 5 on the afternoon of Sunday 9th May 2010 at Esquires Cafe, Ground Floor, Auckland Central City Library, Lorne St, Auckland. Please see Meetup/Auckland 5 for details and RSVP. You can also watch Meetup/Auckland to be informed of future NZ meetups. - Linnah (talk) 14:45, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Paddy the Wanderer
Thanks! Drmies (talk) 15:37, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Invitation
To join the New Zealand politics taskforce, please place the following on your user page:   Schwede  66  20:43, 18 December 2010 (UTC)