Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 57

Benjamin Boyd
Hi all. This character has received a fair bit of press lately due to his association with black-birding and indentured labour. The article has a fairly long section on this (the article's longest section - too long?), but it's all un-referenced. I would like to get in there and re-write with references. Hopefully I can have a go soon. I raise it here simply to get more attention on it, and indeed, hopefully someone has more time and better research skills than me. --Merbabu (talk) 07:29, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not just that article but many biographies are being labelled as blackbirders, slave owners etc. It's a case of people trying WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS on Wikipedia and, yes, rarely do the citations (if any) support the claims being made (fails WP:V). It is also not helpful that recent media uses the term "blackbirding" for any importation of South Sea Islander labourers whereas the more traditional definition of blackbirding refers to the kidnapping or other wrongdoing in the recruitment process and doesn't apply to legitimate contracting. The article Blackbirding itself starts with the kidnapping etc definition in the first paragraph but by the second pargraph refers to any importation as blackbirding. It's all a big mess. I've raised the issue about reliable citations on the Robert Towns content on Talk:Blackbirding since 1 April. No reply by any of those involved. But if you read the cited sources, none of them prove he was engaged in kidnapping. So soon I will be deleting that content as being not verified. I expect I will be then be the subject of personal attacks as a racist or a fascist or a whitewasher or ... that's what usually happens. The problem is this. Yes, there almost certainly was kidnapping, deception etc going on, particularly I suspect at the tail end of a voyage if the captain or their local agents had not obtained the number of recruits specified in their contract. But I very much doubt anyone is going to find reliable sources to pin the blame on Robert Towns and any of other large plantation owners (which is generally the edits being made). Simply, those guys were at the top of large empires; they did not go out in the ships so they weren't personally involved in kidnapping etc. Did they know it was going on and turn a blind eye to it? Perhaps. Did they give a "wink and a nod" to the captain to hint that a little kidnapping was OK by them? Perhaps. But did they leave written instructions to that effect? Not that I have ever seen. Did any ship captain ever testify against them? Not that I have seen. When it was alleged at the time that Robert Towns' ships were involved in kidnapping, Robert Towns cheerfully produced copies of his instructions to his ships' captains for publication in the newspaper. Squeaky clean. A lot of contemporary historians and random journalists are happy to declare them as guilty but they don't set out the evidence for drawing that conclusion; I can't see that as a reliable source. But, certainly if there are reliable sources that can show they instructed their ship captains or others to kidnap etc, by all means, include them! There is a difference between what we suspect to be true and what we can demonstrate to be true. Kerry (talk) 08:23, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Looking forward to your updates. 2 or 3 reliably referenced sentences on the topic would be better than 4 paragraphs of unverified info. I'd be interested to know where the existing info came from.
 * It's received a bit of coverage recently (as the page views attest), particularly in Neutral Bay where there is a street named after him, and a school house at Neutral Bay PS. And the notion to rename Ben Boyd National Park. --Merbabu (talk) 08:28, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Some wrongs remain very much unrighted. I was struck by how Land selection in Queensland makes no mention of who the land was selected from or that Aboriginals were absolutely prevented from selecting any land including their own. No doubt that has always been the policy of the Queensland government but it does seem one-eyed.--Grahame (talk) 05:06, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Good point. It deals with Crown land but you are right it does not make any commentary on the terra nullius assumption underpinning Crown land. I was not aware that Indigenous people could not apply to select land. Do you have a citation? Kerry (talk) 05:16, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I've added to the lede that on the basis of terra nullius that all the land became Crown land. No problems finding citations for that, but I cannot find anything about Indigenous people being unable to select land (although I can well imagine it was true). Unfortunately every set of key words I can think of just returns huge numbers of search results relating to native title. Kerry (talk) 13:53, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The Mabo decision made it clear that just because land was declared to be be crown land in 1788 didn't actually make it crown land until the land was legally transferred. It is true that a lot this land was squatted on but this did not necessarily mean ownership under British law had changed. I am sure Aboriginals as legally non-citizens could not have applied for the land (although German immigrants could). I don't know of any particular sources, but that is my understanding.--Grahame (talk) 02:21, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Because the British paid compensation for the abolition of slavery - to the slave owners that is, not the people enslaved, there is an abundance of records as to who the slave owners were and how many people they had enslaved. In Australia slavery was not just immoral, it was illegal, as was kidnapping. This makes it harder to find reliable sources - was there anybody convicted of kidnapping or slavery? Grahame you raise a very interesting point. I suspect that you won't find evidence as to who couldn't apply, but rather the limitations will be on who could apply - no need to exclude women for example as they could own land except in very limited circumstances. I am not aware of any online access to the text of the relevant acts. Your analysis as to the legality of selection will run into a catch 22 - if first nations people were able to own land at the time, then they already owned the land and there was no "free" land to be selected. The High Court recognition in 1992 that terra nullius was a fiction did not undo the practical exercise of power that progressively dispossessed the first nations people of their land. I agree with you about the slant of the land selection article, like the which reads more like what a fabulous job the government did in dispossessing the first nations people and dividing the land up between the squatters and the selectors. Pretty much the same tone deaf approach as the British treasury tweet about slavery. --Find bruce (talk) 07:21, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

premierpostal.com
I discussed this with about a month ago in relation to articles in New South Wales after which it was decided not to take any further action. However yesterday I noticed that was making similar changes to Victorian articles which contain references to the above. And while he was doing that bot InternetArchiveBot created another problem archived entry. After raising the issue with Graham87, he suggested that the issue be raised here.
 * contains a list of Victorian articles (locations) which contain a reference referring to premierpostal.com. Many of these locations have been archived by InternetArchiveBot at various times even though the original link is still active. The original link requires that the name of the location is entered for a search before the actual reference is found. But in the archived version the search does not work so even if the original did not work, the archived version is also of no use. Yesterday Graham87 was removing the archived version from all Victorian articles which had been archived. I then mentioned to Graham87 that I had been looking looking at a list of New South Wales articles with such links - he has since since removed the archived version from those which had been archived - for which I thank him. There are similar lists for Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia and a  second Victorian list with two entries where the state code is Vic instead of VIC. I believe action has since been taken to stop the bot from archiving such links by User:GreenC.
 * In addition there is a further list of locations in all states (except I think Western Australia and Tasmania) where a different format link is used which goes direct to the page required without the search. There are currently 130 items in this list. The Wayback machine contains 198 archived entries with this format  which are all dated 2017 or earlier - so about 60 archived one no longer have active live entries. Attempts to archive entries now are rejected "An unknown exception has occurred. javax.net.ssl.SSLProtocolException: handshake alert: unrecognized_name". It has been suggested that the number used in the links to identify the locations is dynamic and may vary from time to time hence making archived versions useless.
 * Which format of the link is suggested for future use as with the link without the number an archive will no longer take place while the link with the number can also not be archived? —Fleet Lists (talk • contribs) 04:07, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I've also removed all the archive links I could find for Queensland and South Australia (I couldn't find any for any other states/territories). Graham 87 10:51, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

City of Newcastle proposed move
An editor has suggested that City of Newcastle be moved. Please contribute to the discussion at Talk:City of Newcastle. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 13:14, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Is the Qld health ombudsman legislation legal or illegal if other states don't have the health ombudsman but have the professional medical board traditional structure for practical reasons/
https://www.lexology.com/905/author/Paulina_Moncrieff/ Health Ombudsman Act 2013 (QLD): A New Landscape for the Regulation of Health Professionals in Queensland 09 Jun 2014 | Australia — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.70.187.45 (talk) 03:16, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Co jurisdictional issues may be unconstitutional with potential test cases such as lung cancer loss of chance doctrine under High Court, and potential Fair Work involvement if bullying occurs, involving public representatives or public figures, with conflicts of interests, perhaps. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jo Motoko (talk • contribs) 03:40, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

https://www.cancer.org/health-care-professionals/american-cancer-society-prevention-early-detection-guidelines/lung-cancer-screening-guidelines.html https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Loss_of_chance_in_English_law http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UMelbLRS/2010/14.html ( loss of chance doctrine) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jo Motoko (talk • contribs) 03:44, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:NOLEGAL: Wikipedia does not give legal advice or opinions. --Canley (talk) 03:55, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Australian Aboriginal art - not necessarily prehistoric
I removed from, on the grounds that  not all Australian Aboriginal art is prehistoric; there's quite a lot of current Aboriginal art - the Australian Aboriginal art category includes the sub-category Australian Aboriginal artists, listing 200 people who are clearly not prehistoric. reverted, with the assertion that "enough of it is".

I agree that some Aboriginal art is prehistoric - e.g. probably most (but not necessarily all) of - but Australian Aboriginal art is not exclusively prehistoric.

I suggest that:
 * should be removed from
 * Individual articles should be placed directly in only where appropriate.

Possibly should be in, but I don't know enough about the definition of rock art to say whether "rock art" necessarily implies "prehistoric". The lead paragraph of the rock art article mentions "historic and prehistoric rock art", implying that rock art in general need not be prehistoric. Is there a source that says explicitly when the Australian Aboriginal people stopped painting on rocks? According to some Australian Aboriginal rock art depicts contact with early seafarers, well after prehistoric times.

Mitch Ames (talk) 02:30, 20 June 2020 (UTC)


 * They haven't stopped painting on rocks. Saw some obviously very recent work in Arnhem Land last year. Can't provide a source, and it was explained to me in that form of communication common to Aboriginal issues but unfortunately unacceptable here, orally. I think it's wise to not be absolute in suggesting it has stopped. HiLo48 (talk) 04:07, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree that Mitch's proposal is exactly how categorisation ought to work. obviously doesn't apply to individuals and art galleries listed in that category. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:21, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Categories are not intended to be a 100% fit at every level. If you want to reduce the global visibility of the stuff, fine. I have added the rock art sub-cat instead, since that seems nearly all prehistoric, the modern artists having presumably discovered that galleries pay better than rocks. If that is not liked, individual articles should not be added to the main global category, but  set up.  Johnbod (talk) 12:06, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * 200 entries in Category:Australian Aboriginal artists and more than 25 from 39 entries in Category:Australian Aboriginal art refer to contemporary subjects – that leaves 30 entries in Category:Rock art in Australia and a dozen in Category:Australian Aboriginal art; 42 out of ~270 is far from 100%. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:33, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Categories are not intended to be a 100% fit at every level. — We should follow the principles of "defining characteristics". "Rock art in Australia" is not defined as being "prehistoric" (and previous posts above have give examples of non-prehistoric rock art), so even if most rock art (that we know of) is prehistoric, we ought not categorise all rock art as prehistoric. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:06, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * And presumably non-Indigenous people can paint on rocks too if they want. It seems to me whether the work is Indigenous, whether it is old or now and what materials were involved would appear to be quite independent characteristics, so therefore they should have independent category. Indivdidual works can get placed in whichever apply so we can have old Indigenous rock art, as well as new Indigenous bark art, etc. Kerry (talk) 13:41, 22 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Prehistoric art has very specific definition and isn't time limited, that definition is where other forms of record keeping are adopted or evolved. Which would mean the current use emoji's would fall within the definition as they are perform the same function. Indigenous art doesnt fit neatly in the prehistoric category because much of the work is contemporary. It may be that the category needs to be cleaned up there is want for such a selection, with that would there would be the need to very sure that those included fit the criteria.  With that in mind there will also be the need to cease to mono-cultural identification of Aboriginal because that term is one which has only applied since the late 1700's, so they cant be both Prehistoric and Aboriginal. Gnangarra 04:58, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Categories for discussion
Hi all, just passing on that there's 50-odd Australia-related categories up for discussion here, if anyone has a view. -- Euryalus (talk) 09:32, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The nomination is concerning - those supporting it think suburbs can just be merged to LGAs (which is concerning in itself given that some suburbs have multiple LGAs) and that suburbs in Australia are not fixed areas (which is nonsense). A lot of these are categories that haven't been, but can be, populated. It took me all of 5 minutes to find several articles for a couple of them. The nominator seems to have some sort of hobby horse about deleting these sorts of things, and it would be great for some Australian editors to speak up and let them know that the proposed alternatives are unworkable. Deus et lex (talk) 10:39, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I found 10 potential candidates for Morpeth alone in the same time. I'm sure I could do the same for other suburbs if I had the time. And yes, I do agree with your assessment of the nominator's intentions. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 06:53, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Indigenous references
Hey guys, new to Wikipedia editing so keen to hear how it'll all works. Have edited a page on a Sydney National Park (Ku-ring-gai) and got kicked out immediately by a user saying 'it's a non-neutral edit'. Wasn't expecting that, to be honest. All I did was added a reference to the original owners of the land and that the very name Kuringai is disputed and most certainly not a language / tribal group as the article wrongly states.

Thoughts? Any first nations people on this thread who feel slightly alarmed by this?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Henni1978 (talk • contribs) 09:59, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hey and welcome to Wikipedia. You may have seen that I have placed a welcome panel with a lot of links to various types of help with how Wikipedia works and what we're aiming for in articles. There's a lot to learn and it's a slow process - most of us are still learning, so don't be too discouraged if you have your edits reverted. Having had a quick look at your recent contributions, the first thing that strikes me is that you have re-reverted, with a long edit summary (which is not the appropriate place for a 2nd challenge), against the advice of the experienced editor who reverted your edit. So my first observation would be to advise you to look at WP:TALK and use the talk page of the article in question. You can "ping" another editor by using  or  (as I have to ping you above). Also, please remember to sign any comments here or on talk pages by adding four tildes (~) after your comment. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 10:45, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I forgot to add, please see wp:editwar, and specifically WP:3RR, as you run the risk of being blocked if you keep reverting without discussion. As a newbie, it's a good idea to keep in mind that most other editors have more experience than you, and may have good reason for their reversion!
 * With regard to adding information about Indigenous/Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and cultures, you can rest assured that there are many editors trying to improve our coverage of such aspects, but all added content nonetheless has to be within the Wikipedia guidelines and in the right place. (Depending on the topic, and the state of the current article and various other factors, the WP:LEAD in general does not need a lot of detail, and in most cases, in a fully developed article, does not not need any citations at all - so long as the content is repeated and cited within the body (see WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY).) As far as I am aware, we do not have any active Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander editors at the moment, something that I hope will change. You may be interested in having a look at the draft style guide I am creating, based on the fairly extensive review of reliable sources of style guides. (Please do not edit those pages at the moment, but note the conventions such as capitalisation, when appropriate to use the various terms, etc.)
 * I will have a closer look and make further comment on your changes if need be, but I urge you to start with caution, and you will gain confidence in your decisions with experience. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 11:01, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Merge
While I'm here... This one is just a merge I've just suggested, but as both terms seem to be Australian ones, there may be people here interested in giving an opinion. See Talk:Outstation movement. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 03:40, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Possibly Change an Article
Hello Team,

I recently came across Big Day Out lineups by year which is quite long. I have seen other festivals and such that are broken down by year and on the right hand side is a box to select the previous year and the next year. I am wondering if this would work better for this article as it is way to long and as the years go on will only get longer and longer. Thoughts? Thanks, Bakertheacre Chat/What I Baked 17:34, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, I don't have much experience with List articles, and MOS:LIST doesn't seem to say much about length, but I agree with you, that one does look way too long and difficult to navigate. (I sometimes wonder who has the dedication and patience to create all of those tables, but it was handy to look at as a reminder of the 2006 one I went to!) I think you would have to keep the top level article, containing the links to all of the others (with maybe a couple of the headline acts included in each section), and maybe keep the 1992 one there as it's quite short? If it is split, you would also need to add links to each act not linked to because it's been linked to before above... Probably worthwhile waiting for another opinion on this one though. Anyone? Laterthanyouthink (talk) 03:40, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , thank you for your valuable input. Let me do some research tomorrow to find an article I was thinking of. I know there are other yearly festivals that are major and global that each have their own articles and basically a navigation box to the previous and the following years. Bakertheacre Chat/What I Baked 03:44, 21 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes,, I've definitely come across examples too - just can't remember which ones! Laterthanyouthink (talk) 04:09, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , So I found one. It is the chronology of BB King. Look at the infobox. Blues Summit :) Bakertheacre Chat/What I Baked 18:14, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Infobox Australian place nominated for merge
It has been proposed that Infobox Australian place be merged with Infobox settlement. Please comment in the discussion at Templates for discussion/Log/2020 July 19. Thanks. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 17:52, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

It would be very useful for a non-technical overview of the issues without fear of favour - as we have a few australian editors who appear to have acronym summaries that might not be that easy for those not au fait with the issues in technical detail. Like what was the problem with the Russian templates recently ? JarrahTree 02:01, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know what happened but I assume it was something that was either ignored during the discussion or was found to be too hard once the merge took place. Back when they decided to change the coordinate system back to a completely manual one, our infobox took a while because of the automation in the infobox. There are a lot of people who think merges are simply transferring parameters and that is rarely the case. Perhaps can shed some light. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 06:49, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * We had a number of infoboxes which were specially designed to accommodate relevant fields for Russia and which have been around for a decade. We also had a bunch of users who wanted to unify everything and repeatedly nominated these infoboxes for deletion. During the third nomination, I was the only one left defending the infobxes, and I was the only user working with them. I was essentially overvoted with the arguments "I like it more" and "You have not presented any rational arguments why the infoboxes should stay". They were all converted to the wrappers. For at leat a year, the maps were not shown properly, and nobody cared. (I still they are still not whown properly in some cases). Then, after one year and a half, I discovered that the new infoboxes import data (specifically, area of the localities) from Wikidata where they are cited to the Russian Wikipedia and can not be interporeted in any reasonable way (is this an are pf the town, of the metro or whatever); moreover the data became plain wrong after the administrative division has changed. Which means we have wrong data for one year and a half in hundreds of articles. Nobody cared again. After a number of discussions, I have reverted the infobox to the original version and notified the community at ANI. Then of course I had a bunch of people at the talk page of the infobox accusing me in acting against consensus.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:46, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the explanation, a very salient point for the Australian project to consider when it is attacked with the how-dare-you-be-different from the one size fits all part of the community. JarrahTree 09:04, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * "You have not presented any rational arguments - That's one that they always use when they don't understand, don't want to understand, or simply can't refute arguments. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 10:29, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I am strongly in favour of a merge. Infobox Australian place does not play nice with other infoboxes. Betterkeks (talk) 12:55, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Why, simply because you can't embed other infoboxes? That's a minor issue really. What other infoboxes do you wish to embed? -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 13:17, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Northern Adelaide
Should Northern Adelaide redirect to North Adelaide as opposed to Regions of South Australia. Are they the same place or two different places ? Djln Djln (talk) 20:23, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Northern Adelaide is a metropolitan region. North Adelaide is an inner-city suburb. Quite different places.--Grahame (talk) 00:54, 23 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Cheers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Djln (talk • contribs) 13:39, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Redoing ping to Grahamec. Graham 87 09:04, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Noticeboard discussion on reliability of The Australian
There is a noticeboard discussion on the reliability of The Australian. If you are interested, please participate at. —  Newslinger  talk   19:07, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

The Bays, NSW
Just a heads up I have created The Bays, New South Wales in response to a discussion over at iNaturalist, The Bays is a precinct just of Sydney CBD. Gnangarra 11:19, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * dam just found Bays Precinct I have redirected as its a plausible search choice Gnangarra 11:42, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Use of junior/senior, rather than Jr. & Sr. in article titles
According the WP:JR/SR, regional variation is acceptable in how articles of people known as Junior or Senior are titled. Almost all Australians with that suffix use "Jr." (ie Gary Ablett Jr. (I've searched, and couldn't find many others, see below for stats). User:Grant65 has recently moved Austin Robertson Jr. and  Austin Robertson Sr. to Austin Robertson junior and Austin Robertson senior with the justification of "Normal style in Aus English is lower case "junior" [not "Jr", "Jun.", "Jnr" etc]".

Under Category:Australian people I found 58 with Sr., 85 with Jr., 5 with Jr (no period), 3 each with Jnr or Snr, and 3 with (junior), 4 with (senior) and 1 each with Senior or Junior and only one with ", senior". Some/most of these should probably be moved.

So, is Grant65 correct? Is there an Australian English normal style? Should we stick with the established Jr. and Sr. or should junior and senior become our WP:AUST standard? The-Pope (talk) 14:49, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I have never seen it spelled out like Grant65's change. I think you are right The-Pope, stick with how the subject spelt their own name. Deus et lex (talk) 12:30, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * As a former junior (now with the birth of a son a senior) the bank account I still maintain has Jnr, something I have always seen. Cavalryman (talk) 13:39, 3 August 2020 (UTC).
 * As I recollect, when that policy was brought in, there was no regional opt-out and some folks went through enforcing it on all Australian articles. I was not happy as when I went to school here in Qld (some decades ago!), it was "John Smith senior" and his son "John Smith junior" and never "Senior" nor "Junior" as they could be mistaken as surnames. There was never anything said about "Sr." and "Jr." because they were not used as I recall. "Sr." means Sister (as in nuns and nurses) to me. In more recent times I see more Americanisms creep into Australian writing, probably because of American word processors, enforcement on Wikipedia (and all those who copy and paste from it!), etc. So recent Australian content may not be as reliable a guide as older content. If I search the Trove digitised newspapers for "senior son junior"~10 (meaning find those 3 words within a sequence of 10 words) I get over 6000 results, while ""snr son jnr"~10 and "sr son jr"~10 both yield 200+ results (note these searches are all case insensitive). So historically the evidence suggest that "senior" and "junior" are our traditional forms. I note that Australians don't have the same enthuasiasm for naming sons after their fathers as Americans so it is lot less commonplace situation. While I do know some father-and-sons with the same official first name, they invariably have a different middle name and the son is usually referred to by his middle name within the family, but may or may not use that name outside the family (e.g. school, work). And I am not sure I ever met an Australian who was John Smith III or similar, that seems to be very much an American custom. Kerry (talk) 07:25, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I note that this topic is discussed a bit here Suffix (name) which makes the point that Americans consider the Senior/Junior as part of the name, whereas the British do not and are using it simply to distinguish between them. Assuming our traditions derive from the British, then Wikiepdia article titles for Australians should be John Smith (junior) and John Smith (senior), or perhaps John Smith, i.e. treat it as a disambiguation. Kerry (talk) 07:36, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * If its to disambiguate then (senior/junior) would be the correct method, if the person is written about using the title then use what ever they are known by on Trove like George Thorn Senior you note that at the time of the photo they used senr.. We shouldnt be forcing or making changes to a persons identity nor title to suit ourselves. Gnangarra 07:50, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed, if we have evidence that a person used a particular style when writing their own name, I think that it what we should follow. I just checked the Australian Dictionary of Biography searching for articles that use "senior"/"junior" vs "snr/jnr" and "sr"/"jr" and they use "senior" and "junior" almost always. There is one use of "Jnr" and two "Jr"s. There are five Snr"s and no "Sr"s (it means Sister in the ADB it seems -- they must have gone to school with me!). Kerry (talk) 08:03, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * What a good thing this baffling custom is all but extinct in Australia. But to the point at hand: I think the last few comments from Kerry and Gnangarra in particular are on the money. Given that most Australians in this situation (especially recently) will tend to go by their name alone and require the Sr/Jr only as a disambiguator (the Bob Katters and Harry Jenkinses come to mind), we should go with (senior)/(junior) - and not always both if one is the primary topic. This may require an amendment to WP:JR/SR though. I agree with Gnangarra that if we have strong evidence that someone routinely used Sr/Jr in their name (and that it isn't just house style or something), then it should be included outside the brackets, but in this case we should follow WP:JR/SR. I strongly suspect (and correct me if I'm wrong) that most publications will use a house style here and we should be no different. Frickeg (talk) 09:40, 5 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I think we simply use as found by the person's usage - I think to change from what is found is leaving the project open to problems - Tommy Hanlon Jr. comes to mind - he came from the states and called himself that... JarrahTree 10:57, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem is what is used can be influenced by newspaper's editorial style guides (note how many Australian papers use US style dates these days?), personal preferences of the writer or space constraints. In the Austin Robertson case, I searched the Football Record archive at SLV for "Austin Robertson junior" and only found one recent article. "Austin Robertson jr" was zero. "Austin Robertson jnr" found 96! Now I haven't checked them all, and a lot are probably the same list of Hall of Fame inductees, but ever contemporary articles like this one from 1971 used jnr. and snr. Googling "Gary Ablett jnr" or "Gary Ablett jr" each find about 30000 hits. "Gary Ablett junior" is only 3400. The-Pope (talk) 14:51, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Title of House of Representatives article
Further input sought here. Frickeg (talk) 07:51, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

History of Australia
I just noticed this edit. It opens up a few cans of worms. It's the opening paragraph of a long broad scope article. I'd suggest that the previous version much better summarizes the article (as the opening should), and the new does not - rather it seems to introduce new points about the historiography of Australia, which is different to what the article proceeds to cover.

What are others' thoughts? --Merbabu (talk) 01:01, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Per WP:LEAD - if it is introducing something not addressing content of the article, and also adding opinion - delete without hesitation. JarrahTree 02:08, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That's not the situation here. This is an article about history, as opposed to prehistory or archaeology. Wikipedia's definition of history is "History is the study of the past. Events occurring before the invention of writing systems are considered prehistory.]]"


 * This is what we see in comparable articles such as History of the United States: "The prehistory of the United States started with the arrival of Native Americans before 15,000 BC. Numerous indigenous cultures formed, and many disappeared before 1500. The arrival of Christopher Columbus in the year 1492 started the European colonization of the Americas."


 * I think it's important to stick to the facts and be clear about what we have records for, and what we have scientific studies such as archaelogy and paleontology to inform us as to what happened in the past. --Pete (talk) 02:53, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * That edit simply doesn't reflect the rest of the article, and uses language with a pointedly negative slant to describe the Aboriginal people. Doesn't belong. I note that it has now been reverted, and that's how things should stay. HiLo48 (talk) 03:12, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * How can you justify that opinion, HiLo? I stated accurately, "Archaeological studies reveal that Australia had at that time been occupied by pre-literate humans for tens of thousands of years, but apart from rock art, they left no records." Surely you are not suggesting that the First Australians were literate???? --Pete (talk) 03:54, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * A classic response from you Pete. I wrote all that I felt (and still do feel) needed writing, and you suggest I mean something else other than what I wrote. Take your tabloid, social media style tactics somewhere else. I'm not biting. HiLo48 (talk) 04:58, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The edit in question here strikes me as ill-informed and racist prejudice against Indigenous Australians. Nick-D (talk) 04:00, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Your opinion. If we could stick to facts, please, such as the distinction between history and prehistory, which is the point I raise. Are you suggesting, along with HiLo, that there was a literate culture prior to the arrival of Europeans??? --Pete (talk) 04:19, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There is no need for this racist rubbish, which implies that Australian history began with the arrival of Europeans on the bullshit grounds that they kept written records, to be included in the lead of the article. Or anywhere else for that matter. Nick-D (talk) 04:24, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks Nick - i share Nick's "opinion" and it's a perfectly reasonable conclusion to make based on the edit and comments here in support of it.
 * As for "facts", Skyring quotes Wikipedia's definition of History: "History is the study of the past" ... in contrast, his edit states "The history of Australia is the record of events on the continent of Australia." That's not the same. --Merbabu (talk) 04:38, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You omitted the rest of Wikipedia's definition: "Events occurring before the invention of writing systems are considered prehistory." Are you saying that history and prehistory are the same thing??? --Pete (talk) 05:48, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * History and prehistory can be happily accommodated together in one article. As it is in this Australian article and the half dozen big country articles i just checked (both the "History of X" and the actual country articles - eg, Austrlia). All of them do it better than the edit you provided. I trust you aren't going to now introduce separate pre-history and history sections across wikipedia. --Merbabu (talk) 06:01, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Such as Prehistory of Australia, you mean? --Pete (talk) 06:26, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No, that's not what I meant. I actually meant what I said. Read it again. Here, more specifically: Australia contains a pre-history section. I'm betting so do all the other country articles. --Merbabu (talk) 06:46, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * And you think I have some sort of objection to this? I don't. What makes you think otherwise? My objection is to the imprecision of the lede paragraph. --Pete (talk) 06:54, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree entirely that the edit was a poor one and am glad it was reverted. However, it's worth noting that the current lead sentence ("The history of Australia is the history of the area and people of the Indigenous and the more recently arrived settlers from the late 18th century onward.") is pretty awful syntactically. This might be a good opportunity to workshop something better. Frickeg (talk) 05:31, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * If we could distinguish between history and prehistory. Or recorded events and archaeology/paleontology. --Pete (talk) 05:48, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Frickeg, agree that there is room to improve sentence structure. Are you able to suggest something?
 * Skyring, why do you feel that this is such an important distinguish to make? So important that it needs to go in the lead sentence? Other similar articles all have prehistory sections and without the, shall we say, clumsiness, of your reverted edit. --Merbabu (talk) 05:56, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Call me pedantic, but I don't see history and prehistory as being the same thing. The current wording doesn't make that distinction. We can tell the story of what happened here before Europeans had anything to say about it, but without giving the impression that there were contemprary records to draw upon, as we might find in (say) Egypt, Persia, China, Mexico, Peru and so on. New Zealand has a strong oral history tradition, and there are elements that may be separated from myth, such as the number and names of the ancestral canoes, but there doesn't appear to be anything of that nature in Australia. --Pete (talk) 06:22, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That's correct, history and prehistory are not the same thing, and one doesn't have to be particularly clever to appreciate that. We all get the distinction. But, it's not the point. The question to you has been why does this distinction need to be in this article in the first two sentences? I'm sure it wasn't your intent, but the edit struck a dismissive and demeaning tone. And as I mention above, it was not representative of the article content as a lead should be.--Merbabu (talk) 06:52, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I had a look at a number of our other articles titled "History of...." Almost all apply that topic name to the entire period of human habitation of a country, independent of whether a written language was used throughout that time. There are many diverse openings, but I like this one... "The history of Canada covers the period from the arrival of the Paleo-Indians thousands of years ago to the present day." For History of Australia I would suggest "The history of Australia covers the period from the arrival of Aboriginal Australians over 50,000 years ago to the present day." That "over 50,000 years" wording comes from the lead of our Aboriginal Australians article. HiLo48 (talk) 06:18, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Nobody is disputing the fact that there were people here for tens of thousands of years. We can't tell the story of the continent without mentioning it. My point - and I don't think you appreciate it - is that there is a distinction between history and prehistory. --Pete (talk) 06:30, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I think you just ignored what I actually wrote. Again. HiLo48 (talk) 06:32, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes Skyring, I get the difference between history and prehistory. It's not a hard one. But that's not the point. --Merbabu (talk) 06:46, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, it's the point I'm making. Saying there's no difference, in a history article of all places, is nonsensical. What is your point? --Pete (talk) 06:59, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The notion that if something wasn't written down at the time it's a different type of history is rather outdated. Historians have done lots of work in Australia and elsewhere to trace the history of Indigenous peoples using their oral histories, archaeology, genetics, environmental history, etc. The same approaches have been used to enrich our understanding of the ancient societies for which written records survive. Nick-D (talk) 07:03, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Outdated or not, there is a distinction. My objection is to the imprecision of the lede, which admits no difference. Saying that archaeology, genetics, geology and so on are history when we are describing the human narrative is unsatisfying and imprecise, and short-changes our readers. --Pete (talk) 07:21, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No-one says there is not a distinction. I've already said that. And I understand your point, just not its application. Other editors agree. We are going around in circles. --Merbabu (talk) 08:31, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Typically the major issue with making a WP:POINT on the noticeboard - after all this chatter, nothing has convinced me that the issue's brought up by Pete deserve space in a WP:LEAD other than delete - there is no short-changing as the article itself does not deal with the complexities of the richness of the pre-european cultural traditions that do in their inherent way constitute and provide evidence in a very different manner than the europeantradition.  The whole set of arguments and issues here deserve a separate article - which if dealt with in a manner that relates to the available literature, can provide the reader with a clearer understanding of cultural traditions and transferral of knowledge that has existed long before the western traditions even started... but to say what I did at the beginning - a lead paragraph is not the place to invoke the issue - wrong place. Another article, that can explore the very interesting issues of cultural and knowledge transmission over millenia. JarrahTree 08:42, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Your edit made a number of contentious statements (surely you can see the problem with "apart from rock art, they left no records"), and describes Indigenous Australians as "pre-literate human". It clearly reads as minimising Aboriginal history - indeed, it rather awkwardly avoids mentioning Aboriginal Australians directly at all, which at least seems like an attempt to introduce a very fringe historiography into the lead. As for my earlier issue with sentence structure, like HiLo I had a look at some equivalent articles to get some ideas (and there is clearly a mix between those that emphasise written records and those that do not - with the latter notably including many where written records came much later; as our own page states, "the term [prehistory] is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently"):
 * History of Europe: "The history of Europe concerns itself with the discovery and collection, the study, organization and presentation and the interpretation of past events and affairs of the people of Europe since the beginning of written records."
 * History of China: "The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC, from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC), during the king Wu Ding's reign, who was mentioned as the twenty-first Shang king by the same."
 * History of Africa: "The history of Africa begins with the emergence of hominids, archaic humans and—at least 200,000 years ago—anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens), in East Africa, and continues unbroken into the present as a patchwork of diverse and politically developing nation states."
 * History of the Americas: "The prehistory of the Americas (North, South, and Central America, and the Caribbean) begins with people migrating to these areas from Asia during the height of an Ice Age."
 * I note that the exact words "history of Australia" need not appear, so I wonder if we can dive right in with the current second and third sentences ("Aboriginal Australians arrived on the Australian mainland by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago. The artistic, musical and spiritual traditions they established are among the longest surviving such traditions in human history."), and then add a sentence after that dealing with the arrival of Europeans (which could also mention that they brought written records with them, hopefully going some way to addressing Pete's concern). Alternatively I would be fine with HiLo's suggestion above. Frickeg (talk) 08:44, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Up above Pete pointed us at History. He apparently didn't read the final sentence of that section, which says "This definition includes within the scope of history the strong interests of peoples, such as Indigenous Australians and New Zealand Māori in the past, and the oral records maintained and transmitted to succeeding generations, even before their contact with European civilization." So, despite no formal writing system in the European sense, what Aboriginal people did in Australia before Europeans arrived is history, not prehistory. HiLo48 (talk) 09:39, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I read that, HiLo. What point are you making? "Strong interest in the past" doesn't equate to "records made at the time", and I've already mentioned the oral history tradition of the Māori. In Australian terms, the myths and legends passed down are more spiritual than historical. Typically, a narrative of the past will deal with animal behaviour, geography, and the local law, and the cited behaviour often strains credibility. For example, it is hard to accept that a tale of somebody turning into a mountain has any historic merit. Do you have any suggestions for clarifying the wording of the lede? --Pete (talk) 10:00, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm getting seriously concerned about your competence here Pete. That quote, to me, simply says that Aboriginal history is history, not prehistory, and yes, I do have suggestions for clarifying the wording of the lead. I explicitly made them above. This conversation is becoming ridiculous. Nobody is agreeing with you, and you are not comprehending or noticing what others have written. And again, your comment there about Aboriginal legends is bordering on being derogatory and racist. HiLo48 (talk) 10:23, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Be reasonable, HiLo! If something is history, it can hardly be prehistory at the same time, now can it? As for legends, you need to cast your mind back to pre-European times. In a pre or poorly literate society, information is transmitted orally. The stories of Homer, the teachings of Jesus, the epic of the Bhagavad Gita. To survive over generations, these stories must contain elements that aid memory and prevent alteration. The Sanskrit verse of the Gita is encoded in its rhythmns and meters so that any error is immediately obvious. Bruce Chatwin in his marvellous book The Songlines talks about memory and song and geography. I make no doubt that the same sort of mnemonic devices were used to ensure the information held by the story remained intact. The sort of information contained in these legends is more than just entertainment.


 * Of course, exciting and dramatic stories more easily hold attention, which is important when teaching children their cultural legacy, but we also see the treasures carried by the story in teaching the local geography and elements of behaviour. Respect for elders, how to find food, and so on. These are not just stories for entertainment, any more than The Odyssey is an exciting tale about an incompetent mariner, or the Gita is just a pause in a battle while a warrior chats with his chariot driver, or the Good Samaritan is a story of an encounter on the road. Chatwin goes into some detail about the vital part the Aboriginal narrative tradition plays in survival, and I cannot recommend his excellent book too highly.


 * The First Australians may not have had a system of writing, but the complexity, depth and richness of their cultural artifacts such as the oral tradition and artwork is extraordinary. Good Aboriginal art - as opposed to the tat produced for tourists - is genuinely thrilling, engaging the mind for those who can read the symbology. Perhaps it is too subtle for some to appreciate, but you might enrich yourself immeasurably if you were to look into the way these things are put together. If you think my sincere appreciation for Aboriginal culture is derogatory and racist, well, I suggest you should examine your own views, and perhaps learn something about this rich cultural legacy.--Pete (talk) 16:22, 11 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Waaaayy off topic. HiLo48 (talk) 23:23, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia works because we as editors have to work together. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You have made a vile personal attack, HiLo, and I ask you kindly to withdraw it. --Pete (talk) 09:43, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

The current opening sentence is ungrammatical ("the history of the area and people of the Indigenous"?) and a bit redundant, but the rest of the opening paragraph is fine. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 10:45, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Next steps
@User:HiLo48 and @User:Frickeg - thanks for your thoughts and suggestions for a change to the awkward syntax - i suggest they are heading in the right direction for a good improvement. I want to follow up with more comment but have a horrible couple of days of work ahead of me. Just wanted to say that you're comments were not being ignored. --Merbabu (talk) 02:05, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Infobox Australia state or territory nominated for merge
Infobox Australia state or territory has been nominated for merge with infobox settlement. The discussion is here. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 04:15, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Please note this discussion closed as merge to infobox settlement. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 07:03, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Australian constitutional law
this diff looks suss. Uncited plus random capitalisation. PAustin4thApril1980 (talk) 03:51, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I've reverted it as per BRD. For one thing, we need secondary sources. An editor's interpretation of a primary source that is full of high-level legalese might notr be quite the thing. --Pete (talk) 04:07, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not really correct anyway, agree with reverting. Deus et lex (talk) 09:12, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Are tourist attractions necessarily landmarks?
Editorial opinion is sought at Category talk:Tourist attractions in Perth, Western Australia. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:07, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Prime Minister images
As a photographer, I know that a good portrait can be difficult to achieve. Apart from the technical issues of getting a good focal length, having the settings on the exposure/aperture/ISO triangle more or less in the ball park, getting sufficient resolution and so on, a portrait should ideally capture the essence of the subject. In Wikipedia, we are handicapped by needing to use a free image. Official portraits are by no means ours for the taking, and while someone's selfie with an ex-PM uploaded on Flickr may have a Creative Commons license, it is rare that these sorts of happy snaps are much chop.

The various articles on our PMs generally have a fair bit of discussion on the lead image, and it's always good to see some consensus emerge from editors who usually disagree on politics, but are united in the ideal of making the best possible Wikipedia. For example, this portrait of Julia Gillard is superb. That look of steely determination captures her personality well, and it was shot with professional gear by a photographer who knew what they were doing. I think our best Tony Abbott image came from the same bloke. Our Rudd and Turnbull articles have okay images, but nothing sparkling. Rudd often looks wishy-washy, and Turnbull seems to turn on his quizzical face when a camera is pointed at him.

On that note, we don't seem to have a good image of Paul Keating as PM. A pity. One of the more colourful characters in Australian politics, and the one we use makes him look like George Bush's press secretary.

Over the years I've encountered Wikipedians who use images of politicians as weapons. They hunt down every article on a politician they dislike and substitute it for something that was emphatically rejected from the politician's bio. John Howard is a case in point. Both images are from American trips, where we have the advantage that official American government photographs are placed in the public domain. The 1997 image is pretty crappy, but the second from a later trip captures the guy well and is the image we use in his bio. It's a good clear shot, has an Australian flag behind him, and picks up on Howard's earnestness. I also like the extra dose of eyebrows. And again, it emerges from a discussion on the BLP talk page.

And yet, we see people swapping out a good image for a poor replacement. Incidentally, isn't that a fabulous 2005 shot of Kim Beazley?

I've been hunting down occurrences of the really bad Howard shot and replacing them with the one we use in his bio, but I've encountered a bit of pushback from someone who thinks the bad shot is better. Opinions? --Pete (talk) 11:28, 15 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, this is probably more than PM images being horrified. If anybody is aware of any other politician getting similar treatment, let me know, please? As an aside, I know about the Shane Rattenbury thing, but there's not much can be done. That's just the way he looks. --Pete (talk) 07:02, 18 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Do we not have any older pictures of Howard? If not, I really don't think the 2003 one is much better than the 1997 one. The lighting and definition are better, but the angle is much worse. They both capture a (very similar) characteristic Howard expression. I'd go with 1997 for sure for anything pre-2000. Frickeg (talk) 09:32, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the 97 and 03 images are not great. But if I had to chose, I'd go with the 97 shot as the better photo. It's a better angle, and is face is not all screwed up. --Merbabu (talk) 10:08, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Frickeg hits the nail on the head perfectly here, and fully sums up my view on this. The 97 shot is not a bad photo at all, and is one of the two best Howard photos currently available on Wikipedia alongside the 2003 photo. Why intentionally replace shots of the older, 1997 photo with the 2003 one for any article to do with John Howard set before 2000? I agree that the main photo on Howard's bio ought to be the 2003 photo as it currently is. But to me it makes zero sense to use a photo from 2003 for an article about, for example, a leadership election from 1983 when we have a perfectly good photo of Howard from the same century - a view which the others here also evidently agree with. For me, and I'm sure for many others, we ought to prioritise photos closer to the date when the article is set, particularly since it would be better representative of how they actually looked at the time (Howard for example had visibly aged between 1997 and 2003, and lost what remained of his hair from the top of his head). Furthermore, as I have often noticed your edits (specifically reversions) on the different pages when it comes to PM photos, you often bring up the need for consensus before changing the image - which is something that is only actually needed for the main pages of the PMs, not for any other page such as for House of Representatives seats or for elections. --Thescrubbythug (talk) 17:46, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Suspicious posts
I have just come across a number of similar posts by 2 editors over the past month or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Meganfixo and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Talianak Each posts adds a map to the Infobox of an Australian town or locality in alphabetical order. In some cases the map contains what appears to be advertising material such as in https://2ua.org/aus/nsw/biniguy/map/, https://2ua.org/aus/nsw/big_jacks_creek/map/ or https://2ua.org/aus/nsw/bellevue_hill/map/. What action if any, should be taken on this? Fleet Lists (talk) 12:16, 31 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Think it needs some close look - and  as to what is going on.. JarrahTree 12:36, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I can add a few more accounts - including those four, I'm up to 12 and climbing. Edits are in a literal round robin, with each one taking a turn a minute or so after the previous until they start again at the first. Maybe an SPI will help? - Bilby (talk) 13:53, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There is no information about the website so I don't see how it can be regarded to be a reliable source and the edits are effectively spam. I think an SPI is definitely called for. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 16:19, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Worth reporting to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam? --Find bruce (talk) 21:13, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * All the accounts have been blocked including a few sleepers. - Bilby (talk) 10:45, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that... JarrahTree 13:15, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I think I have reverted all edits except for one outside Australia - over 100 reversions. Fleet Lists (talk) 06:10, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Why was the addition of https://australia.2ua.org/nsw/ballina/ to the infobox of Ballina, New South Wales, a bad thing? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:45, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * As stated above the edits were considered SPAM - would have been OK if it had just been the map.Fleet Lists (talk) 09:54, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Infobox Australian place seems to be broken
Is it just me or are articles using this template displaying the infobox on the left without the box? It seems to have happened this afternoon (working for me before lunch, broken now). There have been no recent edits on the template so I am guessing this is related to a change in some other templates used by it? Kerry (talk) 07:17, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It seems to be affecting all infoboxes on my laptop and IP. Kerry (talk) 07:19, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Doesn't seem like it was an isolated problem (see VPT thread). I had the same issue, but it seems to have been fixed now. – Teratix ₵ 07:35, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed, fixed now. Kerry (talk) 07:37, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Koala "bear"
There is a current discussion on the koala talk page about the whether or not to describe the term "koala bear" as inaccurate or not. Members of this project may wish to contribute to that discussion. - Nick Thorne talk 00:42, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I've added comments to the article. Ridiculous that it is in the lead at all. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 12:20, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Tors Peerson
Is this article about an associate of Fred Walker (entrepreneur) (the Vegemite man) a hoax? An AfD candidate? Doug butler (talk) 00:29, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that it's a hoax, but it definitely fails WP:GNG - none of the references mention Tors Peerson. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:50, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm for the hoax (note the anagram), and Mr. Carty is a master of verisimilitude. Doug butler (talk) 03:17, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I've nominated for AfD - see Articles for deletion/Tors Peerson. Deus et lex (talk) 06:01, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Request from City of Melbourne
Emmuldoon from the City of Melbourne communications team made a request to edit City of Melbourne on 17 August at Talk:City of Melbourne: "Hi thank you for updating the list of Councillors. Much appreciated. There's a problem with the middle column of the table titled 'Party'. It lists some Councillors as 'Team Doyle' and 'Team Morgan'. This information was not there in the last [City of Melbourne communications team] approved update. It is incorrect as these parties do not exist anymore. On the City of Melbourne website, only their names are listed. Can this middle column please be removed or at least the references to 'Team Doyle' and 'Team Morgan'. Thanks heaps."

Please can Australian Wikipedians advise on best practice for handling changes in councilor party affiliation between elections. TSventon (talk) 08:11, 9 September 2020 (UTC)


 * very simple - either by the current version of OTRS system - or they can be provided on their talk page with the WP:COI welcome that is in twinkle which offers the strategies about 'paid' and 'COI' issues.


 * This issue arises so regularly on the Australian project - there is a need for a template specifically for the issue of 'updates' by people in organisations that have articles. It will not go away.  JarrahTree 08:52, 9 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Emmuldoon has followed WP:COIEDIT by making a Declaration of COI and requesting an edit on the article talk page, but I am not familiar with Australian politics Wikipedia pages so I am seeking advice on whether and how to update the article in response to her request. As Robert Doyle has resigned it seems likely that there is no longer a 'Team Doyle' faction. TSventon (talk) 09:38, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I suggest changing the column title from "Party" to "Elected under ticket group (2016)" or similar, as it reflects what the situation was at the 2016 election and can be referenced to the VEC results ("Party" probably isn't accurate anyway for some of these teams and groups). The other option is to remove the column entirely, which removes useful information I think... although the election is in October so it wouldn't be for long and when the new council is elected the column could be restored with the 2020 ticket groups. --Canley (talk) 14:33, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * thanks for replying, I am happy to change the column title: "Group when elected" would be shorter. I will wait a few more days for any further suggestions. TSventon (talk) 20:22, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks all, I have now answered the query in line with Canley's suggestion. TSventon (talk) 10:18, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Trove newspaper links
Trove's automatic Wikipedia citations are great, but would be improved if so many of their template-generated newspaper names didn't need editing to match WP titles. Is anyone in conversation with the helpful folk at NLA on this subject? I can't believe I'm the only one to see the need. Doug butler (talk) 01:58, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Have you got a couple of examples of the issues you're facing? Hack (talk) 05:52, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I corresponded with them about eight years ago about this and other topics; Kerry Raymond might remember a conversation about this. Apparently the newspaper titles they have come from a database that they can't change for some reason. Graham 87 08:49, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There have been a few exchanges over the years on this topic. It always seemed to be "this is a task for our developers, and we don't have any funding for development". However, they do appear to have some funds at the moment for development, and WMAU was thinking of approaching them on this issue. So please if you know of any of newspaper names that need fixing, can you please email me at kerry.raymond@wikimedia.org.au with the name of the current link they generate and what it should be (or what the options are if it is a disambiguation siutation). If you can give me the relevant newspaper title URL that helps too. They are more likely to be responsive if we can give them one big specific list of changes needed. My personal bugbear is The Telegraph instead of The Telegraph. If only I had a dollar for every one of those I've fixed ... Kerry (talk) 08:56, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There are a bunch at Category:Redirects for newspapers on Trove but they are not really a problem as they redirect to the correct title. The problematic ones link to either a different page or a disambiguation page. I'm away this week, so would need to check my notes for those, from memory the various telegraph titles (Adelaide, Sydney etc) & The Australian (1824 newspaper) are similarly problematic. --Find bruce (talk) 10:26, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Kerry should have a good number by now, but here's one I hadn't seen before
 * newspaper=The Week to newspaper=The Week (Brisbane) (is this format OK?) Doug butler (talk) 14:35, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Doug! That format is ok. But no I haven't received very many, so please folks write here or whatever. Kerry (talk) 19:18, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I think I gave you Evening News → The Evening News (Sydney) but I find their "Evening News" could also be The Evening News (Rockhampton) Doug butler (talk) 04:14, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder to go back and look at my notes. The irony in all of this is that where the wikipedia article exists, the Trove page for the paper has the correct link. The following list of A-C shows the scale of the issue. THe disambiguation links are less of a problem that the links to the incorrect article as they can are routinely detected. --Find bruce (talk) 06:54, 2 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Daily Standard → The Daily Standard (Brisbane) Doug butler (talk) 23:57, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The Daily News → The Daily News (Perth). Doug butler (talk) 22:08, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Standard → The Port Melbourne Standard Doug butler (talk) 01:03, 15 September 2020 (UTC) — from 1914–1920 OK as Port Melbourne Standard (same paper, new banner)
 * Western Herald → Western Herald (Bourke) Doug butler (talk) 14:22, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Exclusive economic zone of Australia
Wikipedia is near its death. Where are the editors? A naughty boy has successfully deleted the article Exclusive economic zone of Australia after acquiring just one support in the talk page from a sockpuppet (User:I-82-I, now banned indefinitely). Any admin out there please help me to restore this article to its former glory. Thanks. 2001:8003:9008:1301:CD0E:CD14:AB99:BBA6 (talk) 13:28, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have reverted the edits made by the sockpuppet to the article and its talk page. Since the move discussion was closed by the sock, who was the only supporter, that means that the article and the move discussion have been restored. As a participant in the move discussion, the sock should not have closed that discussion. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 17:14, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks Legend, you are a champion! 2001:8003:9008:1301:CD0E:CD14:AB99:BBA6 (talk) 17:53, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The guy who started the merge proposal is still going at it. He is still defending the sock puppet which makes him look pretty suspicious. He started the merge proposal on 2 August 2020, the proposal received no attention from the community. On 14 August 2020, the sock puppet came and pledged its support for his proposal, just two days before the discussion was scheduled to be closed due to a lack of participation from the community. On 16 August 2020, exactly 14 days after the initial proposal was lodged, the sock puppet closed the discussion and manually created a redirect by deleting the whole article. This looks like a planned action, a one-man show orchestrated by a sockmaster. 2001:8003:9008:1301:B4EE:DD6E:6A85:7A27 (talk) 02:43, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Bushfires...
It might be worth having a look at Bushfires in Australia for the talk page conversation about moving the article... JarrahTree 01:11, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * This stupid proposal pissed me off, mate. Kenwick (talk) 08:35, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have closed this discussion (due to snow keep vote). Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:05, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Andrew Hastie (politician)
There has been some unusual activity at this biography that editors here may want to take a look at. There has been a push by some with accounts created around June 2020 and later to include content promotional and personally detailed of the subject, and from many sources by the subject himself and sources close to the subject. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:03, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * On this topic, was Hastie's section relating to the "severed hands incident" ever that small and insignificant? Despite the significant coverage, and all these new additions by these editors, there's only a tiny section about how Hastie "was met with media criticism about the "severed hands" incident". He was a significant player in the event as revealed by the Afghan Files, being the person to sound the alarm that one of his soldiers was committing war crimes. Catiline52 (talk) 06:56, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * One of the editors that is continually editing the page is "a very junior staffer working in the Australia political space". This seems like a potential WP:COI issue, they haven't disclosed who they work for and they're heavily editing this one page. Catiline52 (talk) 07:09, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * There doesn't appear to be much in the media about it. There doesn't appear to be more to it than a soldier, or potentially soldiers, had removed hands from corpses, and that this was something Hastie reported and told soldiers not to do again. This was a matter that was covered by the media in 2015 and again in 2017. Probably an open question as to how much weight we give this.
 * That particular editor has stated they work for various federal MPs, but have not said which. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:15, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * On that basis alone - I have added WP:COI at the talk page. JarrahTree 11:03, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Javanese contact with Australia
alerted me on my talk page to this article because he was sceptical about its veracity. I agree with him. In fact my feelings really are a lot stronger than that. It was created just over a month ago, and is the work of pretty much just one editor. While I'm calming done before rushing in, maybe some other editors might feel like taking a look. HiLo48 (talk) 03:49, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks - apologies all I didn't think of coming here too, but did take it to the fringe noticeboard and alert the author, who immediately went to ground for several weeks. It is indeed rubbish. I started to edit it offline but quickly gave up - I think its unfixable.Nickm57 (talk) 04:14, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
 * There should be the opportunity for other views than those above to be adequately checked. The issues raised by the article may not be as simply summarised in some cases. JarrahTree 05:46, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Good idea. However, we would want to make sure that because it is a bit obscure it doesn't fall through the cracks. I did ask the editor, two weeks ago, to justify the fairly contentious and possibly offensive claim that "Black labor was imported (to Java) from Jenggi (Zanzibar), Pujut (Australia)..." An authority called "Naerssen" appears in the next sentence, a source for the comment "they (indigenous Australians) arrived in Java by trading (bought by merchants) or being taken prisoner during a war and then made slaves". I certainly have never read an academic who makes such claims and Naerssen isnt sourced or mentioned again. However I'm always happy to learn. Nickm57 (talk) 06:46, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

National Colonial Flag for Australia dating from the 1820s
I was surprised to find that National Colonial Flag for Australia has been tagged as unsourced for 13 years, so set about finding some. Unfortunately, I found the page on Australian National Flag Association has almost identical text to the original 2005 version of our article. I'm not sure whether to tag our article as copyvio, to assume the external site copied our text without attribution or that it is public domain text (they don't obviously have a copyright statement on their website, but should be attributed anyway). I can find a few other references to this flag, but very little that is clearly suitable as a reference for a completely re-written article. The article purports that this flag was created in 1823 or 1824, so did not represent anything like what we now recognise as Australia. The text does not mention that "Australia" in the 1820s did not have most of the colonies that went on to become the Australian states. The article was created by User:Steaknife, a blocked sock of User:Premier who is also blocked and likely a sock of User:Gloriousrevolution who was blocked for abusive editing and pushing the position of the Australian Flag Society Does anyone have a suggestion on how to deal with this? AFD? --Scott Davis Talk 11:26, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
 * On the Flag of Australia page we cite a Government publication about the National Colonial Flag (see Flag of Australia), so I'd be disinclined to use AfD, there are obviously other sources out there and the flag is notable. Deus et lex (talk) 21:01, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
 * First, no need for AfD, there are plenty of references in books and newspapers which show this flag existed, and was proposed by Bingle and Nicholson in 1824. Secondly, half the article is a quote by Bingle (which this 1933 article in the Sydney Morning Herald seems to allude to but does not directly quote) and it would be good to get a link or firmer citation for that—Bingle seems to have been fairly widely published in the early 1800s, but I couldn't find this particular publication (Illustrated Retrospect of Present Century) online but it could be in a library or other archive (SMH mentions Bingle's papers in the Mitchell Library). The National Colonial Flag flag was mentioned in Senate Hansard by Noel Crichton-Browne during a debate on the Flags Amendment Bill in 1988. Other books which mention the flag include Flags of the Night Sky: When Astronomy Meets National Pride (2013) by André G. Bordeleau; Flag of Stars (1966) by Frank Cayley; Doctor Karl's Australia: Great Australian Facts & Firsts by Karl Kruszelnicki; Debrett's Handbook of Australia and New Zealand (1984); The World Encyclopedia Of Flags (2003) and Flags of the World: An Illustrated Guide to Contemporary Flags (2000) by Alfred Znamierowski. May not be enough for a big rewrite but we can at least reference some or all of the statements, and many of these references pre-date Wikipedia so no chance that they used this article as a reference. --Canley (talk) 00:31, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * My "AFD" remark was intended in the sense of "blow it away and start again". Clearly it exists, and something like it existed since that time. This page casts some doubt on exactly what it looked like at the time. I am a bit concerned about the statement that it was the forerunner of Australian flag designs. What "nation" was identified by the "national colonial flag" in the mid 1820s. It seems to have been the nation of New South Wales, which included (some of) the Nineteen Counties, possibly Moreton Bay Penal Settlement, Van Diemen's Land, Norfolk Island and perhaps the northern part of New Zealand. --Scott Davis Talk 00:56, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, good points. I also find the lack of contemporary illustrations of the actual flag a little concerning. Related to your point about the composition of the "nation"–I think it's unlikely the stars on this flag would be the seven-point Commonwealth Stars seen on this illustration, and are more likely to have been five-pointed stars as per the "American notions" that Bingle mentions or the New Zealand flag. Strike that, they are eight-pointed and that seems to be possible to reference, but would love to see an illustration. --Canley (talk) 01:21, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Trove seems to have five Sydney newspapers from that decade and nine from Tasmania (some seem to be mergers and splits). An article from 1929 (published in both Hobart and Sydney) talks about the British flag at Swan River Colony, not the Colonial National Flag. I accept that something called the Colonial National Flag existed, with a little doubt as to its exact form and if there was only one. I have less faith that it was a forerunner of the Australian flag. It is claimed to have been accepted by Governor (of New South Wales) Brisbane, but the blog at CRW Flags seems to have done some research and failed to find evidence of Brisbane having endorsed it.  --Scott Davis Talk 12:15, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Should the flag be removed from Template:Country data Australia then? It seems to be used quite a lot by people assuming that it was an official flag, but given the lack of evidence for use I'm inclined to support removal. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 10:42, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Bowman Flag and Australian Federation Flag, by the same author, also duplicate(d) text on that website. Internet Archive is not helpful. I'll blank National Colonial Flag for Australia and Bowman Flag as copyvios and (re)list them at Copyright problems which gives the reviewing admin (most likely myself, because nobody else clears copyright problems nowadays) the option to delete the article after seven days if the copyright status is not clarified. (National Colonial Flag for Australia was listed at Copyright problems/2020 September 24 but not blanked so I can't delete it now.) MER-C 18:09, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks MER-C. I am a bit confused as the anfa.com.au website appears to only have existed since 2018, whereas the text at Bowman Flag was substantially written in 2005 - similarly for the 2 other articles. Is there evidence of the text prior to 2005 or is it just being assumed that the wikipedia article has copied the text? --Find bruce (talk) 03:03, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It's more likely than not that the text was pasted into Wikipedia - two articles on similar subjects duplicating the same website, article created in one go, no wikification, user has history of image copyright problems. It may not be that URL. MER-C 08:10, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

List of proposed Australian flags
Hi all, I was wondering if any other editors had views on this page. Some of the 'proposals' don't even have images, most are sourced from a singular Australian flag aggregator site 'Ausflag', some are just sourced through someone's trademark (How is that coverage). Sometimes people end up just adding their own random design they uploaded to Wikimedia. After a discussion on the talk page, most editors agreed to remove 'proposed' flags that did not get significant third-party coverage as they don't really merit inclusion. However, this was later seen as contentious and was reverted by one editor. I'd like if any other editor would like to include their opinion on the page so that we can get consensus on what to do, as I don't want it to end up as an edit war. Catiline52 (talk) 10:37, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Kate Baker
I have started the stub article Draft:Kate Baker. I will continue to add to this as time permits, but would it be possible for someone to review this and see if it might be moved out of draft space? It is a worthy article, if not for this lady then Australia's "Mark Twain" might have been undiscovered. - Aussie Article Writer (talk) 06:02, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Infobox Australian place again
It appears that we have a small group of editors trying to make Infobox Australian place into an Infobox settlement wrapper without any consultation with this project. This is despite the most recent merge discussion, which opposed converting the infobox to a wrapper, being closed as "no consensus". One even suggests that the wrapper is ready to go live. I invite all interested parties to visit the discussion at Template talk:Infobox Australian place. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 16:55, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Native white Australians
My initial reaction when seeing the name of this article in the new page queue was … this seems a bit fishy. Reading sentences like Native white Australians were instrumental in developing the self-governing and democratic institutions of Australia only made me more concerned. Is this a legitimate term/topic? AleatoryPonderings (talk) 05:36, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It looks a lot like a duplication of European Australians and the various articles on Colonial-era Australia. Nick-D (talk) 22:53, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Searching references
Is there a way to search through references? I just found that I've been putting "Ransom" as editor of Australian Oxford Dictionary when it should be (W S) Ramson. I've corrected the few obvious ones I did but there would be others and perhaps I am not alone. Doug butler (talk) 00:05, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Something like this should work. Hack (talk) 00:22, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Found three instances, one mine. A good result. Thanks Doug butler (talk) 06:18, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * (Thinks) Hack's trick may be useful for finding unlinked instances of a name (etc.) for which an article exists. Didn't think it possible. Doug butler (talk) 06:42, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Please feel free to use excellent new photographs by Ed Gold
Hi, Australian Wikipedians. I have been assisting the photojournalist Ed Gold to upload sets of his photographs to Wikipedia Commons. He spent some time with the community at Yuendumu and the images he has licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 (the standard Commons license) are to be found. Ask me if you need any advice on the details. Note that Ed Gold is IRL off-the-grid and I'm glad I've been able to help him upload his stunning work under the best license for sharing. Together, he and I hope to upload perhaps hundreds more of his images and we are doing so one Project at a time (see his article for other Projects). You were lucky this was the first full batch we completed. Under the circumstances, you will appreciate his inability to provide more than a scant detail on any one image. To get more, work from the source(s) linked in his article — or look at his website. If you get stuck with a particular image you have definitely decided to include in an article, put it in anyway and ping me or comment on my talk page and I'll seek the details you need direct from Ed. Also, watch out for the next Signpost, where there is likely to be an article by him. Pass on the message! Michael D. Turnbull (talk) 14:08, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * There is currently no evidence in the Commons records that Mr Gold has agreed for Michael to upload his images under a CC licence. Until this is fixed up, anyone who adds these images to Wikipedia articles could potentially be sanctioned for copyright violations given that Commons details are obviously fatally flawed. Nick-D (talk) 22:40, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, I've got to the bottom of this. The problem is merely that Ed and I have swamped the OTRS folk with work. If you check out the first image from the Yuendumu series (now on right here) by drill-through to Commons, you'll see that it has the correct OTRS tag. However, I am not allowed to add these tags: only OTRS volunteers may do so. Thus, in the fullness of time, all the Yuendumu images will get that review and be valid for use in articles. If you want to expedite that process because you spot an image you wish to use, then I'm not sure of how you can speed up the tagging but possibly by sending a begging e-mail to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:30, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It might have been simpler to send one email that gave permission for everything you uploaded for Ed Gold. I see one issue is that the source is not set for many of the uploads. But they look to be quality iamges. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:19, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * That's exactly what we did — and got a very speedy response! The problem is that although I uploaded all the subsequent images using the correct procedure, an OTRS volunteer has to review each one individually to add their approval that OTRS has been done. They, like everywhere else, have a backlog, so as of today only a tiny number including the one on this talk page have been done. Don't worry, though, all will resolve itself. Meanwhile, those who wish to look at the totality of Mr Gold's images should click on this link . Mike Turnbull (talk) 16:02, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * ALL of Mr Gold's photographs now have full ORTS licenses of the correct type for use within WP. It has been suggested that the personality rights warning may limit their use. This is not the case, as confirmed in this e-mail from permissions-commons@wikimedia.org today:
 * "Dear Mike Turnbull, The personality rights warning refers to external reuse only, i.e. when somebody wants to print that on any product or flyer or similar. For the educational use within Wikipedia you can assume you won't get any request [to help get model release permissions] at all. Yours sincerely, Alfred Neumann" Mike Turnbull (talk) 17:05, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Is "¢" used in Aus?
Is the "¢" symbol used for hundredths of a dollar in Australia? I noticed what I thought was a typo in Feed-in tariffs in Australia in which "c" was used instead and fixed it. But then I noticed "c" is used consistently throughout the article. Should these be changed? GA-RT-22 (talk) 16:30, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * We tend to use "c" in the vast majority of cases, although the very occasional "¢" does pop through. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 17:27, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The Australian Government style manual suggests "c" for cents. Hack (talk) 04:51, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Melbourne Cup winner
I noticed that there is a Draft:Twilight Payment as well as Twilight Payment. Can someone please sort this out? I didn't want to blank the draft and create a redirect without asking here about the proper way of fixing this. Oronsay (talk) 20:41, 3 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Fixed in the AfC process. No further action needed. Oronsay (talk) 04:25, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Images nominated for deletion at commons - urgent
A number of images used in Australian articles have recently been nominated for deletion with the rationale "No FoP for 'graphic works' in Australia". Image subjects cover a wide range including murals, water towers and toilet blocks. Because of the quantity involved, editors may wish to check c:Category:Australian FOP cases/pending to see if any articles they are watching are affected. Some relevant information may be found at Freedom of panorama. Editors should see this as an urgent request as some of the images, like File:BrokenHillTradeUnionMural.JPG (uploaded by ) have been deleted within hours of nomination with no discussion. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 08:29, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * ,, there seems to be some material on WP that FoP doesn't include murals and images but that doesn't seem to be consistent with what the legislation says. s65 of the Copyright Act says it doesn't apply to "works of artistic craftsmanship". A "work of artistic craftsmanship" (in s10 of the Copyright Act can include a type of work in paragraph (a) or (b) (which could include a 2D image). Most of the case law about what a work of artistic craftsmanship is seems to be about expanding the categories, not restricting them. Some commentary on IP seems to suggest the freedom in Australia is quite broad. Deus et lex (talk) 09:42, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There's a lengthy discussion on Commons here. Deus et lex (talk) 10:07, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * - can you help with this? Deus et lex (talk) 10:07, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The same thing happened last year by the same nominator and the images were restored after discussion. I have said as much on the images I noticed are up for deletion. Calistemon (talk) 11:05, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I stopped uploading images at commons because of this. They let obviously non-free images stay but delete obviously free images. the people there seem to have no idea what they're doing. -- Aussie Legend  ( ✉ ) 17:23, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The "A1Cafel" user has absolutely no idea at all what they are doing. They just delete images for spurious reasons and rely on a previous deletion debate which didn't establish anything as justification (and get away with it). Wikimedia should not let users like that run riot on sites such as Commons. Deus et lex (talk) 12:11, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Commercial Radio Australia
There’s a student editor working on this article as part of a class project. They’ve expanded the article quite a bit, but in doing so they’ve changed the citation style to something new. It’s probably not a big deal, but it is sometimes something that can lead to problems. In addition, lots of the content is quite detailed and it might be good if some others more familiar with radio in Australia could take a look to see if everything is OK. There were some MOS errors introduced as well, but these a relatively minor and can be cleaned up fairly easily. Student editors often are working under real world guidelines or assumptions that sometimes don’t translate directly to Wikipedia editing.FWIW, this student seems to really mean well and seems very enthusiastic; so, I’m not trying to discourage them. I just think it might be a good idea for others to check over their work because it might reduce cleanup down the road and perhaps will encourage the student to remain active as an editor once their course has finished. — Marchjuly (talk) 05:19, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I had a look at he article concerned. Currently there are two references flagged as errors with their names not defined Cite error: A list-defined reference named "ACMA" is not used in the content (see the help page). and Cite error: A list-defined reference named "PLA" is not used in the content (see the help page). All references are now defined with names in the References section with the actual references in the article only using the name of the reference. Hence an unnecessary duplication of all references. I would suggest all changes be reverted as soon as possible to get back to a standard reference format.Fleet Lists (talk) 06:00, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Commented at Talk:Commercial_Radio_Australia ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~ 07:51, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

FAC needs feedback
Greetings all! It would be greatly appreciated if anybody could give input at the FAC for Warner Bros. Movie World. A shame to see this review stagnating due to minimal input. Thank you in advance! —  CR 4 ZE (T &bull; C)  01:59, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Peter Costello, Alexander Downer, John Hewson
A slew of recent edits by a new user at these articles may be worth reviewing Bumbubookworm (talk) 19:31, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Australian Financial Review - Quality Scale Regrade
Hi Wikipedia Editors,

Over the past few weeks, I've taken the efforts to build out the AFR's Wikipedia page. I was wondering whether the article's project quality grading could be given a review considering that much has been added since its initial grading as a Stub-Class. If this isn't the place to discuss these kinds of issues, could someone please direct me to the relevant discussion board. Many thanks in advance. Lebronverstappen (talk) 06:17, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:23, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks Graeme Bartlett! Much appreciated! I will continue to build on the article! Lebronverstappen (talk) 11:21, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Citipointe Church
Is this a notable church? Bearian (talk) 16:28, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * There seems to be at least some coverage in independent reliable sources, such as and . --Find bruce (talk) 04:16, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Brereton inquiry
Quick query - is there an article on the Brereton inquiry (Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan Inquiry) into alleged war crimes by ADF personnel in Afghanistan? I can't seem to find one and I don't want to create a duplicate. Cheers, Mattinbgn (talk) 01:04, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Don't think so - there is some content at Special Air Service Regiment and even less at Military history of Australia during the War in Afghanistan but no specific article. Definitely notable enough for one. Deus et lex (talk) 03:50, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The public version of the IGADF report has been released. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 05:20, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Brereton Report has been created. Oronsay (talk) 20:04, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Footballer articles
Is anyone else concerned by the number of editors that keep deleting articles for Australian women football players on the basis that the W League is not a "professional league"? It does no service to Wikipedia to have silly policies like that. Deus et lex (talk) 12:22, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Remember that if a player can be shown to pass the general notability guideline, they are eligible for an article whether or not they meet any sport-specific guideline. – Teratix ₵ 12:37, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree, Teratix, but I don't think some other editors get that. Deus et lex (talk) 23:57, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Most Australian media, particularly anything older than a couple of years, is behind a paywall. If coverage doesn't appear on the first page of Google, people seem to be assuming it doesn't exist. Hack (talk) 02:44, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * You have hit the nail on the head - this is a perennial problem with AfDs - most people think notability derives from the first page of a Google search. Deus et lex (talk) 10:02, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Assessment of reliable source - The Advertiser (Adelaide)
Users may wish to participate in this discussion about the reliability of The Advertiser - a claim was made in an AfD that it was the equivalent of the Daily Mail (seriously...) - some Australian input would be welcome. Deus et lex (talk) 02:29, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Is Gina Rinehart an heiress?
There seems to be an ongoing edit war between IPs as to whether Gina Rinehart is an heiress - see article revision history - with no current discussion on the talk page. Australian editors might like to comment. (I don't have an opinion either way, but it keeps popping up on my watch list.) Temporary protection on the article might be required to stop the EW. Mitch Ames (talk) 22:21, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I have reported the page at RPP. Deus et lex (talk) 08:51, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Can someone please promote this draft article for me?
I don't usually create articles in draftspace, but found a sketchy basis for one so did a quick upgrade today. I have often created new articles myself, but am not myself an official page reviewer, and I have forgotten what the process is. It would be nice if it could go up tonight rather than wait months for a reviewer (even though not perfect or complete yet - but more than my original intention, which was just a quick stub), because of the news of his portrait having won the Archibald People's Choice award - plus he's a very prolific artist. Draft:Angus McDonald (artist). If someone can get it into mainspace I'll return later to add a few redirects and so on. (And please fix any typos or obvious errors along the way - it was rather a rush job!) Laterthanyouthink (talk) 07:59, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, ignore the above - it came to me when I was out, that I could just move it myself, and wp:move appears to confirm that. Done now. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 10:26, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Help assessing Australian articles
G'day, everyone, hope you are all having a safe and healthy Christmas/New Year period. Just wondering if anyone here would be able to assist with assessing some of the December requests at WikiProject Australia/Assessment/Requests? I don't feel able to assess some of these topics (for instance Cecil Cook and a few others). Equally, it would be good to get a few more eyes on this page going forward also so that there is a diversity of opinion (rather than the world just according to me). Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 03:21, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Search for sourcing?
I was trying to find coverage for Gothic Hospital and I found one source that implies that there could be more coverage out there, but I wasn't really able to find anything. The book was published in 2001, so there's a strong chance that there may be offline sources. The book was only published in Australia, so could someone see if there are any sources out there? I live in the US and I don't know if an online search here would bring up all of the sources that it would if I were in Australia. Just figured it was worth asking before I redirected the stub. ReaderofthePack (formerly Tokyogirl79)  (｡◕‿◕｡)  09:44, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Michael Spence (legal scholar)
This is an article to keep an eye on - there have been a huge amount of edits by IPs with serious POV issues, that have added swathes of negative material about his tenure as Vice-Chancellor of Sydney University (probably some disgruntled staff or students), including material that should properly be on the University page rather than his own page (e.g. reports about sexual harassment at University colleges). I have reverted a lot of it. Deus et lex (talk) 07:32, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Ric Mochalski
The article states "Mochalski was subsequently charged with fraud and conspiracy, but was later acquitted of all charges." But reference 1 which is not quoted in the paragraph concerned, states "He was subsequently charged, convicted and struck off the roll of solicitors which seems to contradict the article. Can someone confirm this before I go and change things.Fleet Lists (talk) 06:02, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Other than the parliament website, I can't see any news coverage of him being convicted of anything. Hack (talk) 14:41, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Please see my comments on the talk page. One of the problems with discussing the content of articles here rather than the article talk page is that they get lost in archiving. --Find bruce (talk) 21:16, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

FAR for royal assent
I have nominated Royal assent for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  18:29, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Yagan Featured article review
I have nominated Yagan for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  02:57, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Featured article candidates/M113 armoured personnel carriers in Australian service/archive1
Featured article candidates/M113 armoured personnel carriers in Australian service/archive1, which I nominated, would benefit from one or two more reviews, especially from editors who do not have a focus on military-related issues. The article covers one of the main types of armoured vehicles to have been operated by the Australian Army, including during multiple wars and peacekeeping missions, and covers the technical features of the vehicles and their history with the Army - including an utterly bungled recent upgrade program. I'd be very grateful for any and all comments. Nick-D (talk) 04:49, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Conflicting claims
Hi all. Happy New Year!

"Woolworths Group Limited, a major Australian company, has extensive retail interests throughout Australia and New Zealand. It is the largest company in Australia by revenue and the second-largest in New Zealand.[3]" -- Woolworths Group (Australia)

"Wesfarmers Limited is an Australian conglomerate, headquartered in Perth, Western Australia, with interests predominantly in [...] products. With AU$65.98 billion in the 2016 financial year, it is the largest Australian company by revenue, overtaking Coles Group and BHP.[2] --Wesfarmers

They both can't be the largest company in Australia right? Would someone here perhaps please check and update? --Gryllida (talk) 02:41, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Looking at their 2020 annual reports, Woolworths is the biggest now - 63.6 million vs 42.9 for BHP, 37 for Coles, 30.8 for Wesfarmers. Wesfarmers used to own Coles, so those two together may have been the biggest. You might be able to find an article that compares them, or just delete it as it's always only valid at a point in time. The-Pope (talk) 08:26, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi The-Pope. Thank you for checking this. Could you please share links to these 2020 annual reports, and any other citations that may be needed? I would be happy to go through them and include them into the article, with a note like 'As of 2020, ...' . Gryllida (talk) 10:28, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Just google "Company name annual report 2020". But if you can't, here they are. The-Pope (talk) 13:55, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Woolworths
 * BHP
 * Wesfarmers
 * Coles

List of mayors and lord mayors of Darwin
I've just reverted an IP entry to list of mayors and lord mayors of Darwin asserting that Norman Harold Cooper wore the chain 1959–1966, based on a Project Gutenberg url. Now I'm convinced I was wrong; the url is a Wiki mirror, and the IP was on the money, but have no ref. Can anyone help? Doug butler (talk) 07:14, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that's correct. Cooper was commonly known as "Harold Cooper" (not Norman) if that makes it easier to find references. The Northern Territory Dictionary of Biography (view or download here) says that Harry Chan defeated the incumbent mayor Harold Cooper in 1966. The Northern Territory Library also cites his mayoral term as "Norman Harold Cooper OBE 1959-66" on their wiki (cited to microform records, Northern Territory Dictionary of Biography and A city grows: a history of the Darwin City Council). --Canley (talk) 07:30, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I've made a few edits and added some references, there seemed to be a few missing entries, strange gaps and unlikely long terms. --Canley (talk) 09:53, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

premierpostal.com
see in June this year. Now see Balliang East, Victoria and 1000s of others - the reference from there does not work in either Firefox or Edge, with a security warning. Where do we go from here with this? Fleet Lists (talk) 04:02, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Nothing; just ignore it and proceed to the site. I'm sure they'll update their certificate in time ... Graham 87 06:21, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank You - it has since come good. But Balliang East which I used as an example above, would still not work. I then changed the reference as shown in - to include the state code also to cover the bare URL, and then it worked - going to the correct page to select the required location. I then did a link search for "https://www.premierpostal.com/cgi-bin"  which showed the first 52 locations brought up URL's which do not include the state code. Some of those worked OK - Mainly Victorian ones but places in New South Wales like Wee Jasper and Weston, New South Wales also seem to go to the Victorian section as does Conara in Tasmania. Am I missing something - or should these 52 all be changed to have the state code included? I am looking for confirmation. I can do them once I think I should either do all of them or just the ones outside Victoria. Strangely Balliang East is in Victoria but it did not work.Fleet Lists (talk) 10:59, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, you can go ahead and add the state. Graham 87 13:09, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I still have that on my outstanding list as I am working on some other changes with a higher priority. But today I came across another location in Victoria where the link did not work at all returning:"WebSpeed error from messenger process (6019) WebSpeed Agent Error: Agent did not return an HTML page (6383)" A further look found that this occurs with both of the links mentioned above. See

Fleet Lists (talk) 06:24, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I started doing this yesterday and after doing about 20 of the 52, I found something interesting in that if we use this URL we go straight to the location concerned, which will make it a lot easier for users. Still have a problem with places like Bung Bong which contain a blank which makes the URL invalid. There must be a way to overcome that but I have not found it yet. Anyone have any ideas? I may prefix the name with an * to make the search more flexible. If we adopt this there will be over 2000 to be changed. I have done Zetland, New South Wales as an example of this with URL  Fleet Lists (talk) 03:04, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I have since updated Bung Bong with *Bong as filter ie an * followed by the last word in the name. This also lists 3 other items but the best I can come up with so far.Fleet Lists (talk) 03:30, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * A bit more information. Where better results can be obtained by using another word in the name, that word can be used suffixed and prefixed by an * such as *Kennett* in the case of Kennett River.Fleet Lists (talk) 05:23, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * As of last Friday night none of the links work including the 142 I had updated to the "filter" format so far. I have contacted Premier Postal who have advised that they have been incorporated into Phoenix Auctions. The old Premier Postal website is being kept for historic purposes only and in the case of the Post Office historic pages only with the http URL prefix and not the https prefix which we have been using, hence none of our links will now work. Alternatively we can change all our links to the new website where for say North Geelong they suggest  This again uses the http URL prefix - I tried the https prefix but it did not work. So whatever happens we need to change all links. I would suggest we use the Phoenix version with http prefix. Any comments please.Fleet Lists (talk) 22:12, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a plan. Graham 87 07:14, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The latest information has been documented in WikiProject_Australian_places where it will be permanent information instead of being archived.Fleet Lists (talk) 02:57, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Queens of Cue
Editorial opinion is sought at Talk:Cue,_Western_Australia, as to whether it is appropriate to bundle together as "nuances" (or even to mention at all) several unrelated items that happen to have the word "Queen" in them, when the use of that word in not specific to Cue. Mitch Ames (talk) 04:20, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Commonwealth of Australia
Many wikilinks to refer to the Commonwealth of Australia. I've started a discussion about whether that is their best target. Certes (talk) 10:19, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, please contribute to this one, people, because I have found it confusing in the past - have posted there, but don't really know the best solution myself. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 06:51, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Killing of explorer Collet Barker - can it be classified as "murder"?
There is currently a discussion at Talk:Collet Barker as to whether his killing in 1830 at the Murray Mouth can be classified as "murder". Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 03:43, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Map
Would like to add a map to List of caves in New South Wales. Does the map extension have a feature to show locations by name, so that I don't check their coordinates manually? If you saw some such feature, could you please link to an example? Thank you! --Gryllida (talk) 10:30, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure exactly what you want, so not sure if I have the answer. One possibility is GeoGroup which provides a link to an OSM map with a pin for each entry. An example is at the top of List of wind farms in Australia (using kml redirect). An in-page location map is also possible using Location map+ like on Village Settlements (South Australia). I have not seen a solution that takes a list of enwiki articles, links through to their wikidata entries and pulls the coordinates to generate a dynamic map. --Scott Davis Talk 14:06, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi ScottDavis. These all require a knowledge of coordinates in advance, don't they? Is there an API, via Wikipedia or Wikitravel or OpenStreetMap, that can suggest the coordinates of a place by its name? I've visited mw:Help:Extension:Kartographer, where it links to the online editing tool, and a search for "Abercrombie Caves, New South Wales, Australia" (for example) returns a valid result -- yay, no need to search somewhere else separately -- and it is possible to place a marker there. But then the UI lacks any means to add a note to the marker (where a wikilink could be placed). Is there a copy of this useful tool that is modified to suit the on-wiki tasks like this? Gryllida (talk) 20:14, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * That Mapframe looks like what you want. I'm time-limited this morning, but a SPARQL query to start the process to get something like the example Governor's map might be
 * It looks like the Wikidata for the caves will need some improving too. --Scott Davis Talk 22:11, 27 January 2021 (UTC) (edited to use the SPARQL template properly --Scott Davis Talk 23:53, 27 January 2021 (UTC))
 * Some of the category:Caves of New South Wales are not in wikidata as so the query will need more work to include  and possibly other things. It is not (just) the data that needs improving. --Scott Davis Talk 23:53, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Some of the category:Caves of New South Wales are not in wikidata as so the query will need more work to include  and possibly other things. It is not (just) the data that needs improving. --Scott Davis Talk 23:53, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

seems to get what is needed, and can be shown on a map in the query service (click the blue "execute query" symbol then choose "Map" from the menu that defaults to "Table" just above the data on the left). I haven't worked out how to render it in mapframe yet though. --Scott Davis Talk 01:07, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

I have failed to get a "map", but I've got a "graph" (static picture that looks like a locator map). The colour code is caves vs karsts.

Is that close enough to what you wanted? Thanks for the challenge to learn new things. The Kartographer query seems to rely on a geoshape service that in turn requires the wikidata links to be in OpenStreetMap. This Graph:Street map with marks solution uses the wikidata coordinates (and probably requires points not areas). --Scott Davis Talk 03:21, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
 * What we'd really like is an outstanding feature request at T188291. --Scott Davis Talk 03:54, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Lucia Hou
Would some members of this WikiProject mind taking a look at Lucia Hou? It has been tagged with Notability since last summer and it's not clear whether BIO is met. Even if it is, the photos being used in the body appear to be more like something you'd find on social media than in a Wikipedia article and their encyclopedic relevance to the article content isn't clear; they might have also be added as a type of image WP:Namechecking. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:39, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I note that the pages that link to that article generally have lists of people, and she is the only one linked (not even red for the others) except in List of philanthropists which doesn't seem to have particular threshold criteria for inclusion. The closest I found about her in "mainstream" news is as the model in a photo in AFR, she is named in the caption but nowhere else. Curious that is is marked to use MDY dates since December 2013, but was created in August 2020. --Scott Davis Talk 03:53, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the date discrepency is probably just a copy-and-paste error. Perhaps the template was copied from another article and not changed. The notability issue is more of a concern since the article appears to have been created directly in the mainspace without going through AFC. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:41, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Massacre of Running Waters
Editors are invited to comment at Talk:Massacre of Running Waters regarding how best to make that article more neutral. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:06, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

FAR Yarrralumla, Australian Capital Territory
I have nominated Yarralumla, Australian Capital Territory for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  02:16, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Dark Emu (again)
The talk page of this article is generating some heat again, and it would be good to have a few more editors in there, especially those with experience of articles about books in general, and Australian history perhaps. And better if you've read the book, probably, although not essential. I'm sure there's a balance to be found, but I don't have the energy at the moment. (Could be something to do with 39 degrees and still rising here...) Laterthanyouthink (talk) 06:36, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Just to note, I have this article watchlisting and am keeping an eye on it with my admin hat on. BLP issues need to be considered here given that some previous edits have basically been abuse of the book's author. Nick-D (talk) 00:48, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks,, that is reassuring. I find it all a bit too hard - trying to satisfy all parties is not an easy task, and it's very hard to present nuanced summaries of some quite complex material and arguments on both sides, and I'm not sure how far Wikipedia should be attempting to go down that path... Laterthanyouthink (talk) 00:47, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Noted and watched. I've reviewed this book on other websites, so I'm familiar. --Whiteguru (talk) 11:49, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Prime Minister of Australia
Some editor keeps changing the title "Prime Minister of Australia" (in the lead) to lowercase. That isn't consistent with Australian usage (when referring to the full title - it's "Scott Morrison is a prime minister" but "Prime Minister of Australia"). Anything we can do about this? Deus et lex (talk) 12:43, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Job titles should be lower case per MOS:JOBTITLES and virtually every English language style guide in the world. "The prime minister of Australia" should always be lower case. It is not true that this is not consistent with Australian usage, as The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage by Pam Peters notes that "generic or plural references to such offices are left in lower case". Surtsicna (talk) 13:02, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that it should be lower case, per MOS:JOBTITLES - which has "prime minister of the UK" as an example. (See the articles President of the United States and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.) Strictly speaking the article should also be renamed to "Prime minister of Australia".
 * Of course if you don't like the MOS guideline, you can propose changing it.
 * Mitch Ames (talk) 13:09, 30 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Except that isn't what the article says - the title by itself is "Prime Minister of Australia", but when used in other forms it can be in lowercase. I feel like I am talking to a brick wall. Deus et lex (talk) 13:33, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * MOS:JOBTITLES - Offices, titles, and positions such as ... should be in lower case. Looking at this diff for example, I don't think any instance of the term is "used to refer to a specific person as a substitute for their name during their time in office" (which MOS:JOBTITLES would then allow capitalised) - all instances (including the Wikipedia article title) refer to the office, not a specific person. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:43, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The title itself though by itself should be capitalised. There's no difference. Deus et lex (talk) 13:46, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * "Scott Morrison is an Australian politician who has served as Prime Minister of Australia since 2016" is capitalised. The title by itself should also be capitalised because that is common usage and refers to the title not the office. Deus et lex (talk) 13:47, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * MOS:JOBTITLES: Offices, titles, and positions ... should be in lower case ... They are capitalized only in the following cases: When a formal title for a specific entity ... is not preceded by a modifier (including a definite or indefinite article).... Therefore, it is always "the prime minister of Australia". This was discussed at length and confirmed at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Biography/2020_archive. The article Prime Minister of Australia is explicitly listed among those discussed. Surtsicna (talk) 14:00, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * When you say "title" are you referring to the third bullet point of MOS:JOBTITLES "a formal title for a specific entity..."? Again, looking at this diff, each instance of "prime minister" is preceded by "a modifier (including a definite or indefinite article)" which means that the third bullet point does not apply. Similarly for this diff of the Scott Morrison article. Mitch Ames (talk) 14:05, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Why should it be treated differently? GoodDay (talk) 15:28, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

CFD
Category changes usually go un-noticed - as there is no connection to projects affected:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2021_January_30#Category:Trades_Halls_in_Australia JarrahTree 08:45, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Local governments in Australia
G'day mates,

I'm working thru some maintenance backlog and came upon Mayfield, Tasmania. The Australian census appears to list this community as a State Suburb. I was hoping someone here could tell me what that means exactly. Mayfield doesn't appear to have its own government that I can tell, so it's not a city, and its land area is so small that it appears to be merely a neighborhood. Would it make sense to redirect this to City of Launceston?

Thanks for the help, Oiyarbepsy (talk) 08:47, 2 February 2021 (UTC)


 * It's a suburb in the Australian context, i.e. a defined geographical unit in an urban area. It doesn't have its own government. See Suburbs and localities (Australia). No need to redirect. All suburbs and localities in Australia have their own articles and this has been consensus since the earliest days of Wikipedia. ҉ Randwicked ҉ 10:58, 2 February 2021 (UTC)


 * A State Suburb is a level of census district, so it doesn't always apply to an actual suburb or locality, but in this case Mayfield is a gazetted suburb of Launceston. As to notability, WP:NGEO says "Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low. Even abandoned places can be notable, because notability encompasses their entire history. One exception is that census tracts are usually not considered notable." – so if it was just a census tract, probably not, but as this suburb is a legally recognised place, it's fine. --Canley (talk) 22:53, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Yarloop Workshops and fires
Comments from other editors are requested at Talk:Yarloop Workshops, regarding an unexplained reversion of valid edits.

Related comments on editor talk pages:. Mitch Ames (talk) 14:24, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Trove niggles
Editors might be interested in this thread about niggles with the Trove citation generator, in which it was suggested that it might be possible to have a bot that automatically cleans up after some of them, if there could be a list of errors generated by the automated tool. Also see this archived thread. Graham 87 14:02, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Is this the same process which adds numerous links to [The] Daily Telegraph and [The] Sunday Times? I fixed nearly 300 this week, mainly for the Sydney papers but several for The Sunday Times (Western Australia) and a few for The Daily Telegraph (Launceston).  Certes (talk) 14:57, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks,, a useful suggestion. On a separate but related note, I often find the location superfluous, especially when the title of the work reveals its place of publication - I quite often remove that parameter. And yes, , definitely the culprit of many of those, I would guess. What a pain. I try to catch them before publishing when I see them. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 04:40, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Although we must always put readers above editors, I find the location parameter very handy when fixing wikilinks. If someone cites The Daily Telegraph with a location of Sydney or NSW, I can immediately divert the link to The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) without wasting time repeating the Trove search to see which Telegraph is archived at that URL. Certes (talk) 13:53, 5 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Definitely, . I was only referring to to cases such as "work = South Australian Advertiser, location = South Australia". I wouldn't remove location for the generic titles. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 21:36, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Eulomogo
Eulomogo is recognised by the NSW Geographical Names Board as a "rural place". The only susbstantial information in the article, that it has 1,373 people, comes from http://www.geonames.org/ and is not substantiated by the ABS. Do we need articles about such places?--Grahame (talk) 04:35, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I would have thought that any useful info could about this place could be included in the Dubbo article... but I have not been involved in anything to do with the conventions regarding place so this is just a "user comment"... Laterthanyouthink (talk) 04:48, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There was a "State Suburb" (see above) of Eulomogo in the 2011 ABS census, for which the population was given as 760 — seems very unlikely to have doubled in five years, so no idea where the Geonames population figure came from. Eulomogo is part of the Dubbo gazetted locality, and part of the Dubbo State Suburb in the 2016 census. As the only information in the article is a sketchy population figure, I think a redirect to Dubbo is not unreasonable here. I also searched on Trove in case there was more to it historically, and there are some references in the 1920s to the formation of a fire brigade and construction of a public hall, but not much else. The area contains a number of farms and seems to have a population in the hundreds, but I don't think it could be called a "town" as the article does. --Canley (talk) 23:29, 5 February 2021 (UTC)


 * For whatever reason, Dubbo seems to have one of the largest gazetted localities in NSW, meaning at some point the local council decided that all the little surrounding rural localities were geographically part of Dubbo. That's probably why Eulomogo was a suburb/locality in 2011 but not one in 2016. Anyway, from the map it looks like another named railway siding that was never much more than that. I'd keep the article if there was substantial content in there (as I understand unbounded localities can have their own articles if they're notable), but there isn't really enough content to keep. ҉ Randwicked ҉ 08:14, 6 February 2021 (UTC)


 * And, partly related, can we abolish geonames.org as a source for population figures? It's the same stupid site that had Kingston, Norfolk Island as having 800 people, which if you know NI it is about three buildings and some ruins where noone lives. The Lord God knows where they're scraping their numbers from. ҉ Randwicked ҉ 08:18, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Opinions/comments please
If anyone wants to opine on whether to include mention of a self-published book within the context of the Coon cheese article, please do. Not a biggie, but think it needs a broader consensus with another editor or two involved. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 04:48, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * p.s. The above also applies to the new article on Edward Coon. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 07:21, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

NAA citations FYI
This is just a useful bit of info which I don't know where to store for future use except on my own user page. Having come across a broken link to the NAA (National Archives) relating to an Australian Govt article a few weeks ago, I wrote to them, and got the magic formula for obtaining a stable URL, in the absence of the ability to use permalinks (at this point). The way to construct the link is "url=https://RecordSearch.naa.gov.au/scripts/AutoSearch.asp?Number=CA+39", where the "CA+39" is replaced with the appropriate prefix (possibly CP or CO) and number pertaining to the department. I'm doing a few while I have them in front of me after a search, but am unlikely to get through all of the government departments, so anyone editing in that area, you may want to take a note of this. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 07:21, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this. Unfortunately it seems this wouldn't apply to non-record items like the NAA links at Charles Lane Poole, an article I worked on a little while ago. It'd be a pity if those disappeared permanently from the live web. Graham 87 11:32, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Also pinging Grahamec, whose edit alerted me to this. Graham 87 11:34, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, - it only applies to the record searches. But it looks as if you have covered your citations via the Wayback Machine already. Odd that a search on the NAA site doesn't seem to return an updated version of any of those pages. They must have dumped them when they revamped the website, I suppose. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 01:12, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia - additions to the lead.
The author of an article in the most recent edition of The Globe is keen to add reference to his own work to the lead. The short article concerned is "A NOTE ON THE DAUPHIN MAP AND ITS RELEVANCE TO THE EAST COAST OF AUSTRALIA" - and the Globe can be read through ProQuest - pages 79-82 of the latest edition #88. I have welcomed him, pointed out the potential problems of COI and added a reference to his article on the Dieppe Maps page. Other eyes and opinions are invited. However, I have deleted his addition to his own work in the lead. Nickm57 (talk) 05:53, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Not this again... Nick-D (talk) 06:12, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. This is what brought me to WP all those years ago. Nickm57 (talk) 07:41, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Homicide rate table moved here
I removed the Australia table from List of countries by intentional homicide rate and put it here.

The regular editors there (like me) want the individual country tables to be moved to separate articles. In order to shorten the article length there, and to hopefully have more concentrated editing on the individual country tables. They tend to get forgotten on the global page.

Feel free to use this table on an existing Australia page. Maybe integrate into another table. Or create a new page just for homicide rates. The other country tables on List of countries by intentional homicide rate were moved to dedicated country pages for homicide rates. This Australia table is the last one to be moved.

Intentional homicide rate (per 100,000)

--Timeshifter (talk) 10:49, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Priya and Nades
Interested editors are invited to monitor Nadesalingam family asylum claims. A new, single-purpose editor is making unsubstantiated changes to the article. Thanks. WWGB (talk) 09:15, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , looks like another (also almost-SPA) editor is joining in too. They are adding sources (a Parliamentary report and some barrister's own presentation) that don't even back up the claim they are trying to make or discuss the subjects of the article. They should probably be both blocked for violating WP:3RR too. Deus et lex (talk) 22:37, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Wikidata in infoboxes
I asked a question about census population at Template talk:Infobox Australian place but more people will probably see it if I put this pointer here. Please keep any specific conversation there to avoid splitting. --Scott Davis Talk 07:20, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Suburbs of cities in infoboxes
How do we go about putting suburbs, localities, etc. of cities/LGAs in infoboxes? For example, Steve Smith's article currently has it as suburb, city/LGA, state/territory, country, which in my opinion is overloaded. I most often see suburb, state/territory, country preferred, usually with an elaboration of it being a suburb of a city in the article body. Or should it be displayed as city/LGA, state/territory, country, or like Smith's? Just looking for consistency. Thanks, &mdash;Jonny Nixon (talk) 11:17, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if there is a relevant style guideline. I'd drop the word Sydney from the infobox, and in the prose, instead of "Kogarah, Sydney" use a few more words like "Kogarah, a southern suburb of Sydney". --Scott Davis Talk 07:43, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Melissa Caddick
Is it time to have an article on Melissa Caddick? WWGB (talk) 06:48, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Was she noticed for anything before her disappearance and death? If she is only notable for the circumstances of her disappearance and death it should be either "disappearance of Melissa Caddick" or "death of Melissa Caddick". I'm not sure if her own (alleged) crimes are big enough to make her a notable criminal. I don't think it made the national news until her remains were discovered. --Scott Davis Talk 07:34, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Prior to the discover of her foot, most of the detail in articles about Caddick were about the allegations of her fraud - why she is thought to have disappeared rather than the scant facts about her disappearance. The size of the crime is not part of notability, nor is being in the news, even the national news. Instead its about significant coverage in reliable sources- I don't think it's there yet. There is no rush & personally I would wait until after the bubble of interest has died down, as any sustained coverage will go into more detail that would support notability. --Find bruce (talk) 23:23, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Contentious editing at List of mammals of South Australia
There's been some protracted edit-warring at List of mammals of South Australia, and now a discussion on the article's talk page - a US-based editor has insisted on replacing the term "extinct in South Australia" with the term "extirpated", which he claims is synonymous. it seems that this is a common usage in the USA but, backed up by numerous dictionary definitions, I have been arguing that "extirpated" is a non-neutral term that implies deliberate human intention in wiping out a species. This editor is also currently the subject of an ANI discussion. Bahudhara (talk) 03:19, 1 March 2021 (UTC)


 * To me, extirpated definitely implies intentional. —valereee (talk) 19:42, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Wonderful image, where could we use it?
This is a great image that has been donated, and I'd love to figure out where it could appropriately be used. If anyone has a suggestion? —valereee (talk) 19:41, 2 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I would have thought Yuendumu would be a good place to start, although perhaps some of Gold's other photos showing country would fit better. It may be appropriate for either Anmatyerre or Warlpiri people, depending on how Otto Jungarryi Sims identifies himself. I think he may be a Warlpiri man, but that would need a reliable source. --Find bruce (talk) 01:05, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Alleged Cabinet rapist - shenanigans on articles of Cabinet ministers
I'm back for a minute just to draw a few eyes to the articles of male members of federal Cabinet this week, given speculation about the identity of the Cabinet member subject to a rape allegation. There is quite a bit of talk on Twitter about various anon editing shenanigans across multiple articles related to what various male members of Cabinet were doing in 1988 and their university debating careers. It seems like much of it has been either caught by or the vandal bots but it seems like it would be a good idea to have a few more eyes on these articles and checking edits potentially related to this subject with a fine-toothed comb. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 08:03, 28 February 2021 (UTC)


 * (or alternatively, there's probably grounds to just semi-protect the lot of them in the circumstances). The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 08:04, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I'm back! Came to comment on this one. I saw a lot of accusations on twitter that "someone has been removing content from articles" such as Christian Porter, World Universities Debating Championship, and other related articles. It turns out no-one had been removing content from any of them, and most of the people on twitter don't seem to realise that articles have public edit histories. -- Chuq (talk) 10:24, 28 February 2021 (UTC)


 * To note the obvious, WP:BLP applies here, and revision deletion should be used as appropriate. Nick-D (talk) 10:29, 28 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Nice to see you back even if only briefly. I was actually just having a look at the article traffic, the jump in views is astonishing. |Christian_Porter|Angus_Taylor_(politician) Ivar the Boneful (talk) 10:41, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Hello. Related to this, I have seen people on twitter accusing me of covering up information relating to Australian cabinet ministers, and working for the Liberal party and/or Christian Porter. None of those are true though. I have not edited those articles they have accused me of doing, and I certainly don't work for the liberal party or any politicians in general. These people seem to not know how to view history of pages. I think the problem is smaller than the twitter people make out. This gave me a good laugh. Steelkamp (talk) 10:36, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * And here I am like a sucker spending my time on Wikipedia for free! Did you even edit the article they mentioned (doesn't look like) or are they just throwing out wild accusations because you reverted the IP on A-G of WA? Ivar the Boneful (talk) 10:49, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yep - I called her out on it but so far have been totally ignored. -- Chuq (talk) 11:23, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I checked some of the articles before I posted and didn't find as much as I expected from Twitter, but figured it was worth making sure a few more eyes were on given the controversy/likelihood of defamation/etc. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 22:20, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Just seen this from Twitter. Does this need a post at WP:AN to request more eyes on the situation? Mjroots (talk) 10:55, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * An article was started a couple of days ago on Parliament House rape allegations.--Oronsay (talk) 20:07, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * There is also 2021 Australian Parliament rape scandals which is linked from Scott Morrison sidebar. --Scott Davis Talk 22:24, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
 * On the Twitter issue, the allegations of a Wikipedia cover-up actually got asked about at the Porter press conference (with a little Twitter action afterwards). I don't think it is worthy of mention in a proper article, but there is a little discussion at Talk:Christian Porter. Adpete (talk) 00:47, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Eshay
Hrrm, this article seems to have a ton of original research in it, but it seems that whatever language it is written in [as well as the sources that is uses, ie those 'Vice' articles], I am not conversant in ... Bumbubookworm (talk) 16:55, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Does it really matter? It's a foreign wor(l)d to me, but the article seems adequately sourced, and describes a kind of culture familiar around the world, differing only in detail and language. It's not as if Wikipedia is going to run out of internet anytime soon. What of the editor(s) compiling this stuff? Are they doing serious work elsewhere in the project? I can't imagine that too many of those participating in this sort of culture would be Wikipedia editors. Maybe that's me being an old fart, but I'm guessing limited resources and heavy drug use don't make for good editing. --Pete (talk) 20:45, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Australian cricket lists
Hi everyone. Hope you all are well. If anyone of you have some time then please give your input at Articles for deletion/List of international cricket five-wicket hauls on Irish cricket grounds. Thanks. Störm  (talk)  17:01, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Kerry Chant
Please feel free to expand her Bio..... Thanks, Ariconte (talk) 19:56, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources
I have made a redirect from Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources to its predecessor Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. The target has a short paragraph about the new department, written some months after an IP changed the title on the infobox to the new department's name. My solution is not satisfactory either, but I'm not sure what the "right" fix is from here. Is there anyone reading this who can restore the former department's article and create the new one sometime when the mood takes you? Thank you. --Scott Davis Talk 11:44, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Most of the Federal Government Departments have new entries when there's a machinery of government change, so your suggestion sounds like a good idea. Deus et lex (talk) 12:08, 13 March 2021 (UTC)