Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 5

Vandalism? by Azthetik
Azthetik is potentially on a vandalism spree. He has created several unsourced articles for North Shore gangs and has added the dubious assertation that ''The North Shore is infamously known for its major gang problem. It has a numerous amount of gangs spreading throughout the area. For a list of widely known gangs, please go to North Shore gangs''. He also removed at least one speedy delete tag from his own article which I readded and warned him. While it's not certain he is vandalising it does appear his additions either need major work or should be deleted. I was planning to tag all his recent articles but could some else take care of his edits? N.B. I also added this to the vandalism watch list talk page Nil Einne 23:49, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Ethnic edits and cats by User:Alm93
This person appears to be working their way though biographical articles (a couple of hundred NZers and Canadians so far) adding adding things like Category:German-New Zealanders and Category:Dutch-New Zealanders. The cats appear to be based on little more than the person's surname. I have posted to their talk page asking them to stop but they have made a bit of a mess. - SimonLyall 13:10, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Copyright picture in Hei-tiki
Just a request for an Admin to have a look at Hei-tiki and note concerns (and threat of legal action) regarding the use of a copyrighted image. It would seem that the uploader is inactive, but it might pay to delete the other images he has uploaded as well. I will try to track down another pic that is legit. Cheers Kahuroa 19:32, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Kia ora Kahuroa. I have removed the image, and will advise the artist. Ka kite. Moriori 20:15, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I have added some tags to the image and uploader about possible problems with it. Does someone want to contact the person who has complained? Please say here to avoid duplication - SimonLyall 20:52, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Yep, already done. Moriori 21:06, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Cheers guys. I think the other images he uploaded may be dodgy too. Kahuroa 23:36, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Auckland
I've nominated this portal for deletion, since it appears to be unmaintained. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Auckland. I suspect the user who started it became disillusioned with the response to his initiative. How could we have done better to harness their initial enthusiasm and energy?- gadfium 23:12, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps got them involved in the NZ portal? We're always looking for more "Did you know?" and keeping the news updated... Grutness...wha?  00:55, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposed moved: Australian Gannnet to Australasian Gannet
I have proposed a move which may be of interest to Kiwis and Aussies. Check out the discussion here Talk:Australian Gannet Nil Einne 08:04, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

NZ specific welcome
Hey all, I've felt for a while that new NZ wikipedians just get a generic welcome, and don't know about all the NZ related stuff. So I have created my own welcome thing. --~.

Which produces (name is automatically changed for each page, and this page comes up bolded as per normal for linking to the page you are on:

Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page
 * Help pages
 * Tutorial
 * How to write a great article
 * Manual of Style

I see you are a New Zealander (or at least, appear to be by your edits). There are several NZ related Wikipedia pages.


 * Portal:New Zealand
 * New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board
 * WikiProject New Zealand
 * New Zealand Collaboration of the Fortnight
 * And adding to your userpage

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! --Midnighttonight remind to go do uni work! 04:04, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Hope you all use it. --Midnighttonight remind to go do uni work! 04:04, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

And another welcome. This time for when a user already has had the normal welcome stuff, and you just want to advertise the NZ wikipedia stuff. --~ . Which produces (as above, the name changes, this page is bolded by being on this page, and that is my signature):

Hi there, I see you are a New Zealander (or at least, appear to be by your edits). There are several NZ related Wikipedia pages that you may be interested in.


 * Portal:New Zealand
 * New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board
 * WikiProject New Zealand
 * New Zealand Collaboration of the Fortnight
 * Adding to your userpage will list you as a NZer.

Welcome, and enjoy. --Midnighttonight remind to go do uni work! 23:43, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I should add that you can feel free to edit either of the messages. The first is at User:Midnighttonight/Welcome, and the second User:Midnighttonight/WelcomeNZ. --Midnighttonight remind to go do uni work! 23:43, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

MMP 10th anniversary
Yesterday (12 October, 2006) was the 10th anniversary of MMP. There are a number of articles which can get boosted with the info over the past few days. Electoral reform in New Zealand, Electoral system of New Zealand, Elections in New Zealand and Mixed Member Proportional are probably the main ones. With most NZ Herald premium content stuff, there is only a one week window to access them without some other form of access, so I will link them all here.
 * Most politicians prepared to come to MMP's 10th birthday party
 * Winston Peters: Fairer way for all parties involved
 * Helen Clark: Realistic way to govern
 * Brian Nicolle: Put MMP to the vote
 * A decade of MMP: Election night uncertainty a permanent fixture
 * A decade of MMP: 1996 election left country hanging

I should get on to it all tomorrow, but please don't make that stop you from editing (and am I the only one using this page at the moment?). Luckily for me my first exam (20 October) has an essay question on MMP, so I'm not procrastinating too much. Muhahahaha. --Midnighttonight remind to go do uni work! 03:05, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, NZ Herald content doesn't stop being free for use after one week. Their search facility links to a subscriber-only version of articles after some period of time, but the original URL will still work (although I think the www.nzherald has to be replaced by subs.nzherald). Instead of using their own search therefore, you should use google to search within their site for any article you might wish to link to.- gadfium 04:23, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

NZ copyright
Hi all. I'm curious about NZ copyright rules as regards to public domain + government agencies. In Wikipedia, we often come across documents from the US government, which are noted to be in the public domain (though I wonder if this 'taken by an employee of the federal governemnt and thus public domain' also applies to spy photos ;-).

Well, anyway, is there something in NZ law that is similar? Are *any* of the photos I find, for example on a Council or Transit NZ website public domain?MadMaxDog 08:42, 21 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Perhaps confusingly, like the UK, Canada, Australia etc., it's Crown Copyright (Template:NZCrownCopyright), and on the talk page, you'll see that Land Transport (which is tied up with LTSA) is one that is not useable on wikipedia. For council websites, it would pay to look at their copyright notices. --Limegreen 10:32, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I too was wondering about this issue, and the template's talk page doesn't answer my concern. I'd like to know if we can use images from the New Zealand Railways Department or the Public Works Department.  The talk page lists the New Zealand Railways Corporation (as being unusable), but that didn't come into existence until the 1980s.  I could probably track down a few good images to use if we can use Railways and PWD stuff. = Axver 11:04, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Request to add a link
has asked at Talk:Te Atairangikaahu for permission to add links to his site. Further material is on my talk page. Please consider the request and give the user feedback.- gadfium 22:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Cleaned up templates and cat Wikipedians_in_New_Zealand
I've been tidying up Category:Wikipedians_in_New_Zealand and the templates listed there as many of them, contrary to the description on that page, didn't automatically include people in the category. Many more people are now listed in the category. Instead of (or as well as) the templates some people have used with no sort field which results in their name ending up sorted under "U". I don't think I've broken anything, but let me know if they don't work for you :-). --AGoon 19:37, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Erm...you do realise that several of those templates deliberately didn't lead into that category, didn't you? The category is for Wikipedians in NZ, but some of the templates are for kiwis living overseas, etc. User NZ res is the only one which states that the user is normally in New Zealand. Grutness...wha?  00:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

"Any Kiwipedian who feels they qualify for this exclusive club, in geography or just in spirit, may add themselves to this list, by inserting the following on their user page:
 * Ummm, well, no, I didn't think of it like that (I like to be inclusive ;-) and was following the description on the Category:Wikipedians_in_New_Zealand page that says

"
 * I took "NZ res" to be more of a technical category as in NZ resident for taxation purposes vs "NZ citizen". I'll happily revert the templates  etc if I'm completely wrong and it wasn't what was expected - we'd need to change the docs too. :-) --AGoon 00:46, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it would simply be better to change the name of the category to include Wikipedians with NZ connections. That way any vagueness in the wording of the templates can be covered. Grutness...wha?  06:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This page also starts with "You are encouraged to add your name to the List of New Zealand Wikipedians" so I think I interpreted the usage of the cat the way everyone else expects. Perhaps the category should be renamed "Wikipedians of New Zealand".  Personally so long as the documentation is consistant, I don't think the cat name really matters, but feel free to change it (have you checked other countrys similar cat usage?) :-) --AGoon 10:25, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Possible hoax Jeanette Windermere
This article has just been labeled as a possible hoax. No sign of any google or nzherald hits for this composer and it does feel a little funny. People might want to take a look. - SimonLyall 11:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I did a search through the university databases (those listed here) with no hits for either Jeanette Windermere or Jeanette Hunt (presumably her married name). Quite a sophisticated hoax, or maybe just a memorial for someone that is unsourcable. Z iggurat 00:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Battle of Britain
If anyone has a military background or interest, could they please add a paragraph to Battle of Britain regarding NZ? It seems a shame that Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ireland, Canada, Palestine, and Australia are covered whereas NZ is not. Z iggurat 23:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Maori-stub
Hi all - there is now a Maori-stub and associated Category:Māori stubs for stub articles connected with the Maori people. The category's currently empty, but it's about to have a bit of sorting done on it. Note that individual many of the articles will be double-stubbed, especially those relating to individual people (which should still have NZ-bio-stub or similar as well). Grutness...wha?  03:44, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

List of New Zealand film makers
I found this article today, and renamed it from the original New Zealand Film Makers. It has rather a lot of redundancy with Cinema of New Zealand. Should we merge it, or tidy it up and move some of the content of Cinema of New Zealand to List of New Zealand film makers? Please comment at Talk:List of New Zealand film makers.- gadfium 18:48, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Ext links to newspaper articles
In order to prevent dead links from being created we must be careful with the use of URLs linked to newspaper sites. For example the Stuff website only allows articles to be viewed for a short time after publiction. It is probably best to use a date and newspaper name for any of the newspapers under the Stuff unbrella. Using URLs from Scoop seems pretty safe. Alan Liefting 02:01, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Any Soccer buffs?
I see that we have two stubs Mt._Wellington_AFC and University_-_Mount_Wellington. Could someone knowledgable decide in which direction they should merge and then expand the winner? dramatic 08:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * If the Mt W article is about the team best known by that name, it's questionable as to they should be merged. Mt Wellington was one of the country's two or three most successful teams in its own right for many years (winning the Chatham Cup five times from 1973-1990) before it merged with University, which was itself quite a strong team (though nowhere near as strong).


 * BUT - looking at that article, it appears to be about a MtW team that is currently a going concern, and judging by the link provided, the only active team with "Mt Wellington" as part of its name is U-MtW. As such, I'd merge the two at University-Mt Wellington and provide information about the old teams as part of that page. I'll merge them, but I don't know enough about the northern league to expand it too much. Grutness...wha?  13:16, 28 November 2006 (UTC) (I was born in north London - fitba's the state religion there :)
 * Done. Also moved to the slightly more accurate University-Mount Wellington. Grutness...wha?  13:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Regions of New Zealand : Fiordland ?
Should Fiordland be listed under Regions of New Zealand when it's a geographic region as opposed to an administrative region? I asked this under the talk page for the article a couple of weeks back, but I don't think it's watched by very many people. Malathos 18:58, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I've wondered the same myself. It's unofficially regarded as a separate region, but if we start including unofficial regions, we'd have to have things like the Wairarapa and the Coromandel as well. Grutness...wha?  22:37, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Not forgetting Bay of Islands! Malathos 23:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

It looks like the template is starting to lose it's way a bit. There are 16 administrative regions/unitary authorities in New Zealand, but the Regions of New Zealand Template now has 18 - including Fiordland - which I wasn't too happy about to start with - and now Coromandel (Peninsula) which has recently been added. If no-one has any objections, I'd like to revert the template back to the 16 true regions and put a comment on the talk page saying that it indicates the official administrative and unitary regions. If someone wants to build a template for geographical regions, then fair enough - but I feel it's important to keep this one intact to show the true administrative layout of the country. Malathos 04:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for keeping it on the straight and narrow, folks. There are hundreds of semi-official (eg Met Service) and unofficial regions, many of which (including "Fiord"!) used to be counties and can be suitably mentioned in related pages but should not be in a current-looking regions template. Robin Patterson 05:51, 20 December 2006 (UTC) (city council employee 1973-93)

Francesca Mold
User:Goldstann is being rather obstructive at this article (Shich has already been speedy deleted once), and activities include breaking the three-revert rule and removing deletion templates. Is it time for some administrative action? dramatic 09:46, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

New maintainer needed for Portal:New Zealand
Please see Portal talk:New Zealand.- gadfium 02:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

2006 census data
The Stats Dept website now has some data from the 2006 census available here. - SimonLyall 19:10, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

DMCA comes to NZ
We are finally going to get the DMCA! Yay. Summary Full text Minister responsible Parliament page Can someone knowledgeable please start the New Zealand copyright law article? WP 01:06, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
 * You could suggest this as a topic for the NZ Collaboration of the Fortnight.- gadfium 02:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Possibly relevant is a Google ad I saw today (probably on the NZ Wikia) advertising free NZ copyright law info. Robin Patterson 05:37, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

DOC site changes
DOC have revamped their website - invalidating just about every link pointing to it. I'll try and go through the tramping and park articles over the weekend and fix the links, but if you find any articles with links to DOC's site, please check them. Malathos 19:47, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Turangi
I've been trying to bring up the standard of my towns article, and stuck for ideas. Can someone please have a look at User:Brian New Zealand/Temp/Turangi and suggest any feedback? thanks :) Brian | (Talk) 09:01, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks very good, I'm not sure about the gallery though - that's going to be a hard one to standardise across other cities and towns (unless I get out there and start taking LOTS of photos!). I'm trying to think of a better map to use for the town articles I'm tweaking - I like the one that shows regional areas, but I'm also thinking of placing 4 or 5 major cities on it to show relative positions to the key cities in NZ (of course, then we can have "discussions" over what cities are major :-) )Malathos 18:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

NZCOTF
(Cross post) All candidates are overdue for removal due to not enough votes to stay up for WP:NZCOTF. Looks like an opportunity for anyone to nominate their most important articles, for collab Brian | (Talk) 19:41, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Kingsland
I've discovered that we have a main article for Kingsland, New Zealand and a minor stub for Kingsland, Auckland - both of which refer to the same area of Auckland and both have links. Being a relative newbie, I'm hoping someone else can figure out what to do with this :) . Malathos 04:51, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Done - I've merged what little there was to from the K,A article to the K,NZ one, which follows the normal NZ naming guidelines. Grutness...wha?  05:02, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Admin Help needed - State Championship
About a month ago I moved State Championship to New Zealand first-class cricket championship since the article covers the chanpionship in all its guises through the years: Plunket Shield, Shell Trophy, State Champonship. Some people seem to be unaware that the name is only "State" for the term of State Insurance's sponsorship of all major NZ domestic cricket competitions endures. Also note that some American users would like to use State championship to disambiguate the many varieties of state championship in the US.

Well, User:Blackjack appears not to have read the article or the reasoning for the move nad has moved it back. However, I can't revert that without admin help because the New Zealand first-class cricket championship still exists as a redirect.dramatic 08:29, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * You should have been able to have moved it back again, except that you've now edited the redirect, and a non-admin can't move an article over the top of a redirect which has a history. I've deleted and recreated the redirect, so you should be able to move it now.


 * I don't see this as urgent, so please talk to Blackjack about it and get some consensus, then move it back. If you still can't move it, ask at Requested moves (or ask me directly once you've sorted it out, but I'll be away from the keyboard from 8 am tomorrow for 30+ hours).- gadfium 08:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I should be around on and off over that time if there's any further problems with it you need an admin for. Grutness...wha?  22:09, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks guys, all sorted now. User BlackJack was in full agreement once he new "State" was a sponsor's name.dramatic 23:33, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Please reply on my talk page
I was working on a cat for Category:Indian diaspora. What would the correct classification/name be of an Indian in New Zealand? Like example Indian American, Chinese Malaysian, etc. Baka man  17:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I've most often heard New Zealand Indian. ("New Zealand" is both the noun and adjectival form for this country). FWIW, some prominent examples include the current Governor-general, Anand Satyanand, my home city (Dunedin)'s former mayor Sukhi Turner, and cricketers Dipak Patel and Jeetan Patel. Not sure whether you'd count MP Ashraf Choudhary, since he was born in what is now Pakistan immediately before partition, IIRC. Grutness...wha?  22:11, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Not strictly to do with NZ, but fellow kiwis might be interested
The discussion here Talk:Steve Wright (suspect) may be of interest to fellow kiwis. The issues raised will of course be familiar to many of us, how to handle issues relating to supressed information and contempt of court. Of course, unlike here where mostly whatever is supressed is not published in a reliable source so we don't really have to worry about it, there is a fair chance details will be published in a reliable source Nil Einne 16:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Official Information Act 1982
I've started a page on the Official Information Act 1982. Contributions welcome. IdiotSavant 11:47, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Halberg awards
I started copying the list of winners each year from their website but I have relized that for many of the years they don't say who one the man/women/team/coach award. Does anyone know where this information might be? For now I've left my draft information on the page and commented it out - SimonLyall 09:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Stevan Eldred-Grigg
I've started an article on [Stevan Eldred-Grigg]. This is pretty much my first foray into Wiki so any and all comments welcome (although it does fit nicely with the New Zealand Literature Theme, lucky me). If this one goes well I may do some more work on other NZ authors who don't have articles. Hughteg 13:46, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Military history of New Zealand
Can some outside people comment here. Thanks. Brian | (Talk) 09:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)