Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australia/Conventions

New draft
This new draft of the Austalian MoS/Conventions continues where the rough userfied draft User:Dl2000/Australia MoS draft left off. See also the discussion in Australian Wikipedians' notice board for past reference. Dl2000 (talk) 22:53, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Times and zones
Some content is available for review in the Times section for the three main Australian time zones. For events which apply across time zones, does Australia practice a preferred time zone e.g. is AEST/AEDT considered a common reference time? Dl2000 (talk) 17:02, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Updated Currency and Measurements sections
Currency and Measurements sections were updated tonight to account for historic and quotes usage, mainly following up User:Graeme Bartlett's comments in the noticeboard. Any problems with the updated text? Dl2000 (talk) 03:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Other items to do?
Other items to follow-up from noticeboard discussion:


 * treatment of nominal suffixes such as OA
 * category naming conventions (some concerns raised about improper global renaming, such as Category:coastal settlements

Any other subjects to consider? Or is there enough now to work toward adoption of the conventions? Dl2000 (talk) 03:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Currency abbreviation
The ISO 4217 code for the currency is "AUD", not "AU$" — the standard makes no mention of this latter abbreviation. The new AU$ template returns "A$" which imposes an informal (and incorrect, IMO) abbreviation on our articles. The Canadians had a discussion relating to CAD and resolved to use the ISO 4217 construct. I suggest we defer to the standard also. Djanga 04:52, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Fair point - WP:$ (main MoS) did give "AU$" as the abbreviation and did not mention "AUD". Also, the abbreviation issue hadn't been raised at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Australia/Conventions, so there seemed to be no objection to AU$ to this point. The abbreviation should be settled at the /Conventions discussion; once that's done, both AU$ and AUD templates should ideally do the same thing, just like US$ and USD have the same result. But to do that, AUD is currently a big box of links on Australian currency and that would need to be renamed (perhaps to something like Australian currency), which then means changing over numerous articles using that (although that's all in a day's work for a WP:BOT). Dl2000 (talk) 04:44, 21 April 2009 (UTC) (copied from AWNB. I trust that's OK)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Djanga (talk • contribs)
 * The "AU$" abbreviation was apparently first introduced to the MOS here, on 20Oct2005 and has as far as I can see never been challenged. That does surprise me and makes me wonder if I'm not talking shite.  (That currency policy was merged into MOSNUM at a later date).  WP:MOSNUM will need to be changed, if there's a consensus to do so here.
 * I agree to changing the AUD navbox template to something like Australian currency and see no harm in that happening now. Djanga 05:21, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * A heads-up message was placed at Template talk:AUD; if no concerns appear there (or here), the move can proceed later this week, following by converting the various articles using it.
 * The Australian dollar does mention A$ and AU$ as "informal" abbreviations. A$ is frequently seen in various Google results (although A$ seems a bit too ambiguous). AU$ is less ambiguous, and seems to be the usage at Wikinews (e.g. and ). But ISO 4217 does seem to be the only formal abbreviation. Perhaps adapting the Canadian style guide would be better (WP:CANSTYLE)? That is, Australian articles would assume $ (could spell out AUD at first), while advising non-Australian articles to always specify ISO 4217 (AUD). Dl2000 (talk) 02:22, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The Canadian guide seems like common sense to me and could almost be adopted word for word here. -- Mattinbgn\talk 02:29, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we won't adopt the word "Canadian" from that, though. Anyway, currency style option #2 is added to main page for evaluation. Dl2000 (talk) 02:39, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikinews has its own style guide which says in part: Sample dollar notation is as follows: * Australia "A$1.25" or "AUD1.25" (and neither of the two cited n: articles above have followed that guideline, btw).  Although informal, "A$" is almost universally used in financial journalism and "AUD" used mainly in statistical lists (warning, WP:OR).  So, on reflection, perhaps we should make either of these styles (A$ or AUD) acceptable.  (its the other variants such as AU$ and AUD$ that I have a problem with). I have a suspicion that the origin of "AU$" in Wikipedia is rooted in a misguided effort to be consistent with "US$" — "US" of course is an abbreviation for 2 words whereas Australia is just 1 word.  That abbreviation still doesn't equate to vernacular use to my knowledge.  Djanga 09:17, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that use of AUD$ is likely to be less problematic than AUD. AUD3.50 doesn't look right and I suspect most editors will use the dollar sign because of this. It certainly seems to be the case in the articles I've looked at. --AussieLegend (talk) 00:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Note that the AUD --> Australian currency move was done. However, articles using the old template name will need to be updated. Dl2000 (talk) 02:07, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Articles which were using AUD template were renamed as Australian currency, generally the notes, coins and a few other articles. Template inclusion seemed to cause most of the linkage. AUD is now repurposed to use the ISO 4217 abbreviation. Dl2000 (talk) 02:23, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Another round...
The proposed currency section is updated for further review. From the above discussion, it seems A$ has some presence and support; AU$ isn't moving forward; AUD is international standard (ISO 4217). With respect to AussieLegend's support for AUD$, perhaps A$ will serve the purpose of representing a dollar sign just as well as AUD$ would; meanwhile AUD$ would be seen by some editors as a redundancy, similar to that raised at the WP:CANSTYLE discussion (leading to CAD). Hopefully the new statement combines the best of what has been discussed to date; does that look better? Dl2000 (talk) 02:41, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You've nailed it. Thanks. Djanga 08:09, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

New A$ template
A$ is now available to show a linked A$ e.g. A$123.45. Based on the discussion it seems safe to deprecate AU$, while AUD remains available for the ISO 4217 option. Dl2000 (talk) 04:00, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Infobox Australian Place
Infobox Australian Place is Australia-specific and is quite different from Infobox Settlement. Is this place to make reference to it as the preferred infobox for Australian localities? -- 01:56, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Added a Places section to mention the preferred infobox template. Dl2000 (talk) 02:57, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation
This section was updated, based on the recent WP:AWNB discussion and what seems a good example from Cairns, Queensland. Dl2000 (talk) 01:59, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Promote status?
Seems the discussion on the conventions has settled for more than a week, therefore the proposal tag was upgraded to a promote tag. Is there enough project consensus at this time to adopt the proposed text as guidelines? Dl2000 (talk) 22:51, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Number and delimiting
Australian practice is to use a comma to delimit numbers where there are more than 3 digits to the left of the decimal point. e.g 1,250) Sometimes we're lazy and forget them and it's no big deal. MOS:NUM actually says "Numbers with four digits to the left of the decimal point may or may not be delimited" but, for consistency, I think we should state a preference to use them in Australian articles. I realise this seems trivial but I'm having an issue with an editor removing them for no apparent reason and this will resolve future similar issues. Does anyone have any opposition to this? --AussieLegend (talk) 12:25, 13 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Australian practice is the same as MOS. Large numbers are grouped in 3's and 4 digit numbers may or may have a comma. Can't see any reason to make it specific. Since both forms (comma or no comma) are allowed, the editor that is changing them to the other form is in the wrong.  Stepho   (talk) 14:09, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Currency abbreviation revisited
The MOS states (in part): "Use the full abbreviation of a currency on its first appearance (e.g. A$52)" and "If there is no common English abbreviation or symbol, use the ISO 4217 standard." We do have a common English abbreviation (A$), and therefore we should be using that, and not AUD.

Mentions of AUD in this convention should be either removed, or at least demoted to second choice. –Moondyne 15:21, 20 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Agreed. This project has decided that A$99 is the preferred format. AUD should only be used in the unusual case that an article deals with all currencies in ISO 4217 format (maybe articles on international currencies), which would ignore any local conventions anyway. So, our project should state only that A$99 is the preferred format and that all other forms (possibly with some examples of bad formats) should not be used. Note that the AUD template will always show amounts in the preferred format (if we change our minds in the future the the template will be changed to match), so use of the template guarantees an article will always be correct. E.g. A$99  Stepho   (talk) 23:11, 20 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Seems reasonable. ISO may also be plausible in special cases where the ISO code itself is discussed. The AUD used to represent the ISO code, but now something like would be needed.


 * Here's a draft revision of the WP:AUSTYLE currency statement, deprecating the unnecessary ISO bits and doing some wordsmithing:
















 * Please advise how that looks. Dl2000 (talk) 01:13, 21 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Looks good. I'd drop the penultimate paragraph completely - both sentences are just stating the obvious.  –Moondyne 02:08, 21 February 2011 (UTC)


 * The rewording looks good but we should use the AUD template. Other currency templates such as GBP, USD, CAD, JPY and NOK use the ISO 4217 code (disclaimer: I created or edited many of them). In fact, I would like to delete A$ or at least make it into a redirect to AUD so that we have a single, consistent use of templates.  Stepho   (talk) 04:37, 21 February 2011 (UTC)


 * ✅. Convention rewording and template redirect.  –Moondyne 05:49, 21 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the redirects. Was the rewording suppose to use A$ or AUD ?  Stepho   (talk) 06:48, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oops, I complained too early before you did another round of edits - all is as you promised. Many thanks.  Stepho   (talk) 06:50, 21 February 2011 (UTC)