Portal talk:New Zealand/Archive 1

message: Should we have a policy of no redlinks on the portal page, other than in the open tasks section? The section which is most likely to have redlinks is the In the News section. Looking at some of the other country portals, some have red links, but the major ones don't. It could be said that having a few red links might encourage people to contribute the relevant articles; on the other hand, it looks unprofessional, which is why the Wikipedia main page doesn't allow any.-gadfium 05:18, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We should certainly keep red links to an absolute minimum, I think. Grutness...wha? 06:12, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ...in fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that if we have news about something, it should be at least possible to write a stub based on that news. So IMHO if we want to link something but it's a redlink, we could always take the five minutes extra to write the stub. Grutness...wha? 00:14, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Red link policy

message: Since it looks like we're about to start changing the featured picture and article, I've just created Wikipedia:Wikiportal/New_Zealand/Previously_featured to store details of what's been featured before. I would recomment adding in details of the new works when they're added to the portal page, so that everyone knows how long they've been there! I'll also have a look around for some more fascinating facts, to replace the ones there. Grutness...wha? 06:12, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea. I'm going to do the same for the Aussie Wikiportal. --Cyberjunkie 06:42, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Archive

message: This page is going to get very long very quickly if we're not careful. Might I suggest that we archive all the sections on feature pictures and articles once they get to the portal page, and (unless there is serious debate about any of them) simply delete all the "yes that looks good - go for it" type comments that each one seems to get? I suspect it will be a while before we have too many that are debatable choices, and hopefully we'll have a bit more of an idea of what to do with them when we get to them. Any thoughts? Grutness...wha? 06:48, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the proposals for featured articles/pictures can be deleted once they go onto the main page of the portal - no need to archive. I'm posting them here a few days earlier just to get a bit of feedback, since we don't have a mechanism similar to the one for the real front page (and I can't be bothered setting up  mechanism like that at the moment). I'll delete the old featured article/picture "trials" from this page in a few days if I get no objections.-gadfium 08:48, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: I'm not going to bother with the "trial layouts" on this page in future - I'll just update the portal page directly every Sunday morning.-gadfium 19:31, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion as to new features

message: asks ...that New Zealand is the only country in the world that has areas of every climate. How is that justified? We often hear that NZ has a little bit of everything, but when people say that to me I tell them to spend some time in India to see a country that really has everything. Tropical areas (with monsoons) for instance, which NZ certainly does not have. Moriori 23:44, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
:That was inserted by an anon; I couldn't find an appropriate article to link it to. I'll update the section and scroll it off the page.-gadfium 00:39, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Did you know...

message: Is anyone else bothered by the Moa article where it refers to a publican (and names his pub)  and some mates who claimed to have seen a Moa? It looks like a hoaxed publicity stunt. The bird in the dreadful photo doesnot look like its description in the text. It does not have a long neck, for instance. Also, it is spurious to say that if the takahe could be found after being reported extinct then so could the moa. The takahe is the size of a chook, so it could have easily been almost walked on by passing trampers/hunters but was able to conceal itself in the bush. A six foot high moa would have some difficulty managing that! This article is not encyclopedic IMMHO. What do others think? Moriori 22:52, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
:I agree that too much of the article deals with the claimed sighting, and the picture accompanying the claim is a terrible photo and has no licence information. Feel free to reduce the text of this incident to one or two sentences and remove that photo. The taxobox photo is presumably just someone's interpretation of what the bird would have looked like from the skeleton; I think it's valid, but if you can get a better photo then by all means do so (there must be many from 19th century books in the library, which are now out of copyright). When this article goes on the portal page (in 8 weeks time, according to the current schedule), I'll use the skeleton photo if no other photos have appeared in the meantime. You might like to copy this discussion to the talk:Moa page.-gadfium 23:51, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, but it probably is worth mentioning that reports crop up from time to time. I've reduced the size of the section on the Freaney case - I remember it made the news quite a bit in the early 90s, but was almost certainly a hoax. (edit conflict! pah!) Grutness...wha? 23:51, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The [[Moa]] article worries me

message: It is my intention to feature New Zealand general election, 2005 in the week before the election is held. Any objections or ideas? I expect this article to be more or less continually referenced on the In The News section up until then as well.
I have tried to avoid news items on the policies of any particular political party, as I don't want to give more coverage to one party or another. With the Waitangi Tribunal deadlines, the article was put on Current events by someone else, so I tried to balance it by giving the National policy as well. We just don't have the space in the news section to cover every party's policy.
I intend to have a story on the launch of the election campaign for each political party that's represented in Parliament. NZ First launched its campaign a couple of weeks ago, and I gave it a write up with a picture of Winston Peters. I'm hoping that not too many parties launch their campaigns within a day of each other or it will crowd out all other stories. 
If I miss a party's campaign launch, please point me to a story about it or write it yourself. There's a chance I won't see the launch of the minor parties' campaigns in the news media.-gadfium 19:54, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I am aware that the Progressive Party had its election campaign launch today, but I can't find any news stories to quote. I'll probably find something tomorrow, but if anyone sees a story, please place a link to it here.-gadfium 06:42, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: General election coverage

message: FYI The Herald will no longer allow free access to some articles after 7 days. Please be careful not to link to those ones (not 100% sure how to tell which ones will go away). See The Herald story (hope that doesn't vanish). SimonLyall 05:44, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll look for other coverage for events, but I am used to using the New Zealand Herald website. It actually doesn't make a reference invalid that free internet access vanishes after a week; it still provides a source for those who have sufficient need to follow it up, and for current events, few people will be interested in following the link after a week anyway. I can't see the Herald getting much revenue from it for the same reason.-gadfium 02:05, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

text: A clarification: Some premium content (such as columnists - which we don't link to anyway) will require a fee, and the NZ Herald website search engine will not return results more than a week old unless you've subscribed to the website. Links to content will still work, and the website can still be searched for older stories using a Google search with "site:nzherald.co.nz".-gadfium 06:21, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  NZHerald links 

message: Hello you NZ lot.  Great portal page - lots of the my inspiration for P:L came from your page.  But it was far too long to type out all the time, so I've made you a nice new shortcut - P:NZ.  Use it well!  Deano 19:59, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New Shortcut!

message: I missed updating the page last weekend; my sister was staying with me, and she's an early riser like me and I forgot about it. No one seems to have noticed. This leads me to wonder how many Wikipedians use this portal. There was once a way to see how many hits a page had, but it was turned off because the server load created was too high, so there probably is no way to know.
I've certainly enjoyed working on the portal, but I am aware that apart from Grutness updating the pool of DYK articles from time to time, and Cyberjunkie's layout tweaks, there aren't a lot of other Wikipedians involved with it. I know some of the more active Kiwi Wikipedians at least have it on their watchlists, but unless they also watch all the subpages, they won't see the updates apart from my crossing off featured articles/pictures on this discussion page.
Anyone got any suggestions on how we can make the portal more useful/interesting/lively, or should we conclude that it was an experiment which didn't quite work?-gadfium 18:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Portal future?

message: Good afternoon. I have made a template for stock ticker for NZ Stock Exchange Listed companies - see Template:Nzx. This is so that we can easily put NZX stock symbols with publicly listed companies that we are updating on Wikipedia. Also to that end I have also made a new category Category:Companies traded on the New Zealand Stock Exchange.
I have also given a modified version of how this could be put together by using the Infobox_Company template incorporating the above changes on the article on Fonterra. I was looking for feedback on these changes as I would like to include and update all Stock Exchange listed companies while I'm holiday this Christmas :) --Tom Webb 02:19, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  NZ Stock Exchange and NZ Companies 

message: I've renamed two sections of the portal to Selected articles and Selected pictures instead of calling them "Featured articles" and "Featured pictures" as the items we select are not of Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Featured pictures quality, and this may lead to confusion. There has been a discussion of this at Wikipedia_talk:Portal#Overloading_.22featured.22_terminology.
I haven't changed the actual subpage names; they probably won't confuse anyone.
On another note, I plan to archive most of this talk page in the next week, leaving useful links such as to the archive page and DYK candidates page, and leaving the queues of articles/pictures to be selected (but without the lists of previous selections, as that's what the archive page is for).-gadfium 02:16, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Selected articles and pictures