Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New Zealand places

message: * Some standards are stated or at least discussed elsewhere in W; I'll copy them or refs to here when I rediscover them. :robinp 23:17, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Agreed policies and standards 

message: *We could group some of the articles into series, "Regions of New Zealand" series, "Cities of New Zealand" (more controversial). "Towns of the Manawatu" or whatever. Each article could have a table of links to the other articles in the series. Note some articles could be in multiple series.
*I'd like to maintain a standard set of statistics for certain kinds of areas, presented as a table.
*Maps would be good, but I don't know where to get them from.
**Do you mean maps of the places, or maps showing where in New Zealand they are? If the latter, I have a blank free-use map of New Zealand that might possibly be useful. -- Vardion 06:06, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template ideas 

message: Should we have one article for each local government region, separate from the article for the city? Does this make sense for Auckland, Gisborne, Wellington, Nelson?
Ben Arnold 04:10, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regional articles 

message: What is the scope of an article about a city like Wellington or Auckland? Is the article about just the city council area, or is it about the greater urban area? [or the whole region! - Robin]
I'd answer this from the perspective of a foreign audience. If you want to read an encyclopedic article about Wellington, chances are that you're from overseas and local authority boundaries aren't that important to you. If I want to read about London, New York or Sydney, I expect the article to be primarily an overview of the greater area, not specific to a particular central city area.
On the other hand, it is interesting to know about the local authority structure, and the history of local bodies, etc.
So my proposal is that the scope of an article should be the greater urban area, but the focus should be on the central city. This leaves room for satellite cities and towns to have their own detailed articles, without limiting what can be written about in the main article.
Ben Arnold 04:10, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scope of city articles? 

message: There seem to be two schools of thought here:
#a city is a place with a city council; the boundaries of the city are the same as the boundaries of city council
#a city is a town that has a sufficiently large population and status to be described as a city
I don't think we should avoid use of the word city, I just think we should be clear when only one of the meanings applies. For example, Manukau is a city by meaning 1, but not by meaning 2 (because it's not really a distinct "town"). Here we need to mention early on that Manukau is a satellite city of Auckland.
For another example, Rotorua is a city by meaning 2, but not by meaning 1. So we should mention in the first few sentences that Rotorua is administered by the Rotorua District Council.
In particular I want to avoid text like "Rotorua is a district..." because in my mind Rotorua refers first and foremost to the city around which the district is based. I don't mind reading "Rotorua is a city" or "Manukau is a city", but in both cases it makes sense to clarify.
It will also help if we have standardised tables for statistics, then a user will be able to tell at a glance whether somewhere is an urban area, a territorial local authority, or both.
Ben Arnold 04:10, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Timaru is a particularly thorny problem for this... it's a city by definition 2, and used to be a city by definition 1, until regional reshuffles meant it lost its status. It's messy taking about "The former city of Timaru" all the time - it makes it sound like Pompeii or something.Grutness 10:50, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  The term "city" 

message: I recently created articles for the Mayor of Auckland and the Mayor of Wellington (although they're mostly just lists at the moment). It's possible that there will also be other articles for the Mayor of Christchurch, the Mayor of Dunedin, and so forth. What would be the best place in the city articles for these to be linked from? -- Vardion 12:19, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I have linked to the Mayor of Wellington page from the geostatistical table on Wellington. Ben Arnold 21:53, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: another possibility would be that some cities (e.g., Dunedin) have a subheading listing prominent citizens. It would make sense to add it in there. Grutness 05:10, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Mayors

message: Well, it's taken a **** of a lot of work (much more than I thought), but finally New Zealand's places have a logical categorisation system. It works like this.
Every "place" article in New Zealand should have (read "hopefully, eventually will have") a minimum of two categories: a location and a type. Thus, for instance, Clutha River is in both the Otago and New Zealand rivers categories. This means that all New Zealand places can be selected based on what they are or by where they are. Some places, of course, will need more than two (if a river flows through two regions, or is a river running through a cave, for instance).
The New Zealand category (a sort of root menu) has as a subcategory New Zealand geography. This has further subcategories - NZ lakes, rivers, islands, etc, etc... and New Zealand locations. The New Zealand locations category has 17 subcategories for different parts of the country - 10 N.I. regions, 6 S.I. regions, plus "outlying islands".
So far, the main missing category is one for NZ towns, cities, and settlements - which I suspect will have a lot of articles in it. Other than that, it's a case of hunting down uncategorised articles and categorising them, and categorising any new articles.
Apart from that, it's a case of trying to make other sections of the New Zealand root category as logical (NZ history, politics, natural history, culture, etc).   Grutness 06:36, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Categories now more logical (I hope!)

message: A thought about suburbs... With the three main centres, it makes sense to have separate articles for separate suburbs, and they are now being categorised under "X urban districts". A lot of Auckland and wellington area ones are done, and there are a few Christchurch ones I'd like to write small articles on, too.
With Dunedin (and possibly other similar sized cities), there are quite a number of suburbs that are writing something about, but I doubt that many of them warrant a full article. What I propose to do (unless there's any strong objections) is write an article called Suburbs of Dunedin, and give each of them its own subheading and paragraph or two. If necessary they can be moved to their own articles later, and it avoids having nine or ten new stubs. Good idea, or is it better to write separate articles now?  Grutness|hello?  06:19, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: well, it's now one week later (almost to the minute), and there's been no-one saying "Don't do it!", so the article's on its way.  Grutness|hello?  06:35, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Suburbs

message: I'd like to propose a policy that we always use census figures for populations, the rationale being:
# The figures are esily cited and verifiable, unlike statements such as "A population of approximately 10,800".
#It is most consistent: The periodic updates from Statistics NZ are not comprehensive and not directly tied to the maps defining meshblocks.
# Populations don't grow so suddenly that 2001 figures seem badly out of date. If a town is expanding rapidly e.g. Tekapo, that deserves separate mention in the article.
Notes: 
*When using the Statistics NZ site, it is often necessary to sum sub-blocks to get the population for the precise urban area, verifying via the maps. E.g. Queenstown, where the overall community profile covers nearby rural areas.
*My default phrasing is "At the time of the 2001 census the usually-resident population of xxxxx was yyyy, an increase/decrease of zzz since 1996". dramatic 09:26, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Population Figures

message: I'm currently going through NZ places and adding the origins of their names (adapted from The Reed Dictionary of NZ Place Names). I notice that very few of the articles have references listed, and I was hoping that the authors of the articles could point out some of that information. I'd be happy to add the references myself if it seems too onerous a task :)
Cheers, Ziggurat 23:54, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Place name origins 

message: Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Places WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot! Titoxd(?!? - help us) 18:36, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team|Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team]] cooperation 

message: Hi all - I'm trying to get The Catlins slowly towards FA status (at least as far as the NZ Portal's concerned, even if not full WP:FA). At the moment it's probably pretty close to the A-level that Titoxd mentions above (although it could do with a couple more photos). If anyone can add anything they think should be there, or make suggestions as to its improvement (either on its talk page or my user talk page), please do so! Grutness...wha? 10:18, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Help wanted with the Catlins

message: I made a one-off infobox for the Catlins article I mentioned above (which is now getting very close to FA nomination!) As I said, the template was a one-off, but looks as though it might be useful for other similar areas of New Zealand which aren't cities, districts, or regions (that is, anywhere which is more a "community of interest" than an actual political entity). Please have a look at it and see whether it would be useful - and if it is, feel free to turn it into a "real" infobox template! Grutness...wha? 07:27, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I made one for articles related to Taupo District  - User:Brian New Zealand/Temp/info (see in use Taupo)  basing it on the Catlins one :) Brian | (Talk) 00:35, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Potential new infobox

message: Apologies for the cross-posting, but I thought you'd like to know that Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Catlins is now up and running! Grutness...wha? 02:33, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NZ FAC - The Catlins

message: Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory.  This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you.  B2T2 16:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project directory 

message: Hi. I've been looking at the regional articles under the Regions of New Zealand Category and the general layout seems to be a bit mixed (compare Gisborne and Bay of Plenty). I'd like to have a go at cleaning these up a bit - starting with a standard for the map and region info box - possibly using Gisborne as a template. Any thoughts, comments, objections ?
Malathos 19:13, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standard format for NZ Regions 

message: Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 20:19, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia Day Awards 

message: The discussion at Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board#Māori names is likely to be of interest to anyone watching this page.-gadfium 19:56, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Māori names

message: Wikipedia:WikiProject New Zealand places appears to be totally moribund - only one non-vandalism-related edit to the main page in the last year, and no talk page edits (other than this one, which I'm crossposting) in almost two years. Should it be rolled into Wikipedia:WikiProject New Zealand, either totally or as a working party subtopic? Grutness...wha? 01:49, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Just over a year later and nothing else has happened. I've done a fair bit of work on NZ places over time, but always under the aegis of the main WikiProject, I've never seen this separate project as necessary or advisable. In terms of a merge back, I guess it's worth putting the information on locality templates onto a subpage? What else do you think is necessary? Removal of any WPNZP templates. dramatic (talk) 08:08, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: And another year on... :) Should something be happening? Orderinchaos 14:12, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see any dissenting voices, so feel free to merge it back. --Avenue (talk) 13:06, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead WikiProject