User talk:Ben Arnold

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You have new messages (last change).

You did a great job at Hello world program: thanks for contributing. If you have questions, you can also leave a note for me at User talk:Jwrosenzweig. Happy editing,

-- Jwrosenzweig 23:33, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Welcome from me as well. I left a welcome message without seeing James had already left one, which you might have noticed in the page history. :) Angela. 23:43, Mar 25, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks guys, I have known about Wikis for a couple of years, but only just recently stumbled on to Wikipedia, and I'm thoroughly impressed. I think I need a bit more polish for my contributions, so I will definitely read through those articles.

Good work rationalising Kapiti Coast, Ben - ta.

I marched against the Vietnam War and the 1981 Springbok Tour and signed several petitions opposing the Iraq invasion. So I guess we have a bit in common as well as the local govt region. See ya! :robinp 03:42, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Articles about places in New Zealand

I would like to be involved with maintaining articles about places in New Zealand. Currently there are quite a number of articles, but there are areas of inconsistency, particularly around the scope of an article, and the related issue of the use of the term "city":

  1. Article scope: Some names refer to areas of different scales, centred on the same place, for example "Wellington" can refer to the city council area, the built-up urban area, four adjacent city councils or the area covered by the regional council. Currently there is a Wellington article and a Wellington (region) stub article, but there is only one Auckland article. How many articles should there be?
  2. The term "city": It's ambiguous, it refers to (a) a populated place of a certain size; and (b) the administrative area of a city council. There is evidence that some Wikipedians want to avoid using the term "city" for any place that doesn't have a city council regardless of common usage.

That's the background, now I have a few questions:

  1. Are there already policies on these issues? They must be relevant to some other countries as well.
  2. Is there a forum for discussing a group of related articles, rather than a single one? What are my chances of getting input from other Wikipedians in a reasonable amount of time?
  3. I am interested in maintaining population statistics for these places. Some pages seem to use standard tables to present this kind of information? Is there a special mechanism for this, or is it a matter of copying and pasting HTML?

Thanks for your help. Ben Arnold 04:27, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

  • Good questions, Ben. I'm interested in much the same things and have been using the specific Talk pages from time to time to ask what other users want or believe. Check out my list of contributions to see where I've been. One useful page is called something like "List of cities in New Zealand". :robinp 00:06, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hi Ben, I moved this from the help desk in case you hadn't seen it yet. Feel free to remove it from here if you no longer need it. Angela. 22:54, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

I made some regional maps. I will try to make District maps too, but probably not for a week or so and that would take a while. Furius 23:38, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ben, I tweaked those new bits on your User page (mostly spg) in case you hadn't yet put them into articles. Great work - will be in WP the day BEFORE it "happens" for most readers! Robin Patterson 23:54, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Kapiti Coast

Hi Ben - you must have checked out "Kapiti Coast" while I was in the middle of writing the article on it! Yes, there are two separate articles (Kapiti Coast (district), New Zealand and Kapiti Coast). As to the name, it was partly for consistency - every other district in NZ that isn't connected with an urban area with the same name is labelled that way, with redirects from the simplified name. Oh, and it's easier to reply to you if you sign your comments! Grutness|hello? 00:07, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Requested Move: (Picture_016.jpg → Wellington from Oriental Bay)

You requested a move at Wikipedia:Requested moves for the abovecaptionied image. My response to you at that location is placed here for the purposes of redundancy.

This is not the place for renaming an image. Just change the name on your computer, upload it again and change the linking on the page in question. Something that YOU can do in 10 seconds. (also posted at User's talk page)

I hope the instruction is of some use to you. —ExplorerCDT 03:05, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Wellington Region

Hi Ben - good to see you've altered the Category: Wellington-Kapiti I created when I was mapping out NZ geography articles. It does make a lot more sense putting the whole region in one place, with Wairarapa added in. The original reason I divided it up like I did was partly because different sources I had gave different boundaries (and several of them indicated closer connections between Hawke's Bay and Wairarapa that is perhaps accurate). I think the change in the official Manawatu boundaries to take in southern Hawke's Bay probably caused a few hiccups in the descriptions (to be honest, I still don't know why much of that area was linked in with Manawatu!) Anyway, just wanted to say "good work!" Grutness|hello? 09:17, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for edits on HB articles

Heya Ben, just thought I'd drop a line to a fellow Kiwi. Thanks for edits on HB articles. —Christiaan 10:41, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kilobyte

See reply on Talk:Kilobyte. – Smyth\talk 11:51, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for your question on NPOV on the Village Pump

I just wanted to thank you for asking your question about how to handle NPOV and edit wars that you asked on the Village pump a few days ago. It was good to see a semi-new user sucessfully navigate their first edit war. Thanks. JesseW 07:24, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Free web hosting

hi,

I noticed you asking about free web hosting on the talk page for 'Free web Hosts'. I would like to suggest 2 free web hosts to you:

- Frihost (www.frihost.com): 250Mb space, 10GB bandwidth, no ads, PHP, MySQL, etc. They require you to be active at the forums (a couple of posts a week is fine)

- Zeeblo (www.zeeblo.com): 100MB space, 5GB bandwidth, no ads, PHP, MySQL, etc. You need to sign up at the forums to request a site, but you don't need to stay active

The uptime for both of those hosts is about 99.95%, which is really good. They also both use cPanel and give you a subdomain such as yourname.frihost.net or yourname.zeeblo.com

--Daniel15 05:07, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

If you are still looking Google now offers free, fairly fast hosting with no ads at http://www.googlepages.com Hope this helps too. --Skoorb 16:40, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RE:Admin bid

Ben, don't sell yourself, or your bid for adminship so short! Its been up there for just a few hours and perhaps you should let it run for a couple days at least before you decide one way or the other concerning it. Just my opinion of course, take it for what its worth (exactly 2 cents). I myself usually wait till a few votes and opinions have been registered, to see what issues and comments are important to the community. Since I have never bumped into you anywhere that I remember, it's especially important for me to do so. I suggest you remove your last comment from your RfAd, only a few might hold it against you, but you may have acted rashly for posting it. Good luck, sir! See you 'round the wiki! Hamster Sandwich 22:19, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Hi Ben, please don't get too wound up about your RfA nomination; it can be draining even for those who are successfully nominated. I also wanted to mention that oppose votes do not mean that your edits are not appreciated by the community, only that there isn't yet consensus about granting you access to the more powerful (and potentially hazardous) editing functions. Please don't read too much into the RfA feedback, and remember that the admin privileges are only minor extensions to the already powerful editing capabilities that every editor has available. --Alan Au 22:48, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks guys, yeah I've cut out the defeatist-sounding bits. Ben Arnold 23:36, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

I, Journalist hereby award Ben Arnold this barnstar to thank him for his tireless work on Wikipedia, and encourage him to continue his hard work.
I, Journalist hereby award Ben Arnold this barnstar to thank him for his tireless work on Wikipedia, and encourage him to continue his hard work.

Sorry your RFA didnt work out. I was one of those that voted oppose. I hope that you will stay here and continue to contribute to the project. In a months time, I am certain that you will become an admin, (I really see the potential) I will personally nominate you — thats if you havent been nominated already. I know what it feels like; my first nomination last month failed also. Im working towards going back when September ends. Anyway, take care, and continue working hard mate :).

Journalist C./ Holla @ me!

Yeah thanks for the nice words. The thing is, if 18 months isn't long enough, then there's no reason why the 19th should make the difference. Anyway although I'm disappointed I'm not upset about it, and it's not going to stop my involvement in Wikipedia. It is, however, going to interfere with my plans to step my involvement up a notch and take on an admin role: monitoring for vandalism, greeting & helping new users, greater involvement in the Wikipedia namespace and the rest of it.
I have to assume that people have weighed the risk of me being an admin, against the good I would do as an admin and judged that the risk is too great.
Ben Arnold 03:26, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your RFA

I'm sorry you didn't make it to admin, but I think you have it exactly backwards in the paragraph above. Yes, if you continue as before, and nominate yourself again in a month's time, you might get an extra few votes (because you'll have demonstrated that you're really keen on becoming an admin, and you'll have what some people regard as the magic number of 1000 edits), but you still may not pass because the problem with your candidacy was not lack of time spent here, and although many people mentioned lack of edits I think they really meant lack of experience getting involved with the community.

What you need to do, starting now, is act like an admin. By that I mean do all the things that you would like to do as an admin that don't actually require admin powers - get more involved in reverting vandalism, greeting and helping new users, participate in debates in the Wikipedia namespace. You can't use the auto rollback, but you can show that you'd make good use of the ability. You can't block vandals, but you can warn them with the test* templates and report them on WP:VIP and WP:AIV so an admin can come along and block without having to go through that warning process. The large majority of vandals quit after being warned, so no admin involvement is necessary. The only thing you shouldn't do is claim to be an admin. People debate whether non-admins should use the test4 template, but I see no problem with it. Finally, getting involved in a particular area of Wikipedia would be a good thing - one which involves discussion with other editors. Any of the wikiprojects or the NZ discussion board would be good. One of my main involvements at the moment is the New Zealand Wikiportal. I would be prefectly happy to hand that over if you'd like to take over the maintenance of it.

If you do more of all this over the next month or so, you'll be a shoo-in as an admin.

On the other hand, I do realise that the process of RFA is very stressful, and I'll think no less of you if you really don't want to go through that process again. At any rate, I hope we'll see more of you on the New Zealand Wikipedians message board.-gadfium 20:13, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Test

Testing for Wikimedia bug 3805. 202.175.143.143 20:44, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your map of UN-defined geographical subregions

Hello Ben! Just wanted to commend you on the great work creating this image. I also wonder if you mind if I put it on my user page, or use it in articles for a better visual overview for the reader? 8-] --Big Adamsky 16:47, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. No I don't mind, go ahead! Ben Arnold 23:28, 11 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Re forming governments

I've just seen your question on Talk:Prime Minister. I've posted a reply but in case you don't see it I'm posting it here too.

There are two categories that New Zealand can fit under:

  • by appointment by the head of state without the need for confirmation by parliament
  • appointment by the head of state after the majority parliamentary party nominates a candidate

I don't know what distinction is being made here. Surely, even in the UK it is constitutional convention for the monarch to appoint the leader of the party with the support of the House of Representatives. In New Zealand, as in the UK, the appointment is secured by a confidence vote in Parliament. I'd expect that this is true of Australia, Canada and India as well.

Ben Arnold 02:15, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

That is not the system in the UK. Parliament never votes on the issue. When an outgoing PM resigns the Queen commissions someone else. If someone has a clear majority then it is obvious who she is to ask to form a government. In the event of a stalemate, the outgoing PM either resigns (in which case the Leader of the Opposition is asked to form a government) or remains on until defeated in the Queen's speech, at which point they resign and the Leader of the Opposition is asked to form a government. Other than voting on the Queen's Speech (ie, to give or withdraw confidence to the Queen's government's legislative programme) the House of Commons has no role whatsoever. Ditto in Australia and in New Zealand.
In contrast the King proposes a nomination for president of the government to the Cortes in Spain, while the President of Ireland has to await a formal vote to nominate a candidate.
The former one above describes the systems in the UK and the Commonwealth, while the latter describes the system in Ireland and in other places.
They are two completely different systems. FearÉIREANN\(caint)

[edit] personal union

  • I just wandered by and stumbled over the disputed-accuracy template in the given article. If this dispute has been resolved, may I suggest you remove same? (Actually, I'll do so as that was three+ months ago). From the article history it looks to be pretty stable, so this kind of untidyness is unwelcome in a matured article. OTOH, an update of the current dispute state would be in order as would a new line in the article history saying that you reasserted the template 'because... [New Section Name] is disputed'. Thanks, A text search for dispute in the history going back 120 changes or so didn't find it! Time consuming, apparently for nothing much.
Best regards, FrankB 23:35, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Auckland meetup

Just to let you know that a meetup is planned in Auckland for the 25th of June (see Wikipedia:Meetup/Auckland for more details), and that you are cordially invited. GeorgeStepanek\talk 00:21, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed Georgia Move

As a past participant in the discussion on how to handle the Georgia pages, I thought you might be interested to know that there's a new attempt to reach consensus on the matter being addressed at Talk:Georgia (country)#Requested_Move_-_July_2006. Please come by and share your thoughts to help form a consensus. --Vengeful Cynic 03:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wellingtonians

Ben, it's a while since anyone talked to you here (which could mean you're not annoying anyone), and it's ages since I talked to you. I have been doing a diminishing amount on "en:" after discovering (1) "mi:" and (2) http://Wikia.com.

I decided to say a few friendly words to everyone in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_in_Wellington since joining that category recently.

You're currently in Auld Reekie, eh? One of my grandparents was born there and two of the others probably passed through.

Kind regards - Robin Patterson 05:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

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