Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 12

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Archive 12

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Forbes Global CEO Conference in Sydney - 30 August

If anyone is going to be in Sydney on the night of 30 August, they may want to do a little bit of Wikireporting. Unlike Wikipedia, Wikinews allows you to do original reporting and research.

There is a project page on Wikinews to co-ordinate coverage.

- Borofkin 05:13, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Alternatively, you can take a look at the 2005 Forbes Global CEO Conference Wikipedia article. - Borofkin 04:56, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Triple J's Impossible Music Festival

I notice the above article had been created so I decided to clean it up and expand it a little. It seems there are a few major live music venues which don't have articles! Is anyone knowledgeable enough to write about Hordern Pavilion, The Palace (venue)/The Palace, Melbourne, Iwaki Auditorium, Summersault (festival), Phoenician Club, Festival Hall, Capitol Theatre, Sydney, Corner Hotel, Enmore Theatre, Transformer (venue), SBW Independent Theatre, Royal Antler Hotel or State Theatre? -- Chuq 12:57, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Meetup in Melbourne, November 15

Angela will be in Melbourne for a conference in November. She would like to meet up with local Wikipedians on Tuesday, November 15. Time and venue are still undecided, I thought we could start discussing that when we know where Angela will be staying, which we don't yet. But put it in your diary. -- Tim Starling 22:14, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

I've expressed interest in travelling to Melbourne for a weekend Wikimeet (I'm in Hobart) if given sufficient warning - unfortunately I'm not able to get there on weekdays. However I'll be in Sydney October 6th to 12th if anyone is up for one then? -- Chuq 01:56, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
I would be interested in attending any kind of meet-up in Melbourne. Cnwb 05:59, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Photos

Further to the discussion on Parliamentary photos: is this a legitimate photo? [1]. If it is, can we phrase our Parliamentary photo acknowledgement the same way? Adam 05:34, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Australia doesn't have crown copyright. Australian copyright law has no special provisions regarding use of materials whose copyright is owned by an Australian government. So I guess the answer is no. Hesperian 06:01, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Australia does have crown copyright, but it doesn't work the same way as that of the UK. In Australian law crown copyright means that the government owns the copyrights om anything made under it's direction or control [2], there are provisions for fair dealing similar to fair use. --nixie 07:15, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, I want someone to come up with a formula that enables us to use these photos. It seems absurd that Wikipedians from every other country can use official photos of their elected officials and we cannot - not because the Parliament won't let us, but because of this silly Wikipedia rule. Adam 07:26, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I think {{AustraliaGov}}, with the email from AUSPIC pasted on the image discussion page should cover it.--nixie 09:08, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I will try tagging some photos like this:

This photograph is held under Crown copyright by the Commonwealth of Australia. The responsible Commonwealth agency, AUSPIC, gave written permission on 2 August 2005 for this photograph to be used at Wikipedia (see following). The use of this image by is contended to be fair dealing in Australia and fair use in the United States. (Letter from AUSPIC to User:Adam Carr: "Dear Dr Carr, Approval is granted to reproduce images nominated below [photographs of Members, Senators and Governors-General appearing in current and past editions of the Parliamentary Handbook] on the Wikipedia website. Subsequent use by a third pary will incur reproduction fees if that use is of a commercial nature. Copyright remains with AUSPIC. Peter West, Director, AUSPIC auspic@aph.gov.au)"

Adam 06:16, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

That seems reasonable. It's unfortunate we need to go to all this trouble just to use pictures of our politicians. Perhaps a link should be provided in the tag to AWNB so that we can deal collectively with any who might have quibbles.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 06:21, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I have added photos to William Deane and Bill Hayden with the above tag. Let's see what happens. I hope to get some support from other people here for the use of these photos. Adam 13:37, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

SMH Icon article

In case you missed it - I think pretty trivial but here tis: Wikipedia Worries, Sydney Morning Herald 27 August. Concerns raised in the article were fictional entries, spam and marketing.--AYArktos 08:54, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I find this quote particularly interesting:
However, the concern continues. One anonymous reader contacted Boingboing telling them he worked at a marketing company that uses Wikipedia for its online marketing strategies.
"That includes planting of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new promotional sites or 'leaks' embedded in entries to test diffusion of information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of [online meeting place] Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it."
-- Chuq 21:56, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
The issue of links to commercial sites is a problem, say for example in the Car accident article where one firm of US lawyers seems to contantly spam the site. I don't understand the term "viral entries" in the context of plain text unless they are referring to some sort of subliminal content. I guess that is why so many of us have extensive watch lists and spend too much of our time reverting out inappropriate additions. I don't see it as a big problem at present in Australian content articles though. A bigger problem seems to be vandalism apparently from school students.--AYArktos 22:30, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

John Brogden

This is a major news story, yet it is constantly being removed from WP:ITN. However, I notice that Pat Robertson's comment get to stay on this template for a very long time. It appears that US-centricism strikes again. Anyone who feels as disgusted with this as I do please feel free to comment on Template talk:In the news. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:35, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Spoken like a true New South Welshman who thinks Sydney is the center of the universe. The fact is that the United States is the biggest and most powerful country on Earth, and when somebody who's moderately influential in the Republican Party suggests the assassination of a foriegn leader it *is* more important than an Opposition Leader in an Australian state making stupid remarks. How interested would you be if the Premier of Bavaria which has a population more than twice that of New South Wales, or maybe Alberta, resigned in similar circumstances? --Robert Merkel 05:45, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
If they resigned, then it should go on WP:ITN. As for your lovely bit of abuse about me living in NSW, charming. You are a lovely piece of work: firstly, I am well aware that NSW is not the center of the universe. If the opposition leader in QLD resigned in similar circumstances, I would add this also. Secondly, noone was assasinated that I am aware. Thirdly, you are comparing notablility by population. Basically, by your reasoning, if Charles King had committed his massive electoral fraud today instead of in 1927 then you would not allow it on the template either. In any case, I find your comments to be rather horrid, and uncalled for. Ever read Wikipedia:Assume good faith? I suggest you start now. - Ta bu shi da yu 10:06, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
OK, as far as being rude and personal, that was indeed uncalled for and I apologise. I do, however, stand by the substantive point. From a global perspective, or even an English-speaking world perspective, the resignation of any state/province Opposition Leader (or equivalent) is relatively small bikkies, whether they are from New South Wales, New Jersey, or Nova Scotia. And, yes, the size and economic influence of the particular jurisdiction is relevant. Would you expect anyone from outside Australia to care if Jodeen Carney resigned under virtually any circumstances? --Robert Merkel 12:18, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
Apology accepted. This was massive news - almost every paper in Australia picked it up and a considerable number of overseas papers picked it up also. When he attempted self-harm, the story got even bigger. If a bigger issue displaces this one, by all means we should let it scroll off the template. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:44, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
Although it's oddly co-incidental in that they both made stupid remarks (and are of the right ;-)). I've made comments again at Template talk:In the news. --Cyberjunkie | Talk 06:00, 30 August 2005 (UTC)


Repeatedly replacing one bit of non-notable news with another bit of non-notable news seems to violate WP:POINT.--nixie 03:48, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

This is the second time I have read you say this about me. Please show me the edit where I replaced anything. Oh? Can't find it? You won't be able to as I did not do this. - Ta bu shi da yu 10:06, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

A bit of decorum, please! Adam 10:19, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Might want to add something about his apparent suicide attempt. I would do it myself, but I can't because the page is protected. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 22:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Election coverage - request for comment

New Zealand has its general election in one week's time. Can Australians who covered the 2004 Australian election for Wikipedia comment at the New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board on what pages were set up and how the coverage on Wikipedia was organised. Any suggestions for improvements we could make to the process? Thanks in advance.-gadfium 02:58, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Help requested to get to stub status for every Sydney suburb

Folks, I'm making a big push to get to stub status (with a mapping info), or better, for every single Sydney suburb. I need some help to do this though - details are here. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 08:55, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Darryl White

I wrote this article recently and think it's pretty good. I'm interested in others' comments, so I've sent it to peer review. Note that I've deliberately not broken it up into sections as I feel it would disrupt the flow of the article, but see what you think. --The Brain of Morbius 00:33, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Aussie rules team template

I've just created Template:Aussie rules team to provide consistent formatting between various notable teams (such as Indigenous Team of the Century) listed in WP.--The Brain of Morbius 12:36, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Image request

Does anyone have a photo of or easy access to some native Australian crustaceans, marron, yabbies, red claw, crabs etc to take a photo? Or an exotic underwater pic from the Great Barrier reef showing other marine invertebrates? I need a pic for Fauna of Australia. Thanks in advance. --nixie 07:09, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I offer one small crab but can't tell you much more than we exchanged looks at Batemans Bay, New South Wales. Regards--AYArktos 10:38, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll see if I can find out what type fo crab it is.--nixie 11:38, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
The crab has been identified as probably being Ocypode cordimana: Common Ghost Crab or Smooth-handed Ghost Crab. The characteristics include one claw being much larger than the other. Reference: Australian Department of Environment and Heritage page on this species. I took another photo which perhaps better illustrates the characteristics and matches the DEH picture - Image:BBayCrab2.jpg --AYArktos 10:58, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Collaboration of the fortnight

The new Australian Collaboration is History of Queensland. Seven people have made a significant change to Snowtown murders over the last three weeks, although a lot remains to make a complete article. If you can stomach it and want to keep at it, there are some good references listed at the end. History of Queensland has been created from a timeline in Queensland, and needs to be expanded and written as prose - the talk page has a preliminary to do list. --Scott Davis Talk 14:46, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

I've put in a bit of information on

considering also putting some more info on significant sport events, rugby or cricket? not much else happened in 20th C. queensland! Astrokey44 04:20, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Renaming of Uluru article

User:Hottentot has recently renamed Uluru to Ayers Rock. I am not sure that the user is Australian. There is some discussion on the talk page about the name but none of it conclusive. This user has renamed the article woithout discussion. The rock is officially known as Uluru in Australia. What do other wikipedians think the article should be called?--AYArktos 00:27, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

  • According to the Gazeteer of Australia, the official name is "Uluru", and the "alternative name" is "Ayers Rock". I think we should use the official name. Snottygobble | Talk 00:33, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I've moved it back, the changes to the text where Uluru has been replaced by Ayers Rock need to be fixed.--nixie 00:47, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
  • The user making the moves is also moving other sites with traditional names to their european names, like the Olgas could Australian's please weigh in on the various talk pages to guage some support or the lack of support for these moves.--nixie 01:57, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I've moved it back, and made a comment on the talk page. Snottygobble | Talk 02:10, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
    • My comment was wrong and has been corrected. A dual naming policy has been adopted. The official name of Uluru/Ayers Rock is literally "Uluru/Ayers Rock". Similarly, the official name of Kata Tjuta appears to be "Kata Tjuta/Mount Olga". Snottygobble | Talk 02:20, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I have just edited Uluru to indicate that its official name is "Uluru / Ayers Rock", along with a little bit of background to its dual name. Since I have argued above that we should be avoiding the naming debate by adopting the official name, I'm going to stick to my guns and ask: how would people feel about renaming the article Uluru / Ayers Rock? Snottygobble | Talk 02:43, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I can find no evidence that "Uluru / Ayers Rock" is the official name (I consider official to mean government usage). See, for example, the homepage for the Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park [3], at the Department of Environment and Heritage, which quite clearly uses "Uluru". All other usage at DEH is "Uluru". All usage at the Northern Territory Government's site is "Uluru": [4]. See also usage at the Alice Springs site, or at Geoscience Australia, or even Johnny's site. Google gets 13,000 results for 'uluru site:.gov.au', as opposed to about 90 for ' "uluru / ayers rock" site:.gov.au'. On this basis I would not support a move, since the article is already named correctly. --bainer (talk) 09:15, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Here's my evidence: [5]. Your evidence is pretty compelling but: if the very government department that produces the gazetteer ignores the offical name, why should we use it? My votes is still for the official name, but I'm not feeling so strongly about it now. Snottygobble | Talk 12:11, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
I don't mind much as long as consensus is reached. However, that being said I prefer Uluru and I don't think the article should be named Ayers Rock. The Geoscience Australia site is obviously not consistent: a place name search on that site for Uluru brings up the official name of "Uluru / Ayers Rock".[6] If we go with the official name I suspect it would be the amalgam notwithstanding common government usage and consequent Google hits.--AYArktos 10:17, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Its important that regardless of what you search for (Uluru or Ayres Rock) you get the same result as both names are widely accepted, whether or not they are the official names or not --bacco007 07:37, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

The name of a place is what people call it. This seems to be a case where it is a matter of contention rather than convention, and two views apply. Ayers Rock is more widely known and longer established, and consequently you find that travel agents are tending to drop "Uluru" and use "Ayers Rock" instead. As an example, go to this site and click on the South Australia map.

I think it is important that people looking for the article, regardless of which term they enter, be able to get to the right place, and that we take an NPOV stance.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.51.32.148 (talk • contribs) 22:59, 20 September 2005
The present availability of redirects ensure that people looking for the article will come across it, even including the misspelling Ayres Rock which in fact produces a fair number of google hits and is intended to refer to Ayers Rock.--User:AYArktos | Talk 00:18, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Naming conventions

There's been a dispute about shopping centre naming conventions at Talk:List of suburbs of Canberra. Garglebutt wants to create a Canberra-only convention that we name them as we would suburbs, in contradiction to every other shopping centre article on Wikipedia, both in Australia and overseas. I think this is silly. In any case, feedback would be appreciated. Ambi 03:04, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

This is inaccurate and only part of the debate at Talk:List of suburbs of Canberra. Ambi has been enforcing her opinion of naming conventions in the Canberra Project without allowing for debate. Garglebutt / (talk) 03:48, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
I've been resisting attempts to change them without debate. Now there is debate. Ambi 04:04, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
Actually you didn't resist at all and reverted my changes repeatedly which is why I created the debate and asked for a vote rather than having you blocked for 3RR again. The overall conclusion was that most commercial centres don't warrant articles and should be rolled into their suburb which suits me fine. Garglebutt / (talk) 12:40, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
I did not violate the 3RR, thank you very much. I reverted your changes as they were against naming conventions, three times if I recall correctly. There was discussion, and people come up with some good points. With that in mind, I can accept redirecting Jamison Centre until I can get together a decent article about it (which I'll begin preparing for tonight). There was no such consensus about "most commercial centres" (most of them already have decent articles, several written by editors that commented there). Ambi 13:45, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, firstly let me say I don't know much about Canberra suburbs or Canberra's shopping centres. For the Sydney suburbs though, we've been keeping shopping centres off the list thus far (e.g. someone added Warringah Mall, and it got removed after some discussion). Currently the shopping centre articles and the suburb articles are one and the same thing in most cases though (e.g. Miranda, New South Wales), (or don't exist yet, in the case of which Warringah Mall), which makes it much easier. We also list localities in italics, to distinguish them from suburbs, because there are some places which are well known but which aren't officially suburbs. It's a bit of grey line as to whether a shopping centre is a locality, and therefore could be listed, but for the time being we've said they're not, because they're not defined as suburbs or localities by the Geographical Names Board of NSW, and because they don't seem to appear in our street directories in the index of suburbs and localities. However, Canberra and Sydney are very different cities, so you folks need to use whatever works best in your context. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 00:44, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Lake Macquarie

I've started a new city WikiProject, Wikipedia:WikiProject Lake Macquarie. There is some confusion among Australians about the classification of places within the Lake Macquarie LGA, some people calling them independent towns, some calling them suburbs of Newcastle. However, residents of Lake Macquarie are in general deeply offended if they are told they are part of Newcastle, just like residents of Port Stephens. Luckily for them, the facts are on their side, Lake Macquarie is Newcastle's slightly larger neighbour, with its own independent local government. I'll provide whatever references are needed to convince everyone of this.

Because of this general confusion, Lake Macquarie articles have been inconsistently categorised and formatted in the past, and this is the perfect problem for a WikiProject to address. I hope some other interested people will join this WikiProject and help in creating lots of great articles about this area. -- Tim Starling 09:00, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

I think you need separate articles for the lake and the city, perhaps start Lake Macquarie (lake) ??. Cfitzart 09:25, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
Yes, probably. I imagine the lake article would be pretty short to start with though. -- Tim Starling 09:41, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
It seems a little strange to have Lake Macquarie (lake) - perhaps the local government article could be placed at its official title with a disambiguation pointer from Lake Macquarie? Ambi 09:54, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
The lake article would take up about half of whats there already I think. So would City of Lake Macquarie be better? Cfitzart 10:17, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Perth Royal Show article

Hi all,

Just thought I would let you know I've made a reasonably large start on a Perth Royal Show article, in recognition of the upcoming event. All of the information I've written there is based on my own personal experience or the Show website, so I suspect there is substantially more data to be added, including (hopefully) some pictures (anybody have some from previous Shows that they're willing to release under the GFDL?) and some expansion of the relatively brief lists I started on.

Looking forward to hearing your comments and seeing any changes on the page.. Thanks!

splintax (talk) 16:03, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Mark Latham

How awesome is this:

  1. The enough rope site links to our article on Latham
  2. Our article on Latham was documenting what was happening with the enough rope/news corp controversy mere minutes after it happened.

Viva la wiki. The bellman 13:18, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

'Tis very cool, indeed. Although it does come with the clause "The ABC does not accept responsibility for the content of external site". Hmmph! Maybe one day they'll even link to Andrew Denton (which is rather lacking at the moment)... ;-)--Cyberjunkie | Talk 02:38, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Australian Collaboration of the fortnight

Thankyou to everybody who contributed to History of Queensland. It looks to be well on the way to a good article now. The new Collaboration of the fortnight is 1997 Thredbo landslide. Please help to improve it. A few other nominations have been removed due to lack of interest, leaving just Marree Man and 2005 AFL Finals Series as candidates for the next collaboration at the moment.

Sorry I didn't do this last night - by the time I got round to it, Wikipedia slowed down to a crawl then stopped completely. --Scott Davis Talk 11:33, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Articles in SMH & Age

Get the SMH today, there's an article on Wikipedia in the Next pullout. It has Jimbo and people and everything! Dysprosia 04:18, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

You mean these articles?
(registration may be required) --Wm 04:43, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I thought the first was more pertinent. But yeah. Dysprosia 08:28, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I like that cute illustration in the first article. I wonder if we could use it...--Cyberjunkie | Talk 05:54, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Heh. Have you noticed that not all the contributors are human? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.51.32.148 (talk • contribs) 22:31, 20 September 2005

Image:ComputerFrustration.gif

They all look like they are enjoying themselves. I think there should be at least one like this: —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.51.32.213 (talk • contribs) 20:06, 21 September 2005

There's a mention on the Age website today (Website denigrates Wiesenthal). Geoff/Gsl 04:14, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Rather strange but I could find no reference to the edits made to Simon Wiesenthal referred to in The Age article. As one might expect the article has been very heavily edited over the last two days with changes every few minutes. I was curious to see if such a version of the page existed and how long it stayed. I appreciate a sysop may have permanently removed the edit. It would be nice if a message was left on the talk page that the edit history had been tampered with.--User:AYArktos | Talk 09:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Refer discussion at Talk:Simon_Wiesenthal#Article about vandalism of_this_article_in_The_Age_.28Australia.29. Apparently the offending edits were on the page for three minutes and the edit history was modified within 4 hours. The journalism then is sensationalised and inappropriate to my mind since it does not reflect what open editing might mean. Further discussion icluding correspondence with Josh Lanis who was quoted in the article is at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Newspaper report on vandalism at Simon Wiesenthal--User:AYArktos | Talk 20:39, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Newspapers are in business to get people to buy their paper. They want interesting stories and let's face it, thousands of people beavering away at writing encyclopaedia articles isn't a sensational or fast-moving story. Vandalism of an encyclopaedia is a good story, and even if it only lasted a few minutes, as most vandalism does, it's still something that they can latch onto and beat up and make more interesting than it really is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.51.32.213 (talk • contribs) 21:31, 21 September 2005

Pictures of Judges

Does anyone know of the copyright status of the pictures of High Court judges on www.HighCourt.gov.au ? Xtra 07:25, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

The whole site is copyright by the Commonwealth ([7]), so presumably that would include the pictures too. It's probably worth contacting enquiries@hcourt.gov.au to see if we can get permission for the images, I'm sure they'd be happy for us to use them. --bainer (talk) 13:31, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Go the Bloods!

What do you reckon are the chances of getting the Swans' win on WP:ITN? --bainer (talk) 13:42, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

boo hiss! Xtra 13:42, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Not quite what you were hoping for, but the win is featured on The Australia Wikiportal's ITN.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 15:12, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

The Australia Wikiportal

Hi all. I'm hoping to increase turn-over at the The Australia Wikiportal, and to aid that end, I'd like to invite suggestions at the talk page for future feature articles and images. The articles and images do not have to be Wikipedia features, but they must be of outstanding quality. So if you come across an excellent Australia-related article or image, please suggest it as a potential feature. Thanks, --Cyberjunkie | Talk 16:02, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Crazy idea: Harnessing child labour

Hi All,

I've got this crazy idea, and it might just work, but I want to know whether you think it'll work or not, so hear me out:

The basic premise is this: In our secondary schools, we have a vast untapped pool of child labour. Almost all of that labour is wasted writing essays or solving made-up problems that only the teacher will ever look at, and which will then be thrown away and promptly forgotten. If the aim of secondary education is to educate and learn, and you educate and learn by doing, then as a ongoing taxpayer who foots part of the bill for this whole exercise, surely it's not unreasonable to suggest homework and class activities which are just as educational and are also useful. In particular, I'm thinking that it'll take a long time to flesh out the list of Sydney suburbs if we let them grow using the current organic process (there's around 400 of them). What we need is to speed the whole process up at little by generating some external involvement. Now, who can we ask? (See where I'm going with this yet?) Why, the schools of course! Lets look at their attributes:

  • Do they have the motive? (Check: Teachers need educational tasks to give the kids something to do, and the kids don't really get a say)
  • Do they have the opportunity? (Check: Classes run for much of the day on weekdays, that's a lot of hours to fill!)
  • Do they have the means? (Check: schools have computers, courtesy of the taxpayer, and furthermore many people have computers at home)
  • Locality and local knowledge (Check: schools generally draw students from the surrounding area, and the teachers and students know that area quite well because they work there and usually live there too).

So, each school would be a natural "sponsor" of the suburb in which they are located. All we need to do is to suggest this as a class activity. It would involve clear and concise writing, copy editing, getting familiar with computers, logical organisation of though, making links to other topics to see where and how things are connected, and possibly some photography of local landmarks. In short, it's like what they do already, only instead of being a non-productive private exercise that's immediately forgotten as soon as it's done, it would a useful and enduring contribution towards the sum total of public information (whilst still being just as academically useful).

I'm thinking a letter or email along these lines:

Subject: Fictional Public School:
Dear Sir or Madam,

Are members of the general public able to suggest possible class activities? If so, I would like to first tell you about something, and then made a suggestion: On the Internet you will find the world's largest encyclopedia, called the Wikipedia (the web address is http://en.wikipedia.org/ ). This encyclopedia is very unusual in several regards, namely:

  • All the information is publicly available, without charge.
  • Anyone can expand it or improve it. You don't need a password or anyone's permission.
  • It's a not-for-profit organisation: it's maintained by volunteers, operational costs are paid for by donations, and there is no advertising.
  • It's international: Contributors come from all over the world, including Australia generally, and Sydney specifically.

As a result of these attributes, the Wikipedia has been grown very quickly from it's start in 2001, and is now already larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica, and continues to grow rapidly.

The reason I am telling you this is that we have recently added article entries for every suburb in Sydney. At the moment most of these entries are extremely brief. I would like to suggest a class activity of expanding the entry for the school's suburb. This would involve a number of things, including:

  • Some research on the suburb, it's origins and history.
  • logical organisation of though.
  • clear and concise writing.
  • copy editing.
  • making links to other topics (such as surrounding suburbs) to see where and how things are connected.
  • possibly some digital photography of local landmarks, if you wanted.

It's also an interesting and fun way to get familiar and involved with computers in general, and with the very unusual concept of the Wikipedia specifically. Also, many school activities are by their nature ephemeral: they're done, and either thrown away, lost, or forgotten. This on the other hand will endure, and will go on to be improved upon and expanded upon by future contributors.

It's a unique opportunity to get involved and learn about the local area in which the students live and go to school, and I encourage you to please consider getting involved.

To get to the entry for the school's suburb, just go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peakhurst%2C_New_South_Wales . Or alternatively go to http://en.wikipedia.org/ and type "Peakhurst, New South Wales" (without the quotes) in the "search" box on the left margin of the page.

Yours Sincerely,
Nick J.

Thoughts? Do you think it'll work? And if you think you can improve upon the letter above, please just jump right in and edit it directly. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 00:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC)


Nick, I had a similar thought about six months ago, regarding Melbourne suburbs, and sent off an email to all U3A's (University of the Third Age) in Victoria, as well as LGA's and local Historical Societies. I'm not sure if it helped to recruit any new people to Wikipedia but I certainly didn't get many replies. For you, and anyone else thinking of doing something similar, the following is the text of the email I sent out:

Subject: Wikipedia and U3A

The free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has become one of the internet's most inspiring success stories.

It has no editors, no fact checkers and anyone can contribute an entry - or delete one.

It should have been a recipe for disaster, and it is still far from perfect, but in less than four years, an estimated 10,000 volunteers have written more than 1.2 million entries in 160 languages.

Wikipedia is continuously evolving. There are now around 3,000 new entries being added each day.

Each article in Wikipedia has an editing page, a discussion page and a history page. Articles are written and submitted by users, which means you, me, or anyone else in the world who wishes to contribute their wealth of knowledge to the project. Once an article is posted, other users can then edit or revise the content of the site.

The Wikipedia Melbourne Project is an area that is in need of volunteers to write articles.

I am sure that many members of U3A would have knowledge and wisdom which they could contribute to the Wikipedia Melbourne Project.

I would be pleased if you could bring the Wikipedia Melbourne Project to the attention of all your members.

To learn how to get involved in Wikipedia check out the Community Portal and Help pages.

Kindest regards,

Eric O.

One problem that I can see there is that the email isn't personalised - the beginning almost makes it sounds like spam. But it's a very good idea in principle. :) Ambi 06:18, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I know for one of my children, their major geography project last year was a study of the suburb they lived in. The data gathered was very useful for my contributions to Wikipedia. The issue with children is that for some of them there already would be major articles, others would be starting with blank or near blank slates. For many schools there would be more than one child living in the suburb. Each child needs the opportunity to work on the project themselves, cooperative work is limited to small teams. It is not the same as adding material to an article and subjecting oneself to merciless editing. In short I don't think Nick's project will work. I recall seeing somewhere some frustration with teriary students who had been set assignments to contribute to the wikipedia and were not adding a lot of value. I can't find the exact discussion of the incident (probably on votes for deletion some months ago) but a page that might give some ideas about the experience is at Wikipedia:School and university projects and the related talk page.--User:AYArktos | Talk 10:39, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Heads up, it's done! The messages went out a few minutes ago to secondary public schools in New South Wales.

  • I've tried to make them feel less spammy.
  • If schools aren't interested, then they're not interested. Frankly, if I was running a school or an appropriate class (such as Geography or History), then I would be. In the end though, all you can do is tell them about it and help answer questions, and then let them decide whether to participate or not.
  • I included the links to the pages about using the Wikipedia for school projects.
  • I looked through the talk pages about past problems, and the real problems came from tertiary students who were either adding original and obscure research, or were adding made up concepts (like nonsense words) because their lecturers wanted them to challenge their concepts of reality! I honestly don't think these problems will be particularly applicable to this.
  • I added redirects and did moves to find as many of the appropriate towns and suburbs as I could, and for those that currently do not have an article I used a slightly different message explaining that there currently is no article for their suburb or town, and maybe they would like to add one.
  • I've created a page where people can ask questions about this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Sydney/Suburbs/Schools Project.

-- All the best, Nickj (t) 06:12, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

A great idea. In fact it is already being done at US universities. One lecturer makes the production of a Wikipedia article a compulsory unit in the course he teaches. Some are a bit crap and end up in the AfD but others go on to be fully-fledged articles. I might try and arrange a similar think here in SA and the NT. Lisa 08:31, 1 October 2005 (UTC)