Talk:New Zealand/Archive 5

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
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Archive 5
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Contents

Islam

User 203.97.169.134 removed Islam from the list of religions in NZ, saying it was not considered a significant minority. The page Demographics of New Zealand lists it as one of the largest non christan religions according to the 2001 census.

The article's demographic list had an advisory: Please do not add your ethnic group (and your religion) here. How pathetic for someone to do that like they actually can block or ban any of us, even if the entries are backed or correct. Islam is regarded one of the largest non-Christian religions in the Statistics New Zealand population report. According to demographers who studied the rise of Islam in the western world (Europe, North America and Australasia), Islam is 1.5% of New Zealand's population and the majority composed of immigrants from South Asia (India or Indonesia) or Middle East countries. 63.3.14.1 13:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, there are ethnic and religious groups in New Zealand. But to list them all is not going to add anything to the article - listing the top one or two is all that is needed in a general article like this. If you wish to add information about more of New Zealand's religious groups, an appropriate place would be a separate article on New Zealand ethnicity, already linked above as Demographics of New Zealand. Compare similar articles for other countries - these usually do not list religious affiliations if fewer than about 3 - 5% of the population belong to specific doctrines. Grutness...wha? 18:32, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
According to [1] 2006 cencus will be released in the next few days. We can hopefully update some numbers then. - SimonLyall 01:09, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

According to the last census (2006) islamic people make up less than 1% of religion so there maybe some truth in that. The actual figure is about 0.8% —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.89.15.14 (talk • contribs)

NZ copyright

Hi all. I'm curious about NZ copyright rules as regards to public domain + government agencies. In Wikipedia, we often come across documents from the US government, which are noted to be in the public domain (though I wonder if this 'taken by an employee of the federal governemnt and thus public domain' also applies to spy photos ;-).

Well, anyway, is there something in NZ law that is similar? Are *any* of the photos I find, for example on a Council or Transit NZ website public domain? MadMaxDog 07:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

The place to ask this question is on Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board.- gadfium 07:50, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Such things are usually "Crown Copyright" rather than Public Domain. Karora 09:07, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Additions of crown copyright are usually subjected to a Wiki policy going by the Orwellianly inapproriate name, "the Fair use Test". Wikipedia policy is heavily based on American law, especially adopting the American fair use test. Comment on the copyright page suggests this is because Wikipedias servers are on US territory. The fair use test is however used to both rule in and rule out images which are subject to the intellectual property laws of other nations, despite the Fair use principle appearing to have relatively narrow application outside the US, (unlike Crown copyright which is used through most of the Commonwealth). Also the Free use principle has been been used to attack the posting of crown copyright pictures, on the grounds that all images on Wikipedia should be able to be altered by any subsequent user. My own personal view is both these policies are inappropriate because 1. they tend to exclude non US material and 2. they imply fair use is legal, which it is not necessarily, and leave non US residents (and potentially some US residents) open to liability.
I don't really folow Wiki politics and after a breif discussion with those involved in the copyright policy were unwilling to tackle a problem beyond their legal knowlegde. The present situation is attempts to post Crown Copyright material are sometimes blocked by deletionist Wikipedians who keep referring everything back to irrelevant US law and Wiki policy based upon it, and sometimes allowed when they seem to potentially break NZ law merely because they fit withtin the US fair use exemption.
Oh and by the way someone has tagged this whole page for breach of copyright, without saying what.
End Grump :-) Winstonwolfe 07:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you about NZ Crown copyright and fair use, but I think we're pushing shit uphill. The copyvio tag was obviously vandalism.-gadfium 09:15, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
For a discussion about another licence which is not free, but it seems silly that we can't use, please see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Use_of_international_wheelchair_symbol. If someone can see a difference between these two cases, feel free to explain it to me on my talk page.-gadfium 08:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

There is nothing about the world famous singers

but about sports of different types. why???? Who has deleted the information? There are: Kiri Te Kanawa, Dame Malvina Major, but the others I cannot remember now. Austerlitz 88.72.20.196 13:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget - Crowded house, Split Enz - Unsigned comment by Kiwi.piranha 05:31, 22 November 2006

because having a section of famous people who live in each country is ridiculous - you can create a list, but seriously, how many people, looking up New Zealand, expect a list of famous people in the article? imagine the page for the U.S.; half the bloody page would be celebrities --Danlibbo 22:56, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

yeah there is also Bic Runga, Zed...the list goes on and on. I don't think it's necessary.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.236.174.160 (talk • contribs)


History

The history section is skewed a bit much towards 1840 and before. While this is a refreshing change from the more usual 'nothing happened before Abel Tasman' bias, there needs to be more on post-1840, and since space is limited, less on pre-European NZ and the Treaty. If no one has any major objections I will do a rewrite. I've already substantially rewritten the History of New Zealand page, and this section will essentially be a very compressed version of that. --Helenalex 21:52, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Not an objection per se, but just a note that I agree about the usual bias in many NZ articles where anything pre-European (or non-European) is invisible, so I am pleased to see that you seem to be someone who will take care in that regard. Kahuroa 18:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
A lot of the regional pages still have Eurocentric bias (Taranaki, for example), so if anyone knows a bit of local history, there is work to be done... --Helenalex 22:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Done. I've moved the history of naming to its own section, as it was very difficult to fit into the narrative, and I felt it worked better on its own anyway. --Helenalex 23:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone has stated that Cook named the Islands North, Middle and South. I have never read this before, and Cook actually thought Stewart Island was just a Penninsula (and that the Banks Penninsula was an Island) so this is obviously false. I tried to simply delete that sentence, but it was put back up by somebody. I'm new to wikipedia, but Id like to correct this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.207.191.160 (talk • contribs).

Those names for the islands sound correct, but I agree that it probably wasn't Cook who applied them. Anyone know who did? I'll remove the statement for now. -- Avenue 02:15, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
I've added some sourced stuff - Cook didn't name the islands and I have no idea who did, but by 1840 the current ones were partly in common use. I suspect they were never officially named North and South (possibly Stewart's), but just acquired the names through common usage. --Helenalex 23:48, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Cook has a long and distinguished history of giving New Zealand locations inordinately boring names: are you sure he didn't name them North and South Islands? And secondly, on the suggestion that 'why Wellington was chosen as capital', James Belich thinks (in Making Peoples/Paradise Reforged) that it was simply a matter of geographical convenience - a great and highly defensible natural harbour on one hand and a good political position with relation to both islands. Charlespk 08:16, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Cook's maps use the terms "Tovypoennammu" and "Aehikamauwe" (sp?) - i.e., Te Wai O Pounamu and Te Ika O Maui garbled by someone more used to Yorkshire English than Te Reo Maori. The term "Middle island" for the South Island was used in the 1840s and 1850s - by Brunner and Taylor among others. Not sure when its use started or finished - I don't think I've ever seen anything dated past about 1870 to use the term, or before 1840. The New Zealand Institute was using the terms Middle island and South island interchangably by 1868. Grutness...wha? 11:56, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Subheadings

User:PDH has taken it upon him/herself to remove all the subheadings and all the {{main}}s that were underneath them, meaning that we now have large blocks of text and no links to a lot of pages (including Music of New Zealand, Cuisine of New Zealand, Te Reo Māori and Māori culture). A case could be made for the subheading removal, although I think it works far better with them in, but the links which went with the subheadings were really important. I'm going to reverse pretty much everything s/he's done, although if anyone thinks it was a good idea, feel free to make the case... --Helenalex 07:46, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello Gadfium! I see you are dealing with this issue at the same time as me. What you've done with the international rankings section works quite well, and seems like a good compromise on the subheadings issue. The table of contents was rather long... --Helenalex 07:57, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The effect of Peta's edit was to bring this article in line with the standard layout of country articles. In general, subheadings are avoided in well-written articles as they impact on prose flow, are a poor equivalent to well-rounded paragraphs, and enlarge the table of contents un-necessarily. Furthermore, in articles written in the summary style, their use should be negated by the general overview. Your concern about main links is a poor reason for reversion; if they are central to the topic being summarised, they can be added to the primary list; if not, then they need only be incorporated in the text.--cj | talk 09:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
The polite thing to do would have been to raise the issue on the talk page before reformatting the entire article. It's not like this is one of those articles that no one cares about. Could you post a link to a country article which meets your approval? If it is obviously a better way to do it, I will change this page to conform to it. --Helenalex 10:35, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Not every edit needs to be discussed before its made – being bold is how things get done. The most obvious article to compare this one to, on several levels, is Australia. There's also Nauru and India.--cj | talk 11:25, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
In order to make this page conform to the ones you've listed, most sections would need to be reduced in size. This might be a good idea anyway - a lot of them are longer than they really need to be. --Helenalex 22:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
I have experimentally reduced the History section and removed the subheadings, and I have to say, it works better. If no one has any objections I will do the same for most of the other sections over the next week or so. See, doesn't discussion work better than just jumping in and changing things without saying anything first? --Helenalex 04:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


problem

In the 2nd paragraph of 'government', it mentions anand satyanand as the head of state. Then it says that Dame Silvia Cartright is the Head of State.

This confuses me. Chessmanlau 00:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Chessmanlau (talk • contribs) 00:24, 14 March 2007 (UTC).

No, the paragraph states that women have held all four of the most important political offices in New Zealand at one stage (Sovereign, Governor-General, Prime Minister, Chief Justice). It doesn't state anywhere that Dame Silvia is head of state, because she isn't, the office of Governor-General is only representative of our head of state, HM the Queen. --Lholden 00:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Thx. Yeah i just realised that. Thx. Chessmanlau 00:35, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Can someone add information on what functions as New Zealand's de facto upper house in governement? New Zealand is curious in not having an 'offical' upper house - Homesick_kiwi_uk

If you look at New Zealand Legislative Council, it says the upper house was abolished because it was seen as ineffective. Parliament of New Zealand and Constitution of New Zealand are good places to look at the current structures limiting the power of Parliament; in short, the limitations on Parliament in the absence of an upper house are cultural rather than legal, but quite strongly entrenched.-gadfium 19:58, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Cheers for that good explanation Gadfium, do you think it is worth putting a very brief mention of something to that effect in the overview article? - Homesick_kiwi_uk

It's rather too specialised for the main New Zealand article, and would need to be scrupulously referenced if expanded on in the Parliament of New Zealand article. I can get away with hand-waving like this on a talk page, but not in an article.-gadfium 09:12, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
When I saw that the Government section needed 'polishing' i thought it could be included, but I agree that to do it justice it would need to be too long-winded for an overview articleHomesick kiwi 11:13, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Aussies as Minority group

I can find no ref to the large numbers ( hundreds of thousands!) of Australians living permanently in New Zealand.While Kiwis in A/a seem to be a readily identifiable group, I wonder if the reciprocal is the case in NZ ? The article Australian Diaspora ignores this question, despite NZ being possibly the largest reservoir of expatriate Aussies ! Any ideas ? Feroshki 05:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

There aren't as many Aussies in NZ as you seem to think. For instance, the 2006 census recorded 62,634 usual residents of NZ who were born in Australia, and no doubt some of them had Kiwi parents and might not think of themselves as Australian.[2] (For example, 1.6% of Māori usual residents were born overseas, or about 9,000 people;[3] I suspect most of them were born in Australia.) The 26,355 people who identified as Australian at the ethnicity question are definitely Aussies, but that's only 0.7% of the population, and is less than the number of British, Chinese, Samoan, Indian, Tongan, Cook Island, Korean or Dutch people.[4] -- Avenue 08:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
For comparison, 428,000 Australian residents were born in New Zealand (2003).[5] -- Avenue 08:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Portuguese explorers

I have removed the following from the article for the time being:

The first Europeans to discover New Zealand may have been Portuguese explorers in 1522 led by Cristavao (or Christopher) de Mendonca, states Peter Trickett's new book entitled "Beyond Capricorn". [6]

because this theory is highly speculative, at least as far as exploration of New Zealand goes. There are in fact numerous theories about early explorers of New Zealand, including ones about Chinese explorers, none of which have great credibility with historians. We should not mention one such claim without the others, and we should explain the basis for each claim. This is not appropriate for the main New Zealand article. It is not even appropriate for the History of New Zealand article, although if a separate article was to be written along these lines, a link from History of New Zealand would be appropriate.

I have changed the New Zealand article to say that Tasman was the first known European explorer, as this acknowledges that there is the possibility of earlier ones. This is more or less the wording that existed in this article before February.-gadfium 21:26, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I see that my removal of the sentence cited actually failed, because Avenue made the same edit just before I did! He has since added a single paragraph to the History of New Zealand article which I think is sufficient to cover these theories.-gadfium 21:44, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Copyright infringement

I'm assuming this is vandalism, since it doesn't specify where the page is supposedly copied from. How do we get rid of this? --Helenalex 05:13, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

reverted - has to be vandalism Kahuroa 05:34, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Wynton Rufer

I'm not convinced that Wynton Rufer is internationally famous enough be be mentioned in the sports paragraph (hell, I'm not that convinced about Richard Hadlee either, but I can let that one go). We need to keep the list down to the super famous people like Jonah Lomu and Edmond Hillary, who even non-New Zealanders who don't know much about sport are likely to have heard of, otherwise it will get swamped when everyone decides to add their hero or their sport's biggest achiever. Wynton Rufer isn't even super famous in New Zealand. Perhaps he is a big name in the soccer world, but his page doesn't indicate that to be the case, so I'm inclined to remove him. --Helenalex 05:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

That's the problem with including a few people as examples: other people get added to the list. I'm happy for you to remove names, or the whole sentence, as you see fit.-gadfium 06:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

National Anthem Audio

I reckon id would be good to have an audio icon for God Defend New Zealand next to it, so with one click a reader can hear it. I'm not too sure how to do this, and it would raise the article's standard just that little bit, getting it up to FA class. -Bennyboyz3000 03:23, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

There's already an instrumental version in the God Defend New Zealand article.-gadfium 08:26, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Helen Clark's photo

I reckon we need a real photo of the honourable PM as the photoshopping here is extraordinary....extraoridnarily obvious that is. Nickhwt 11:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

This is the official portrait, and it is appropriate to use it (it was placed under GFDL at our request). I think you'll find that all leaders' official portraits get some professional attention. More photos of good quality of Clark and other politicians are welcome so long as they are under a suitable license, but should go on their own articles, not in the New Zealand article.-gadfium 19:36, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

One of New Zealand's own is being dissed!!

See [7]--Africangenesis 22:07, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

This is not an appropriate place to raise this matter. New Zealand-related deletions get added to Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/New Zealand, and editors interested in following such deletions should watchlist that page.-gadfium 06:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, somebody who knew what they were doing, put it there. Sorry.--Africangenesis 06:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Languages

I strongly believe that maori is not an offical language for new zealand, because there is no full maoris left and a majority of New Zealanders speak english not maori. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Debateable (talk • contribs) 08:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC).

The proportion of people who speak the language, and their ethnicity, are not the deciding factors in the legal status of the language.-gadfium 09:38, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions

Here are a couple ideas i had after reading through the article which i thought might improve it.

the article has no reference to the continent of Australia which it is part of (this could be linked to internally and externally). OH WOW I JUST DISCOVERED THAT IT ISN'T PART OF IT, so much for our education system :(

Kiwiana is not mentioned or linked to (there is a Kiwiana article internally aswell) and i think it is significant as it helps define New Zealands culture

its hard to navigate from 'NZ' to a 'town' within and 'suburbs' within the 'town'.

this is kind of nitpicky but i think the article about new zealand towns (list) is pointless and should be merged with each specific town article, there is already a category for towns in NZ who agrees? it makes more sense to me (country>(north island, south island)?>town>suburb rather than all the mess that we have now).

im willing to do this in about three weeks. if no one contests to it. it will be similar to Germany's article at the bottom where it has the Geographical Local section.

David E Powell 11:34, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

1) Saying that New Zealand is part of the continent of Australia is like saying that Canada is part of the United States or Scotland is part of England - completely wrong, and insulting to most New Zealanders. New Zealand is part of Oceania, and is also occasionally referred to as part of Australasia. It is never regarded as part of Australia.
2) Kiwiana is appropriately linked from New Zealand culture, which is linked from this page. No problems there.
3) Linking to an individual town from this article would extend this article beyond all reasonable length, since it would require either a mammoth template or a very long list. This is the reason why the list of New Zealand towns exists as a separate article - and is an extremely useful one, at that. Again, it only requires one intermediary step to get to any town.
4) Please do not change the way things currently work too dramatically. While a table of administrative divisions (such as that which is in the Germany page) may be useful, I don't really see much need for a more thorough editing - perhaps more links from the geography of New Zealand page might be useful, but not on this main page. Grutness...wha? 23:04, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
1) Yes i realise this sorry, (did you read what i wrote in CAPS?). I realise now, and before you responded that its part of Oceania, Australasia and of Zealandia. Cheers.
2) Ok, just making a suggestion. Thanks for pointing that out :)
3) I didn't mean linking to towns from this article but linking to towns in each cities individual article (i.e. Aucklands article linking to all towns within Auckland) and perhaps linking to each city or region from this article.
4) Ok im only trying to improve the navigation, its quite messy at the moment (poor usability).
David E Powell 06:55, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Old proposal

About a year ago, in Talk:New_Zealand/Archive_3#Rearrange, User:Midnighttonight suggested a new ordering for the New Zealand article, and put up a draft at Talk:New Zealand/proposal. The proposal has been gathering dust since, so does anyone have any objections to my deleting it?-gadfium 19:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I support it been deleted, I was looking at it a couple of days ago, and thinking of tagging it for deletion Brian | (Talk) 05:47, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
Support as well Kahuroa 09:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've deleted it.-gadfium 04:42, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Anti Nuclear reverted text 3-4 June 2007

With respect User:SimonLyall, I would hardly describe New Zealand’s anti nuclear legislation or the reasons for it as irrelevant or POV, and so it should be highlighted in the main New Zealand entry. Facts remain, this issue was a thirty year campaign in New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs history where the nation independently engaged with economic giants such as the US and France. We are the ONLY country in the developed world which is anti Nuclear by legislation and this remains a FACT irrespective of personal opinion on the issue. The majority of New Zealanders support its anti nuclear position thus it’s integral to our history and culture, and this should be stated quite clearly as part of New Zealand’s Wikipedia entry.Mombas 00:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that 3 lines after the bit you have added we have the sentence The New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987 prohibits the stationing of nuclear weapons on the territory of New Zealand and the entry into New Zealand waters of nuclear armed or propelled ships. which you are duplicating. The phrase effectively rebuking feels POV in that it makes claims about the wider impact of the legislation in world affairs without backup. These are why I reverted your additional sentence. Please do not assume my objections are politically motivated. - SimonLyall 03:21, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
While I understand your point there are two underlying issues important enough from a nationhood perspective to be coverd? The first being the "disarmament act" provides the legislation only to prevent nuclear powered or armed ships entering NZ territorial waters. This was implemented essentially to stop the visits of American nuclear propelled ships coming into NZ ports. (The Buchanan). The second, the issue of New Zealand being a nuclear-free zone provides a much wider nuclear ban which is not entirely covered by the legislation but by bipartisan party political policy. (Both Labour and National). In my view the nuclear-free zone link needs to remain as it covers more extensively these anti nuclear events which began well before you were born. On the question of why NZ became Nuclear free and rejects the nuclear umbrella (mutual assured destruction) I have added two more links in support of. New Zealand has already backed its international position, in its parliament and when it took the French to the World Court mid seventies. It continues to actively pursue its policy today in the UN. Sorry if I enferd personal political motivation, cheers mate. Mombas 04:08, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

DNZB

Can someone tell me how to link to specific articles in the Dictionary of NZ Biography? (www.dnzb.govt.nz) --Helenalex 18:59, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

It's difficult because the site uses frames. One rough and ready workaround is once you have found your article, select and copy some unique text from it, such as the person's name and birth and death dates, paste that into Google and search. That should find the article in Google, then copy and paste the link. Eg, if you wanted to find 'Mackay, Maria Jane', then you'd search google for 'Mackay, Maria Jane 1844 - 1933' and the first link on the results page is [www.dnzb.govt.nz/dnzb/Find_Quick.asp?PersonEssay=2M16] - clicking on that brings up the article. Maybe there's a better way Kahuroa 19:23, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
That seems reasonable, especially since the DNZB is pretty high on the google list for a lot of name searches. Thanks. --Helenalex 20:46, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
A quicker way, if you're using Firefox as your browser, is to right click on the article, choose 'This Frame', then 'Show only this frame'. You can then copy the link directly from there. Not sure if this is an option in Internet Explorer. Kahuroa 00:11, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Faith based lobby groups

The article currently says:

Although faith-based lobby groups exist, political parties have recently been hindered more than helped by their support.

and this requires a citation. The easiest citation to find would be someone saying that the campaign by Exclusive Brethren members in 2005 was harmful to National Party votes, but there may be other faith-based lobby groups which have not had such an effect, or at least, for which it would be more difficult to find a reliable citation. I suggest therefore that we remove this sentence entirely as being too general to be defensible.-gadfium 00:09, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

AgreedA.J.Chesswas 00:31, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree as well Brian | (Talk) 01:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I agree too - the statement sounds a bit NPOV, although I think that the recent book on the 2005 election - The Baubles of Office - may have explored this issue. --Lholden 01:57, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Removed.-gadfium 02:16, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Added Figures of Number of Speakers of Languages

I found a source with figures of the number of speakers. It only listed a number and not a percentage. Check my formatting of the information since I do not want to ruin the article by not conforming to some standard. Here is the direct link to the online edition's article about New Zealand: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=NZ . Andrew D White 03:08, 15 June 2007 (UTC) That would make the percentages something like English ~78% Maori ~1% Andrew D White 03:34, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to change those figures, for two reasons. First, like a lot of Ethnologue's figures they are quite out of date, which is probably why the English percentage appears so low. Up-to-date census figures can be found here: Language spoken (total responses) for the census usually resident population count, 2006 (revised 21 December 2006) More importantly, this level of detail seems to clutters up the infobox, making it much less readable. I'll try percentages instead. -- Avenue 15:05, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Geological history

Would this not also be a good section to add to go with the geography and biodiversity? The Rangitata orogeny, Oligocene drowning, recent reappearance? It would give a deeper understanding to the two previous sections, and could perhaps precede them. Richard001 00:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that's maybe too specialised for this overview article. The geology section of Geography of New Zealand could certainly be expanded along those lines, and Geology of New Zealand would be a worthy topic for an article.-gadfium 05:03, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
It would, as would an accopanying category Cat:Geology of New Zealand . There are quite a number of articles which could go into it, such as the one on the Maui gas field, the ones on the Auckland and Central N.I. volcanic zones, and New Zealand geologic time scale, which I started about a year ago. In fact, I may just add that category myself... Grutness...wha? 05:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
While some of this might be a bit specialised (e.g. mentioning the Rangitata orogeny by name), I think even this summary article would benefit from including more of NZ's geological history. We should at least mention the split from Gondwanaland and that NZ is geologically active and young compared to most landmasses. I agree that the drowning and reappearance is probably better left to other articles. Some of the existing Zealandia stuff could be cut as well. -- Avenue 15:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Auckland Meetup in August

Just thought I'd mention the upcoming August meetup - see Wikipedia:Meetup/Auckland 3. Cheers. Ingolfson 09:23, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Treaty of Waitangi

Since when and where exactely is the Treaty of Waitaingi become the founding document of New Zealand? Whilst there may have been moves to enshrine its place in various constitutional mechanisms... it remains a quaint pience or divisive history rather than a founding document. It seems odd to me that it is assumed to have such signifance... it should be properly consigned to the past rather than continually dragged up as a legitimate instrument for the percieved greivances of generations of Maori who have little or no connection to it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.182.18.49 (talk • contribs) 02:04, 24 July 2007.

Well, irrespective of your views on the Treaty itself, there is little doubt that it is New Zealand's founding document. If you take the view that it established British sovereignty in New Zealand, then it is New Zealand's founding document. If you take the view that it established a partnership of the Crown and Maori, then it is New Zealand's founding document. Even historians critical of the contemporary interpretation of the Treaty - such as Prof Paul Moon - argue that it is New Zealand's founding document. --Lholden 22:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Have a look at the main Treaty of Waitangi article. Govt websites like [8] call it "New Zealand's founding document" in the first paragraph. Remember that wikipedia has a Neutral point of view especially about controversal issues such asthese. Even if people don't like the place it has been given in NZ society the article has to reflect reality. - —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SimonLyall (talk • contribs) 11:22, 24 July 2007.

Culture section

Is the picture of the twilight bagpipe practice necessary? From my experience, this is not a central part of New Zealand's culture. The section doesn't even discuss anything related to the image. It does mention Scottish influences, but groups them with many others. So why is it there? Any ideas for replacements? --Teggles 07:29, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it used to say that NZ had more pipe bands per head of population than Scotland. I think we should leave it in, at least until a replacement is found. Also, I think it would be pretty difficult to find an image of anything which is a 'central part of NZ's culture' without getting into kiwiana territory. A main point of the section is NZ has cultural influences from all over the place, and since its pretty difficult to get lots of them into one shot, the Scottish one seems reasonable since there was a lot of Scottish migration to New Zealand. I'm going to put the image back, but also try to find a good sports one for the sports section, which should represent a more mainstream part of NZ culture. Having said all this, I'm not hugely attached to the image either, so if anyone finds something better, they should feel free to replace it. --Helenalex 17:38, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest

It seems APN has put their own link to the NZ Herald as shown in this edit. Should this be removed as a Conflict of interest, since it is self-promotion and possibly link spam? Doesn't the article already have enough external links as it is?

The edit was in 2005 and the article has change heaps since then including removal of the link to the herald's website - SimonLyall 08:32, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Request for comment on "royal" residence of the Governor-General

Editors of this article may wish to comment on the edits being made at Official residence, advancing the unusual view that the official residence of the Governor-General of New Zealand, and those of his equivalents in other jurisdictions, are "royal" residences (i.e. official residences of the monarch), and that this aspect (assuming for the moment that it exists) deserves mention in a list of official residences, alongside "vice-regal", the somewhat opaque term being substituted for "Governor-General" and the like. -- Lonewolf BC 17:29, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Note: User:Lonewolf BC is here omitting the point that the edits at Official residence are part of a broader cleanup of the article to create a uniform standard; "royal" and "vice-regal" in place of the specific New Zealand Monarch and Governor General of New Zealand brings the New Zealand section into line with others which use (by other editors' contributions) "royal," "vice-regal," "presidential," "prime ministerial" and the like.
Comments are certainly welcome at Talk:Official residence to improve the article as a whole. --G2bambino 19:45, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

In regard to G's comment, I trust that you folks will forgive me for focussing on the issue. For your information, though, the "general cleanup" only began after the "royal" issue had arisen, though the two spread to the "New Zealand" entry at the same time. Please judge for yourselves which actions have brought about which. (The "cleanup" is also making the article worse in some other ways, in my opinion. You may wish to look at that, also, but those are separate, or at most indirectly related issues.) -- Lonewolf BC 20:13, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

percentages

I'm sorry ut the percentages of people who speak certain languages is just not right. 98% speak english and 4% speak maori. Sorry but doesn't that seem strange to anyone else?

Some highly talented people speak more than one language. The percentages exclude those who speak no languages e.g. very young children.-gadfium 08:56, 16 August 2007 (UTC)