Talk:Sydney/Archive 3

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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.

Peer Review

I think it's about time we had another peer review so we can get this article on the way to Featured Article status. The link is above. (JROBBO 10:09, 3 October 2006 (UTC))

Warmest years

I have edited the latest addition for style and accuracy, but it still needs a source, particularly for the "first nine months" part. The yearly figures seem consistent with various BOM news releases, however the four years could only be the hottest four years on record, not the four hottest years on record, which isn't immediately clear from the text. Apart from all of that, I am still unsure whether this sort of info (recent rises in temperature) really belongs in this article, at least to this level of detail. What do others think? JPD (talk) 09:38, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

thanks for the editing although i am inclined to agree that the detail and relevance is questionable and lack of sources also detracts from the section's worth. Hard to say. --Merbabu 11:17, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Link map

I am not convinced that we need this sort of map, but the concept may have merit. However, if we are going to include a linked map like this, we need to

think about where it will go/which images it will replace,
not have too many links on it, and
use a better map as the base. At the very least, this map is no good because half of the northern suburbs is missing. JPD (talk) 14:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

City & Metro area

It is my understanding that the City of Sydney has 122,211, as in the local government district named The City of Sydney. It states at the intro however, that Sydney is a City with approx 4,254,900. I have no great understanding of Australian government stucture and City definition, but it is apparent that you class a CITY as being the wider Metropolitan area that encompasses other Towns and settlements, rather than the district with official city status. Am I correct in making this assumption and could someone please clarify this. Being English, Cities are general based within the Local government area as it is caled in Australia (Local Authority or District in UK) with a metropolitan area being based aroun that core City including other towns and even other Cities. For example, Birmingham, classed as the UK's 2nd city, has an urban pop. of around 2,240,000 (or there abouts) but in UK govenment this is not classed as a CITY as only the portion which is situated within the official city district called 'The City of Birmingham Metroploitan Borough' is what is recognised as being a City so reducing the population to 1.1 million within its limits. In my personal opinion however I do believe a large Urbanised area of substantial size be classed as a CITY, given it is some distnace form other large urban entities so that they do not become an even larger 'CITY' and thus a never ending expanse or Urbanisation. I understand that different countries have different definitions of City but I am just curious to the structure of those within Australia. dj_paul84 1:13 18th November 2006 (UTC)

That one qualifies as a FAQ! See this, this and this. John Dalton 02:44, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Relationship with the rest of Australia

I was a little disappointed to see no real mention of Sydney's standing within Australia in the history section. The way the article simply states that Sydney is Australia's biggest, oldest and most important city etc, would leave an uninformed reader with no idea that Sydney was Australia's second city for more than 100 years. Has this been omitted on purpose? I think it's pretty important to put the city's recent emergence onto the world stage into context with some mention of its recent dominance in Australia and its historic rivalry with Melbourne. 128.250.6.246 00:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I won't be making the change myself, but I think it's important that it be done. The article is good in that it does not read like a tourist brochure, but leaving out important information can be as bad as exaggerating other information, in my view. The population section ought to say explicitly that Sydney has always been the largest city in Australia, except during a period from (I think) the 1880s to around the beginning of the 20th century, when Melbourne was larger. There should also be a mention in the history section of the fact that Sydney was overtaken by Melbourne as the country's main financial centre in the 1860s, but regained this status from about the 1970s and is now firmly established as the dominant city. And it should mention that the rivalry between the two cities resulted in the creation of Canberra. I don't think a balanced encyclopedia article on Melbourne could be written without a single mention of Sydney, and I don't think a balanced article about Sydney could be written without any mention of Melbourne. But the latter is the case at the moment, and it gives me the impression that there may be something of a pride issue involved. If I am wrong here then I apologise. But I expect to see a high level of maturity from a soon-to-be featured article such as this. 128.250.6.247 (same user as above) 01:10, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure that either article really needs much mention of the the other city, or focus too much on which city was dominant when, but it would be silly to completely avoid mentioning Melbourne in a historical context. JPD (talk) 16:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I'm certainly not suggesting adding a new paragraph dealing with Melbourne, or mentioning it in a prominent position in the article. But I think the three pieces of history I mentioned in my post yesterday are important, interesting and relevant enough to the story of Sydney that they should all be included somewhere in the article, so that somebody who read the article from top to bottom would pick up this knowledge somewhere along the way. The article might not absolutely 'need' to mention Melbourne anywhere (and it is true that the Sydney article could get away with not mentioning the other city more easily than the Melbourne one could, because saying that something is second begs the question of who is first). But I think that including these pieces of information (with proper references of course) would enrich the article, and push it further in the direction of higher quality. 128.250.6.246 04:04, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

May I suggest this userbox as a contribution to the relationship? Rexparry sydney 05:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

This user thinks Melbourne is the second-best city in the world

Image Gallery of Sydney ?

I hope this is the right place where to ask: is it possible to add a gallery of Sydney, or even just a link to an other web page ? I've seen like cities like Taipei, they all have an Image Gallery. I spent the last 8 months in Sydney and I took a lot of nice photos, now, other than just publish them on my website, I would like to be helpful and add them to the best encyclopedia on line. Please let me know if is possible and how. I would also like to know if there are restrictions to the size of the images, and what's the best resolution, because my images are freaking big. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Diegotrazzi (talk • contribs)

Diego's images are here if anyone is interested in checking them out. Sarah 08:07, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I've used on here: Deutsche Bank Place Merbabu 10:43, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Sarah --Diegotrazzi 10:21, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

For a straight image gallery why not use the commons, after all it is specially set up for media such as images? At the moment the Sydney page is the default category listing that appears for an empty page. It can be formatted differently though, as this simple example shows.John Dalton 02:01, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Nicknames section

I've just removed this:

==Nicknames== Several nicknames are applied to Sydney. Within its locality, it is known simply as "the city". It was once known as the "Big Smoke", though this name has declined in favour of "Sin City" and the "Emerald City", which was the title of a 1987 play (and later film) set in the city, and has been used in official propaganda for the city.

Apart from being unverified, I don't think any of the names are notable enough to be mentioned here. darkliight^[πalk] 11:59, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

To quote Wikipedia:Notability: Notable here means "worthy of being noted"[1][2] or "attracting notice"[3], not "important" or "famous". It is not synonymous with fame or importance. It is not measured by Wikipedia editors' own subjective judgements. It is not "newsworthiness".

Remove it if you will, but please don't use "Notability" as the reason. Wikipedia:Notability is quite explicit in that "I don't think any of the names are notable enough to be mentioned here." is a subjective judgment which has no place in Notability as a guideline. Apart from that the "notability" guideline is currently aimed towards complete articles rather than individual facts within an article. If I seem to be coming down hard on this it is because "Notability" seems be used as an easy way out for deleting stuff from Wikipedia. Sorry, but this is the instance I decided to follow up on. As I said I'm happy for them to go, but please find a better reason than "I don't think it is notable". John Dalton 05:12, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that's a bit unfair, John, as "I don't think..." isn't necessarily an indication of a subjective judgement, but may be merely an acknowledgment that the writer's knowledge of the objective fact may be wrong. At any rate, the passage you quote is from a guideline about what topics deserve an article. Here the issue is whether the nicknames are important enough to the topic covered by the article to be included, which is probably slightly more subjective. I think it would be fair to say that the nicknames are not important enough to Sydney to be included in this article. JPD (talk) 16:40, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this issue comes not under notability, but whether it adds value to the article. Personally I think they would be better as a single sentence in the lead section> Harryboyles 01:38, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

And I'll throw in a request for references to show when those nicknames were used. --Steve _(Slf67) ^talk 04:09, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't get why "emerald city" is treated as a positive label in official propaganda, when, if you look up Emerald City, it actually comes from a pretty negative references --Sumple (Talk) 09:28, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Media

Should the section on the Media mention The Australian newspaper? Although its circulation isn't that large, its still significant. Also, MX, while a free newspaper, has quite a large circulation (see their website), indeed comparable to the Herald. Should there be some mention of these papers, perhaps also in the main article about media in Sydney? Recurring dreams 12:56, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

The Australian is a national paper not a local paper.

Education

Re citation: for the selective schools, there is a list here, but it doesn't actually say that 25 schools are in Sydney: http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/schoolfind/types/shs_ahs_details.php There's also information about the school districts here, although the information is not explicit, and has to be worked by going through each district in Sydney: http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/schoolfind/locator/?section=showRegion —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Recurring dreams (talk • contribs) 12:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC).

Pages for Sydney suburbs

Hi, I notice that the pages for suburbs of Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth each have a box in the upper right hand corner with population, area, date established, property value etc. Has there been any talk of doing this for Sydney's suburbs? (JM) P.S. Apologies if I haven't used this talk page correctly, I'm new to this!

A rating

I fail to see how this article can possibly be regarded as meeting the A rating criterion. Especially "A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting. ". Not that I regard that as a realistic goal for a 40000 byte article on a large city, but that is the rules. Greglocock 11:21, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Rather than making a drive-by sweeping statement, how about providing a few objective areas where you feel an encyclopaedic article on Sydney is wanting? --Steve _(Slf67) ^talk 23:05, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

The infobox is miserably designed. View other major cities in different countries. 84.189.77.194 03:13, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Sister cities again

A sister city relationship is a relationship between two local governments or similar entities. The subject of this article does not have an body representing it, and does not have sister cities. This has nothing to do with some notion of council seats - it is simply the fact that each LGA in Sydney has different sister cities. Claims that the City of Sydney organises sister city relationships for the metropolis as a whole, either officially or de facto as it appears might be the case in Melbourne, need to be backed up by evidence. JPD (talk) 12:18, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

That's the case everywhere else in Australia (and is on just about every Wikipedia article on a major city); it should be here as well at least for consistency. The reason that it's associated with the City of Sydney is because it's local government's responsibility to foster business links like Sister Cities in Australia. However, in terms of a metropolitan city it's always the main city council that is deemed to have made the relationship, but it applies to the whole metro area. That's not to say that other satellite cities can't make their own, but the main ones apply for the whole city. JRG 12:54, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

It's not clear exactly what you're saying is the case. That the major cities have many LGAs each with their own sister cities, but Wikipedia articles still list the sister cities of the "main" LGA? To say that means this article shoudl do likewise is terrible logic. If other Wikipedia articles make that mistakes, they should be fixed. Brisbane is obviously a different case, as the City of Brisbane is much bigger. I would have removed the sister cities from Melbourne months ago, but I am not as certain about the situation there, and I found some evidence that may suggest that sister city activities go on throughout the metropolis. I haven't seen any evidence for this in Sydney. Without such evidence, we have no reason to say that the subject of this article has any sister cities. JPD (talk) 13:06, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

But what I'm saying is exactly what the City of Sydney's page on the sister city relationships is saying here. Note the words "using the resources of local government" - yes, it's run by the City of Sydney as it is local government who has responsibility, but note also the words such as "to bring together like interest groups in each city". It's not a focus just on the City of Sydney - it's a focus on the whole of Sydney, as it is elsewhere in the world. If you look up the pages of Sydney's sister cities, they will say "Sydney", not "Sydney City Council". JRG 22:00, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the resources of the local government (in this case, Sydney City Council) are used to forge links between groups in the areas that the local governments represent (City of Sydney). There is nothing on that page to suggest that the "city" they are talking about is the metropolis, rather than the local government area. "Sydney" can mean either. As for elsewhere in the world, apart from possibly Melbourne, can you name any city where sister city relationships are organised by a body not representing the whole area covered by the relationship?

I did look up a couple of the pages of Sydney's sister cities, and discovered some interesting things. The relationship between Sydney and Wellington is a "friendly city" relationship, which is "less formal than a sister city relationship and it generally has a lower profile."[1] On several pages, the Nagoya site speaks of "シドニー市" rather than simply "シドニー", suggesting that they are referring to the formal entity. [2]

Going back to the idea of elsewhere in the world, and your earlier reference to other Australian cities and Wikipedia articles, I had a look at other major Australian cities, and what you seem to be claiming isn't only true. Only Melbourne, Brisbane and Darwin have a sister cities section. Brisbane and Darwin have local government that is more representative of the whole metropolis than most large Australian cities. Canberra is also well represented by the ACT government, and so its article also includes sister cities, but it is a high quality article and so mentions them as a paragraph rather than with the silly list with flags so common elsewhere. Melbourne is the only strange case, and as I have said already, there is actually evidence that the Melbourne arrangement is unusual. JPD (talk) 10:05, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

lock page

I think this page needs to be locked to prevent vandalism. Mindys12345 13:03, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there is really enough vandalism at the moment to make protection worthwhile. Either way, please don't add templates saying that the article is protected unless it is actually protected. {{sprotect2}} is not a way to request protection - that can be done at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection or here, as you have done. JPD (talk) 11:18, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I also think that this page needs to protected from vandalism, recent vandalism has been carried forward with possibly real edits adding to vandalised ones, causing a mess to sort out. --Belfry 07:23, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Still seems pretty normal to me. JPD (talk) 11:44, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Major format error un-noticed

This page has been reverted about 50 time or so but why didn't anyone pick this mistake when trying to fix the article [3] Mindys12345 00:22, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Probably because it isn't easily noticeable in diffs. JPD (talk) 09:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Repeat offender

this guy has been warned but continues to vandalize this article [4], can someone put a block on this guy or something. AdamCassar 07:47, 15 May 2007 (UTC) AdamCassar 07:55, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Important?

Someone better than me can incorporate it into the article: http://www.smh.com.au/news/good-living/ripe-for-development/2006/11/27/1164476117631.html Htra0497 15:44, 21st June 2007 (AET)

Consistency Checking

I think this article needs consistancy checking. For example, one place which I fixed (Weather) says the rainfall yearly is 1201mm, yet at the BOM table, it said 1207mm. The hub 08:53, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Figures are constantly being updated from other sources and it is our job as members of Wikipedia to update the figures as they appear on Wikipedia. But a 6mm difference in rainfall as quoted on the Bureau of Meteorology does not constitute a crisis (unless you can provide more examples).--Just James 09:04, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Density section

Seems to be more POV criticising the city's density as an opinion, rather than treating it as fact. I encountered a similar problem weeks ago on the Auckland page. Also please give date of when public transport was implemented. Michellecrisp 04:35, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

APEC meeting

I think should be included as it's a very notable event, that would be covered considerably in the media of the 20 odd participating countries. Very few cities have hosted so many important leaders in one place where the actual leader rather than delegated Minister attends, I could only think of a G8 meeting having more importance. Michellecrisp 06:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I left a reference to it in the lead, along with other events that Sydney has hosted. It is true that few cities have hosted so many important leaders, but even fewer cities have encyclopedia articles that bother to mention every meeting like this that they have hosted, and even fewer mention it in the lead. When reading about Seattle, is the fact that it hosted an APEC meeting in 1993 really that important? JPD (talk) 09:25, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

National Estate gallery

I established a gallery of National Estate buildings but was soon donged on the head by Sarah, who reckoned that 12-46 images is far too much. I have now reduced the number of images on the gallery.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this subject of how many images are appropriate?

Sardaka 09:59, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Images should be included to complement the text of the article, not simply to create galleries. I don't think the article needs any more images at all. Galleries can be created at Wikimedia Commons. More of these images may be appropriate at pages like Architecture in Sydney, where buildings are more significant to the topic. JPD (talk) 10:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, well the first time you added 46 images and that is unquestionably way too many. I was on dial-up at the time and I couldn't even load the page properly because of the glut of images. I basically agree with what JPD has said above. Sarah 13:24, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

And now that the number has been roughly halved, it's still "too many". What's the total you're looking for? - Dudesleeper · Talk 13:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Well yes, 27 is clearly too many also. Four or five might have been not so clearly too many, but as has already been said, this is an article, not a picture gallery. There shouldn't be a section composed of just pictures at all. It is hard to see why there would be a whole section on National Estate buildings, even if the pictures were complementing the text. A more specific article would have room for more text on the subject, and as a result more pictures. Here, the images are simply inappropriate. JPD (talk) 14:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

JPD sums it up nicely - "an article, not gallery" and that images should directly complement info in the articles. The article has enough pics - any additional pics would have to be exceptional (and directly) relevant. Anyway, what is the "National Estate" and how does it relate to Sydney? --Merbabu 08:24, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

National Estate

The national estate is a listing of buildings and other sites that are preserved because of historic or other significance. Sydney has many buildings on the NE. I thought a gallery on the NE in Sydney would be an appropriate addition, but obviously no-one agrees. Probably the article on Sydney buildings and architecture would be a better place.

I find it a bit disappointing that someone who works on the Sydney article has never heard of the NE. A useful link would be www.ahc.gov.au.

Sardaka 09:15, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Aboriginal name of Sydney

Anyone know the Aboriginal name of Sydney? Would be nice to have it in the article Supposed 04:14, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Agree - I recall one name being Werrong - needs a ref though. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:45, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

For many reasons, I fail to see why such a thing as "the Aboriginal name of Sydney" should exist at all. Werrong was the local name for Sydney Cove.[5] JPD (talk) 10:25, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

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