Talk:Timeline of New Zealand history

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To-do list for Timeline of New Zealand history:
  • Refactor all years to fix language and ensure text is original
  • Add dates (and maybe places) of birth and death of various New Zealanders These will be removed from this list. Add them to individual year articles.
  • Fix any election links that don't seem to work yet
  • Add election results (in summary form)
  • Byelection dates and results
Flag Timeline of New Zealand history is part of WikiProject New Zealand, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of New Zealand and New Zealand-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.
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Contents

[edit] Comments lacking heading

I've grabbed the initial data from this: Statistics NZ page , which is under this copyright .

The stats NZ stuff is just intended is a rough pointer, I hope to get rid of 90% of their material pretty quickly. SimonLyall 10:24, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • Stats NZ stuff seems OK in principle, no hurry to replace. This is the encouraging paragraph:
    • Copyright
    • Information obtained from Statistics New Zealand may be freely used, reproduced, or quoted unless otherwise specified. In all cases Statistics New Zealand must be acknowledged as the source.
So no worries yet?? Robin Patterson 10:03, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
No worries then SimonLyall 10:51, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Idea - start this again

I've been thinking about this page a bit tonight. All the entries from 1870 onwards (and much before that) are just cut and paste from the Stats NZ page. I'd like to suggest deleting all the content after 1870 (except headings) and starting again.

We can use the StatsNZ page are a reference for each year but basicly create new content as we go. At this stage of things it won't lose us much and avoid copyright worries. Entries before 1870 can be reworked as we go. Thoughts?

SimonLyall 11:29, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • As above - copyright doesn't seem to be a problem as long as we have a note at the top about "Statistics New Zealand ... acknowledged as the source". I wouldn't delete anything until a definite replacement is ready. Mind you, I haven't looked at anything after 1840! I'll have another look tomorrow. Have you skimmed through the general "year" pages, eg 1854? Robin Patterson 10:03, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • I'll put external links at the bottom in a minute with a pointer to the StatsNZ page.The general years pages look okay (with their events, births, deaths, heads of state, etc) . I would suspect we will have to break this page up fairly soon (it's pretty long in its current state) but I don't want to do that until we have more than 4 or 5 lines for each year. SimonLyall 10:51, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • Good work, Simon. We can break the page up when we get the "32k" warning. Meantime, we can keep copying text from elsewhere in Wikipedia and ideas from other countries, eg History_of_Canada and Category:Australian_history, as already discussed. (And I will be copying from here to http://mi.wikipedia.org, of course!) Robin Patterson 04:35, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
        • I'm already getting the warning. Have a look (and update as required) at User:SimonLyall/test , It's a sample "year by year" page taken from on of the Canadian ones and slightly modified (it still has some canadian names in it). I'd suggest that once a year is more than (say) 20 lines long it's contents gets moved to it's own page. SimonLyall 05:33, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Standardising some styles

[edit] Birth and death

Mixed at present. Shortest is "xx xx born/dies" - but "Birth of" may be the form in which we copy from elsewhere, so saving time? Robin Patterson 03:33, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We will end up with just a header followed by some names ( like 1984 in Canada has ) eventually so I don't think it matters long term. One other format thing I'd like to keep is dates however. I think "Month day" is easiest and quicker to sort. I notice a few recent entries have been the other way around. SimonLyall 10:43, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Why mention birth date of non kiwi?

Why is it necessary to record the following -- September 26: Birth of William Hobson, future Governor.? Why is the date he was born outside NZ important to the "Timeline of New Zealand history". Who cares? The link to William Hobson gives birth/death details (as it should) and that's where it should end. Moriori 07:21, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

A few reasons. (1) I'm trying to flesh things out a little and there wasn't a lot else happening that year. (2) A large number of people that probably should be mentioned wern't born in NZ (MJ Savage) or else spent much of their time elsewhere ( Kiri ), or even both (Sam Neil). I can't really see how if we are recording births then we could exclude Savage just because he was born in Australia and Hobson would merit a similar level of importance as Savage. I'll start splitting this page soon so I don't think concern that it's being cluttered with what some people might regard as minor events will be a problem. SimonLyall 15:16, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You've lost me Simon. If you include the birthdate of Hobson in this article then you have to include every notable born outside NZ. . Imagine the length of the list! It's irrelevant, because as I say, Hobson's birthdate is included in the William Hobson article. Also., I don't think it is a good idea to deliberately pad out articles because they are short on content. Cheers Moriori 21:53, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)
I think I have lost you. The big thing about births and deaths is that almost nobody is famous just for being born except for royalty. Same with deaths most of the time (since people are usually retired from what important thing they did). What the deaths and births section is there is to say what Important people in NZ history (usually people who are listed elsewhere in the timeline) were born of died that year. Hobson was a important person in NZ history (who did he important stuff in NZ and died here) so his birth should be listed. Would you exclude Michael Joseph Savage because he was born (and lived for 30 years) in Australia? Also this article is (timeline of the history of New Zealand NOT timeline of the history of New Zealanders). I don't think we are going to get into slippy slopes where we list (say) Paul McCartney just because he's had a lot of Number 1s on the NZ Charts. SimonLyall 01:58, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Please stick to the point Simon. You say "Hobson was a important person in NZ history (who did he important stuff in NZ and died here) so his birth should be listed". It IS listed Simon, in the William Hobson article, where it belongs. If you are going to insist on it being included here, then we are going to end up with an article dominated by birth and death dates. I believe they are irrelevant in this article, and will clog it up so much the article will become about as interesting to the reader as the Beijing phone book. Moriori 02:33, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)
I doubt very much it'll clog up the whole thing. Have a look at the various Timeline of Canadian history articles which I'm basing things off to an extent. Most years have 10-30 deaths. The dictionary of NZ biography lists just 298 deaths in the 1970s and 279 in the 1980s. So worst case the sections for each year might be 40 entries each (for something like 1941). There are a few birth and death dates now since they are fairly easy to lookup and enter ( I just did John Walker ) . I would hope that eventually for most years we will have 20 births, 20 deaths, 50+ News events, 50 cultural events (books, movies, NPC winners etc) plus whatever else. Births and deaths certainly shouldn't dominate. SimonLyall 03:29, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Your last sentence says it all. You advocate it, but don't do it. Also, because something is done elsewhere on Wikipedia that is not always a good lead as you will discover when you have been here a little while longer. I believe I have some knowledge to significantly contribute to the article , but I can't see the point of sticking around. There are subjects in Wikipedia where I believe I can contribute without being bothered by such silliness. I'm outta here. Moriori 06:05, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline references relative to New Zealand Timeline

When I was editing my first contribution Taumarunui, the year was listed that a certain trading post was set up, i.e. 1874. The natural tendency is to bang some square brackets on the date and make it a link/xref.

Unfortunately the destination of these link is mostly unrelated, as it is a global reference. I realise that this page is new, but I was thinking that this page could be used as a destination somehow. For example: 1874 or 1874 or for simplicity 1874 and have some kind of fancy redirects.

"Clearly" :-) the steps would be:

  • check if there isn't anything else doing the same (copy someone else?)
  • gauge the tempature of this community for the idea
  • put forward a proposal, collect feedback
  • revise proposal, and put out a poll/vote
  • add NZ year targets like 1960s / 1962 to the Timeline of New Zealand history
  • create a bot to update pages with a NZ stub and reference a year eg. 1874

Is this the right direction? Have I over looked the obvious?

Also: I am thinking that this is a lot of hard work. Please... someone chase me away.

NevilleDNZTALK? I realise I missed a couple of key points above:

  • Learn about what is already in place. eg. 2004_in_New_Zealand
  • Find out what the water tape is...

I note that User:Robin Patterson has already started 2004_in_New_Zealand. I am currently pondering if it would be better to call this page [[2004, New_Zealand]], (and thus [[2004, New_Zealand|2004 in New Zealand]] where desired.) In line with how other NZ specific pages are disambiguated.

NevilleDNZ 01:55, 7 May 2005 (UTC)


Hi, Neville and others. I think the form 2004_in_New_Zealand matches what other countries have, but I may be out of date there. (Check with a quick category-browse?) Whatever the "standard" is, I hope you can extend the series back. I have actual or potential links to it from the year pages I create on "mi:", eg mi:2004 and mi:1940. And when you put a date in an NZ article, it will be good to make it a link to the year in that series if it's not a world-significance event. I think I've done a couple already, in anticipation. Kia ora. Robin Patterson 04:05, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The idea with "fancy" redirects seems nice and easy to use (I prefer NZ2005 over Nz2005 though). The problem that I see(from google) that nz2001...nz2005 seem to be used as psuedo trademarks for sporting events. I was pondering if we could use a punctuation mark to proactively avoid ambiguations. eg 2005
I do wonder if we could use a Catagory somehow. eg [[Category:NZ1875|birth]] (example Alfred Hamish Reed, [[Category:1875 births]] and [[Category:1870s births]]), these "half" automatically generate an automatic catalogue, but to be honest catagories only work end page, not mid page.... I am pondering of thre is another such construct for midpage hence avoiding having to enter the dates in two/three/four or more places...
BTW: (I chucked when I saw :mi:2003, nicely contrasts with :en:2003)
NevilleDNZ 13:19, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've now thanked "Dramatic" for all the work on 2003 in New Zealand, which I had not seen when I wrote the above paragraph. Ka pai! The series is well under way. I suppose we could consider some "fancy redirects" to shorten the work? "nz2003", anyone? Robin Patterson 05:28, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Date/Event format

(Discussion Moved from Talk:New Zealand)

I've reverted the change of the years to point to the timeline of New Zealand history. This is because doing this screws up the date formats that people have set in their user preferences. Evil MonkeyHello 00:54, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I am the kiwi that added the links to the NZ Time Line. I guess I must now play with my date preferences and find out what you are refering to. To point NZ date to a global date wiki-page sometimes makes sense. But sometimes (often) it is just "noise in the wiki", perhaps these better pointed at something relavent. NevilleDNZ 02:14, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
I tried changing my date preferences as you suggested. And I cannot detect any differences in how the page is presented. Please explain. This is important as I am ironing out some bugs in a bot before I put forward a proposal to have all NZ pages pointed to the NZ Time Line with the bot, and also maybe even come up with a wiki derived timeline.
c.f. Talk:Timeline of New Zealand history#Timeline references relative to New_Zealand Timeline
NevilleDNZ 02:28, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
Did you refresh your cache? Currently my preferences are set to display the dates are 26 September 1907 but when viewing the version of the page that links to the timeline it sppears as 26 September, 1907 (note the addition of a comma). If you set you date peference to be of the style 2001 January 15, it appears as January 15, 2001. Evil MonkeyHello 02:49, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
Also readers expect to be taken to 1907 when they click on 1907 not be taken to a timeline page. Evil MonkeyHello 03:00, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
To be honest, the only practical use for the year (without a relavent timeline) is in generating some kind of global cross reference, and maybe user format preferences. And even then the user format preferences dont give much mileage other then moving a comma.
I am looking for a template (like Template:coor) that can handle dates, and still works with User Preferences.)
NevilleDNZ 04:50, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
It does more than add a comma -- having the preference of 2001 January 15, you get dates appearing like January 15, 2001. Evil MonkeyHello 05:16, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
I kind of sympathise with you, to be honest if someone really wants the date format in Ethiopian Buddest Format, then it should be able to be configured in their preferences. Similarly with their prefered unit of measure, km vs miles etc.
In the mean time I think I try improve the resulting date format by using a Template somehow. I will study various different formats, and see how it effects the user preferences, ultimately (IMO) NZ relative dates should point to a NZ Timeline. None the less, thanx for picking this preferences issue up, otherwise I would have totally missed it.
NevilleDNZ 07:23, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
I like the idea of pointing New Zealand pages to New Zealand year artices (as long as it doesn't mess up preferences), but I don't think that Timeline of New Zealand history is the best page to link to. If anything we should be linking to individual years like 2004 in New Zealand. Wiki is not paper so there is really nothing to stop us creating a page for every since 1750 or something. Check out Timeline of Indian history. Evil MonkeyHello 09:31, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
A few of us have been pondering this. I am trying to think of a way of making it so a Major Timeline catagory automatically drops out of it. For example, tag certain dates as major (via a template), and then this page automatically gets linked into the Major NZ timeline. {{event major NZ|1953|5|29|type=first_ascent|Everest}}. These could be inserted on any relavent page, and the template would automatically take care of the format (inc month names), and the Timeline creation.
But we still can get a minor NZ timeline with the rest of the NZ related events by dropping the word major. Problem is I am still learning wiki, and misc problems like preferences pop up, and I am then (kind of) obliged to research the official and/or the best solution.
Any ideas for the brew most welcome. The Indian Page is useful.
NevilleDNZ 13:39, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
Here is an experimental Category_talk:Timeline_of_New_Zealand, does anyone know how to extend the year to 4 digits, rather then just the millienia as it is currently? 15:22, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] All Black Matches

If people are looking for something to do I've started copying in results of All Black matches into years. See 2004 in New Zealand . Just start at the page and click on old matches to fill in a year. Each match can be clocked on to get more details. IF peopel have a similar link for Cricket or other sports please post them. SimonLyall 20:30, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I don't understand this

In 1941, it mentions that Ian Mune was born (I don't know whom this is). However, many Maoris were killed in the Battle of Crete in that year. Also, the Battle of Cassino 1944, where the Maoris took a big part is also not mentioned. In addition Charles Upham won two VC's, which I would have thought rated a mention. I think the timeline is out of kilter, somehow. Wallie 19:37, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

That's wiki (and, in particular, that's lists on wiki). There's a lot of trivial stuff mixed up with the serious here. Needs a NZ editor (or somebody with a good knowledge of the country) to trim and refactor it. --kingboyk 14:58, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

At the battle of crete, there were 3,500 maori, 300 died. it might not seem like much to the 6,000(or so) who died at the beach of normandy. but to them it was because there were so few. im into historys of new zealand, especially maori, seeing as i am maori. [brother_h] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.154.54.87 (talk) 11:09, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The less important events (births & deaths, etc) should probably be moved to the 19XX_in_New_Zealand pages. Some of this has already been done. - SimonLyall 20:39, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
A quick Google will tell you who Ian Mune is you young whippersnapper [1] you! He is one of New Zealands first generation of television actors and has performed in a number of films, advertisments and stage productions. Trivial maybe today's dross - but tomorrows taonga of social commentary. Bottom line, if you see something is missing, addit. Wiki will tell us when the hard drives are full. L-Bit 13:11, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
No no no! This is supposed to show important and significant events in the history of NZ and is not a collection of "I think this person is great so he needs mentioning" or similar. I've gone through and trimmed lots of it, which I hope goes in line with this. violet/riga (t) 10:47, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Personally I'm not in favour of the 'such and such person was born in this year' entries. They don't say anything about the state of NZ in that year, even if the person went on to become super famous. We should limit this to events which were significant in their own right. Having said that, I don't think 'A is on this list but B isn't, and B is obviously more important' is an argument for deleting A. It always irritates me when people write stuff along the lines of 'this page is crap, it doesn't have such and such'. Um... anyone can contribute so if you see a problem... fix it. --Helenalex 22:42, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
I think most of the born/died entries can be removed. Unless the birth or death of the person was an event in itself. Some other stuff needs to be cut down really the page should have more than an entry or two for each year on average. - SimonLyall 07:09, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I have removed all births except one and all deaths except when in office. - SimonLyall 07:33, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Table of Contents

Shall I set up a TOC for here as I did with Timeline of environmental history of New Zealand? Looks a bit nicer - in my opinion..... -- Alan Liefting talk 00:18, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The TOCright you added looks fairly good, especuially with the short early entries. - SimonLyall 10:10, 22 August 2007 (UTC)