Portal talk:New Zealand/Archive 1

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Very nice!

A few first thoughts... How do we decide on a picture of the day, or an article of the day - and do we change it daily, weekly, or what? Similarly the facts - are they to be from new articles, or just generaloddments from articles overall? And what of the news items - do they come out of WikiNews, or do we put our own in (we have a minivan crash, flooding in Tauranga and the budget to deal with if we do!). Also - with the categories, since "Auckland" is the region rather than the city, should it be listed there? I know I'm biased, beeing a southerner, but I don't think it does - if the category was for the city, then maybe, but not the region.

Other than those fairly minor points, which will no doubt become clear pretty quickly, a big thank you goes out to Cyberjunkie for a job well done! (and to Clarkk for spotting his deliferate mitsake!) Grutness...wha? 14:38, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I assure you, it was accidental ;). It was a literal copy of the Australia Wikiportal and had not been completely 'Kiwinised' before first save. I just wanted to give you guys a head-start. I hope the colour arrangement is fine (All Blacks?), but feel free to change it.
There isn't really any guidelines to maintaining a Wikiportal - it's a virtual free-for-all. Generally, however, I would suggest it operate similarly to a WikiProject and in conjunction with the New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board. From what little response I've had, vis-à-vis the Australia Wikiportal (A big thanks goes out to clarrkk, for his help), and from what I've ascertained, those involved with the Wikiportal should determine the features. Rather than establishing a separate feature system, choose from amongst already featured articles and pictures. However, don't feel restrained by this. The idea of a Wikiportal is "showcase" the best on the topic, or the most relevant. So, by this view, the articles are not necessarily featured standard, and "feature" becomes an ambiguous term. Furthermore, this "showcase" principle extends to the "Did you know" section. Source the facts from any New Zealand article, but the aim is relevance.
With the "In the News" section, just swipe New Zealand stories from the Current events in Australia and New Zealand page, which are usually taken from Current events. There is quite a dedicated New Zealand element there, so there will be no shortage of stories - they far outweigh the few Australian stories (which I mostly add).
I acknowledge the category section is deficient, and this is due largely to my finding the New Zealand categorisation odd and inconsistent. I encourage those who had a part in categorising Kiwi articles to modify the category section. I'm not all that familiar with this provincial/regional type system, but they might substitute for states and territories. The last thing I want to do is force the New Zealand Wikiportal to comply with the Australian model. But, to those who wish to enhance the Wikiportal, I encourage you to see Wikiportal Australia and Wikiportal Canada (on which I modelled Australia's) and perhaps even Wikiportal Quebec. (You'll notice too, that, aside from Australia, these use uglier templates).
I'm now going to have a browse around WikiProject New Zealand to see if there is something that might suit "open tasks".--Cyberjunkie 16:15, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

One I can think of straight away is that there are a lot of NZ biographies not yet started, including a slew of sportspeople (cricket and rugby players in particular, but also the likes of Wynton Rufer). Pretty sure that's listed there somewhere. Grutness...wha? 00:54, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to officially "launch" the New Zealand Wikiportal now (that is, I am going to add it to the established Wikiportals list).--Cyberjunkie 12:59, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Nice facts too! And the picture is great, also. I considered adding that when I saw it on the NZWNB, but decided to let others choose.--Cyberjunkie 13:11, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
These are probably only temporary - I decided to be bold rather than leave the page empty. Prtesumably some proper system of working out what to put on the page will develop pretty soon. Seems like we both had the same idea at the same time - you were adding FW Petre while I was ferreting out some interesting facts :) Grutness...wha? 13:15, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

"The settlement of Matata also declared a State of Emergency on May 18 and is still in place." - good that the settlement is still in place! Robin Patterson 12:25, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Red link policy

Should we have a policy of no redlinks on the portal page, other than in the open tasks section? The section which is most likely to have redlinks is the In the News section. Looking at some of the other country portals, some have red links, but the major ones don't. It could be said that having a few red links might encourage people to contribute the relevant articles; on the other hand, it looks unprofessional, which is why the Wikipedia main page doesn't allow any.-gadfium 05:18, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

We should certainly keep red links to an absolute minimum, I think. Grutness...wha? 06:12, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
...in fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that if we have news about something, it should be at least possible to write a stub based on that news. So IMHO if we want to link something but it's a redlink, we could always take the five minutes extra to write the stub. Grutness...wha? 00:14, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Archive

Since it looks like we're about to start changing the featured picture and article, I've just created Wikipedia:Wikiportal/New_Zealand/Previously_featured to store details of what's been featured before. I would recomment adding in details of the new works when they're added to the portal page, so that everyone knows how long they've been there! I'll also have a look around for some more fascinating facts, to replace the ones there. Grutness...wha? 06:12, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. I'm going to do the same for the Aussie Wikiportal. --Cyberjunkie 06:42, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion as to new features

This page is going to get very long very quickly if we're not careful. Might I suggest that we archive all the sections on feature pictures and articles once they get to the portal page, and (unless there is serious debate about any of them) simply delete all the "yes that looks good - go for it" type comments that each one seems to get? I suspect it will be a while before we have too many that are debatable choices, and hopefully we'll have a bit more of an idea of what to do with them when we get to them. Any thoughts? Grutness...wha? 06:48, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think the proposals for featured articles/pictures can be deleted once they go onto the main page of the portal - no need to archive. I'm posting them here a few days earlier just to get a bit of feedback, since we don't have a mechanism similar to the one for the real front page (and I can't be bothered setting up mechanism like that at the moment). I'll delete the old featured article/picture "trials" from this page in a few days if I get no objections.-gadfium 08:48, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'm not going to bother with the "trial layouts" on this page in future - I'll just update the portal page directly every Sunday morning.-gadfium 19:31, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

New "did you know" facts

What I'd like to do, unless anyone has any better ideas, is have one fact change on the "Did you know?" list every two or three days (or maybe change two facts each weekend), to keep a sort of "rolling list" going. I've made another subpage - Wikipedia:Wikiportal/New Zealand/Did you know list. If anyone has any interesting facts from NZ articles that they think would do well as "Did you know?" facts, please add them to that page, and hopefully we'll have a continuous supply of several strange bits of trivia to choose from.

Selected picture suggestions

I'm still hoping someone will give me a list of suggestions for future featured pictures.-gadfium 04:51, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There are some good pictures on the Franz Josef Glacier , Heaphy Track and Milford Track pages. SimonLyall 09:35, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've now used a picture from each of these article.-gadfium 03:56, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm not going to have net access this Sunday morning (I'm on Waiheke for the weekend), so I'll update the featured article and picture on Saturday morning, unless someone else volunteers to do it.-gadfium 05:05, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to propose one of my pictures for Featured Picture (yeah, I know... self-noms...) Have a look at the image on the (brand new) Mitre Peak page! Grutness...wha? 29 June 2005 06:56 (UTC)
I've since used this picture.-gadfium 03:56, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Very nice. Have you considered putting it up for Featured pictures?-gadfium 29 June 2005 09:07 (UTC)
I like it (both the page and the picture). It certainly contains less cloud than my panorama of Milford Sound, but at least Bowen Falls was in full flow (cloudy seems to be the norm there). I agree with Gadfium, somebody should put your picture up as a FPC, because we need more NZ featured pictures. Before you do, make sure that you upload a less compressed version (if you have one), because there is some obvious banding in the sky. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 29 June 2005 12:14 (UTC)

The picture to illustrate Tolaga Bay, which is in the upcoming DYK list, is too good to waste on a thumbnail in that section. Should I use it there anyway, and later make it a featured picture, or should we try never to use the same picture twice?-gadfium 19:56, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Heh! Thanks for that! I only put tht picture up as an afterthought! Glad you like it! Grutness...wha? 00:05, 10 July 2005 (UTC) (trying to type with a cat on his lap...)

I've decided not to use the image for the DYK as it will be a featured picture in a week or two.-gadfium 02:25, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

My suggestions for future featured pictures are:

The following pictures may be featured once the problem noted is resolved:

After that, I need some suggestions. Please add them to the list. Self-nominations are fine. I prefer not to use panoramas as they don't look good when they're only 300 pixels wide. Unfortunately this cuts out most of User:geocachernemesis's work.

I may re-order the list to avoid having similar-themed shots or two by the same photographer immediately following each other.-gadfium 02:25, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

What a rewarding surprise it was to discover my Tui image is currently "Featured picture". Hey, I'm nominated for admin, so if anyone would like to support me please do so here before 02:03 July 20 (UTC). If you want to oppose, do so after 02:03 July 20 (UTC) ):-. Cheers. Moriori 23:03, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
I saw your Tui image because someone mentioned it on your admin vote. Do you have any other images which might be good enough?-gadfium 23:29, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

We'll use our last suggested featured picture this weekend. Please suggest others. Don't be shy.-gadfium 03:56, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I've discovered a lot of photos uploaded by User:PhiloVivero, mostly in 2004, and I'll add these to the list. I still need lots more photos by other photographers.-gadfium 04:36, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
If all other options are used, perhaps we could use one of the NASA satellite images, like Image:Otago harbour landsat.jpg? Might I also suggest my picture of Lake Rotorua at Image:Mokoia Island.jpg? Grutness...wha? 07:44, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I quite like the couple of pics in Maori culture and Tui. Anybody have a good photo for Waka (canoe) ?? Papeschr 06:02, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

The picture in Tui has already been featured. See Wikipedia:Wikiportal/New_Zealand/Previously_featured. I'll add User:JShook's Maori culture picture to the list.-gadfium 06:42, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Did you know...

asks ...that New Zealand is the only country in the world that has areas of every climate. How is that justified? We often hear that NZ has a little bit of everything, but when people say that to me I tell them to spend some time in India to see a country that really has everything. Tropical areas (with monsoons) for instance, which NZ certainly does not have. Moriori 23:44, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

That was inserted by an anon; I couldn't find an appropriate article to link it to. I'll update the section and scroll it off the page.-gadfium 00:39, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Note also that we're also running short of new "did you know?" facts. If anyone has some idea - please put them on the Did you know list! Grutness...wha? 01:17, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

The Moa article worries me

Is anyone else bothered by the Moa article where it refers to a publican (and names his pub) and some mates who claimed to have seen a Moa? It looks like a hoaxed publicity stunt. The bird in the dreadful photo doesnot look like its description in the text. It does not have a long neck, for instance. Also, it is spurious to say that if the takahe could be found after being reported extinct then so could the moa. The takahe is the size of a chook, so it could have easily been almost walked on by passing trampers/hunters but was able to conceal itself in the bush. A six foot high moa would have some difficulty managing that! This article is not encyclopedic IMMHO. What do others think? Moriori 22:52, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that too much of the article deals with the claimed sighting, and the picture accompanying the claim is a terrible photo and has no licence information. Feel free to reduce the text of this incident to one or two sentences and remove that photo. The taxobox photo is presumably just someone's interpretation of what the bird would have looked like from the skeleton; I think it's valid, but if you can get a better photo then by all means do so (there must be many from 19th century books in the library, which are now out of copyright). When this article goes on the portal page (in 8 weeks time, according to the current schedule), I'll use the skeleton photo if no other photos have appeared in the meantime. You might like to copy this discussion to the talk:Moa page.-gadfium 23:51, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
I agree, but it probably is worth mentioning that reports crop up from time to time. I've reduced the size of the section on the Freaney case - I remember it made the news quite a bit in the early 90s, but was almost certainly a hoax. (edit conflict! pah!) Grutness...wha? 23:51, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

General election coverage

It is my intention to feature New Zealand general election, 2005 in the week before the election is held. Any objections or ideas? I expect this article to be more or less continually referenced on the In The News section up until then as well.

I have tried to avoid news items on the policies of any particular political party, as I don't want to give more coverage to one party or another. With the Waitangi Tribunal deadlines, the article was put on Current events by someone else, so I tried to balance it by giving the National policy as well. We just don't have the space in the news section to cover every party's policy.

I intend to have a story on the launch of the election campaign for each political party that's represented in Parliament. NZ First launched its campaign a couple of weeks ago, and I gave it a write up with a picture of Winston Peters. I'm hoping that not too many parties launch their campaigns within a day of each other or it will crowd out all other stories.

If I miss a party's campaign launch, please point me to a story about it or write it yourself. There's a chance I won't see the launch of the minor parties' campaigns in the news media.-gadfium 19:54, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

I am aware that the Progressive Party had its election campaign launch today, but I can't find any news stories to quote. I'll probably find something tomorrow, but if anyone sees a story, please place a link to it here.-gadfium 06:42, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I missed the Maori Party's launch, but found the story and added it today. Better late than never. Act New Zealand will launch on 4 September, and that will be all the parties currently in Parliament covered.-gadfium 06:46, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

NZHerald links

FYI The Herald will no longer allow free access to some articles after 7 days. Please be careful not to link to those ones (not 100% sure how to tell which ones will go away). See The Herald story (hope that doesn't vanish). SimonLyall 05:44, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I'll look for other coverage for events, but I am used to using the New Zealand Herald website. It actually doesn't make a reference invalid that free internet access vanishes after a week; it still provides a source for those who have sufficient need to follow it up, and for current events, few people will be interested in following the link after a week anyway. I can't see the Herald getting much revenue from it for the same reason.-gadfium 02:05, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
A clarification: Some premium content (such as columnists - which we don't link to anyway) will require a fee, and the NZ Herald website search engine will not return results more than a week old unless you've subscribed to the website. Links to content will still work, and the website can still be searched for older stories using a Google search with "site:nzherald.co.nz".-gadfium 06:21, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Can anyone update New Zealand Sign Language?

The New Zealand Sign Language article says the bill to make NZSL NZ's third official language "was referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee which will report back to the House on July 26, 2005." I'd bring it up to date, but I don't know what hapened. Anyone got an update? Moriori 02:20, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

Here's the status.-gadfium 02:45, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
Cheers. I have amended the page accordingly. Moriori 20:04, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

New Format

Hi all. How do the editors here feel about adopting the new "box" format for Portals? I just switched Australia over, and would be happy to do it here if that's what you would like. Thanks, --Cyberjunkie | Talk 10:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

One thing for certain is that it beats the kiwi portal hands down IMMHO. Yep, I know that black is traditionally used by kiwi sporting teams, but that portal looks like something they hand out at funerals. Moriori 23:06, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I'd be happy to have a new look.-gadfium 05:04, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

I'll set about doing this tonight then. Any suggestions for colour then? --Cyberjunkie | Talk 05:52, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

How about green, to go with our clean green image? Maybe a slightly lighter shade than that used on the Portal:Ireland page. Not as blue as on Portal:Mexico, and definitely not lime. Note that I have no artistic ability, so everyone else may be horrified by this colour.
-gadfium 06:43, 24 September 2005 (UTC).
I see that our article Lime (color) says that the color above is called lime, but what I don't want is the much more yellow version.-gadfium 07:06, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, aside from colours, the switch is complete. I did note Gadfium's suggestion about green, and don't think it a bad idea, but I couldn't find a hue I was happy with. So, I went with the tentative colours of red, white and blue - based on the NZ flag, of course. I'm not sure if that's satisfactory, given there's probably more Kiwi's peeved about their flag than there is Aussies about ours. Nonetheless, it's easily changed. I'm quite tired, so if any want to fiddle with colours see this page. You'll have to purge with each change, or just "show preview". You might like to invite other Kiwis at the notice board to make suggestions.

By the way, in attempt to make the Portals more professional, I've adopted (unilaterally, sorry :)) the WP:ITN format for our Portal ITNs. There are a few other changes that you'll notice, as well. Night, --Cyberjunkie | Talk 18:30, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

In The News

I'm generally happy with the changes, but I don't like having the new restrictions on the portal ITN.

If we have to have an updated article to match each news event, then there will be a much slower turnover of news events added. At present, I add almost all of them, and while I'd like to update a relevant article, most of the time there isn't a suitable article there. For example with the protest flotilla against the Cook Strait ferry, we'd need an article on Cook Strait ferries first. The article on Toll NZ probably isn't as suitable a place to put such stories; it's more detailed than I expected it to be, but the issue actually affects ferries from more than one company and so should be a separate article. With the Field immigration story, I could and maybe should update the Taito Phillip Field article, although the problem of Wikipedia:Recentism appears. The Field article isn't very detailed; explaining the controversy would be out of proportion to the rest of the biography.

Also, dropping the link to the news media from these stories makes it more difficult for anyone wanting to check on the facts. Not all stories on ITN are also on the Current events in Australia and New Zealand - some stories of purely local interest I don't add to the latter page. The ITN page is also used periodically to update 2005 in New Zealand, which has included links to news media.

I think we need a fuller discussion about the purpose of the ITN part of the portal. How many people look at it who don't also look at Current events in Australia and New Zealand? Many of the other country portals don't include an ITN section, and some of those that do don't keep it as up to date as we have so far.-gadfium 23:05, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

I think of them as guidelines rather than restrictions. I did make a few changes to the layout comment before posting it. I admit the "only feature stories with corresponding article" guide is impractical. Perhaps it should be changed to: "where possible, provide a bolded link to an article that is updated with the story". Else, it could be abandoned altogether.
Personally, I think that story displayed in ITN should also be shown at Current events in Australia and New Zealand (CEANZ). Of course, that doesn't mean that everything on CEANZ should be on ITN. If this is done, than there really is no need to for external links. True, most people who see ITN won't go to CEANZ, but this isn't a problem for WP:ITN. The references are available to those who want them.
With regard to other portals, it is true that there is little commonality. This is something I've raised at Wikipedia talk:Wikiportal. Most do have a "news" section of some sort, and Canada and the UK transinclude their current events pages.
How the Portal is formatted really depends on what purpose it has been given. I envisage the Australia and NZ portals as "Main Pages" for Australia- and NZ-related content, for both editors and readers. --Cyberjunkie | Talk 09:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

New Shortcut!

Hello you NZ lot. Great portal page - lots of the my inspiration for P:L came from your page. But it was far too long to type out all the time, so I've made you a nice new shortcut - P:NZ. Use it well! Deano 19:59, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Shortcut

Portal future?

I missed updating the page last weekend; my sister was staying with me, and she's an early riser like me and I forgot about it. No one seems to have noticed. This leads me to wonder how many Wikipedians use this portal. There was once a way to see how many hits a page had, but it was turned off because the server load created was too high, so there probably is no way to know.

I've certainly enjoyed working on the portal, but I am aware that apart from Grutness updating the pool of DYK articles from time to time, and Cyberjunkie's layout tweaks, there aren't a lot of other Wikipedians involved with it. I know some of the more active Kiwi Wikipedians at least have it on their watchlists, but unless they also watch all the subpages, they won't see the updates apart from my crossing off featured articles/pictures on this discussion page.

Anyone got any suggestions on how we can make the portal more useful/interesting/lively, or should we conclude that it was an experiment which didn't quite work?-gadfium 18:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

NZ Stock Exchange and NZ Companies

Good afternoon. I have made a template for stock ticker for NZ Stock Exchange Listed companies - see Template:Nzx. This is so that we can easily put NZX stock symbols with publicly listed companies that we are updating on Wikipedia. Also to that end I have also made a new category Category:Companies traded on the New Zealand Stock Exchange.

I have also given a modified version of how this could be put together by using the Infobox_Company template incorporating the above changes on the article on Fonterra. I was looking for feedback on these changes as I would like to include and update all Stock Exchange listed companies while I'm holiday this Christmas :) --Tom Webb 02:19, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Selected articles and pictures

I've renamed two sections of the portal to Selected articles and Selected pictures instead of calling them "Featured articles" and "Featured pictures" as the items we select are not of Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Featured pictures quality, and this may lead to confusion. There has been a discussion of this at Wikipedia_talk:Portal#Overloading_.22featured.22_terminology.

I haven't changed the actual subpage names; they probably won't confuse anyone.

On another note, I plan to archive most of this talk page in the next week, leaving useful links such as to the archive page and DYK candidates page, and leaving the queues of articles/pictures to be selected (but without the lists of previous selections, as that's what the archive page is for).-gadfium 02:16, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

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