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Fair use campaign: next steps

I am moving to close this discussion as there has been significant input from the community and a consensus has been established. To begin with, it is clear from this discussion that all parties involved value Wikipedia’s role in sharing information. It is invaluable and we have all invested countless hours in improving a global resource.

Any action which could be interpreted as political should be thoroughly discussed and scrutinised as it affects Wikipedia’s credibility. As such, it is important that WMF Legal have confirmed that it is “technically possible and legally feasible if there is community consensus in support” (own emphasis added). Establishing community consensus is integral to deciding the course of action.

The result of this discussion is that there is a broad consensus to have a banner for readers in Australia about the proposed change to Australian law. There is precedent for this form of advocacy, particularly around Freedom of Panorama. The consensus supports raising the awareness of readers in Australia, while ensuring readers are “empower[ed] … to get access to knowledge and information” (wording from WMF Legal).

Users have asked for evidence of how the change in law will affect Wikipedia since the servers are based in the US and obey US laws around fair use. This is a challenging question, but it should be noted that Australian uploading files to the US may be falling foul of the current law. If this is the case, or has perhaps prevented people from uploading content, this would directly impact Wikipedia. It is however, next to impossible to quantify.

The biggest bone of contention has been the role of Wikipedia in what is a political issue. Some editors feel very strongly that a banner supporting the change in the law would breach Wikipedia’s principals of neutrality. However, as a website hosting at least half a million non-free files and making them globally available the English Wikipedia has in effect taken a stance that it supports Fair Use. A banner supporting the proposed law change not only has consensus from the community, but reflects Wikipedia’s own practices. By running this banner Wikipedia is not supporting a particular party, but is stating an opinion on a particular matter. Creating a website which is based around open knowledge is indeed a political act. Where a policy change may enhance Wikipedia’s goal, it would be appropriate for the community to support it should they choose to do so. For those who remained concerned about neutrality, I recommend contributing to the draft article currently being prepared on the subject.

As is appropriate, Wittylama has stated that the banner and landing page will be factual and avoid hyperbole while still being advocacy. The weight of opinion in this discussion is in favour of having a banner. It is worth remembering that this is the first step in the process for approval (more details here). Thank you all for taking part in this discussion, and for remaining cool in a discussion which has got right to the heart of the ideals which are part of Wikipedia.

User:Wittylama has requested on WP:ANRFC for this discussion to be closed so I thought I would step in. For disclosure, though I have worked with Wittylama in the past this is my first involvement in the discussion, and I am not an Australian citizen, so do not have a stake in the outcome. Nev1 (talk) 21:26, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I've moved this sub-heading down to make this a new section to ensure visibility rather than it being lost in the earlier thread. Note: This proposal has been advertised by watchlist geonotice, Talkpage message to all 1,700 users in Category:Australian Wikipedians, on the Public Policy and Australian mailing lists, and on the WikipediaWeekly Facebook group.

As described in the above section "#Fair Use recommendation for Australian law, could WP have a role in this?" the Australian productivity commission recently handed down a report into Australian Intellectual Property law (Report), and one of its key recommendations was the introduction of the principle of Fair Use - to replace the current Australian system of Fair Dealing. This is not the first time a government inquiry has recommended this (e.g. the 2014 Australian Law Reform Commission's report Copyright and the Digital Economy). Several of Wikimedia's allied communities in Australia are fighting for this change - notably the public education sector (see for example the "Fair Use And Why Australian Schools Need It" documents published by the Copyright Advisory Groups (Schools and TAFEs)) and the Libraries sector (see the Australian Libraries Copyright Council submission into this enquiry[1]).

I propose that English Wikipedia supports this campaign with a banner which sends people to a campaign page on-wiki with more information about the wider campaign for the introduction of Fair Use in Australia. I propose that this be limited by the following methods. The banner would:

  1. only displayed to logged-out readers, on the English-Wikipedia
  2. only on mainspace articles which include a Fair-Use image.
  3. only to people viewing from an Australian IP address.
  4. that the campaign be for a fixed period of a few weeks.
  5. that it have an "x" to dismiss (which stops that person seeing the banner again)
  6. that the banner not block/obscure page content.

(originally I proposed an image-overlay system but that's probably too complex to manage - let's just stick with our tried-and-true technology of banners)

Notably, Slaporte (WMF) from WMF-Legal department has confirmed that this proposal is technically possible and legally feasible if there is community consensus (see the above section #Note from Wikimedia Legal), and Damph from the Australian Digital Alliance (ADA) has confirmed it is willing and able to support such a campaign (with their staff and documentation resources).

I know that Neutrality is a core principle of Wikipedia and political advocacy is something we are very hesitant about. However, I argue that providing free knowledge is not a politically neutral stance and Fair Use is something which the English Wikipedia community uses on a daily basis - even though it is currently illegal in Australia. If Australian Wikipedia editors are benefiting every day from that system because our website is hosted in the USA, then we should be willing to advocate for it in our home jurisdiction - especially if our library and education allies would greatly benefit from this copyright law change but don't have the visible platform to advocate for it. Wikipedia has done political advocacy before - notably in Europe, promoting Freedom of Panorama legislation and globally, against SOPA. I believe that Fair Use is "core business" to how we operate so it is valid for us to promote awareness of it.

Creationistas - Australian Copyright Is Broken

I've included here on the right an example of a video produced by the ADA in their 2013 Fair Use campaign "The Creationistas - Australian Copyright is Broken", which directed people to the dedicated campaign website (internet archive link) and their main site http://digital.org.au/. The ADA could potentially make something like this (or re-adjust this one) for a Wikipedia project page about this e.g. at [[Wikipedia:Fair Use for Australia]] (or something like that) and the ADA, in collaboration with WMF-legal and WikimediaAustralia could handle any mainstream media enquiries (as/when appropriate).

So, I know there's been some comments above, but now there is confirmation that this idea is legally and technically possible (equivalent to the Commons FoP campaign discussion or the MetaWiki Free Bassel campaign discussion) perhaps a straw poll here, would be the best way forward to determine Australian-community consensus? If you support this idea, or disagree with this proposal, have comments/questions, or would like to propose a design for such a banner please comment! Wittylama 11:53, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

JarrahTree - Fair Use, a broad copyright exception, is not and has never been part of Australian copyright law. We [currently] have a different system called Fair_dealing#Australia in which the kinds of 'allowed' actions have to be specifically listed in the act, otherwise it's not allowed (e.g. it's only since 2006 that using a VCR is technically legal in Aus). Fair Use makes you apply a 'fairness' test to any kind of use of copyrighted work - which is what we do on Wikipedia any time we upload a fair-use image (we clarify that it's "small" and "only used once" and "can't be replaced with a free image" etc. etc.). We do this on english Wikipedia because the website is hosted in the USA, but the legality of australians utilising this american law, when uploading australian images while they're sitting in australia - is questionable. For that reason most of the other language editions of wikipedia don't allow fair-use images because most of their editors and readers are physically located in juristictions which don't have fair use (e.g. Germany). This proposal I'm making here will not change the way Wikipedia operates - but it would radically change the way the school and library sectors (among others) work. It would save them MILLIONS in fees they pay to the copyright agency for their "statutory license" they negotiate to have the right to use things which the public use for free (e.g. TV shows, websites) in public schools and libraries (that's the "par VB of the copyright act" notice you might have seen at the start of any printouts you received at university, etc. Wittylama 14:05, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
In short, because logged-in users are a very small proportion of the visitors to Wikipedia but are the ones most keenly affected by 'banner fatigue' from various surveys, announcements etc, and, after all, this proposal is aimed to raise awareness "in the general public" rather than within the wikipedia-editing community. Another way of putting it: no doubt some active wikipedians would complain that they weren't consulted and don't like ANY banners - hiding the banners from Wikipedia-editors would reduce their frustration without decreasing the visibility to the target audience. Wittylama 12:31, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
Lankiveil (speak to me) 11:43, 28 February 2017 (UTC).
Further to this, I've advertised this discussion on the Australian Chapter mailing list, and on the WikipediaWeekly facebook group[2] - can anyone recommend other places to notify people (primarily targeting Australians, not merely for obtaining comments from those who won't be affected)? Wittylama 16:36, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment weighing in again on behalf of the Australian Digital Alliance. Now that we've made it through our annual conference, we'll have capacity to start working on the prep material for this whenever there is consensus in the community. In terms of timing - the public consultation on the PC recommendations has finished, and submissions are now being considered by government. It's not clear if we'll have a response in 3 weeks or 3 months (or even 3 years - some reports never really get responded to) - but I'd say that anytime in the next 3-4 months would be a good time to run the campaign. That way the messaging would be going to government as they are making decisions, and hopefully it will help to counter some of the public perception that fair use is just aimed at harming creators. We've got some new videos from our Forum last week that we're hoping to cut into short mythbusting FAQs, that could also go on the external website. I'll look at starting some ideas for the Wikipedia landing page on the campaign to share as an example, so people have a a better idea of what it would actually look like.Damph (talk) 01:19, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
For some comparison, here is the landing page of the 2015 Freedom of Panorama advocacy campaign in Europe, and these were the proposed banners accompanying that campaign. Perhaps Seddon (WMF), as the person with the most campaign banner experience on-wiki, can suggest some other examples that have been used for other advocacy campaigns around the world? Wittylama 11:33, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support As a long term Australian Wikimedian, it's great to see this campaign happening, and fair use in Australian copyright law would have educational benefits at all levels. I don't see why we can't push for change, and add our voice to those in the sector already doing so. Orderinchaos 01:43, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose As I've noted previously, this is a good thing for individual editors and Wikimedia Australia to advocate, but Wikipedia itself should not be seen as advocating for a change in this contested policy area as it would raise concerns around its neutrality and reliability. For instance, would readers who see this banner really assume that the Copyright law of Australia article is going to be neutral? Nick-D (talk) 07:51, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
I thank you for your contribution Nick-D. To clarify - would you have also been opposed to the Freedom of Panorama advocacy campaign (if it had been applicable to Australia) and the SOPA-shutdown (which did happen in Australia too), or is your concern related specifically to this subject?
More generally, I empathise with your concern (which I understand to be akin to WP:NOTADVOCATE and the need to uphold WP:NPOV in what people see on WP). My response to this valid critique is that I believe that our core principle of advocating for "free knowledge" is NOT a politically neutral stance, and running a "free knowledge" encyclopedia is an inherently disruptive/political act (not as much in Australia as in, say, China, but still). I believe it is possible to make a landing-page that describes the facts of why "we" believe Fair Use is an important thing for Australia - and dispells myths about it being spread by the Copyright-lobby - in a way that is factual and the community feels represents/advocates for our values. See, for example, the landing page for the FoP campaign on Meta:Freedom of Panorama in Europe in 2015 which, in my personal opinion, did not put the Neutrality of the article Freedom of Panorama in question. I suspect that you won't be swayed by my argument here, and that's fair enough, but I thought I ought to put it down in words for the record nevertheless :-) Wittylama 11:23, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with the political arguments around those other campaigns (the whole SOPA thing went over my head) or the balance of public opinion. I do have a mild degree of familiarity with the political arguments here, and am highly uncomfortable with Wikipedia being seen to campaign against prominent authors such as Anna Funder ([3]) and possibly the Australian Labor Party, which previously opposed changes to liberalise copyright laws applying to books. Wikimedia Australia and individual editors should certainly participate in this debate, but let's keep Wikipedia neutral. Nick-D (talk) 10:29, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
Hi again Nick-D, the article you link to does indeed quote a noted Australian author opposing the introduction of Fair Use (published pre-empting the Productivity Commission's recommendation). Also quoted in that article is a piece by the SMH Economics editor pointing out that there were 5 (now 6) government enquiries over the years (commissioned by both sides of the political divide) which have recommended the introduction of Fair Use - so it's a bipartisan issue in that sense. However, that a fair amount of mainstream media publicity on the productivity commission report is actually focusing on the other main recommendation of the commissions' report relating to book publishers: the removing of Parallel Import Restrictions (see Parallel_import#Australia). This recommendation was in the same report, and affects the same peakbody (Copyright Agency Ltd - CAL) but is an entirely different part of law - its about trade restrictions, not copyright. This distinction is lost on the general public and CAL are deliberately conflating these two stories together to get them both shot down rather than deal with them separately on their respective merits (quick google search showing how the two stories are often mixed together). See this report in the SMH about the difference between the two, and how the Publishing industry is affected by each. Damph (from the ADA, above, who is also the copyright-advisor to the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee) tells me that she spends a lot of time/effort busting myths about Fair Use which are actually critiques of Parallel Import laws. This proposal for Wikipedia is solely about the Fair Use recommendation, not about Parallel import Restrictions. A major purpose is to demystify to the Australian public what Fair Use actually looks like in practice - since our infobox images of logos, album covers, movie posters etc are a perfect example of the system in daily use (and in a way that in no-way commercially disadvantages the copyright holder). Wittylama 11:39, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
Nick-D, there's nothing apolitical about free knowledge: it is a radical force. And have you been sitting by for years thinking that the male, white, middle-class, anglophone underpinnings of en.WP weren't skewed in the first place? So, let's not be precious about "neutrality" when it comes to injecting sanity into Australia's antiquated and slightly corrupt system of copyright. Tony (talk) 13:49, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
You are both making the mistake of thinking that I have some kind of opposition to reforms to introduce fair use in Australia: I don't, as long as the reforms are appropriately balanced to also protect the reasonable rights of content creators/owners (eg, the people who do the work to create the material Wikipedia is based on and have a right to be remunerated for their efforts). My concern is that as this can be a highly contested political space in Australia, Wikipedia should not be advocating for only one side of the debate. Nick-D (talk) 22:09, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
Dear StAnselm, thank you for adding your voice, even if it is strongly against my suggestion :-) To clarify, could you elaborate? While I respect your opinion, my understanding of NotAdvocate is that it is about the content of the articles themselves, and that Wikipedia's very mission statement is 'advocacy' - for free-knowledge. As I asked Nick-D above, who expressed similar concern, would you have also been opposed to the Freedom of Panorama advocacy campaign (if it had been applicable to Australia) and the SOPA-shutdown (which did happen in Australia too) - on the basis that you're opposed *any* such activity? Or, is your concern related specifically to this subject - Fair Use in Australian copyright law? Wittylama 20:42, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I was opposed to the SOPA-shutdown as well, and thought that it violated WP:POINT. Yes, I know WP:NOTADVOCATE and WP:POINT are written in the context of articles, but I think they apply more widely - we should not be engaging in political advocacy. I have no idea where you get the idea that "Wikipedia's very mission statement is 'advocacy' - for free-knowledge". In fact, I didn't know we had a mission statement. StAnselm (talk) 21:22, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
you're quite right that wikipedia doesn't have a formal "mission statement" in the way that the WMF as a registered charity does. Nevertheless, in the imprecise sense of "this is what we do", the creation and dissemination of "free knowledge" (Especially in the libre sense of the phrase) is what Wikipedia[ns] does/do. I personally believe that the NPOV and Free Knowledge concepts are - in an era of fake-news and information paywalls respectively - inherently political/advocacy positions. I appreciate that this does not change your opinion on how Wikipedia's banner space should be used (or not used, in this case!), but I hope we can amicably agree to disagree on that point :-) Wittylama 22:06, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support as per nom. Would be useful for WP and other Australian organisations. Jjamesryan (talk | contribs) 22:46, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment I also have similar concerns to the two opposes above. I don't think this at the level of SOPA or the proposed FoP laws in Europe, because this simply isn't mission-critical – whatever happens with fair use in Australia, it isn't going to change the way Wikipedia operates, no extra images would be uploadable to Commons, nor would any images have to be deleted. Fair-use would be nice to have, and would help out free-knowledge organisations etc, but I don't think Wikipedia itself should be doing the advocating. However, this isn't an outright "oppose" because I'm not exactly sure what you are proposing in terms of details. I could be more supportive if it turns out to be a relatively neutrally worded banner/landing page, that informs rather than advocates – i.e. says something along the lines of "this is how Wikipedia uses U.S. fair use, this is the situation in Australia (fair dealing), here's what supporters say, here's what opposers say, make up your own mind" (all appropriately linked and referenced). - Evad37 [talk] 00:37, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
That's certainly not what's being proposed as far as I can see. Yes, I'd be somewhat OK with that, although I don't really see the need. But we must not abandon neutrality just because it will be a banner rather than an article. StAnselm (talk) 08:32, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
StAnselm is correct in that this proposal is indeed one to advocate for a specific position - in support of the introduction of Fair Use in Australian copyright law. It would be disingenuous of me to soften that statement here just to try to encourage your support and then for you to be unpleasantly surprised later! I think a neutral description of the responses to the Fair Use proposals over the years could be a viable Wikipedia article (an expansion of Copyright law of Australia#Fair dealing perhaps?). However that said Evad37, I certainly DO intend that the banner(s) and landing-page text will be written in a way that is factually accurate and not hyperbolic - in keeping with Wikipedia's general 'voice'. While Damph will be the primary author (she's the actual Lawyer in this field after all) I fully intend for the banner message(s) and landing page to be commented-on/critiqued by the community for style-appropriateness and checked by WMF-legal and WMF-comms teams etc. (as per the relevant WMF policy on these matters). As I've just replied to Nick-D, above, a major component of this proposal is to demonstrate to the Australian public what Fair Use looks like in daily practice - and how our use of logos, album covers etc. is not harming the copyright owner.
Finally, you're right that if Fair Use were to be added to Australian law, it wouldn't change what content appears on Wikipedia (unlike the FoP debates in Europe). However it would reduce the sense of Forum shopping that we currently have - where Australians are viewing Australian content in Australia, but relying on an American copyright exception to do so - not to mention how it would save the public education and library sectors $millions in fees for the use of otherwise publicly available content. Wittylama 12:24, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
@Wittylama: I'm not Australian. General comment, I'd like to see impact on Wikimedia projects front and center, as it's not nearly as obvious as FOP. You've made a few comments such as the one I'm replying to with some potential impacts; I think those should be expanded upon and form the core rationale for any action. Finally, tiny comment on "This image is illegal to view in Australia under copyright law" possible image replacement text. Is that really true -- illegal to view? Mike Linksvayer (talk) 18:09, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
Mike Linksvayer - the original suggestion of "This image is illegal to view in Australia under copyright law" was one of my very earliest suggested possible phrases and has been rightly critiqued given that the 'view' aspect is debatable (as you say) and that it's possible that in the particular circumstance of any particular image its usage might fall under one of the allowed exceptions in the Fair Dealing legislation (e.g. "section 41: criticism or review" - though perhaps not if viewed in the context of any downstream re-used of Wikipedia articles). What the text of the banner we do end up using should be has yet to be decided - and will be devised to be legally accurate yet 'pithy'! Possibly something very simple like "This image is Fair Use" which might provoke people to click the banner and read more. As for 'potential impacts' on english wikipedia directly - the thing is that we are already using an American system to operate our site - this legal change would normalise our actions for Australians in the Australian jurisdiction even if the content stays the same. There was for a long time the fact that the Copyright Agency Ltd. was ALSO collecting royalties for websites used in schools that were CC licensed - but they've finally stopped doing that at least... Wittylama 18:36, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
Wittylama Ah, apologies for missing the existing critique above which I now see. I shouldn't have bothered mentioning the proposed text, but thanks for the patient explanation anyway. What I'm really interested in is the impact on Wikimedia projects aspect! Mike Linksvayer (talk) 18:43, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
Mike Linksvayer To that specific question - I would argue that English Wikipedia's use of logos etc. in relevant articles is probably the most visible use (other than google's snippets?) of Fair Use in action in Australia. There is much misinformation about what the concept would do to the local publishing industry, for example, so it is the very fact that wikipedia is already using Fair Use that is important here - as a "public awareness campaign" for our readers. This is why I'm increasingly thinking that the banner text should probably simply say "This image is Fair Use" (and click through for more info) because it is plain and simple statement of fact (not an overtly political-advocacy statement). Wittylama 15:05, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
Formalising my !vote as reluctant oppose. I know I'm in the minority here, and I certainly do appreciate the sentiment of the supporters – but I just think think that Wikipedia should stick to being an encyclopedia, and only advocate on the most important issues that directly interfere with that. - Evad37 [talk] 00:53, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - Australia needs to catch up with the rest of the world in this area. Twitbookspacetube 01:24, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment - While I would happily advocate for Fair Use law in Australia personally, I'm reserving my judgement regarding the case for/against Wikipedia taking a position on it. I understand and appreciate the comments made by both supporters and opponents. --Danimations (talk) 01:47, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose : This is joke, isn't it? All this does is add less than useful banner pointing out the way people should behave by stinking filthy lawyers. Really, who needs it. As for Witty please stop with the unhelpful commentary and grooming as it can be construed as deliberate bias. Arianewiki1 (talk) 07:07, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
    • Admin Note - User:Arianewiki1, people have made cases against what's being proposed here without the need for personal attacks, especially the (hopefully hyperbolic) accusation of "grooming", which could easily be misinterpreted. Your comments are out of line and inappropriate. Please make sure future comments are in accordance with the civility policy. Lankiveil (speak to me) 09:50, 2 March 2017 (UTC).
      • @Lankiveil: Eh? There is no evidence of personal attack here, and you saying / accusing so avoids WP:GF. Your link to child grooming is disgusting slight, where my meaning for 'grooming' clearly refers to Wittyama attempts in influencing responses by further unnecessary comments towards Users. (Suggest you get a dictionary.) Either immediately remove this false accusation/implication of 'child grooming' or things will get really nasty. I.e. WP:ANI. Thanks. Arianewiki1 (talk) 00:56, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - Agree that the recommended changes should be supported as described in the opening paragraph Ilenart626 (talk) 08:18, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support, as per nominator. Resnjari (talk) 09:20, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support as per nominator. User:Ragingfreddy
  • Support as per nominator. Matt (talk) 11:15, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support We should get behind this. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:17, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support as this site requires the progression of copyright law, as indicated by the SOPA shutdown and i believe we can take steps to ensure resources are available for this site by campaigning for a change in the fair use law in Australia.--- || RuleTheWiki || (talk) 11:25, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support – can also be a highly misunderstood concept. 4TheWynne(talk)(contribs) 11:36, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • I was summoned by bot to express an opinion. I've been watching the conversation, feel generally supportive and do not have anything significant to add. I guess the one-word opinion is Support. --Scott Davis Talk 11:37, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support, as per nominator. Paul Foxworthy (talk) 11:40, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support, has strong merit Screech1616 (talk) 12:19, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support, has strong merit, I knew we had some kind of booby trapped fair use arrangement, my son just finished High School, and it was a real minefield for him to copy material for assignments Salbayeng (talk) 12:23, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Wholeheartedly support. Fair use is an incredibly important concept to educational resources like Wikipedia, and has many other benefits besides. Opposition on the grounds that it "wouldn't change what content appears on Wikipedia" are ridiculous and America-centric. If the same debate were happening in America, it would affect what content can be displayed here, and on principle I believe that we should strive for laws which improve what would theoretically be available to Wikipedia, even if the particular country's laws don't directly impact the content on the site. I would also suggest that there is no particular reason to only display it to logged-out users. I would also guess that the technical capability already does exist for a full-page takeover, like the original proposition. They used it for SOPA/PIPA, remember? I would still support the banner system though, rather than a full overlay. The overlay would be more obtrusive than necessary in this case, I feel. --Sauronjim (talk) 13:14, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for the support comment Sauronjim but just to clarify - the very original proposal was suggesting an 'image overlay' not a full-page takeover. That is, to somehow obscure the Fair-Use image itself with a message saying "this is Fair Use" (or something similar) until dismissed. That would have been technically feasible but would require some bespoke coding, whereas the geolocated banner is a standard piece of software (although we still need to restrict it further to be only seen on articles which also include fair-use images - which will be, 95%+ of the time, in the infobox). As for the "changed content on Wikipedia" argument - you mightn't agree with it, but it is nevertheless factually correct that even if the Australian law changes, what people see on the English Wikipedia won't change. Maybe just maybe it would cause other countries to adopt Fair Use too (like some countries are following us with plain pack cigarettes) in which case the Wikipedia language editions serving those countries might change their local wiki policy to allow Fair Use - but that's a stretch! :-) Wittylama 13:28, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
Ah right, I misunderstood what you meant by the overlay. Nevertheless, I stand by my arguments against the "changed content on Wikipedia" argument. Yes, it may be factually correct that what people see would not change. But I believe on principle that if one country (most notably America) making the same change would result in a change for the better or worse to Wikipedia, then Wikipedia should take a stand in favour of or against any similar change in any country, or at least any country which primarily uses that language version of Wikipedia. That is to say, I believe that we should here make the same decision as would be made if America's current laws matched Australia's current laws, and America were considering making the same changes Australia is currently. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sauronjim (talk • contribs) 18:49, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment - I disagree with Wittylama's assertion that

    our core principle of advocating for "free knowledge" is NOT a politically neutral stance, and running a "free knowledge" encyclopedia is an inherently disruptive/political act

We are (or strive to be) neutral in that we don't favour one political group or set of ideas over another. The fact that our principles differ from some political groups does not make us "inherently disruptive/political", and I don't think it helps our case by making such an assertion.
Our purpose (or "mission statement") is to "benefit readers by acting as an encyclopedia", "to create a free encyclopedia"; it is not actually "advocating" for anything. In particular our purpose is simply to provide free knowledge, not to change anybody's mind about anything (including that knowledge should be free). There's a fundamental difference between doing something, and advocating that others should do the same thing. Our purposes is explicitly the former and not the latter.
I think a banner that advocates a particular view (no matter how much it helps our mission) is a blatant violation of WP:NOTADVOCATE and contrary to our principle of neutrality.
That being said, I agree with Evad37 that a banner that is neutrally worded, stating the facts (or a linking to a page that does) but not advocating a particular view, might be a reasonable compromise between our desire to advocate for what helps us, and our pillars of neutrality and non-advocacy. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:38, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Unsure about the banner, but I'd like to be kept informed myself of how I can support this campaign. I note that Wikimedia legal have no objection to it provided it has "community support". It certainly has mine. Andrewa (talk) 18:05, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Of course, we've never had "Fair Use", so I don't think you can say it needs to be "protected". StAnselm (talk) 01:05, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support As an Australian, I support this by the nomination and will be beneficial to our area.
  • Support. My initial hesitations are in line with Evad37's concerns about a neutrally-worded banner and landing page, which I agree, should inform rather than advocate, following WP:NPOV. B.T.Riley (talk) 04:41, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per nom. Flickerd (talk) 05:05, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support It’s mystifying that we don’t already have “fair use” provisions. The arguments about WP’s neutrality are completely vacuous. WP has a policy of advocating neutrality in articles. It does not have a neutral policy about everything in the universe. It clearly advocates for free access to information for instance. Would you oppose that just because of some Quixotic devotion to neutrality? —☸ Moilleadóir ☎ 06:34, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per nom. TFlarz (talk) 12:06, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment: Doesn't §44 of the Copyright Act (1968) already provide a basis of usage on a site of education such as Wikipedia? it being an online encyclopaedia etc. - Imperator Talk 13:17, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
Here's a link: COPYRIGHT ACT 1968 - SECT 44 : Inclusion of works in collections for use by places of education. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:43, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
Imperator Honorius FYI: I've notified a bunch of friends off-wiki who are Australian copyright lawyers of your question, in case they can shed some well-informed light on this particular point. I should also reiterate what I've noted above that regardless of whether Fair Use is included in Australian copyright law, that will not change the actual contents of English Wikipedia (or Commons, for that matter) as we already operate the website under the rules of it's American jurisdiction. If, for some reason, an Australian wikipedian were sued for uploading a file to WP under our Fair Use practices (e.g. the way I personally uploaded the logo of the Copyright Agency Ltd itself - under fair use!) it would indeed be interesting to see how an Australian court would interpret §44 as potentially applicable. My guess is that §44 has limited applicability to Wikipedia because that clause requires (1.b) "the collection [of works] is described in an appropriate place...as being intended for use by places of education" and also that (1.c) "the collection consists principally of matter in which copyright does not subsist". Wikipedia certainly can be used in educational institutions and does include out-of-copyright content. However, we go out of our way to ensure that our content it can be used by anyone for any purpose (not just in formal education) and the majority of the content (on Wikipedia, and Commons) is in-copyright and using a share-alike license. Furthermore, section 44 (2) adds some seriously complicated constraints on the whole thing - saying that 44 does't apply if two-or-more works by the same author are included and the same publisher is involved in the preceding 5 years. Wittylama 14:53, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
Comment Copyright geek (formerly with the ADA) chiming in, I agree with Witty section 44 won't apply to wikipedia articles. Wikipedia articles also won't be covered by the slightly wider education exception in s200AB as it can only be used by a body administrating an educational institution. Trishhepworth (talk) 16:05, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support I think this is a no brainer. Tango Mike Bravo (talk) 15:20, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Cautious Support, keeping in mind User:Evad37 observation that getting an Australian fair use will not have any direct effect on Wikipedia. However, I think that generally speaking having a more sane copyright regime here in Australia would be of considerable indirect benefit to Wikipedia and the free culture movement generally. I also second User:StAnselm's suggestion that we write a fact-based article on the controversy, to sort out the misleading linking of parallel import laws and fair use. If we're going to have banners getting that article up and running should be a pre-requisite so that we can link to it. Lankiveil (speak to me) 00:25, 4 March 2017 (UTC).
  • Support I note the concerns, in particular those raised by Nick-D but I believe that it is time for the law to catch up with the real world. Fair use is a vitally important tool for education. The reasoning by several that the core principle of Wikipedia to advocate for "free knowledge" is important. "Free knowledge" is unfortunately a very political stance, particularly in the current political climate in both the US and Australia. Wikipedia's raison d'être supports taking this action. AWHS (talk) 08:11, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support—Tony (talk) 13:50, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per nom. Ypna (talk) 01:19, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - the Fair Use proposal affects much more in Australia than Wikimedia, and, I believe, would place an unfair burden on authors to legally defend their rights against breaches of the proposed law.----Design (talk) 06:31, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support Freedom of speech is necessary. While it might not affect some other countries, fair use has been stepped on by other websites. I don't want Wikipedia to go down the same boat. The Ninja5 Empire (Talk) 10:19, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support This concept is a notable omission from Australian jurisprudence, and as a service that's widely used in Australia, which partially relies on this concept, I don't see the problem with Wikipedia at the very least publicizing the connection between this sort of knowledge-sharing and Fair Use in the broader sense. shannonr (talk) 03:51, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose As an intellectual property lawyer, I think Australian "fair dealing" works okay in practice, and wholesale replacement with a roughly equivalent, but different, legal principle imported from another jurisdiction and that has its own issues is not a sensible way to deal with any issues with the present law. It's not black and white. It's obviously fine for individual informed users to advocate for one or the other but I don't think it's the role of Wikipedia to advocate for either one or the other side in this. I also question the extent to which Wikipedia can produce quality advocacy that reflects the informed views of the community, given that many members of the community don't properly understand the issue. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:27, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Concern The concept of "Fair Use" is American, but the last thing we want to do is let Americans impose even more of their onerous copyright laws upon us. I realize that technically this is different, but politically if one US regulation is good, why arn't they all good? In practice Australian penalties and courts are not (yet) draconian, so the issue is of very limited relevance here as in the USA. (We can (very quietly) thank Trump that the Free Trade Agreement will not rewrite more of our copyright laws.) The mickey mouse act (70 year terms) would be a better target.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Tuntable (talk • contribs) 07:02, March 7, 2017 (UTC)
    • That's a good point. In more than 10 years on Wikipedia and Wiki Commons, I've never experienced any issues due to the lack of fair use in Australia. In contrast, the laws around the expiry of copyright have been a significant barrier - for instance, in sourcing images of historic events. Nick-D (talk) 10:36, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
    • The current situation seems to be that whatever copyright laws are made in the USA become Australian copyright law as part of the next Free Trade Agreement in the vain hope that we might be able to sell them a few bags of sugar or whatever. I do not know if FTAs actually benefit us or not, but we should not be trading off basic legal issues like this one. So calling it Fair Use is an issue. As I said below, the big one should be that works unpublished and unavailable to be purchased in Australia should not be copyrightable (which is the point of copyright -- to encourage publishers). That covers both things never intended for publication and things which publishers are playing games with.Tuntable (talk) 23:54, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment: Following the recommendation of StAnselm, Evad37 Lankiveil et. al, I've started a draft outlining the history of the Fair Use/Fair Dealing debate in Aus - in my usersandbox at: User:Wittylama/History of Fair Use proposals in Australia.
It's obviously not 'finished' but it's a start, and could be used as a standalone new article on the History of Fair Use proposals in Australia (or something to that effect) or an additional sub-section for any one of Copyright law of Australia#Fair dealing, Fair dealing#Australia, or Fair use#Fair dealing. Obviously I have a COI (in the Wikipedia-neutrality sense) on this topic so I will not be moving it to mainspace myself - someone else can when/if they think it is "ready". PalaceGuard008 & Trishhepworth - as a self-confessed copyright lawyers it would be really helpful if you could help improving that article!
Also, PalaceGuard008, in response to your concern, I want to clarify that it is for this very reason that Damph - the executive officer of the ADA[4] - would be the primary author of the landing page, and the person listed for any media enquiry etc.
Finally, Tuntable - you reference the Free Trade Agreement and how it extended the Australian copyright term to 70 years. In that draft article I just mentioned I've given several references for how both parliamentary enquiries at that time (2004) recommended Fair Use be adopted specifically to balance out that fact. See the section #AUSFTA. Wittylama 13:55, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
Wittylama What you are saying could be interpreted as by trading off Fair Use the 70 year rule and other US imported measures are fair and balanced. I'm not opposing, but I would far prefer none of the US influences than making that type of trade off. Needs consideration. I would prefer specific changes to Australian Copyright that are our own, and NOT called Fair Use. One of those changes that would be fun is that works not published and available in Australia do not get copyright protection, as there are no sales to lose. In other words, a broader and non-US copyright discussion. Tuntable (talk) 23:46, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - While many have brought up concerns over Wikipedia advocating for anything political, I don't see this as Wikipedia advocating for politics, I see it as Wikipedia advocating for itself. Given that it's a relatively non-contentious issue (nearly all opposition has been against the concept of advocacy, rather than what would be advocated itself), I don't see this as being a intrinsically political statement, but rather an attempt to provide an informative platform for discussion and action, and to keep Australian Wikipedians aware of potential law changes that would affect Wikipedia and their usage of it. SellymeTalk 14:01, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Update: Subsequent to this discussion being admin-closed, a video-conf meeting was held including representatives of WMF, ADA, EFA to 'get the ball rolling'. Most importantly, the timing recommendation from ADA is that there will probably be other related legislation debated in federal parliament (regarding to 'Safe Harbours') in the near future - so Fair Use discussion will not be centre-stage until probably May. This is our working-theory timeframe for a banner campaign.
So as not to bore people here with ongoing updates - I've created a project page on Meta with a timeline etc. That will be, eventually, where the banners' landing page will be. For any really major updates (such as, that we're close to 'launch') I'll put a note here (and on the Australian mailinglist). Meanwhile, if you'd like to be involved in drafting the landing page etc, please watchlist that page on Meta.
Also arising from this discussion here is the draft History of Fair Use proposals in Australia page (currently in userspace draft) - help improving that before moving to mainspace would be appreciated.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this discussion thus far, Wittylama 16:11, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Cyclone Althea damage photos

Hi guys,

I recently published a new article on Cyclone Althea, one of Australia's most notable weather events that didn't yet have an article. It's a decent article so far, but it's seriously lacking images of the damage and aftermath in North Queensland. There are plenty of good pictures out there but none are free-use as far as I can tell. While this is a long shot, does anybody have any relevant photos they'd be willing to upload to Commons? I've put out a couple other inquiries in various places so hopefully I get lucky. Any help would be most appreciated! Best, – Juliancolton | Talk 03:20, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

You can use {{External media}} to link to non-free-use images for the moment, and replace it with an actual image if/when any free-use ones turn up. - Evad37 [talk] 04:03, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
@Juliancolton: This one is CC-BY-2.0. That's all I could find Kerry (talk) 06:04, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

self correcting BLP editors

I have no idea whether many other editors are finding this, but I have encountered an increase of subjects of BLP articles who seem to think they have inherent rights to correct articles about themselves... I am not sure whether other editors have encountered this phenomenon, it would be useful to get a sense of whether this needs to go up a step to a wider-scoped noticeboard - or whether there is a sense of inadequate templating inside BLP articles that clearly indicate the requirements of BLP articles... ? anyone with any thoughts of this? JarrahTree 09:44, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I've encountered this. It's definitely a problem at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_Vltchek (although it is not an Australia-related page). The subject, or someone close to him, keeps creating new users and correcting the content. The article has been tagged to reflect this. merlinVtwelve (talk) 03:42, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, on some articles self promotion is really obvious (cannot remember which ones right now) and there is almost always a conflict of interest. Maybe restrict BLP editing rights to confirmed and/or autoconfirmed users only? I doubt that these people will wait to make 10 confirmed edits to edit the article.--Dark-World25 (talk) 21:09, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
Yes, that kind of protection seems to be almost routine if the subject is literate enough to be aware of Wikipedia, and yet hasn't grasped the "encyclopedic" concept. Rags (talk) 17:16, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Western Australia Tourism Awards / Sir David Brand Awards

Hallo, Elizabethan Village includes reference to its having won the Sir David Brand Award for Tourism in 1978. The article David Brand says that "From 1988 to 1995, the West Australian Tourism Awards were named the Sir David Brand Awards ..." (discrepancy of dates, and should it be "Western"?). The website at http://www.tourismcouncilwa.com.au/winners-and-awards doesn't list any winners earlier than 2010, nor the history of the awards. We don't have an article on the awards. Perhaps someone with local sources could create an article about the awards and clarify the question of when they were named after David Brand? PamD 15:02, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Most states do have noticeboards as well - linked this message on wa noticeboard JarrahTree 01:12, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Westfield shopping centre articles have been nominated for deletion

All of the Westfield shopping centre articles have been nominated for deletion. The AfD is a bulk nomination and may be found at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Westfield Innaloo (2nd nomination). Westfield Airport West has been separately nominated at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Westfield Airport West. --AussieLegend (✉) 19:37, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

I've closed this nomination as it was out of process. Nick-D (talk) 23:58, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Populations and the Template:Infobox Australian place

Following a comment on Talk:Malanda, Queensland asking why the population doubled between the 2006 and 2011 census, it highlights an ongoing problem. Many places (at least in Queensland) outside of the large cities are both towns and localities and therefore have UCL and SSC data in the census. So in fact the population of Malanda didn't double, it used UCL for 2006 and SSC for 2011, hence measuring populations over different areas. In this case, the UCL data is smaller than the SSC, but in large towns it can be the other way around (depending on whether the town fits within the locality or overflows into multiple localities, aka suburbs). I was wondering if we should have different population fields in the Australia place template to capture both of these to avoid this confusion. It's not that either one is "right" or "wrong"; it's just fallout from the way the govt re-uses town names as locality names. I do know of a few towns in Queensland which don't share their name with the locality but they are a tiny minority to the number that are gazetted as both town and locality. Kerry (talk) 23:29, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

We already have multiple population fields in the infobox specifically for this purpose. |pop2= was added nearly 4 years ago. --AussieLegend (✉) 19:35, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
Is that the intention of pop2? I've only seen it used very rarely and my recollection is that it was used to show 2006 vs 2011 data (I assume so the reader could tell if the area was trending up or down). So what's the correct way to use them for SSC/UCL issues? I experimented Barcaldine, Queensland (see lede & infobox). Is this how people would like to see it? Should we standardise on which one is used for SSC vs UCL? Kerry (talk) 06:55, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
I think it's not a bad idea, although in many cases it's going to require some further explanation as to how they've defined either of the two (I remember trying to do one town, I think it was Moonta, South Australia, and discovering that they'd wildly changed the UCL boundaries between censuses.) The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:27, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
There's no set use for pop2, it's just meant as an additional population figure, because it was obviously needed at multiple articles. At Clarence Town, New South Wales, it's used to show the population for the township versus the locality. --AussieLegend (✉) 18:52, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
Maybe we need to standardise the use given we are talking about trying to use wikidata and automation to add the 2016 census information. Perhaps we need to add specific fields like pop_ssc, pop_ucl, etc for that purpose of adding the 2016 data and deprecate the use of pop and pop2 over time? That way any problems in automating the 2016 census won't do any harm to existing population data. Kerry (talk) 22:50, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
I think that's a terrific idea data-wise - would need a way to explain it in English for the actual front-facing text. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:00, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
I agree, that's an excellent way to do it. I've also given some thought to setting up the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) as Wikidata items so that it is absolutely clear what the figure applies to (and you can use "criterion used" as a qualifier which could be the ASGS structure). --Canley (talk) 23:58, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Free talk by Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation - Melbourne - Monday 1 May 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

As part of Melbourne's Knowledge Week, Katherine Maher, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation is giving a talk entitled "Democratisation of knowledge with Katherine Maher". It is a free event but you must book a ticket and it is expected to sell out (a similar talk in Brisbane by Sue Gardner a few years ago sold out very quickly). To book, see [5]. Kerry (talk) 02:55, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Anthony Squires

I just noticed this User:Anthony Squires in recent changes. Can somebody more experienced than me please help this user move their draft to a more appropriate space? JennyOz (talk) 05:24, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Politicians POV-pushing again

There are some very insistent new editors, possibly with ties to their respective politicians, repeatedly reverting POV-pushing rewrites at Michael Sukkar and Dawn Walker - can we have some more eyes on both? The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:56, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Maybe it's just one of life's amazing coincidences, but according [6], Joshua Bonney is the media contact for Michael Sukkar, and its User:Joshuabonney which is doing the edits to the Michael Sukkar and it's an WP:SPA. There's also questionable licensing on this image uploaded by User:Joshuabonney. Kerry (talk) 00:12, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
With the Dawn Walker article, there are 5 SPAs (one or two edits each to the article) and all seem intent on removing or blaming the "proto-Communist faction" for the disputed preselection. Kerry (talk) 00:32, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
Just a word of advice if anyone is looking into the COI of these folks, they should be aware of the provisions of WP:DOX, particularly the sentence "Posting another editor's personal information is harassment, unless that person has voluntarily posted his or her own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia". I've asked User:Joshuabonney on his talk page if he has anything to say with regards to COI in line with the site's terms of use. Lankiveil (speak to me) 02:28, 30 March 2017 (UTC).
@Lankiveil: If you think it needs redacting, then please redact it. Kerry (talk) 03:04, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
@Kerry Raymond: I don't think it's a problem given that they have used their real name as their account name (assuming it is really him). Just more making sure that everyone is aware of the rules here because it's very easy to trip over them when looking into COI issues. Lankiveil (speak to me) 03:27, 30 March 2017 (UTC).

Not a politician exactly, but Canberra Airport is seeing an editor really determined to insert a big screed about the owners' stance on marriage equality, in one of the more absurd bits of shoehorning content into articles I've seen. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:32, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

For anyone in the West - Perth, this Friday

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Western_Australia - meetup number 35. JarrahTree 12:21, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Extra eyes

Specially admins, needed at Gun laws in Australia please - on going edit wars JarrahTree 00:04, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

series of IP vandalisms on Gold Coast, Queensland and Sunshine Coast, Queensland

We've had a spate of IPs doing more or less the same edits (removing the photo caption in the infobox) on these articles. The articles were semi-protected for a couple of days, but that's now gone and the IPs are back removing the captions again. Can someone with appropriate superpowers protect these articles again. Thanks Kerry (talk) 05:19, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Done. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:56, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Ben McCormack

Very recently:
"Mr McCormack, a veteran television journalist," (with A Current Affair ) "has been charged with allegedly sending child pornography material after being arrested by detectives from the Sex Crimes Squad earlier today."[1][2]
No BLP yet, may have to watch for such as an attack page or material added prematurely to the A Current Affair page.

References

  1. ^ A Current Affair reporter Ben McCormack charged over alleged child abuse material ABC, 6 April 2106
  2. ^ Megan Palin (6 April 2106) Police raid A Current Affair office, arrest and charge reporter over alleged child porn offences news.com.au

--220 of Borg 07:27, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

NSW Parliament 404s

I've found that the NSW parliament website has changed its urls to use HTTPS, which means that a lot of the old links, those that aren't just to the home page, now are 404s. here is a list of pages that link to the old site. Is there a way of siccing a robot onto fixing the links that are used in articles? Thanks. --122.108.141.214 (talk) 23:36, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Changing http to https is the main purpose of Bender the Bot. --AussieLegend (✉) 02:28, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
With all other URLs besides the main page, it goes to 404 rather than redirecting, though. http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20050526036 becomes https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Pages/PageNotFoundError.aspx?requestUrl=http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20050526036 . The new url for that page is https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Hansard/Pages/HansardFull.aspx#/DateDisplay/HANSARD-1323879322-62997/HANSARD-1323879322-81939 Is there a way to tag all these links as being dead? --122.108.141.214 (talk) 02:54, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Yes, you can add the template {{dead link}} but it's generally better if you can replace it with the new URL or with an archived URL which you can often find at the Wayback Machine. Kerry (talk) 03:23, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
For example the URL above http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20050526036 can be found at the archive as https://web.archive.org/web/20160303203135/http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20050526036 Kerry (talk) 03:29, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Unfortunately, governments and other organisations couldn't care less about the stability of URLs and redesign their websites constantly, leaving us with loads of dead links. If they have just changed domain names or made small changes to the structure of their URLs for their website, it is easy enough to automate or semi-automoate to replace some portion of the URL from the old to the new, but when they completely redesign things (as your example above illustrates), it then becomes a much more manual and conseqeuently very tedious process to fix things. Kerry (talk) 03:37, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Is it possible to get a robot to automatically tag them all as dead? Then we can wait for the internet archive bot to revive them, like it did here. --122.108.141.214 (talk) 04:23, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
I think we may have to manually tag them. If the format of the change is reasonably consistent, we may be able to mitigate future redesigns by creating a template like {{NSW GNR}}, which was created after the NSW Geographical Names Board redesigned its website leaving 1,400 dead links, or {{DoL suburb image}}, which was easily able to compensate for a complete redesign of a map display system, accompanied by a move to a new subdomain. --AussieLegend (✉) 04:35, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
There are two aspects to the question. Is it technically possible and who is volunteering to do it?
Technically. It's easy enough to generate a list of all articles containing http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/ (and I note there are 3130 of them at this moment) and I am happy to share that list with anyone who wants it (I generated it in AWB using Make list > Special > Search link). But to process that list, one has to be consider the range of places that the URL prefix might appear and take the right action. For example, if it appears in the the url field of one of the cite templates AND it has an archiveurl field, then you must add or turn on the deadurl field in that template and not add the dead-link template. If it appears outside of a ref tag pair or within some other template other that the cite templates, then you aren't really sure of how it is being used and therefore if/where the dead-link template is appropriate (probably needs a human decision). If it appears inside a ref-tag pair and doesn't have an archiveurl present inside that same ref-tag pair, you can probably add the deadlink template immediately before the closing ref tag. But it's a messy business as you can see; I've thought of at least 3 scenarios and there are probably others I have not considered. Bots are all very well but they need very precise and correct instructions and need to be extensively tested or else they have the ability to do a lot of harm very quickly and very extensively. Because I am pretty confident that there will be scenarios where URLs are passed to random templates as parameters, I think semi-automated is probably the best you can aim for, as you need to figure out what that template is going to do with the URL to decide if a dead-link template is needed and if so, where it should go. The other situation is where there are templates which generate URLs to that site from parameters and I don't know if any of those exist or not as I don't write a lot of NSW content.
Who is going to do all of this? Not me, I am still up to my ears in my QHR project and doing outreach and don't need a new project right now. Kerry (talk) 05:14, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

I had been tagging them with {{404}}, but someone's been following me around and reverting my edits for no good reason that I can see. Little help, anyone? --122.108.141.214 (talk) 07:38, 8 April 2017 (UTC)--122.108.141.214 (talk) 07:38, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

The correct template is not {{404}} but {{dead link}}, should be added in the format {{dead link|date=April 2017}} and accompanied by an edit summary. That may be why you are being reverted. --AussieLegend (✉) 08:48, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Thankfully, they've noticed that 404 is the same as dead link and have fixed it. --122.108.141.214 (talk) 09:25, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Template:Roman Catholic Archbishops of Brisbane

Recently a number of articles, categories and templates relating to Australia have been changed to replace "Roman Catholic" with "Catholic" in their titles. Further to that, there is a move request relating to this sam issue at Template talk:Roman Catholic Archbishops of Brisbane#Requested move 6 April 2017 on which members of this project may wish to express an opinion, perhaps as part of forming a more general consensus on this issue for naming of Catholic and Roman Catholic and non-Roman Catholic content related to Australia. Kerry (talk) 07:11, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Sorry to be a wet rag - but the wikiproject catholicism project talk page shows there is an unresolved divergence - to expect a consensus - should really occur at that project page - note carefully that the issue is long standing and on-going and hardly resolved in any way JarrahTree 07:22, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
I agree it doesn't look like coming to a consensus at WikiProject Catholicism. I didn't start this Requested Move but, although it relates to just one template at this time, it does have the potential to set a precedent for all Australian Roman Catholic related content (and potentially more widely). This is why it may be something on which this project wants to have a position. I note this project has had previous discussion about the titles of Uniting Church articles. Kerry (talk) 03:29, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Editing outages planned

Details of the outage below (copied from an email). By my calculations this is midnight for Australia's east coast (that is the transition between Wed and Thurs, not Tues to Wed) and 10pm on the Wed for the west coast (and in-between for everyone else in Oz). It is only an outage for editing, reading should still be OK. Kerry (talk) 00:03, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

You will not be able to edit for approximately 20 to 30 minutes on Wednesday, 19 April and Wednesday, 3 May. The test will start at 14:00 [7] UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Thursday 20 April and Thursday 4 May).

Additional / translated short details: [8]

Technical details: [9]

Trove roadshow in May-June for organisations holding colllections

The National Library of Australia is running a Trove roadshow in May-June this year visiting various Australian cities and towns. The intention of the event is to motivate and educate collecting organisations (libraries, etc) to contribute their catalogues into Trove and to digitise more content. As contributors to Australian Wikimedia content, many of us are probably Trove users (for finding reference material and online source material), so I presume we all support having more catalogues and more digitised material accessible via Trove. So if you have any connections or influence with any libraries or any organisation that holds a collection particularly those likely to hold unique material (think of local/family history societies, school archives, etc), encourage them to get involved with Trove starting by attending this event. As I realise that many people who run those kinds of organisations are not always the most tech-savvy, you might like to attend with them to help them understand the "why" and the "how".

Note, even if the event itself is not of direct interest to you, it's still worth attending as a good place to make friends with your local libaries (and GLAMs more generally). Building personal relationships between Wikipedians and GLAMs often leads to interesting opportunities to work more closely with them to improve Australian Wikipedia content. For example, State Library of Queensland contributed over 1,000 citations to Wikipedia's Queensland articles in the recent #1Lib1Ref campaign, about a quarter of the total worldwide. In Western Australia, there are ongoing projects in Fremantle and Toodyay that have involved local organisations including historical societies. NSW State Library has had Wikipedians in Residence and hosted Wikidata events. The National Library of Australia has pre-formatted Wikipedia citations for over 200 million items on Trove. All of these things happened because Australian Wikipedians befriended these organisations, so get out and make some friends!

For more information and to register for specific events (free of charge), please see here. Kerry (talk) 02:15, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Editing outages planned

Details of the outage below (copied from an email). By my calculations this is midnight for Australia's east coast (that is the transition between Wed and Thurs, not Tues to Wed) and 10pm on the Wed for the west coast (and in-between for everyone else in Oz). It is only an outage for editing, reading should still be OK. Kerry (talk) 00:03, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

You will not be able to edit for approximately 20 to 30 minutes on Wednesday, 19 April and Wednesday, 3 May. The test will start at 14:00 [10] UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Thursday 20 April and Thursday 4 May).

Additional / translated short details: [11]

Technical details: [12]

Trove roadshow in May-June for organisations holding colllections

The National Library of Australia is running a Trove roadshow in May-June this year visiting various Australian cities and towns. The intention of the event is to motivate and educate collecting organisations (libraries, etc) to contribute their catalogues into Trove and to digitise more content. As contributors to Australian Wikimedia content, many of us are probably Trove users (for finding reference material and online source material), so I presume we all support having more catalogues and more digitised material accessible via Trove. So if you have any connections or influence with any libraries or any organisation that holds a collection particularly those likely to hold unique material (think of local/family history societies, school archives, etc), encourage them to get involved with Trove starting by attending this event. As I realise that many people who run those kinds of organisations are not always the most tech-savvy, you might like to attend with them to help them understand the "why" and the "how".

Note, even if the event itself is not of direct interest to you, it's still worth attending as a good place to make friends with your local libaries (and GLAMs more generally). Building personal relationships between Wikipedians and GLAMs often leads to interesting opportunities to work more closely with them to improve Australian Wikipedia content. For example, State Library of Queensland contributed over 1,000 citations to Wikipedia's Queensland articles in the recent #1Lib1Ref campaign, about a quarter of the total worldwide. In Western Australia, there are ongoing projects in Fremantle and Toodyay that have involved local organisations including historical societies. NSW State Library has had Wikipedians in Residence and hosted Wikidata events. The National Library of Australia has pre-formatted Wikipedia citations for over 200 million items on Trove. All of these things happened because Australian Wikipedians befriended these organisations, so get out and make some friends!

For more information and to register for specific events (free of charge), please see here. Kerry (talk) 02:15, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikimania 2017

Following the news that no Australians got a scholarship the committee of WMAU decided that is was important for the community for members to be able to access the global community through such events. WMAU will therefore be offering the opportunity for people to attend all the details including how to apply are at https://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Scholarships_policy . Applications close midnight AWST(Perth time) 30th April 2017, if you have any questions please contact me. Gnangarra 15:05, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Eastern Bilby

Hey everyone !

I've just translated Easter Bilby in French (fr:Bilby de Pâques). Since it is still the right period of the year, could it be possible that someone takes a picture of an easter bilby ? That would be great. Thanks a lot ! .Anja. (talk) 22:52, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Important meetup

An important opportunity to discover more about the Wikimedia Foundation Strategy directions, in Melbourne, at

Melbourne Meetup 33 will occur during the visit of Katherine Maher, Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation, for Melbourne Knowledge Week 1-7 May 2017

Date:Wednesday 3 May 2017 Time: 5.00-6.30pm Venue: Green Room, Multicultural Hub, Level 1, 506 Elizabeth Street Melbourne

JarrahTree 00:30, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Upcoming "420 collaboration"

You are invited to participate in the upcoming

"420 collaboration",

which is being held from Saturday, April 15 to Sunday, April 30, and especially on April 20, 2017!

The purpose of the collaboration, which is being organized by WikiProject Cannabis, is to create and improve cannabis-related content at Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in a variety of fields, including: culture, health, hemp, history, medicine, politics, and religion.

WikiProject Australia participants may be particularly interested in the following: Cannabis in Australia.

For more information about this campaign, and to learn how you can help improve Wikipedia, please visit the "420 collaboration" page.

---Another Believer (Talk) 21:34, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

We've had an IP complaint that Category:Australian cannabis traffickers unfairly singles out Shapelle Corby. Are there any other famous Australians involved in cannabis trafficking that we should create articles for to flesh out the category? Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 21:25, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
There is also Category:Australian drug traffickers, of which Corby is a member. Surely that is sufficient, without creating another cat? WWGB (talk) 01:54, 22 April 2017 (UTC)
Neither category is so overpopulated that they couldn't be merged. Lankiveil (speak to me) 05:02, 22 April 2017 (UTC).
We're in the middle of an edit-a-thon right now, so we created some cats with the expectation that they may fill up before the end of the month. That aside, it'd be great if more folks could watchlist Schapelle Corby as we're getting some drive-by IPs pontificating on the page; not sure if someone somewhere is kicking up a fuss on social media and bringing folks here, or what the case may be. Thanks! Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 06:36, 22 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks to WWGB (talk · contribs) for helping find more Australian drug traffickers known specifically for cannabis offenses, and thus helping populate the category. Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 06:39, 22 April 2017 (UTC)
Good old WWGB, first in line, again, to find an excuse to retain the abuse. Why don't you have a good read of this document before promoting the media smear-fest which you call an article:
http://www.expendable.tv/2012/12/the-use-of-wikipedia-to-misrepresent.html
Yes, that is your track record on this page, one which faithfully reports the gutter media's smears and lies, and totally ignores the hundreds of FOI documents which prove her innocence. Quite a chunk of Australia do know this, despite the efforts of the sneering rabble that comprises Australian journalism.
But Wikipedia? The editors here buy into the filth, faithfully re-producing it as credible, whilst censoring the evidential material every time it is referenced.
This page has caused untold damage and hurt to innocent parties over the years. It has played its part in hiding the facts, fostering malice and prejudice, and causing acute suffering to real people.
Some of those who have edited this page are well aware of this, and are amongst you. The rest of you... let me read the script: you will rally round the toxicity, brand me as the lunatic fringe, slap each other on the back for successfully retaining the poison, and sneer at those who don't wallow in the cesspit of cultural abuse and hate.
May karma prevail. Have a nice day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.2.249.121 (talk) 07:55, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

2018 referendum

Capital punishment in Australia#Public opinion ?!?

Crikey! Am I reading this right? Please tell me I'm dreamin'. JennyOz (talk) 10:46, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

It's not a referendum if it's not in the constitution! --Canley (talk) 10:59, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
Oh I see, there's some push to use a referendum to enshrine abolition in the Constitution. Very WP:CRYSTAL to create a redlink for it with a date and all though! --Canley (talk) 11:06, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
Especially as that article is four years old! I've seen no talk about a referendum on this issue, and it's hard to see why one would be conducted. Nick-D (talk) 22:35, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

cannibalism and traditional law

There have been recent significant cited additions to Pauline Hanson, Australian Aboriginal culture, Customary law in Australia, Australian Aboriginal Sovereignty. Can I have some further opinions on whether these should be removed, substantially rewritten, or just edited to comply better with the Manual of Style? I'm having trouble deciding which response I think is appropriate. Thanks. --Scott Davis Talk 11:55, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

For Pauline Hanson, it's definitely WP:UNDUE - see Talk:Pauline Hanson#cannibalism. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
I agree with Mitch that the section "Literature Supporting Pauline's Claims of Cannabalism" was not appropriate in her article. I added a needed citation wrt to a quote by Pauline Hanson about cannabalism. For the other articles, the additions aren't as voluminous as the Pauline Hanson additions and do appear to be reasonably well-cited for what appears to be a new user. I don't think there are grounds for removal. Obviously this is a topic this user is interested in and perhaps feels strongly about and probably could use a little MoS. I think the edits themselves are acceptable in terms of POV. The case seems well-made that there was cannabalism (I don't claim to be an expert on what would be a reliable source for this topic, but the citations draw on a range of sources, some online, some offline, so I don't immediately notice anything suspicious, e.g. numerous citations of one or two sources). To put the issue into perspective, it might be nice to discuss how frequent or widespread it was if anyone can find the sources. After all Armin Meiwes is a German cannibal, but nobody is mentioning cannabalism in Culture of Germany. Kerry (talk) 16:13, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
such a long time this editor is blocked user going back a few years now, just remove it the sourcing used has already been proven to be unreliable and shouldnt be used in a generalisation article about over 300 cultures. Gnangarra 00:22, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
I agree with Gnangarra. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:32, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
Yes, this is a long running far right POV pusher and block evader. Nick-D (talk) 09:07, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
Probably sooner stopped and closed the better, giving too much attention to this gives it air JarrahTree 00:52, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks all. I was unaware of the editor's history, but am happy with the outcome. --Scott Davis Talk 07:14, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Great Sandy National Park/K'gari National Park (please distinguish between the National Park and the

Hi all,
See http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-24/fraser-islands-national-park-renamed-kgari-paradise-aboriginal/8460808 . I've created a WP:REDIRECT.

Should "Great Sandy National Park" be moved to "K'gari National Park"?
Pete "cane toad for lyf" AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 09:56, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it should be moved, it's not changing the name of the national park according to the ABC story and the Queensland Government media release – what I gather from those sources and the current article is that Great Sandy National Park is divided into two sections: Fraser Island and Cooloola. The Fraser Island section is being renamed to K'gari (Fraser Island) section, which just means rewriting the article to change the name of the section (and setting up a redirect which I gather you have already done). As far as I can tell, the name of the national park isn't changing, and there is no such entity as "K'gari National Park" (and also it should be noted the official name of Fraser Island has not changed either). --Canley (talk) 10:24, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Combinatorial Mathematics Society of Australasia

Combinatorial Mathematics Society of Australasia is newly created article which was moved directly to the mainspace from User:McKay/sandbox by its creator. The draft does not seem to have been submitted for review, and based upon its name it might fall within WP:AUS's scope. Anyway, I was wondering if someone from this WikiProject would mind taking a look at it and assessing it. Most of the sources cited appear to be primary ones, so it's not clear where the organization satisfies WP:NORG. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:22, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Result/outcome of the Emu War

G'day, there is currently a discussion about how to describe the result of the Emu War in the article's infobox. Interested editors are invited to comment on their opinion on the article's talk page: Talk:Emu_War#outcome. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 04:01, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

There are time and space wasters here on wp en - and this is a classic, a talk page and article edit history that reflect editors problems, rather than the article itself... the projection of editors issues seems to take far too much space in talk page areas. Best of luck for whoever go to the talk page - I believe the issue in a broader sense of where it wasnt a war between humans and as a consequence should have a different title so as to not attract the endless banter and edit issues in the first place seems to have been missed. If we were to put a tally on Australian articles that attract vast volumes of unresolved discussion this must be one of the top contenders. JarrahTree 04:10, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes that seems a fair assessment. I've commented there now for what its worth. Anotherclown (talk) 05:53, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

It was not a war - that is just the popular name for it. Is was just a cull. WP:LAME Aoziwe (talk) 10:43, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Completely agree. Anotherclown (talk) 23:10, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
Where's the problem? Hack (talk) 03:20, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
Personally, I'm disappointed the article doesn't give us the name of the Emu commander. StAnselm (talk) 04:37, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Biased History Post-Invasion

Many entries are heavily skewed to favour a settler-colonial imagining of so-called Australia since the multiple instances of Invasion, which ignores and erases the perspectives - as well as sovereignty - from the First Nations' Peoples of so-called Australia. Why is the 230 year colonial history unfairly favoured throughout these articles as opposed to less radical standpoints which appropriately respect and position the multiple 60,000 year histories and perspectives across the country as equal knowledge producers and authorities on this country's narrative? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DecoloniseNow (talk • contribs) 10:26, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

That's an awfully broad complaint. Can you be more specific about what article/s particularly are problematic, and how? Lankiveil (speak to me) 10:33, 12 May 2017 (UTC).
and moreover - can you propose practical suggestions for how to make improvements and/or address the issue you raise? Wittylama 12:23, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for your responses. I acknowledge it's a broad complaint as it's a broad problem affecting many articles, and for it to be addressed involves an honest commitment to integrity and impartiality from all Australian Wikipedians. One place to begin with is why 'settlement' is used in many articles when this is clearly favouring British and European sources and settler-colonial historians. This is partially addressed in the NPOV entry by wikipedia, given that many contributors can be Anglo-American, or in this case settler-colonial. Articles which favour non-Indigenous sources and representations can be marked for POV checks, or at the least many articles can be marked as 'contentious' as the growing awareness regarding the symbolism of January 26th, in that it marks the invasion of this country, should demonstrate the contention regarding our history. I think this deserves a project of its own, honestly, and a conscious effort to engage with Elders of First Nations' Peoples of so-called Australia as well as Indigenous sources. Apologies for any poor formatting - am new to Wikipedia. Please to meet you all. DecoloniseNow (talk) 13:04, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
As far as labels and terminology go, we follow the established usage in English-language sources. So we use "settlement" rather than "invasion" because that is far more common. It isn't our job to fix this - please read WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. StAnselm (talk) 20:27, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
I think that's a bit of a patronising response. We should have this conversation - our articles don't engage very well with a lot of reliable, published history addressing these issues, and do lean towards the easy colonial myths of history. It's something I haven't seen brought up before - and that's not a good thing. The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:14, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
Indeed, while we should avoid having an "Australia was invaded" house POV, we also ought to work on not having an "Australia was settled" house POV. I know that WMAU has been involved with working with Indigenous folks a lot in WA so maybe User:Gnangarra might have some useful contributions to make here. If I can make one suggestion for User:DecoloniseNow though it would be to avoid painting with a broad brush with terms like "settler-colonial" when referring to Australian editors, who in my experience are an extraordinarily diverse bunch. Lankiveil (speak to me) 02:36, 13 May 2017 (UTC).
Regarding the suggestion that "this deserves a project of its own", we actually do have Wikipedia:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of Australia but it's rather inactive (like many of the sub-projects of WikiProject Australia). Kerry (talk) 07:17, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
Regarding the use of POV tagging, I think this would be a waste of time. Tagging doesn't make anything happen (especially not whole-of-article tagging). It isn't as if there was a team of people out there just sitting idle waiting to take action on a POV tag. The folks who might do something about a tag are probably already reading this discussion and (as is often commented here) there are just not enough of us and most of us are pretty busy with our existing commitments both here on Wikipedia and in the real world. Kerry (talk) 07:23, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
  • This is a great conversation to have, even in the broad Australian community there is as yet no solution on how to deal impartially with the different perspectives, be it Indigenous, free Settlers, or Convicts. DecoloniseNow is right in pointing out that we are also hamstrung by the way in which the sources available to us tell there story, Wikipedia policy of WP:NPOV say we should be presenting events in a neutral way without the Indigenous story we havent done that. Wikimedia Australia is working with Indigenous communities assisting and encouraging them to tell their stories we are in the final stages of the first of our 300+ Indigenous languages having its own Wikipedia at nys.wikipedia.org using the Noongar language, following Noongar culture, to share Noongar knowledge. As much as I think the people who contribute to Wikipedia have the capacity to address this in a respectful way, even potentially leading the conversation and creating permanent change thats not our role we are here to share what is known and accepted not do original research... As an initial response we could modify the Australia project talk page tag to help identify which articles lack Indigenous knowledge or have european/settler bias. Other efforts in broadening the number of editors is an ongoing effort of WMAU from more voices potential come more perspectives and knowledge sources. As editors what we can do is be conscious while telling a story that there are additional knowledges sources we need to seek out, when we cant find them acknowledge that they are missing. There are no easy solutions here, I can see lots of argues for what every way we express the past.... Gnangarra 04:26, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
Are there any articles with a "european/settler bias"? Can you name one? StAnselm (talk) 04:54, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
As an exercise, I picked the first Australian thing that popped into my head, which was wombat. That article seems fine - it addresses the wombat in Aboriginal society and culture, without giving this undue prominence. In regards to "indigenous knowledge", WP:FRINGE is also relevant, of course. StAnselm (talk) 04:59, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
Your first post is not a helpful response: there are many, many, many articles with such biases - for example, every geographical history article with a narrative that starts at white settlement (of which we have literally thousands), as well as many historical articles which sloppily reinforce colonial myths and don't engage with sources. These are not necessarily easily things to resolve (even I've written some of these articles!) but it's something important and really not helped by offhand, thoughtless dismissals. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:39, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
Again, the article on the first place that popped into my head - Ross, Tasmania - seems appropriate: it has a brief mention of the Aboriginal nation. Anything more than that would be undue weight: after all, Ross, as a town only dates back to 1811. There may have been Aborigines there but it wasn't Ross per se. What is missing, of course, is an article on the Tyrernotepanner. StAnselm (talk) 02:43, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
I did the same thing, but with History of Australia (1788–1850). The article does use the word "settlement" and "settler" a lot, although in a lot of them they're in contexts where "invader" wouldn't make a lot of sense, and I'm not sure what alternative word could be used to refer to the actual physical site where the buildings were put other than "settlement". There is a section entitled "Aboriginal resistance" down the bottom which does go along with the history of describing it as an "invasion" and such. It's probably not ideal having that tucked away under the fold, but then the article as a whole isn't that crash hot on a quick scan through. Nothing a bit of editing won't fix.
I also had a quick look at Australia Day since it was mentioned above, an article that probably isn't going to be renamed any time soon on WP:COMMONNAME grounds. But that article mentions "Invasion Day" and "Survival Day" in the lede, and contains extensive sections on criticism of the public observance, as well as a discussion on proposed alternative national holidays. From my POV, it seems relatively well written and does not have any obvious bias, although I'm happy to accept discrete suggestions on improvements for anything I don't see. But that's why I asked for specific examples rather than generalities so that we could hopefully look at repairing any problems rather than walking up the garden path of identity politics. Lankiveil (speak to me) 08:58, 13 May 2017 (UTC).
It isn't an example of a small number of articles being at fault, though: it's a systemic bias problem, and it's something that runs across a lot of issues and areas of content. Finding a couple of articles on particularly hot-button issues and noticing that they mention indigenous people does not actually answer this. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:39, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
@The Drover's Wife: I take your point, although if it wasn't clear I thought there was room for improvement in the "history" article. The question is, what do we do about it? What concrete steps can we follow to address the systemic problem? Lankiveil (speak to me) 23:17, 14 May 2017 (UTC).
(edit conflict)The areas I edit most are:
  • places - many note the indigenous owners of the land, but I am not aware of universal sources for this, nor good coverage of "grey areas" where modern towns might be on land that was once used by several indigenous groups. In general towns and universally local government and electoral districts are "white" creations, and there is very little documented history of displacement in the general case.
  • politics - Local, state and federal politics have only existed post settlement/invasion.
  • Highways and railways. Again these are post-settlement. It would be great to be able to include reliably-sourced information about Aboriginal trade routes that follow(ed) the modern highways and add articles about trade/travel routes that have existed since before white settlement.
  • People - if the sources discuss interaction between races or cultures, then so will the article, regardless of if that is Aboriginal/white or British/Prussian (German)
I am aware that I come with a "colonial" bias. It had not occurred to me until after I left that the area I grew up in had Aboriginal heritage before my ancestors settled in the area. I still haven't found any reliable sources to say what happened to them. Despite having ancestors across the early-settled areas of South Australia, I have no family stories of conflict, invasion, displacement or even trade and collaboration with indigenous people in the 1800s. Perhaps if such sources exist, we should add a subpage of the project linking to appropriate online resources, or to authors with access to offline sources. --Scott Davis Talk 09:26, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Improving indigenous content/viewpoints in Australian Wikipedia articles

From the conversation above, it seems to me that there is plenty of goodwill towards greater inclusion of Indigenous content and viewpoints. I see at least three approaches towards improving indigeneous content in Wikipedia articles:

  • attract more contributors with interest in Indigenous topics. I note that Wikimedia Australia will always try to provide free training to Australian groups/individuals who are wanting to learn how to contribute to Wikipedia (within the constraints of our available people and the cost of travel involved). Put simply, more work needs more people to do it.
  • build up a list of of reliable sources for indigenous content (ideally online sources) linked off WikiProject Australia as the previous conversation makes clear that sources are a limitation so let's make it easier to find sources
  • take more photos (or prepare maps/illustrations) relating to Indigenous topics (where culturally acceptable to do so) and donate them to Wikimedia Commons so they can be used to illustrate articles. Again we could link the relevant Wikimedia Commons categories to the list of sources above.

To kick this off, I have created an new section on WikiProject Australia for any indigenous source materials and have added a couple of resources I am aware of. I'm not sure if this is the best location long-term for this list, but let's focus in the short term on building up a set of sources and worry about where best to put them in the longer term.

@DecoloniseNow: Are you able to help with any of these ideas (or other ideas you might have)? Kerry (talk) 06:48, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

There seems to be a small problem operating here - we already have a project... that is where the issues could be explored - for any new notice board reader - a gentle reminder - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Australia-related_WikiProjects
The one where all this could be considered is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Indigenous_peoples_of_Australia
It could be useful to locate the concerns from this message, and the previous, there... JarrahTree 09:56, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
It is frustrating seeing people try to brush this off without so much as discussing the (totally valid) points of the original commenter: issues which affect huge swathes of our geographical and historical content (at the very least) don't belong on the little-used talk page of an indigenous peoples WikiProject. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:15, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
The issue is a perception (nobody has yet demonstrated that it is true) that the that general articles about Australian topics do not adequately cover Indigenous aspects. WikiProject Indigenous Peoples of Australia is unlikely to be able to "fix" all Australian articles, even if it were in scope for that project. The point of the issue is not the articles that would resonably be tagged |indigenous=y, but every other article that is tagged with {{WikiProject Australia}}. It would need to adjust the culture of all of us editing everything, and that needs to be discussed here. But as yet, we have vague accusations of bias, specific examples of how it is covered, with no indications that these were either insufficient, nor isolated examples of suitable coverage in a sea of unsuitable. --Scott Davis Talk 22:57, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

At WP:WPNZ the centerpiece of our indigenous content work is Template:Iwi and hapū and the parallel Category:Iwi_and_hapū category tree. Almost all Māori-related places, objects, events and people are connected to one (or a small number of) iwi. About the only thing that it doesn't seem to work for is plants and animals. Relatively few of our Māori-related articles are mainly-Māori; in fact a very large number are sports people who identify as Māori and their biographies are written exactly the same as any other sports-person, with usually one sentence on their ethnicity and a category or two. Maybe something similar could work for you? Stuartyeates (talk) 00:34, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

I think it is true that indigenous content is under-developed in many Australian articles. But many aspects are under-developed in Australian articles. A quick look at the assessment matix shows us that we have over 176K articles tagged by WikiProject Australia of which 82K are listed as stubs, 45K as start class, 7K as C class, etc, so many topics/aspects are under-developed. If Wikipedia employed its contributors, then Wikipedia could say "we are missing indigenous information" and recruit a new staff member (or re-allocate an existing staff member) to work on filling that gap. But Wikipedia has volunteer contributors and you cannot assign them to work on particular topics (you can ban them from a topic though!). Volunteers work on the topics for which they have interest/expertise/sources. A gap in Wikipedia content largely reflects the gaps in our contributor base. To get a big increase in indigeneous content requires more people with an interest in indigenous matters to contribute; that's why it was my first point above. Kerry (talk) 02:51, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Stuartyeates: With respect to the Maori content in New Zealand articles, who wrote it and were they specifically recruited in some way or did the NZ community just naturally have such folks through "organic" growth? Kerry (talk) 02:59, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
@Kerry Raymond: There are a number of WPNZ editors who do considerable editing of Māori-related subjects. I have considered an explicit recruitment drive but avoided it for essentially ethical reasons. My point about sports people is that much of what one might consider "indigenous content" is actually a very small part of a much larger article. Having a national style that naturally supports those things helps all editors (even those who know or care nothing for indigenous issues) produce a better encyclopaedia, because they become things that people put in to get an article to GA status. Stuartyeates (talk) 03:10, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
Stuart, do you want to elaborate on the ethical reasons? I am guessing it's probably about NOT making the assumption that XYZ people "naturally" want to write about XYZ topics (given that I get pretty annoyed by that assumption when XYZ = "Women"). But maybe there is some other ethical dimension that I am not considering. Kerry (talk) 04:24, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
@Kerry Raymond: Several years ago (before I had toddlers) I did some university courses such as basic te reo and Māori science. I was gearing up to leverage my new te reo skills for editing mi.wiki and recruit others, talking people on campus about wikipedia and the options for editing in te reo. But it became clear to me that wikipedia could offer Māori the Tino rangatiratanga (essentially a cipher for decolonisation) they are looking for. There are a couple of threads to this, but they're deep in the fabric and not really the kinds of things likely to be fought successfully: (a) recent formalisations of te Ao Māori all appear to be deeply resistant to 1:1 mappings to exterior sources, apparently by design (for example the Māori Subject Headings are explicit designed this way) and wikipedia infrastructure assumes wikidata-style mappings; (b) as an encyclopedic tertiary source, wikipedia assumes a physical (or later digital) print model, and pretty much completely fails to recognise the traditional knowledge structures in oral cultures such Māori; (c) related to (b), there appears to be a much greater cultural reluctance to edit the words of another in the wiki style of editing (this seemed to apply much more strongly in te reo than English, even if the speakers were the same). Having decided that wikipedia was not the tool that was needed for Tino rangatiratanga, it essentially became impossible for me to run Māori-specific recruitment in good faith, so I didn't. Stuartyeates (talk) 09:40, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, Stuart! This is indeed a very complex issue. Kerry (talk) 04:49, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes and no. The core problem is that we're (largely) a bunch of non-indigenous folks sitting around talking about indigenous stuff. If you get together a whole bunch of ideas and then go talk (and listen) to a range of indigenous folks about what might work for them, 95% of the issues seem to resolve themselves pretty quickly. If you're serious about tackling this, I'm happy to help. Stuartyeates (talk) 09:44, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Well explained Kerry, the problem as you say is that most editors are very much in their comfort zones - and are constrained - by their interest and scope of their experience - and it is quite obvious a broader range of contributors from a range of perspectives is always hoped for...

And the points by Drovers Wife, Scott Davis and Stuart are very relevant - thanks for sticking to the point! JarrahTree 02:58, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Australian Light Horse infoboxes

I asked this a few days ago at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#Australian Light Horse infoboxes but have received no response, so guess I asked the wrong audience...

Is there a "right way" to include an Australian Light Horse wikilink in the infobox and/or lead seaction of the brigades and regiments of light horsemen? I am not familiar enough with Australian Order of Battle to know whether it belongs as a second line in |command structure= (rendered as "Part of"), |type=, |branch= or somewhere else, nor what the right language is to put it in prose in the lead. Each of these articles includes a link as part of the navbox at the bottom, but it seems to me like it would also be helpful at the top somewhere. It's possible that if I looked at every article, I would find one that answers my question, but it's not in the sample I looked at. Thanks for your help. --Scott Davis Talk 11:23, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

With hindsight, perhaps I should have provided article links. I want to add the new link to the infobox and lead of articles like 4th Light Horse Brigade (five brigades) and 11th Light Horse Regiment (Australia) (fifteen regiments). Hopefully someone here can help. Thanks. --Scott Davis Talk 14:00, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

ABS 2011 census geographic ID - wikidata property proposal

Participants here may be interested in discussing a Wikidata property proposal I just posted: wikidata:Wikidata:Property_proposal/Place#Australian_Statistical_Geography_2011_ID. --99of9 (talk) 05:33, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject and related task forces have signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, Community Tech bot will post on Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Popular pages.

We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:

  • The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
  • The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
  • The report will include the total pageviews for the entire project (including redirects).

We're grateful to Mr.Z-man for his original Mr.Z-bot, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding reach of WikiProject Philosophy, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at meta:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, The Community Tech Team, through Johan (WMF) (talk) 11:49, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

This is wonderful, thankyou. It's disappointing that some of our more popular pages are rated so poorly. Lankiveil (speak to me) 09:34, 20 May 2017 (UTC).

Australian female impersonators = Drag Queens?

[13] - possible discussion area for those interested in such subjects - I for one have never thought of Dame Edna Everage as a drag queen JarrahTree 13:58, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Fair Use campaign update

Here are two emails just sent to the Australian mailing list which give a fair bit of updated information about the forthcoming campaign: Specifically with regards to some technical constraints that change the nature of where the banners can be shown, and how we plan to ensure that the spirit of the community-consensus on supporting this banner campaign is maintained

(For context, see previous thread on the noticeboard, archived here)

Rather than put ALL the details here, I encourage you to read those emails if you are interested in this topic. The short version is:

  1. We will running banners on all articles (when viewed logged-out in Australia) but at a very restricted pageview %, because it's not possible to filter by only articles which have Fair Use multimedia in them (for technical details, see Seddon's email), notwithstanding our initial belief that this was possible.
  2. The banner campaign will start in Mid-May (likely the 18th), after budget week, and hopefully coinciding with some mainstream media articles we're preparing. With a 50% visibility on day 1, and then run at a low % for the next ~3 weeks. A demo banner can be viewed here.
  3. Http://FairCopyright.org.au is being prepared with lots of resources (e.g. FAQs, 'contact your MP') that will go live at the same time. This, and the mainstream media, is the work of Damph, Trishhepworth from the Australian Digital Alliance and Jon from Electronic Frontiers Australia.
    1. Allied organisations from the education/consumer/digital-rights communities are also going to run their own parallel things, all linking in to that page.
  4. The Meta landing page for the banners is here: M:Fair Use in Australia. Currently it has a project status/timeline, and draft banner and landing page texts. You can suggest things there too. It's not 'pretty' yet, but we've been focusing on making the text engaging and yet also accurate.
  5. The requested mainspace en.wp article History of Fair Use proposals in Australia has now been written and admin-approved from the Draft namespace. Further editing work on it, just like any other article, is always welcome :-)

All the best, Wittylama 17:14, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

  • Is the Australian chapter helping with this? If not, why not? Will there be an online petition, widely circulated? Will there be a formal submission? Tony (talk) 03:15, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Ciao Tony1, individual members of the chapter (inc. board members) have expressed their support for the project and have been involved in the plannin. for example, at WMCon in Berlin this year all the Aussies present had a meeting with WMF-Legal to ensure we were on the same page and help tell WMF-Comms what kind of messageing would work best for Katherine's visit. Those people have been kept frequently updated as we've been progressing (eg they know about this change in banner-display for technical reasons a few days ago). As for the Chapter per se, we have the option of putting the chapter logo on the Landing page and/or FairCopyright microsite, and any posts (eg sharing of the Wikimedia-Blog post on the Chapter's social media profiles) is up to them :-)
Regarding a petition: the FairCopyright.org.au campaign site will have a 'contact your MP' (based on postcode) widget, and various sharing/subscribe aspects. It will not be a petition per se, but we will definitely be tracking the number of people wanting to be involved.
By 'submission' you mean, to the Productivity Commission for their report? This report had concluded and has been published months ago. The time for formal submissions into the consultation phase was quite a while ago, see the timeline here: http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/intellectual-property#report The government is now "preparing its response", which means now is the time where public advocacy is the most effective. This is precisely why the copyright lobby are running articles in The Australian (in particular) as often as they can, about why fair use is an evil American ripoff of our cultural industries - if you want to see what their lobbying is about, search for the hashtag "free is not fair".
I hope that helps answer your questions, Wittylama 09:06, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
Witty, thanks so much for your detailed reply. I read a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald by Kim Williams, the ?head of the Copyright Council, whatever they call themselves. It was full of more holes than Swiss cheese: how does that man sleep at night after trump-distorting the truth? This is a critical issue, so I hope the communication lines with supporters are well-oiled (any email update facility?). It's very disappointing that the chapter didn't organise a formal submission. Tony (talk) 09:34, 6 May 2017 (UTC) Oh, in response to your links to relevant posts on the Australian mailing list: Stephen Crossin banned me from that list years ago because he didn't like my criticism of several illegalities the chapter was responsible for. He did so against the rules, not even asking the other two administrators for their input; and he didn't even inform me. So I'm not going anywhere near it. Can you ensure that information about this important matter is made available elsewhere? Tony (talk) 09:42, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
Ciao Tony1. To answer your questions. 1) Kim Williams is the current chair of the board of The Copyright Agency Ltd (CAL), and is former CEO of News Corp[14]. This is the organisation that collects all the money from the education sectors and is supposed to then redistribute royalties to creators. Except it was revealed recently they've been hoarding millions - with the specific intention to use to lobby against Fair Use.[15]. There's no way to know if/how much money that was collected from the public school sector which has now wound up in CAL's "fighting fund" against Fair Use, but, it's pretty egregious behaviour.
2. The EFA and ADA, for similar privacy-policy reasons as Wikimedia, don't make a habit of collecting email addresses. But the specific tool that will be used on the faircopyright.org.au campaign microsite for 'contact your MP' will be based on the DoGooder system - which does allow for email updates, for example.
3. Irrespective of who has made submissions, both the current Productivity Commission review, and the Australian Law Reform Commission review (from a couple of years ago) strongly recommended Fair Use introduced to Australia - to 'future proof the economy' and to clarify common practices of society (such as 'forwarding an email'!) as not-illegal actions. Feel free to read the details of the various government enquiries on that new article: History of Fair Use proposals in Australia. As for WM-AU being directly involved - as I've said earlier, there is no problem or requirement either way - this is an on-Wikipedia action. If the Chapter would like to add its logo on the bottom of the Meta landing page, it is welcome. If it does not, that's fine too. No doubt there will be some journalist who confuse 'Australian Wikipedians'/Wikimedia Australia/Wikimedia Foundation, but that's a perennial problem. Much more important IMO is that Wikimedians in their personal capacity are interested and care :-)
4. Irrespective of who is subscribed to the Wikimediaau mailing list, the archives are public (as far as I can tell having checked in a few different browsers) so anyone can view the content of those links. However, here is the substantive technical aspect of Seddon (WMF)'s description:
"[The original plan was]...A line of javascript code would run upon the loading of the page, search for the following "//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/". If found, the banner would show. If not the banner would be suppressed. I expected a few false positives but generally this would function well. However what I did not take into account was that the top 100 used files on the English Wikipedia are hosted locally. This includes things like the Wikimedia commons logo which is used on a vast number of pages. This means that unfortunately with the current tools at our disposal, we aren't going top be able to do this particular type of targeting as I had hoped and my apologies to the community...The intention is for the campaign to continue to follow the spirit of the consensus established by the community..."
I hope that is sufficient to answer your needs. Wittylama 20:14, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Thank you Witty. Yes, the CAL is behaving about as ethically as Murdoch does. All the more reason that institutions like the dormant WMAU pony up and apply pressure. The Australian WMs' mailing list? I wouldn't touch it, and for some years I've been encouraging others to ignore it, with some success. Tony (talk) 03:54, 7 May 2017 (UTC)


New update:
LAUNCH of the banners is now set for ~6am (Sydney time) on MONDAY 22 May.
These are the banner texts, and this is a preview of how it will appear. They will run on rotation for 50% of pageviews on day 1, dropping back afterwards - as described above.
This is timed to (hopefully) match some mainstream media articles that morning; ADA/EFA will be sending press releases etc. There will also be a post on the Wikimedia Blog. http://FairCopyright.org.au is the campaign homepage that will continue to exist beyond the lifespan of the WP banners.
For those on social media - the campaign hashtag is #FairCopyrightOz and we control https://twitter.com/faircopyrightoz. The WP article History of Fair Use proposals in Australia is currently in the prep-queue for a DYK appearance in the next few rotations.

Best, Wittylama 14:26, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm guessing this is deliberate and will be fixed prior to the campaign going live, but just in case, I wanted to point out that faircopyright.org.au currently is nothing more than an admin sign-in page.
And, going a little off topic, could I ask what will be on it? I'm really hoping for a specific script that users can read off if they call their MPs, or use in formulating letters/emails, such as has been seen from time to time in various campaigns in the US. Such tools make it much easier for someone not exactly sure how to approach contacting their MP to get over that barrier.
Cheers, and thanks for putting all of this together. --Sauronjim (talk) 02:49, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
yep, Sauronjim - the faircopyright.org.au campaign site will go live on Monday, and it has a 'take action' page where you plug in your postcode and it produces a letter you can modify which is pre-filled with your electorate's federal MP and optionally your State's senators. Wittylama 13:09, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Fair Use campaign is live

We (well, Seddon (WMF)) have just turned on the banners for 50% of pageviews from logged-out readers in Australia (which will drop back the following day). You can see previews of each of the 4 banners on rotation on the Meta landing page talkpage.

As Reddit:Australia has already noticed, Peter Martin - the Fairfax Economics editor has published the exclusive story - in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Canberra Times - and (thus far) the comments are REALLY positive about Fair Use, and about Wikipedia taking a stand for it! Hopefully other stories will appear too - Jon (EFA) and Jess (ADA) have already done radio interviews for ABC radio breakfast Sydney and Melbourne this morning! I'm trying to keep a list of media mentions on the talkpage of the Meta landing page.

If you are personally interested in taking action on this issue I encourage you to the campaign site we've set up and fill out the form with your postcode to send a letter [which we provide a template, but you can modify] to your MP: https://www.faircopyright.org.au/take-action/ Equally, if you're on social media, please use #FairCopyrightOz
We will have a blogpost on the Wikimedia blog about this on Tuesday; and the History of Fair Use proposals in Australia mainspace article will be appearing as a DYK on Tuesday morning.

I am really excited and happy about how this is going so far - it's been a long time coming! Hopefully we can affect some positive change for Australians with this campaign. What better example of "free access to knowledge" could there be than for our public school system to no longer have to pay royalties to use publicly-visible websites!

Sincerely, Wittylama 21:20, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

How does fair use vs fair dealing impact on small businesses? I'm trying to write to an mp who is interested in that. Not sure they'll care about meme sharing, as in the form email. 122.108.141.214 (talk) 22:29, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
If your business happens to be in the digital/tech sector in Australia, then it is definitely being hurt by the lack of fair use. For details, please look at the "innovation" page of the faircopyright website here: [16]. To make it relevant to your particular circumstances then I would need to know what business you're in - but see what you think about the specific information on that page (or even the 'for creators' page) for starters. Wittylama 23:04, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
are we still trying to pretend we're the clever country? Thanks for the information, I'm trying to aim for the personalised touch with my pollie. If unpublished works are perpetually copyrighted per the cooking for copyright campaign by alia, then what legal tomfoolery did the state library of nsw have to pull to make the war diaries available for transcription? I'd like to make reference to those if I can, because my pollie likes our wartime history. I looked on the website, but I could only find that the transcriptions were under a cc licence, nothing about the legal terms of the scans. 122.108.141.214 (talk) 23:14, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
For the specific case of the SLNSW and the WWI diaries, I recommend you talk to Aliaretiree who works with that project. For the more general case, here is a letter from the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee specifically about why Aussie libraries want Fair Use: http://www.libcopyright.org.au/news/australias-libraries-and-archives-support-fair-use . I hope that helps! Wittylama 01:02, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for the link - I did find something which indicated that the SLNSW might be relying on a particular subclause to copy the diaries ("WHAT CAN I COPY WITHOUT THE COPYRIGHT OWNER’S PERMISSION?" @ sl.nsw.gov.au), so I guess I can't use that as an example because libraries were able to use the existing law, even if it was a PITA and status quo is powerful. Thank you for the 'free is not fair' rebuttal above, it's good to know the arguments in play. --122.108.141.214 (talk) 01:35, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Encouraging Australian Wikimedians to take personal action

First, hats off to Liam (Wittylama) for his leadership in the fair-use campaign. This includes his co-writing of a really good WMF blog about the matter, published yesterday. We should be upset that the so-called Copyright Agency Ltd is shooting Australia in the foot, and using tons of money originating from public institutions (schools, universities, libraries, etc) to do so.

I've donated $20 to the campaign, which is easy to do at this site.

The same site also makes it easy to send a pro-forma email to your federal MP. I added this as the second paragraph of my email, biting my lip ... but politicians react better when their self-interest is at stake"

"CRITICALLY, I want to convey to you my belief that the Turnbull government would gain good public relations among voters by enacting a fair-use exception, and would suffer little adverse consequence. I ask you to disregard the threats from one agency to mount an advertising campaign against the exception. It is galling that much of their seven-figure warchest ultimately comes from taxpayers."

It's important to act soon—before the federal government decides to put our heads in the sand yet again.

Tony (talk) 04:07, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I'll not often agree with Tony, but can I heartily endorse his recommendation to write to your local member of (federal) Parliament, particularly if you live in a marginal electorate. The more custom written letters they receive the more the issue will lodge in their heads. You might only get a form response from them, but come election time if they know there's a vocal group out there concerned about the issue, a letter writing campaign might be the thing that makes this an issue something that politicians pay attention to. If you have time, write on paper and send it through in the post; it's harder for them to ignore old fashioned letters than it is to ignore email. Tony's extra paragraph is pretty on point. Lankiveil (speak to me) 07:36, 23 May 2017 (UTC).
Thank you both for your comments!
The blogpost which Tony1 mentioned is here: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/05/22/australia-fair-use/ , co-authored myself and Slaporte (WMF). I think it is particularly important because: it makes it clear that this is a community-led campaign (not something emanating from Silicon Valley); clarifies why some other language editions don't accept fair use content (for quite opposite reasons than the Australia copyright lobby oppose it, in fact); and confirms that the WMF supports the action (if anyone doubted that).
And to further Tony1 and Lankiveil's point: if you are interested in this issue at all, the single easiest-but-most-effective thing you can do is go to the faircopyright.org.au campaign website, plug in your postcode, and send an email to your MP with a version of the template letter provided in the tool. After 1 day we've had over 700 emails sent!
https://www.faircopyright.org.au/take-action/#emailform.
Sincerely, Wittylama 12:22, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Photo request

Is there anyone in the Sydney area interested in going the NRL Heroes and Legends Museum? I'd really like to get some photos of the Courtney Goodwill Trophy, the very size and construction of this gargantuan trophy really needs photos to help describe it - words are not enough. Thanks. Nthep (talk) 14:29, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Can't help with the photo, wrong state, but I have added the {{reqphoto}} template to the article talk page and added what I believe are the coords of the museum, so it would display on the map of requested photos at Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Sydney. Kerry (talk) 03:11, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Nathan Barrett

Could we please have some eyes on the Nathan Barrett (politician) article? An account purporting to be Nathan Barrett has persistently been removing (well-sourced, well-known and in nearly every mainstream media Google hit for '"Nathan Barrett" Blain') negative information and making various legal threats against editors who reinstate it. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:50, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Macksville Airport

According to List of airports in Australia, there is an airport in Macksville, NSW. Despite this I cannot find any evidence of an airport there, apart from it being registered on some websites. I have found on an external website a link to the supposed airport's coordinates, however this leads to an area densely covered in trees. I am doubtful of this list's reliability, as I have previously found a mention of an airport in Gosford on it. After posting that here, it was found that there was the nearby Somersby Airfield, which I was able to create an article on. Therefore, would anyone know of any information of an airport surrounding Macksville? I will be looking into this and the list's overall integrity. trainsandtech (talk) 08:14, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

UPDATE: I have removed Macksville and various other "airports" that appear to be non-existent, including some that are registered on Google Maps despite the coordinates showing hilly terrain and other areas that are clearly not airports, including what looks like an orchard! With the "Gosford Airport" reference that I removed previously, the only coordinates for it I could find led to a suburban home! Maybe some of the references were they as the land's owners used those locations to take off small aircraft, but there is certainly no airport in these exact places. However, please still alert me to an airport near these areas (including Macksville) that may of been what was being referred to or worthy of being added to the list through this page. Thanks! trainsandtech (talk) 08:38, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
Hi trainsandtech, I have two comments in respect to your previous posts. Firstly, I had a look at the Airservices Australia website because I remember a link in an article that went to very informative document about this matter. While I cannot find this document, I was able to find one (56 pages) which lists of all of the ICAO codes used for ‘aerodromes’ (i.e. AD), ‘aircraft landing areas’ (i.e. ALA) and ‘helicopter landing sites’ (i.e. HLS) in Australia. You can download it from http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/aip/current/ersa/LND__25-May-2017.pdf. After comparing its content with the state that I live in (i.e. SA), it would appear that it lists both facilities currently in use and those that are not in use, i.e. the former is described as ‘ENCODE’ while latter is described as ‘DECODE.’ While there is no ‘Macksville’, there is a ‘Macksville Medical’ which is a HLS. Secondly, you should be able to confirm the location of existing airports and kindred facilities in NSW by looking at statutory planning documentation because these facilities do have considerable impact on the layout and design of urban and regional areas due to aircraft noise, maximum building height and so on. Regards Cowdy001 (talk) 08:22, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I have removed all the listing on the NSW part of the list that appear not to actually be airports. Maybe a further section or article could be made for former airports or other facilities that serve aircraft, or would that be too minor? It still appears there are some differences between the NSW list and the NSW section on the pan-Australia list. I will be working on that soon. trainsandtech (talk) 02:34, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Noticed the banner?

In the next less than two weeks, the broader Wikipedia movement is involved in the second cycle of the Wikimedia Strategy programme.

It was presented by the CEO of Wikimedia Foundation, Katherine Maher at the Melbourne Knowledge Week earlier in May.

Meetings and consultations with the editing community will be held in Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide.

Please look at your respective city or state project notice boards for further details...

If you are not able to be in the mentioned cities, but are interested in knowing more about the Strategy Survey?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Strategy_2017 is a good start.

Want to discuss with the Australian collection of responses? please contact strategy@wikimedia.org.au thank you.

JarrahTree 12:18, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Please note that meetups for Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide are being noted - some will be rolling

where a location can be ascertained where the Strategy Survey can be discussed - in most cases State Library coffee shops

will be the base - and people will be able to catch up at a time suitable for them...

In the event of interest, but the late notice or inability to get to the places -

any person - editor, non editor - is welcome to offer feedback or contributions to the Strategy Survey process

please contact directly or find a meetup near you! JarrahTree 02:47, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

A full version of what it is all about

Join the next cycle of Wikimedia movement strategy discussions (underway until June 12)

Message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki

The Wikimedia movement strategy core team and working groups have completed reviewing the more than 1800 thematic statements we received from the first discussion. They have identified 5 themes that were consistent across all the conversations - each with their own set of sub-themes. These are not the final themes, just an initial working draft of the core concepts.

You are invited to join the online and offline discussions taking place on these 5 themes. This round of discussions will take place between now and June 12th. You can discuss as many as you like; we ask you to participate in the ones that are most (or least) important to you.

Here are the five themes, each has a page on Meta-Wiki with more information about the theme and how to participate in that theme's discussion:

On the movement strategy portal on Meta-Wiki, you can find more information about each of these themes, their discussions, and how to participate.

Australian based responses are welcome at strategy@wikimedia.org.au, or even here if you wish to leave comments here relevant to the Australian project. Thank you JarrahTree 00:20, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I've been doing a bit of work to make sure each suburb/locality in Wingecarribee Shire has an infobox with at least some information, and while doing so I noticed that:

  • The Template:Southern Highlands navbox has inconsistencies to the way it lists things (e.g. the villages/localities section lists localities such as Hoddles Cross Roads that aren't suburbs while missing localities such as Mount Lindsey that are suburbs (or to use the terminology in Suburbs_and_localities_(Australia), bounded and unbounded localities are listed together.
  • The Template:Southern Highlands navbox is more detailed than those for most other areas of Australia, in that it lists towns, suburbs, rivers, national parks and tourist attractions.
  • The Template:Southern Highlands applies to a region rather than an LGA, though in this case the region and LGA overlap almost exactly. That said, there doesn't seem to be a standard navbox template for either region or LGA. E.g. Template:Sydney_regions lists regions and LGAs but not geographic features, Template:Southern Highlands lists towns, villages, rivers, national parks, and tourist attractions, while Template:New_England_NSW lists LGAs, electorates as well as all of the above (and other regions such as the Monaro have no infobox listing articles within the region.

So I'd like to suggest a standard format for the navbox for LGAs that includes a list of suburbs (i.e. bounded localities) and a separate list of localities (i.e. unbounded localities - see above) and maybe other articles relevant to that LGA (e.g. parks/notable streets/buildings/etc). Similarly, I'd like to suggest a standard format for the navbox for regions, along the lines of the Template:New_England_NSW navbox.

Is this even worthwhile if navboxes don't show up on mobile wikipedia? What do you think? And while I've got your attention, is Template:Navbox the best resource for working on this kind of thing? TrisRyall (talk) 06:37, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, navboxes are always useful. But you are quite right, navboxes for local government areas are not standardised in any way. Personally I think it's probably not worth the argument to try to completely standardise them. But maybe we might want to have some minimum expectations, e.g. they list all the towns, suburbs, and bounded localities within that LGA (an open question is whether they should list only existing articles or also contain redlinks). My personal preference is to include redlinks as they goad me into writing the articles sooner or later. Kerry (talk) 22:30, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Further to your comment about mobile sites. We are content writers. I don't think we should ever take a decision to omit information because of the current rendering choices on mobile devices (or desktop devices). It may be that the rendering on mobile devices is later changed to include a button to take you to another screen with the navbox or a Virtual Reality display or goodness knows what else. Leave rendering to the teams that work on that software. If the rendering teams were to ask us to present information differently in some way to assist their work, then that's the time to have that discussion. I know that Template:Navbox mentions the mobile site issue, but it's not saying "don't use navboxes" (roughly half of the en.WP articles have them). I interpret the comment about mobile as saying "Content writers, please don't write on the assumption that the reader will see the navbox". So if the only wikilink from a suburb article to their LGA article was through the navbox, then that would be a big mistake (of course, this is unlikely to happen if Template:Infobox Australian place is being used properly as that has the LGA as one of its fields). So my advice is focus on writing good content; leave rendering to others. Kerry (talk) 22:47, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback Kerry. I agree regarding redlinks, particularly considering very few localities in my area have articles yet and I hope to create some. TrisRyall (talk) 00:31, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
Agree that an LGA navbox should have a complete list of SUB and LOCB (and TOWN/POPL if other states use them). I am less convinced that LOCU, former names, etc need to be included where they do not have an article of their own already. I like the simplicity of the boxes that only have this, but recognise that for some people and LGAs, adding things like conservation parks, hills, reservoirs, well-known venues, cadastral overlays, historic events might be desired. I have generally tried to make redirects from LOCU names to the relevant LOCB and mentioned it there. That is easier for some than for others. --Scott Davis Talk 06:20, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Photos - an "out there" suggestion

I drive around the Hunter Region a lot but I often find it difficult working out what I should photograph in a location, as I'm either unaware of the local significance or unsure whether what I see is truly representative, and worthy of inclusion in the encyclopaedia. Last year I started playing Ingress and that has been a big help. Locations within the game called "portals" are accompanied by a photo of the location and all of the locations may be seen on the Ingress Intel map. Many of the portals are trivial but there are always portals in an area that have a reasonable level of significance. Ingress has driven me to visit some interesting locations that I wasn't aware of and I'm amassing a large collection of photos that I hope to add to articles when I get some time. The locations are all accurately geotagged, so it helps when uploading to provide accurate location information. --AussieLegend (✉) 06:41, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure if this is really answering your question but I make a lot of use of Template:reqphoto which goes on the Talk page. For example, on the talk page Talk:Childers Pharmaceutical Museum is

{{reqphoto|in=Bundaberg Region|of=the interior}}

Which places the article into the Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Bundaberg Region (in Queensland, the category hierarchy is built around LGAs as the first level above Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Queensland but my impression is that other states are more random about the category hierarchy. At each of the category pages, you can generate an Open Street Map or Google Map view of the places requesting photos, BUT the map view does not show the information about what photo is specifically wanted, e.g. "the interior" (you still have to look on the article talk page for that). Of course, this depends on people adding these reqphoto messages to Talk pages and, to be honest, I don't think a lot of people do.

User:Shiftchange and I have done a number of "photo runs" (as we call them) in and around Brisbane. Shiftchange usually draws up the list of things to be photographed, but generally we look for a "typical scene" (typical street of housing, typical farmland, or typical bushland) for use as the infobox photo. Then it's things like rivers and mountains and any other interesting geographical features. Then community stuff like schools, churches, war memorials, heritage sites, roads, bridges, railway lines, railway stations, etc, the kind of thing that is often mentioned in articles about places. I probably should add that Shiftchange often researches some of these in advance using Google Streetview to see where there is likely to be a "typical street" or line of sight onto something of interest, so we usually go out with a quite precise list of addresses and what is to be photographed there; doing this homework in advance makes the day more productive than random driving about, but of course if we see something on the day that we didn't know about, we photograph it too. If you take a look at Shiftchange's uploads on Commons, you will get a general idea (he does the photography, I do the driving which is why I am pointing you at his Commons work not mine). Kerry (talk) 09:15, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I appreciate what you are saying but I didn't actually have a question. What I wrote was more about deciding what to photograph. The thousands of Ingress portals have already been identified as significant by someone (whether or not they actually are) so they help to find a subject to photograph. --AussieLegend (✉) 09:37, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Rabbit-proof fence - any chance of semi-protecting this?

There's a history of an IP making problematic edits. The IP was blocked. They are back with a vengenance today, changing IP address frequently (presumably to evade blocking) but doing the same-old edits on the page and on its talk. Thanks Kerry (talk) 22:23, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

It has been semi-protected for six months protected by Kuru. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:17, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Using the Visual Editor on this page

Well, well, well! It seems you can use the Visual Editor on this page if you know how. And it seems that using 4 tildes for signing still works. Kerry (talk) 23:43, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Yep, it works (check the history of this page and my edits are correctly tagged as VE edits. Kerry (talk) 23:45, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

So if we put something like this "Visual Editor users - please click here to add your comments to the Australian Wikipedians' notice board" (perhaps with a graphic rather than text) at the top of this page, we would be the first WikiProject to be inclusive of VE users. How about it, folks? Kerry (talk) 00:13, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Actually, this link would be better (skips the stuff above the first discussion), but indentation isn't properly possible...

...unless you use 'black magic' to insert wikitext into VE (but then what's the point of that?) - Evad37 [talk] 00:47, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
What about this new template called VEFriendly that I just put on User talk:Kerry Raymond? Kerry (talk) 02:02, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Note, I'm not wedded to any particular solution, just trying to solve a problem. Open to better ways to do it. If anyone has more skills with templates, please feel free to fiddle with Template:VEFriendly but note it needs to work on non-talk pages too (thinking of the many namespaces for which VE isn't enabled). Kerry (talk) 02:08, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Maybe a proper clickable button would be nicer (possibly as part of a banner)? From Template:VEFriendly/sandbox: [|Edit with VisualEditor ] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Evad37 (talk • contribs) 03:55, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Nice! I knew someone else would have a better way to do it! Plus I've learned about clickable buttons as a bonus. I've put into the main Template:VEFriendly. So, how do people feel about having it at the top of this page Kerry (talk) 07:01, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Why, if you edit using visual editor then the page will do so automatically if thats your choice, those that dont use visual editor wont use it anyway... the button is just another waste of space Gnangarra 02:30, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
The Visual Editor is only enabled in a number of namespaces, including Main and User. It's not enabled in Talk, User Talk, Wikipedia, Wikpiedia Talk, where the VE user is presented with the source editor only. This button overcomes this problem for this page. Without it, VE-only users can't contribute to this page. Kerry (talk) 04:30, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
It doesn't have to waste extra space if it can be on the same line as (or replace) "Click here to start a new discussion thread". I always use the New section/(+) button right up the top anyway, and am unlikely to use Visual Editor deliberately for quite a while yet, so for me, one is no more waste than the other. I also have the section edit buttons active and use them for replies like this. --Scott Davis Talk 04:18, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm new here, and for what it's worth, am confused about how to post a new discussion here or access visual editor here. Powertothepeople (talk) 02:13, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
    • This is why I am proposing that we should add a button at the top of this page like the one you can see at my talk page so VE users can use the VE to participate in conversations. The VE does not support editing sections so (assuming we add the button) with the VE, to start a new discussion, just go to the bottom of this page and add a heading with the topic of conversation you want and start saying whatever you have to say. Adding the button is the simplest solution for all VE users. But you can achieve the same effect *for this page* by bookmarking this URL. Folks, can we get some consensus here on adding the button please? Kerry (talk) 05:51, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Australian War Memorial

Per above, I noticed AWM is also in throes of new website but it seems are keeping same URLs? Can you pls confirm Nick? JennyOz (talk) 10:46, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

The items in the collection databases have happily remained at the same URLs (saving a massive fix-up job), but it appears that most other links have moved or been taken down. The damage is mainly to the articles on the AWM site proper - the online editions of the official histories look to be at the same URLs, though they moved about a year ago! I'm not sure what will happen to the defunct but very useful Australia–Japan Research Project. There's also been a discussion of this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#Australian War Memorial site. Nick-D (talk) 11:12, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Gazetteer of Australia template

Hi all, {{Gazetteer of Australia}} is no longer working. Is there some genius out there who can get it to work? The web lookup function was changed by Geoscience Australia. Rangasyd (talk) 10:38, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Urgh, what a usability and accessibility nightmare. I'll see if I can find any way to call up a page from the database, but it seems to be all embedded in an ESRI web map wrapper. --Canley (talk) 13:23, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
Yep. I had a bit of a look last night too. It looks like in trying to be helpful they have been very unhelpful? I was thinking about a direct approach to GA, but I will leave that to you if you wish? Aoziwe (talk) 22:11, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
I have had a go at Template:Gazetteer of Australia/sandbox. It only works for feature numbers, not rowIDs. I don't remember what the old output looked like, so I don't know if the target now is a lot uglier. --Scott Davis Talk 05:11, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
We've had the same kind of thing with various Qld government websites. It's not usually possible to construct a URL that points to the content you want, but only to the page with the search function on it. For the Queensland Placenames, I use

{{cite QPN|entry number|name of place|any disambiguation information|accessdate=....}}

Even though all I can do is take the reader to the search page URL, I figure that I am still telling the user what to search for (name of place), how to distinguish between multiple returned results (the disambiguation information which is usually the type of place, e.g. town, river, ... and/or local government area), and the entry number serves as a double-check that the reader is now looking at the entry intended by the writer. It's often the best you can do when govt bodies decide to "hide" information from the users for the sake of a sexier looking interface. It may just be my cynical nature but I think organisations increasing like to do things this way precisely because it makes it hard for people to keep copies of information and so they can change it behind the scenes and deny it was ever any different. I certainly know of one organisation that got caught out after refusing an entitlement based on policies that the customer claimed existed on their website at the relevant time, saying that the current policies had been in force at that time and the customer was not eligible; alas the Internet Archive proved the customer was right! Kerry (talk) 09:36, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Geoscience Australia has released the whole current dataset (January 2012) under a CC-BY 4.0 licence at data.gov.au, so someone could potentially set up their own web front end to the database! @ScottDavis:, I'm still getting a "Page Not Found" error with the Roy Hill example in the template sandbox. --Canley (talk) 12:22, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I've had a quick look this evening and it doesn't look too complicated. I've got a fair bit of time on my hands at the moment for a project like this. Lankiveil (speak to me) 12:16, 19 June 2017 (UTC).
@Canley and Kerry Raymond: Oops. I didn't change the call in the example, so it was still calling the main version, not the sandbox version. Try again now that the example invokes the sandbox version too. --Scott Davis Talk 23:07, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I haven't used this before. Would it be useful to have the Gazetteer "feature number" as a property in wikidata? --99of9 (talk) 00:44, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Sure, I think so, I know the Victorian equivalent VICNAMES ID is already a Wikidata property. --Canley (talk) 00:03, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
I've just had some email correspondence back from GeoSciences Australia. They appear open to making the data available in more convenient formats and claim to be currently working on it. I have suggested a single spreadsheet on the Open Data portal as a convenient option. Just a comment, folks, when there is a problem with any govt websites, I suggest you always write to their contact address. Sometimes nothing comes of it or you get back a "we know better than you about what the public need" response, but sometimes you get what you are asking for or at least an improved situation. Public servants (and their overlords) vary in their genuine desire to help and you can get lucky and strike some very helpful ones. Ask and you may receive. Kerry (talk) 07:20, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
Agreed, I've had about a 50-50 response rate writing to government departments about such matters, and the ones who respond are usually keen to assist and appreciate constructive feedback. --Canley (talk) 12:45, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

"Ask a librarian" on which pages

Hi, I've noticed the "ask a librarian" message on some Australian talk pages, but not others. What is the criteria to use it, and how do you put it onto a page? Thanks Powertothepeople (talk) 02:18, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I've been editing some Australian living person's pages that haven't had it on their talk page .e.g. [17] [18][19][20][21]. I've also been working on a draft article that was requested as part of the Women in Red project, and it is about an Australian women's organisation so I am guessing I would need to put the right template on myself? Powertothepeople (talk) 05:52, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Ahah! Sorry, my bad. I just realised there is a link that uncollapses the box and reveals the Ask A Librarian link, so they do in fact have it, I just didn't see how to access it. Many thanks for your help and patience as I learn the ropes :) Powertothepeople (talk) 05:54, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Never be afraid to ask here. There is a lot to learn. Kerry (talk) 06:15, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't appear on draft pages, e.g.: Draft talk:Women Rites & Sites. Aboriginal women's cultural knowledge. Surely there it would be even more useful than on regular pages? --122.108.141.214 (talk) 00:36, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Opinions on task forces? (Signpost request)

The Signpost is looking to publish an article on the state of task forces (or subprojects of other projects) and issues they face in 2017. As a project with many different subprojects, with varying levels of activity, editors here might have some intriguing insights. Would anyone be interested in giving their thoughts/opinions, to be included in the piece? (It doesn't need to be long – just a paragraph or two will be fine, unless you want to write more.) If so, can you please leave a link to your submission at WP:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions § The state of taskforces in 2017. Thank you, - Evad37 [talk] 03:08, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

2016 Census data template

Data for the 2016 census has now been released. {{Census 2016 AUS}} is now available for citing populations. Please let me know if you find any errors when using the template. --AussieLegend (✉) 07:04, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

The wikidata property P4014 in the template is not correct, but we don't yet have one to replace it with until this application is completed: wikidata:Wikidata:Property proposal/Australian Statistical Geography 2016 ID. I'll just take it out for now. Oh, nevermind, you spotted this already. --99of9 (talk) 07:08, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
I've just updated the census data in the Australia article, and used this template for the reference. --Canley (talk) 07:17, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

2016 Census data

The 2016 Census data release date is sneaking up quickly now - 27 June 2017. Is there a plan to develop a 2016 version of Template:Census 2011 AUS at this stage? -- Mattinbgn (talk) 02:00, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

That makes sense. I've actually just updated the 2011 version, to track whether we have a matching ASGS 2011 ID in Wikidata. One thing everyone could help with is matching all the Urban Centres and Localities and State Suburbs in mix-n-match. Once we have these across the board on Wikidata, it will be possible to harvest populations onto Wikidata easily, and then pull them into en-wiki infoboxes. As I'm sure you know, the IDs change each census round, so to get this up and running for the 2016 data, we could get a 2016 wikidata property equivalent, and then load them either in mix-n-match, or by using the equivalence mappings put out by the ABS. --99of9 (talk) 05:08, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
PS here are the tracking categories, although they have not autopopulated yet:
Category:Australian Statistical Geography Standard 2011 ID not in Wikidata (140)
Category:Australian Statistical Geography Standard 2011 ID same as Wikidata (1,297)
Category:Australian Statistical Geography Standard 2011 ID different from Wikidata (45). --99of9 (talk) 05:10, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
PPS If any admins or template editors would like to assist with this, can I point you in the direction of this edit-protected request. My first LUA! --99of9 (talk) 06:59, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
I've made a start on the SSC mix 'n' matching, thanks for setting it all up and getting the property activated. Do you still need me to run that module? --Canley (talk) 10:04, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
@Canley: Great, it's a bit of a grind, but if we all split the work it will make it much easier. Yes the module still needs updating (I wouldn't call it "running"), just copy from the sandbox. Thanks. --99of9 (talk) 11:08, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
OK, I've updated the module. Quite enjoying the matching actually, but we'll see if that holds after a couple hundred more! I am going to the ABS seminar on the census data release in July, so if anyone has any questions or topics you would like me to follow up, let me know. --Canley (talk) 11:43, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Looks great! Helping with matching where I can. One straight-forward win we could have would be setting up a mix-n-match for LGAs such as Moree Plains Shire. There are around 520-odd in Australia, all well defined and all with articles. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 04:35, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@Mattinbgn: Yep, I did the states, LGAs, SUAs, the CEDs and the SEDs by myself before calling out for help! Moree Plains Shire is linked already: wikidata:Q820167. You can see a pretty map of everything done so far here.---99of9 (talk) 05:38, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Too easy! Great work. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 06:32, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

If we are to be ready for the 2016 release, we might as well have a property for it: wikidata:Wikidata:Property_proposal/Australian_Statistical_Geography_2016_ID. Also the 2006 version: wikidata:Wikidata:Property_proposal/Australian_Standard_Geographic_Classification_2006_ID --99of9 (talk) 13:33, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Cool, supported. --Canley (talk) 23:59, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

2016 Census data is out at http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310114.nsf/Home/Census . The DataPacks will be released on 12 July. --Canley (talk) 00:14, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

No UC/L data yet - as far as I can see. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 00:21, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
You can get to 2016 quickstats via [22], not complete yet.--Grahame (talk) 03:06, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

@99of9: We just cracked the 50% mark on the SSC matching. --Canley (talk) 06:48, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

@Canley:@Kerry Raymond:@Mattinbgn: Woohoo. Keep it up. We should get the 2016 property in about 24 hours, but that will be way easier to populate because I can use conversion tables once we have 2011 in. --99of9 (talk) 06:50, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Wagga Wagga is going to be a problem to update, and no doubt a few other regional cities! There is no population data that covers the urban area, if one were to use "Statistical Area 3" it covers an area larger than the LGA and "Statistical Area 2" misses out on Forest Hill! Bidgee (talk) 07:31, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
ASGS Volume 4: Significant Urban Areas, Urban Centres and Localities, Section of State is to be released in "late 2017".--Grahame (talk) 08:41, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Nomination of Tony Chang for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Tony Chang is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tony Chang until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Sagecandor (talk) 17:48, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Sydney

For some time now, Sydney has lacked attention from experienced editors. There was a major expansion in September 2014 by a new editor who hasn't edited since November 2014. Since August 2014 the article has blown out from 7,246 words of readable prose to 11,756 words, a 62% increase. One editor seems intent on making the article an image farm and a lot of the content that has been added is either trivial or minutiae. Some of the content should have been added to subarticles. Recently, the lead has been filled with more minutiae that really belongs in the body of the article and the lead really doesn't summarise the article. A check of other capital city articles shows some problems but Sydney seems to be the worst and, by far, the largest. It could really do with some copyediting, and I'd suggest this may be aided by editors who aren't resident in this state and therefore can look more objectively at the subject. --AussieLegend (✉) 09:58, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Updating census figures

When updating a section such as Raymond Terrace#Demographics should I remove the 2011 (or other years) figures or keep them for reference? AusLondonder (talk) 00:42, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Mostly you just substitute the new figures. Sometimes a comparison with the old figures might be useful.--Grahame (talk) 02:30, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
Articles with too many and indiscriminate figures (such as Yass Valley Council) put people off updating them.--Grahame (talk) 02:33, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Localities

ABS now produces population counts for localities such as Riverton, Queensland ([23]), 10 people.--Grahame (talk) 02:43, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I was looking at the SSC correspondence table last night, and as far as I can tell the 2016 ones are very closely aligned to the gazetted localities (and there are almost twice as many). So it means it won't be as simple as matching the 2011 codes, but it will solve a lot of the issues where a named State Suburb covered several bounded localities. --Canley (talk) 03:44, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
We actually discussed this at Template talk:Infobox Australian place#Populations from wikidata. There are still some inconsistencies but, generally, the places that I've checked seem a lot closer to what they should be. --AussieLegend (✉) —Preceding undated comment added 05:23, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
This is awesome news - ending the practice of mashing together lots of small localities with nearby bigger ones vastly increases the amount that we can use ABS population data as-is without explanation. I'm still noticing that the ABS hasn't lost its penchant for cracked boundaries - there's now an SSC for Big Hill...that adopts a random chunk of Lorne thus blowing out its small numbers, and more bizarre SSCs like Birregurra are every bit as bad as in 2011, but at least there's no need for "this figure is actually the mashed population data of ten towns" caveats on most articles anymore. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:01, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

other opinions

I've moved the "penatly rates" section to the end, but it probably ought to be a separate article. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:13, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes warrants its own article. But I could see it being POVed very quickly with semi protects being needed. Aoziwe (talk) 14:03, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia in the news

I happened across an ABC News article titled "'Wiki club' revives forgotten Northern Territory history in Wikipedia publishing nights". The first article mentioned, Cissy McLeod is an interesting story but seems to be WP:BLP1E fodder. Dexter Daniels (Aboriginal activist) seems a bit better, but both articles had MOS issues. Some eyes on the articles to assist the editors would be helpful. --AussieLegend (✉) 18:02, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

As the first of three wiki clubs in Australia - the Darwin editors are to be commended on their efforts and being able to be reported on their work. Regardless of the issues, any help in keeping the articles up would be appreciated JarrahTree 00:18, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Mal Meninga

I don't follow football so I would appreciate it if someone who does could look at this diff. I see a lot of "one digit" changes in my watchlist and almost all turn out to be testing/vandalism, so naturally I am suspicious of this one. But I have no knowledge of the sources for rugby to judge if this is a genuine error being corrected or testing/vandalism. Thanks if you can help. Kerry (talk) 22:02, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm no expert either, but that does not tally with the references such as Rugby League Project, and the 161 figure seems to be very well known as it was an Origin record until 2014 (Queensland rugby league team records, [24][25]). --Canley (talk) 22:17, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
Someone should check the other numbers, because (6x4)+(69x2) does not equal 161. Was there a field goal in there somewhere? Not in a position to check at the moment, unfortunately. Lankiveil (speak to me) 00:55, 13 July 2017 (UTC).
No field goals, but according to Rugby league gameplay, tries were worth 3 points before 1983, not 4. So that covers three years of Meninga's representative career, and on RPL it looks like he scored a penalty try in 1981. --Canley (talk) 01:37, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
But yeah, that could explain why the IP thought it was wrong, so likely a good faith edit. --Canley (talk) 01:42, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
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