This is an archive of past discussions about Portal:Australia. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Can we have edit links for these? There's a spelling error in did you know and I can't work out how to fix it. Ambi 11:02, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I haven't completed the main description. I am going to rewrite it. As for edit tags, I haven't quite figured out how to work them yet, though I have been experimenting. I was actually going to put a request on the Notice Board to see if anyone could do it. Until then, the only way to edit the boxes is to "edit this page" and click on the appropriate template listed below the edit box.--Cyberjunkie 11:33, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Syntax
I copied it directly from the Information Technology Wikiportal, and followed the layout of Wikiportal Canada, Wikiportal UK and Wikiportal Quebec. So its more hybrid than non-standard. I'm not at all learned in wiki syntax. Since you seem to be, could you perhaps add edit links as Ambi has requested - I made one half-hearted attempt to do so, but without success.--Cyberjunkie 13:35, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
unfortunately it looks like you picked a bad wikiportal to emulate, actually the instructions for creating a new portal are at wikipedia:wikiportal#Wikiportals under construction, it uses the template:wikiportal as a skeleton and has all the edit links in place. i'll try and fix it if i get time. clarkk10:21, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I noticed that that was the instruction. But, as an aesthete, their template did not appeal to me at all. And, at 600 x 800 screen resolution, it rarely worked. Thankyou for adding those edit links - it saved me a lot of hassel.--Cyberjunkie04:56, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
Okay, now I see you've gone and used that template, which I decidedly disagree with. It may be what they're using for a basic start at Wikipedia:Wikiportal, but we by no means must follow it. If you look at any of the existing Wikiportals, they have all been modified in some way. Their "instruction" is not policy and their template is not "standard". --Cyberjunkie05:14, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
it helps to standardise (within limits, obviously) where possible. less startup cost when somebody is switching into a new project, easier to maintain multiple portals, and helps maintain general consistency (e.g. using template:Wikiportal:Australia/Opentask rather than COTF). that said, tweaking the portals stylistically for each country, i have no problem with, your version looks fine to me, now that we have the links in place. the point being that if somebody wants to go with a less standard version, the burden is then on that person to make it work as well as the standard one, which can sometimes be time consuming. anyway, it all works fine now. clarkk07:38, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
Hello, I would be very pleased, if you can help me: I'm searching for "my" article de:Flagge Australiens a public domain photo of an australian sportsmen (cricket player, soccer player, whatever...) in a national green/gold sportsdress. Grüße de:Kookaburra
PD Images
Fo your information, I've created this PD image template {{PD-Australia}} which is self-explanatory:
It wasn't the intention. That map had been used to show Australia for quite a long while, but it seems someone had changed it without bothering to check the consequences. I have subsequently updated it. Thanks, --cj | talk17:33, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I've started a set of subpages at Portal:Australia/Anniversaries, which has a subpage for every day of the year, so that notable events and anniversaries in Australian history can be considered. Hopefully, if approved by the community for inclusion on the portal page, it would not be hard to maintain, as a glance at the code of Portal:Germany, shows that there is an automated device so that the reference to the relevant day's subpage will automatically update itself at 0:00 every day. I've stuck a few random notable events in there just off the top of my head, etc. Regards, Blnguyen | Have your say!!!02:33, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
I suggest that the set of pages needs to be nearly complete before the portal starts displaying them. Otherwise we'll get unsightly red links on the portal page. It would be a lot of work to complete these pages, and I'm not sure the benefits would be worth while.-gadfium02:58, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh, of course, but in time I think we could rummage together at least three or four anniversaries per day. It's just like the main page, and I think there could be more Australia content than German content on the English Wikipedia. Blnguyen | Have your say!!!03:01, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
I think the proposal is good. I was thinking of it already, but not sure how to implement in the context of the years in Australia pages, which are of course an easy source of events. I would like to see the links back to those years too, eg for July 11 1916 being Gough's bithday, don't link to 1916 but instead 1916 in Australia, though piped to 1916, ie [[1916 in Australia|1916]]--A Y Arktos\talk03:12, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
I think they (the German portal) just trawled through the data manually, unless someone creates June 8 in Australia, which would have the exact same effect anyway.
I think so, there is a template that works out the day, with an offset of days, I don't think it would be difficult for the people who write these templates to create one with a deliberate time offset and then convert to days and months. I don't know what the WP policy is w.r.t changing the clock for regional portals not on GMT however.Blnguyen | Have your say!!!03:20, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
I like the proposal, though it would need to be completed before inclusion on the portal as either a new feature or replacement for DYK.--cj | talk03:34, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Since we are drawing from a smaller pool of articles than Wikipedia, it might be a good idea to include notable births and/or deaths, and important cultural works - like the publication date for books etc. I've also got to say, I don't really see a great problem with having red links on a portal - red links often prompt people to write articles.--Peta23:42, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
I also have no problem with red links. If using years in Australia for the date (which is my preference), there will be red links and these definitley deserve an article, 1916 in Australia, 1868 in Australia and [[1916 in Australia are all redlinked at the moment, they each have interesting events happening in them--A Y Arktos\talk00:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC).
Is "19xx in Australia" too going too fine-grained for the article topics? I mean, there were those world factbooks for each year in my local library when I was growing up and I agree their content would be great on Wikipedia, but with its extremely broad frame of reference I worry that fine-grain summary articles like these will be hard for researchers to find. Imagine you are looking for information about the goldrush in Australia and associated economical change... You have an idea it happened in the goldrush happened in the mid 1800s, but not sure exactly what year the most important dates happened. You are going to want an article more like "1850s in Australia".... What do you think? This is going to be particularly relevant for the pre-1788 years in Australia and pre-Renaissance years for most countries — Donama00:50, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Have a look at one of the non redlinked years in Australia, for example 1962 in Australia. It links to the Timeline of Australian history which has major events per decade. It also links back to 1962 which from there links to decades - not too many clicks to get to a broader timeframe. I agree with you about pre 1788, but are we putting in dates pre 1788 (other than 1770 which I am in two minds about), there weren't that many records or consistent calendars around for dates relevant to Australia. However, if it was something like the Batavia or similar event you had in mind, no I wouldn't link back to 1629 in Australia--A Y Arktos\talk01:11, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Peta, per featured portal criteria, red links are limited to only contibution-encouraging aspects of portals (ie, to-do lists). This portal does not include a to-do list, but instead points to ACOTF. --cj | talk05:25, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
It would be my preference to not include pictures amongst the anniversaries because they are too variable; not all subpages will be of sufficient size to balance the image. In other words, the image should be a secondary aspect - the text should outweigh it. If images are included, they should be limited to dates with 4 or more anniversaries. Moreover, they should not be thumbnailed. Also, please ensure in adding dates that a uniform format is followed; the first letter of the anniversary after the hyphen should be capitalised in all instances, and all anniversaries should have full stops.--cj | talk08:52, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
The issue is, it is much easier to include pictures as we are building the items now rather than go back and add them later. I would like to add now and discuss later, rather than the other way around, if pictures are an agreed option. I think we should be able to find pictures for one in four events. The model I had in mind is Portal:Germany/Anniversaries/May where there is a picture for each day. I note they are not thumbnailed or captioned - the lack of captioning a consequence of not thumbnailing rather than editor's intention though looking at the code, but probably a Good Thing.--A Y Arktos\talk23:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
That seems reasonable. There are a few reasons to not thumbnail images on portals; firstly, they conflict with set backgrounds; secondly, they are not always aesthetically appealing (the box in a box issue); and finally, for this portal, they would be inconsistent. Capitions should always be included for images though, as they are still shown on mouse over.--cj | talk07:23, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I see the red links as "contribution-encouraging aspects". The German portal seems to have achieved its blue links through the domination of births and deaths - few events per se doing a quick scan. I am not interested in merely a list of births and deaths - a light scattering only should be sufficient. I also see little point to linking to the common year for an Australian portal. Given the lack of interest from other editors to even add events, I can't see this going anywhere with the constraint put on it by Cyberjunkie's interpretation of "Red links must be restricted to only contribution-encouraging aspects, and limited at that." at Wikipedia:What is a featured portal?--A Y Arktos\talk11:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm actually quite happy with the response to this proposal – it has been the most concerted group effort this portal has seen. The catalogue will continue to grow over time, so I don't see any particular need to rush – the portal certainly isn't going anywhere. Peta's suggestion below to run it on AWNB may trigger further participation. The "contibution-encouraging aspects" comment refers to self-referential sections on portals, namely things to do, WikiProjects etc. Red links are confined to these sections. You can trust my interpretation of what is a featured portal?, because I wrote it. The reasoning behind the red link criterion, imported from Wikipédia française, which was more advanced vis-à-vis portals at that stage, is that because portals are meant to display quality snippets of the encyclopædia, red links serve only as a distraction.--cj | talk05:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
A different proposal
Here's another proposal, why don't we have a dummy run on the notice board? I think the collaboration of the fortnight could be moved - (cj would it be possible to make the candidates box half as high and make a skinnier box for the collabortion of the fortnight? Or we could rename the box community and just have the collabotation and candidates in there.) and the box could go beneath in the news. Red links would be ok, and it would draw attention to the "project" since more people (probably) visit that page than look at the portal. Then when we have some more polished material it can appear on both the portal and the noticeboard.--Peta02:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
We need to free up a box, so I though we could have two boxes where the candidates box is now, one for the cotf and one for candidates - or we can just combine those things in one box.--Peta05:59, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea. I think Peta means merge the contents of Collaboration of the Fortnight and Other Candidates boxes at the AWNB to free up a box for the new Australian Anniversary content. -- Longhair02:39, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I made a change and think it looks ok. What do you think? Alignment in the middle right box could do with an expert tweak though. -- Longhair11:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Another (minor) problem being, the edit link actually edits the box contents, and not anniversary dates. -- Longhair11:12, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I suspect a page or two also needs to be renamed, plus the edit link problem. Other than that, I quite like it. I stole your userpage idea too AYArktos :) Thanks. -- Longhair11:35, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Appears to be fixed. What was happening was the image tags where being presented as such, and not an image. -- Longhair06:27, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
Big dates
What happens on dates where there are lots of events (Jan 1, Nov 11 and Dec 10 spring to mind, but there will be more)? Does someone need to manually modify a template, or will the whole list appear?--Peta21:50, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
If they are excessive, and distort the portal proper, then that may have to be done. But they are only temporary and none have yet struck me as too large. Still, maybe we should place a cap on the number of events per anniversary?--cj | talk07:30, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I think we will have to review to reduce to no more than five per day, but it is easier to review later and take out than provide guidelines up front. The criteria for removal might not be significance of the event but interest of the unusual - directing to an article that would not have come otherwise to the attention of the casual browser. It really comes down to refining the purpose of the Anniversaries list. Some events/articles have more than one date associated with them and are easier to move than others - eg a significant Australian was born, died and might have done something on particular days; they need only be mentioned once in the year's 365 days. I suggest review when a month is about to go live - we still have lots of blanks in July but it seems a bit early to be working on the clean up when so much is still being added generally throughout the year. Need to start the clean up in the last week of June.--A Y Arktos\talk22:59, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Images
I have been adding captions to images. In at least one case the caption had been removed. The mouseover does work if pop-ups is not enabled and is important information thus for general readers that they would not see otherwise.--A Y Arktos\talk22:59, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
There was talk somewhere of a list of Featured Australian articles but I can't seem to find it. If we're running short of Australian content, there's always the Good article pool to chose from. -- Longhair02:46, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
See this and this. I couldn't bear to see redlinks, so I quickly copied them from around Weeks 40/41, 2006. If I've stuffed this up, my apologies, but I figured these were better than nothing for a featured portal. Daniel Bryant07:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
The portal says that Australia has been inhabited by Aboriginals for 50,000 years, whereas the Australia article says that it has been inhabited by Aboriginals for only 42,000 years. Please explain, --Spebi22:45, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Simply, the text in the introduction of this portal was taken from the Australia article, which has subsequently changed. I've updated the figure.--cj | talk16:46, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Fair use images
In particular, logos. What's the current status regarding the legitimacy of their use in portals? I see at least two in Portal:Australia/Anniversaries/August (A-League and Demons), and I always thought that they were off-limits, so I'm asking here for more input. Thoughts? Cheers, Daniel Bryant11:50, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Under present policy, they are prohibited in portalspace. A proposal to allow them is currently being discussed, but looks unlikely to get up. I've removed the photos you pointed out. Thanks,--cj | talk16:45, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Red links alert!
Resolved
The portal was showing redlinks for "week 0" on selected items! I have copied materials from week 1 to temporarily remove the redlinks. Arman(Talk)01:28, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
I have fixed the problem now. There was an error with the function that automatically produces the week number of the year, and (I think) the ISO week number was Week 0 of 2008, but the year number still generated 2007, and as Week 0, 2007 didn't exist, hence the red links. I've fixed the problem so it manually displays the Featured selection of the first week of 2008, even though it's technically (according to the software) not 2008 yet. Spebi01:32, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
Located between Batemans Bay and Moruya and by the village of Tomakin. This sandy beach is about one kilometre long with shrubbed sand dunes and grassed flats to the interior. It is crescent shaped and features Barlings Island and Long Nose Point to the north and Melville Point to the south. The beach faces south and, therefore, picks up southerly swell. The beach is affected, usually after mid morning, by strong north-easterly winds especially in summer. Sea temperatures usually vary between 15 and 20 degrees Celsius, with the coldest months being October and November. Wet suits are advisable in the non-summer seasons. Salmon, sting rays and dolphins are common. Whales can be seen in the migratory months. Several years ago a mother whale and its calf sheltered in the bay for a day or so.
Barlings, also known as Chunders, is patronised mainly by local Tomakin surfers who are more atune to the vagaries of the beach. Outsiders are quick to dismiss Chunders because of its famous close-out break, its unforgiving bach-wash, its sometimes dodgey paddle through the rocks, the presence of bluebottles after a strong southerly and suspect flotsam after a stong north-easterly. The north of the beach is sheltered from swell while the south can experience periods of strong surf-- usually followed by a flat spell. The sand banks are normally best after strong waves have shifted sand further out to sea. Right hand breaks are usually fast while the left handers are generally slower with a faster section close to the shore. Waves break into respective rips which can be hazardous to visitors.
To the north of the beach, between Barlings Island and Long Nose Point, are rocky coves and a sewage outlet. To the sooth, between Melville Point and the mouth Of the Tomaga River are Tomakin Cove (Little Beach) and Tomakin Beach (River Beach). The former is protected from waves. The latter has a long right hander on the river mouth with NE swell. Avoid a fast out going tide. In the middle, The Basin, provides a large fattish left/right hander. Be prepared to wait...
Always remember the surf is always far better and the girls are prettier at Broulee!!!! ECO
I don't know what has gone wrong, but the top of the portal page looks really awful. The map overlaps the text, the text is ragged and right-justified, and there is a big blob of useless whitespace. cojoco (talk) 16:27, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
I've commented out some html in Portal:Australia/Intro which has fixed it. This is just addressing the symptoms. Perhaps something changed in MediaWiki which broke the layout. Someone more familiar with this portal can try reversing my change in a few hours and see if it now works, and perhaps report it at WP:VP/T if it still doesn't.-gadfium17:42, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Currently I'm using Firefox 24.0 and it's fixed. I was using Safari 6.0.5 when it was bugged like that... I'm also using Mountain Lion on a Macintosh. Acalycinetalk00:11, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
The intro blurb for the portal cites Australia's population as 21 million, while the actual figure is more like 24: would someone with sufficient permissions to get to the template on which the intro is located like to fix it?
Rpot2 (talk) 02:45, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
I should also probably mention that, to stop it getting too out-dated, that stat will also need to be monitored, and updated whenever the population ticks over to the next nearest next million. Is using a bot for that worth-while? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rpot2 (talk • contribs) 05:58, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Resolved
