Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 18

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Archive of Wikipedians Notice board from 1 September 2013 to 31 December 2013

Audioculture

I've been contacted by Russell Brown from Audio Culture which is funded by NZ on Air to showcase NZ Music and Artists. They are keen for the like to be referenced on Wikipedia eg artists pages like this however after some bad experiences a few years ago with NZonscreen links they are a little wary on how best to proceed. I was thinking we could just add them ourselves where they were up to scratch but I don't want to tragger some spam filter. Thoughts? - SimonLyall (talk) 11:46, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

It may be helpful to recast this in terms of Wikipedia:Authority control. Stuartyeates (talk) 04:04, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
A bit off topic, but perhaps it'd be a good opportunity for them to run a editathon to get things going and provide a lot of help for getting the content in? (Were I not on the other side of the world I'd be interested. As it is I've started using some of the content on articles). There's also the more specific Wikipedia:WikiProject New Zealand/Music task force Vickytnz (talk) 17:53, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Question regarding copyright of images listed on National Library of New Zealand

Edward John Eyre

I've been searching for some free images for New Zealand biographical articles, and have found a number of interesting images listed on the National Library of New Zealand website. However I'm unsure of the copyright status of some photos. For example here an image (from 1921) is provided, and they state that the author is unknown. The photo was definitely taken in New Zealand, but the exact date and location is unknown. According to this, should this photo not be in the public domain? The natlib page states however that "You can copy this item for personal use, share it, and post it on a blog or website. It cannot be used commercially without permission, please ask us for advice. If reproducing this item, please maintain the integrity of the image (i.e. don't crop, recolour or overprint it), and ensure the following credit accompanies it". So can anyone clarify whether images such as this, taken, and I assume published, in New Zealand over 50 years ago by an unknown author are in fact not in the public domain? -- Shudde talk 02:39, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

They may be government works, which are 100 years. NLNZ also runs http://digitalnz.org.nz/ which lets you facet / filter on license. Stuartyeates (talk) 03:43, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
It's of course true what Stuartyeates says, but most of the time, what they say about copyright is simply made up. I've uploaded hundreds of photos from the National Library, and most of the pages told me that I can't do that. Volunteers on Commons are quite strict, and if I were doing anything wrong, I would certainly have been caught out by now. Schwede66 04:03, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Yeah if it's a government work then you'd hope they'd know who took it and when (they give two possible dates and locations). I get the feeling they just put up a bit of a boiler-plate message without establishing whether they actually have copyright or not. I think I may go and upload the image to commons. I've done my homework, and I'm very confident that it's PD. -- Shudde talk 04:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
The licence tag to use would mostly be PD-New Zealand. Schwede66 17:13, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Unfortunately the National Library have various objectives and getting photos into Wikipedia articles is not one of them. However 'Ive contacted them re individual photos and they will usually double check and explain their copyright reasoning, probably in this case it is just defaulting to something. The lack of photographer information is probably the problem - SimonLyall (talk) 06:27, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I have just uploaded the photo on the right from this source to replace this low resolution job and lets just have a look at it by way of example. "It cannot be used commercially without permission, please ask us for advice. If reproducing this item, please maintain the integrity of the image (i.e. don't crop, recolour or overprint it)". Well, it is from the 1870s or 1880s, they don't even give the artist but even if they did, that person would be long dead. I think I'm actually doing them a favour by not asking for permission, because I'm not using up their staff time and they can instead focus on something more productive. And why wouldn't I crop the black stripe that the original has? Schwede66 22:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
You seem undeterred by "It cannot be used commercially without permission". Sorry I've just stumbled on this discussion. I've spent quite a lot of time corresponding with the Turnbull Library / National Library and even more time before and after on the phone. In the end I (very unhappily) threw it all in, in particular the non-commercial requirement being so directly against WP/Wikimedia requirements.
I think the volunteers that police Wikimedia are strict but they do not supervise usual suspects and your confidence may be misplaced. Do I mean usual suspects or do I mean steady contributors? Eddaido (talk) 22:01, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Where I'm coming from is that they do not have the right to claim any restrictions when items are in the public domain. In that case, it simply does not matter what they say or write. Schwede66 00:27, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that. Where I'm coming from is that I could only find the image because "they" had preserved it and catalogued it and that is why I could find it and therefore I owed them some courtesy. Being unwilling to be 'blacklisted' (there've been quite a few conversations, er terseness was in the air) I just shut down my little project. One of the things I did point out to them was that while their colleagues around the world were groping for ways to let people see what they held and yet keep it safe they would let me display things1 things2 in WP that NatLib would not. The non-commercial thing, aside from your let-out, just kills all their stuff for WP.
How do we successfully encourage them to Loosen Up? Eddaido (talk) 02:52, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't think you can get them to loosen up. Everything is donated under the understanding that they will look after it carefully etc. A significant portion of it they don't even own the copyright to (eg all the stuff from Fairfax). I think it is best to just give up on getting them to change the license and only use them for stuff that is(or should be) in the public domain.
I've bounced from body to body. The one I'm most hopeful of is Archive New Zealand. They actually control the copyright to everything they have so can make decissions. If anybody is Wellington-based we could organise a slection of a sample of stuff and then request they release it under a WP-friendly license. - SimonLyall (talk) 10:35, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Maori language help

Can someone here please verify that the claim made at mi:Talk:Tāke about [1] is correct? If so, it does seem appropriate to delete the article.-gadfium 19:33, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I have now deleted this article.-gadfium 02:54, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Regions of New Zealand, revisited

Kia ora tātou. The names of all 16 regions in NZ were standardised as "Foo Region" for articles and categories per consensus in 2009. A few regions have now had their names changed to "Foo region" (lower-case "r") because the "region" bit is not part of the proper noun; this makes sense IMO. I was trying to standardise the rest of them, but a couple of them had redirects (which needs admin assistance). So I wanted to get a second opinion before going ahead.

  • These were all moved on 26 November by User:BlackCab, except for Hawke's Bay, which I moved just prior to posting here. Double redirects from "Foo Region" have already been fixed.

The categories are all at Category:Foo Region, including Nelson. Personally I favour having all of them at "Foo region" with the lower-case "r". Thoughts? – Liveste (talk • edits) 06:47, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I have always wondered why 'regions' was capitalised. I support having the remaining ones brought in line to all have lower case 'r'. Schwede66 08:28, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
I'd assume they are capitalised due to being proper names. A Region in this context is a local government entity which took over from sundry local committees such as catchment boards upon local government restructuring in 1989. See Regions of New Zealand. As to what to do with each individual article it depends on what the article is about. If it is about the local government entity then I think the capitals should be retained. If it is about a general area, does it really need to be called "region" at all? For example the Southland Region article would perhaps be better off at Southland, New Zealand than Southland region. (The clarity of this distinction is not helped by the habit of Regional Councils of giving themselves brand names emphasising their environmental work). Similarly the article currently at Canterbury Region could be moved to Canterbury, New Zealand, subsequent to which the article currently at Canterbury Regional Council could be moved to Canterbury Region. Daveosaurus (talk) 10:35, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
Wait, are the geopolitical areas actually defined independently of the regional councils? Or are they officially the same thing? (I hope those questions make sense, because I'm a little confused.) I've gone through the List of regions table at Regions of New Zealand:
  • Of the five unitary authorities, three have separate articles for the geopolitical area and a regional council; Marlborough has no council article that I can find, while Gisborne District Council redirects to Gisborne region;
  • Of the 11 other regions, only three have separate region/council articles (Canterbury, Otago and Southland), while the others simply redirect to the Region article (or else don't have a council article).
Shouldn't we standardise all this as well? (Here I was thinking this would all be straightforward.) – Liveste (talk • edits) 12:35, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
Standardisation would be a good idea. The Regions themselves each have a Regional Council, although in the case of unitary authorities (Nelson, Tasman, Marlborough, Gisborne, and I'm not sure what's gone on in Auckland) the District or City also has the powers of the Regional Council. The Regions also include areas which historically hadn't been thought of as part of that Region; for example, Kaikoura, Kurow and Otematata are in Canterbury Region, but wouldn't be considered part of Canterbury in normal contexts (Kaikoura only ended up part of Canterbury when Marlborough decided to be a unitary authority and Kaikoura didn't want to take part).
To standardise them, I'd suggest move Foo Region (or Foo region) to Foo, New Zealand, and if any Regional Councils are actually independently notable (I'd doubt that for any other than the Canterbury Regional Council, which is a major ongoing political issue; Regional Councils are very much eclipsed by City or District Councils in newsworthiness) then their articles should be at Foo Region, or Foo Regional Council. Daveosaurus (talk) 00:02, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
I inadvertently started this ball rolling a few weeks ago when I encountered the Hawke's Bay article that appeared under the title of Hawke's Bay Region. I was baffled by why the article had a title that included the word "Region", including a capital "R", as if it was part of the proper name; because there was a similarly-named article (Hawke Bay) that referred to the body of water, it seemed more logical to move the word "region" into parantheses as a disambiguation, in the style of Steve Martin (motorcycle racer) and Steve Martin (sportscaster). I sought the help of an admin to move the page because of an existing redirect. (See [2] on October 9).
I thought no more of it until I discovered a couple of weeks ago that other NZ regions had the word "Region" in the title also. I moved some to a new title with the "region" uncapitalised, then stopped when I wondered why the word "region" was in the title at all. My reasoning is that if Queensland and New South Wales can exist as article titles without the word "state" in the title, so can Manawatu and Taranaki. The complication is those regions for which disambiguations are clearly needed (West Coast, Gisborne, Wellington). My suggestion would be to rename all articles without the word region unless a disambiguation is needed, in which case the word "region" would appear in parentheses, per the Steve Martin disambig examples. The high number of articles requiring the bracketed disambig shouldn't affect that: as a principle, the word "region" is just not needed.
Sorry for not raising this here earlier; I could see no previous discussion on any of the articles I looked at, nor was I aware of this page (I did look at Wikipedia:WikiProject New Zealand without seeing anywhere the discussion would logically begin. Since someone did notice me changing the articles, it probably would have been helpful if they had directed my notice to this page once the discussion began. But no matter; I'm here now. BlackCab (talk) 10:29, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
The caps read strangely to me too. For names where the region isn't the main topic (e.g. Auckland, Wellington), I think "XXX region" is probably the most natural way to refer to it, but I wouldn't object to "XXX (region)" and where necessary "XXX (New Zealand region)" if that keeps things reasonably consistent. (Consistency was the main reason given for changing to "XXX Region" in the 2009 discussion.) "XXX, New Zealand" only works in some cases (e.g. Canterbury), not others (e.g. Auckland, Wellington). So I don't think that's the best approach, especially since further disambiguation (e.g. "XXX, New Zealand (region)") starts to seem clumsy.
Where we have a separate article on the council, I think this should generally be titled using its official name as listed on localcouncils.govt.nz.
In some cases, the vernacular meaning of "XXX region" is quite different from the area governed by the regional council (e.g. Wellington, Waikato), and we may have extra regional articles that don't match the regional council boundaries (e.g. Wairarapa). In others, only some border areas are in the "wrong" region, and this can hopefully be covered in the articles on the relevant region council areas. --Avenue (talk) 15:08, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
Sorry for starting this section and then leaving it for two weeks. And apologies to BlackCab for not notifying you of the discussion. I don't mind which disambiguator we use, whether it be "XXX Region", "XXX region", "XXX (region)", "XXX (New Zealand region)", or anything else (I'm a little over "Foo" right now). I'd probably pick "XXX region" because it's simple, and we haven't had any disambig issues with "XXX Region". Personally, I'd like to see consistency across all 16 articles, but I'm not fussed either way; I'll settle for some kind of consensus. I also agree with Avenue on regional council names. Thoughts? – Liveste (talk • edits) 07:08, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
With consistency the aim, we need to think more widely about other local govt divisions, such as the territorial authorities, provinces, counties, etc. I'm not sure that "Province" was part of a proper name any more than "Region" is. The New Zealand Constitution Act [1852] said "The following Provinces are hereby established in New Zealand; namely, Auckland, New Plymouth, Wellington, ...". Would Auckland Province be renamed Auckland province or Auckland (province) or whatever? Likewise would Waikato District become Waikato district or Waikato (district)? Should Cook County, New Zealand be Cook county or Cook (county)? Nurg (talk) 21:11, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
I'd like to see consistency combined with brevity for the regions. Any articles about the councils themselves should use their official names (and let the text and redirects cover any trading names). Cities and districts are called "City of ..." etc in legal documents, as were counties, so there's no legal requirement to prefer "Porirua City" over "Porirua city" and sentence case is the overall standard. U.S. county pages are "... County, State" but we surely needn't follow that. It's a small step to suggest that our "region" pages could match the "case" of whatever we agree for the cities and districts. Robin Patterson (talk) 01:14, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
For the sake of simplicity, I support Daveosaurus' suggestion, but also taking into account Liveste's option when a disambig is required.
  • For regions with no disambig issues, a simple Manawatu-Wanganui, Otago, Waikato, Marlborough etc.
  • For regions with simple disambig issues involving only other NZ-related articles (such as Auckland, Wellington, Taranaki and Gisborne) Auckland (region), Gisborne (region) etc.
  • For regions with wider (international) disambig issues on Wikipedia such as Northland, Canterbury and Southland, Northland (New Zealand region), Canterbury (New Zealand region) etc.
Queensland, Texas and New Zealand exist without further elaboration in the title; there is no reason to explain in the article namespace that Waikato is a region. I note that Nelson also appears in both the Template:Regions of New Zealand template and Regions of New Zealand article, yet the link directs to an article on the city. Is there in fact a Nelson region? If so, it should have an article of its own, no matter how brief. BlackCab (talk) 07:42, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Nelson is a unitary authority, so the same organisation (the Nelson City Council) has the powers both of a City Council and of a Regional Council. (City councils' powers are what one would expect - local roads, water and sewerage, parks and reserves, etc. Regional councils are descended from the old Catchment Boards and organisations such as Pest Destruction Boards and a number of them have rebranded themselves to emphasise their oversight of water and air standards, so that, for example, the Canterbury Regional Council calls itself "Environment Canterbury".)
I honestly don't think a Nelson Region article needs to exist separately from the Nelson City Council other than as a redirect. A Nelson-Marlborough Regional Council did exist for a short time after 1989, when local government throughout New Zealand was reorganised, but within three years was split into four parts (Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough unitary authorities, and Kaikoura District, which became part of Canterbury Region). Daveosaurus (talk) 08:43, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
BlackCab says "For regions with no disambig issues, a simple Manawatu-Wanganui, Otago, Waikato, Marlborough etc" - come, Sir, I think you picked three poor examples out of four. "Manawatu-Wanganui" is the only good one. Otago, as mentioned above, includes many square kilometres of land that was put into the Canterbury region in 1989 for catchment reasons; it is therefore not the same as the Otago region, and the province was bigger still, including Fiordland and the south-western lakes. "Waikato" is a major river, a group of iwi, and a territorial authority district as well as a region; and Marlborough needs something to distinguish it from the surname or ducal title and several other overseas entities and from the province, which included Kaikoura. Robin Patterson (talk) 04:55, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Nelson Region currently redirects to Nelson, New Zealand, which makes sense IMO. Waikato would need a disambiguator, as well; see Waikato (disambiguation). I think the regional councils warrant individual articles, although named at "XXX Regional Council" for all of them (rather than "Environment XXX"). BlackCab's idea for regional disambiguation has merit, and it's probably more consistent with WP:DAB. I don't mind others, as well. Consensus? – Liveste (talk • edits) 22:59, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

A search for "Waikato" currently takes users to Waikato region, which is the dominant subject. An {{About}} template to point to the Waikato (disambiguation) page should be sufficient there, which would allow the article about Waikato region to be simply titled Waikato. BlackCab (talk) 23:13, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Wow, didn't know that the region was the primary topic for "Waikato" (having a Waikato (disambiguation) page should've been my first clue ... sigh). This being the case, then you're right in saying that a disambiguator is unnecessary. Good to go with BlackCab's dabing scheme? – Liveste (talk • edits) 12:44, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I've dragged this out of the archive, as it's not sorted. I think we were pretty much there, but need admin support to do it. Schwede66 18:13, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposal, December 2013

There are 16 NZ regions listed at Template:Regions of New Zealand. Seven have the format Foo region. Eight have the format Foo Region. The odd one out is Nelson, New Zealand, which actually is an article about the city (but also notes that it is the "economic and cultural centre of the Nelson region".)

Looking again at the options, the problems of ambiguity (either in a NZ sense or an international one) actually occur in most of those regions. The only ones for which there is definitely no ambiguity are Manawatu-Wanganui and Otago. I'd argue that Waikato is a third such case. There are other uses of Waikato, but these are covered under the disambig tag at the top of the article. It could be argued that Taranaki is a similar case and could be treated in exactly the same way, making the region the primary use of the name and a disambig tag at the top.

There are, then, two options:
(1) Rename those three (or four) unambiguous articles by their region name only: ie, Waikato, Manawatu-Wanganui and Otago, and the remainder Foo (region).
(2) Rename all 16 articles Foo (region).

For ease in searching for them, my preference would be No.1. Creating an article naming consistency by appending "(region)" would be tidy, but not really helpful. Few people would search for "Otago region". They would want the article on Otago, the region. I would oppose a naming convention of Foo region. No one refers to "Taranaki region" or "Marlborough region"; it's "Taranaki" and "Marlborough" and the use of parantheses makes it clear this is for a disambiguation purpose only.

I invite comments. BlackCab (talk) 22:09, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd go with (2), personally. Notes: (a) Auckland Region is not a proper name any more, it's now just Auckland; (b) Waikato is not unambiguous, due to the existence of Waikato_(iwi) (the Tainui is a modern disambiguator). Stuartyeates (talk) 01:06, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
Waikato (iwi) and Waikato (New Zealand electorate) could both theoretically lay claim to the article name "Waikato" — the river and sporting teams would obviously have more specific names. However the iwi article is currently a one-line stub, so I'd suggest that per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, it would be appropriate to name the article on the Waikato region simply "Waikato" and retain the current disambig line at the top of the article, which links to Waikato (disambiguation).
Could you please elaborate on your point about Auckland, Stuart? This discussion is aimed at removing such titles as "Auckland Region", but according to the articles, Auckland is the metro area, while the Auckland Region article refers to a wider area. The new article name Auckland (region) would work perfectly fine, I think. BlackCab (talk) 02:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
I meant that the Auckland Region is now the Auckland region. Stuartyeates (talk) 04:44, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
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