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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Wikipedia and Australian Law

In the last meetup, we discussed briefly our concerns with proxying and distributing Wikipedia content in Australia due to weaker free speech laws in Australia. I was wondering why we don't do something about it? Something like taking steps towards changing Australian laws to be more Wikipedia friendly. I don't want to detract Australian Wikipedians from what they do best, which is write good articles - but this is really important and we should at least be doing something minimal. The most productive action we could take that I could think of is to actually document the status of Australian laws that affect Wikipedia. This means we could be killing two birds with one stone:

  • Expanding knowledge by writing Wikipedia articles.
  • Providing the specific information a politically oriented group would need to lobby government on our behalf so that we don't have to get involved in politics.

Newhoggy | Talk 13:37, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem is more fundamental than this. What we really need is an Australian bill of rights. This would guarantee freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. People assume we have these rights in law, but it appears that we don't. Apparently we are the "only common law country without a Bill of Rights". See: NSW Council for Civil Liberties, which basically covers point 2 above about a lobbying group. Point one could perhaps be covered by having a redirect at Australian bill of rights, which could point to Australian bill of rights - lack thereof, which in turn could explain that we don't have one, and explain what one would get us, and provide various links/references (e.g. [1], [2], [3], [4]). -- All the best, Nickj (t) 23:05, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Suburbs

I just did a pass through List of Sydney suburbs and found all the blue-links which were going to incorrect articles, and dabbed them with a ", New South Wales".

Now, of 634 links in that list, 122 have articles of varying worth.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Melbourne are using Blackburn South, Victoria as an example of what a suburb article should be like - what does anyone think of it? Looks quite reasonable to me.

btw why do you suppose the Romanian Wikipedia has a list of suburbs in Sydney, most of which have stub articles?? See ro:Lista suburbiilor din Sydney —Stormie 04:36, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

Good question! Sounds like someone might start a translation effort soon... I guess we should merge out progress boxes now :-) - Ta bu shi da yu 05:17, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Also see Brunswick, Victoria and Brunswick, Melbourne, which are soon to be merged into what will probably be our best example yet. Ambi 04:41, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
As to the Romanian one...who knows. Ambi 04:41, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Heya, I'll join. I just want to make a suggestion about following the Melbourne lead: that we don't add one of those directional navigation boxes. They're a gimmick and not very useful. Maybe they suit Melbourne with its retangular grid, but not Sydney. --Randwicked 11:14, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. This is suited better to a map. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:58, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

hey, to keep things consistent could a sysop, delete the redirect at gordon, New South Wales and move gordon, Australia there? clarkk 11:26, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Actually, anyone should have been able to do that, since Gordon, New South Wales was a redirect with no edit history? Anyway, I just did it, maybe I needed my sysop powers to do so but I don't think so! ;-) —Stormie 02:10, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)

Made a new template

I've created a new template based on teh Melbourne progress box. It's Template:Progress. Just use {{Progress|<thing in progress>|<article> (not linked)|<category>|<percentage_gone>|100-<percentage_gone>|<description>}}.

Here's an example:

{{Progress|Suburbs|[[List of Sydney suburbs]]|Sydney suburbs|0|100|So far as I known several articles exist and very few are detailed.<br>Not all existing articles have an appropriate table and category.}}

{{Progress|Suburbs|[[List of Sydney suburbs]]|Sydney suburbs|0|100|So far as I known several articles exist and very few are detailed.<br>Not all existing articles have an appropriate table and category.}}

Ta bu shi da yu 05:07, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

List of Sydney suburbs

moved from my user talk page

Hey Stormie,

Do you envisage having a 'nearby suburbs' table on Sydney suburb pages, like the ones at Patterson Lakes, Victoria?

If so, feel free to copy the templates used on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Melbourne/Suburbs page - in fact you may be able to offer us suggestions, or maybe use a shared template. Let me know what you think! We also (just recently) moved all Melbourne suburb names to (suburb), Victoria instead of (suburb) or (suburb), Australia, to make the templates easier to use - just thought you might like to know, since you were editing list of Sydney suburbs! -- Chuq 05:41, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Throwing it out to the floor, what does anyone else reckon to that nearby suburbs table? See Template:MelbSuburbBox1 for the template. And also, I guess, what does anyone else think of having a consistent suburb, New South Wales title for every suburb article? If we were all keen, a template with extra city and state parameters would be usable for both Sydney and Melbourne (and other cities). —Stormie 05:50, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)
And eventually all the other cities... and then, the World! :) But the city/state parameters wouldn't really be neccessary if you just create a template for each city, just to make it easier. Any stylistic changes would need to be done on each template, but that's a lot easier than entering extra variables a few thousand times. And I think it would be best to have all the suburbs in any place in Australia follow Place, State, especially considering that a lot of them are the same (eg there are no less than four Richmonds) and will need disambigg'n, they may as well all be consistent.
Also, we would love some input on what to do with the templates we have at WPMelbourne, before they get rolled out. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Melbourne/Suburbs for the different versions.
T.P.K. 06:05, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I think this is a good idea. What sort of template do we all think is a good idea for Template:Sydney (good enough template!)? - Ta bu shi da yu 06:34, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I don't like the nearby suburbs template, it's not useful. It seems that one could better just list neigbouring suburbs, rather than having a fancy directional browser like that. Besides, Sydney's topography is so convoluted that cardinal directions are just about useless. Just opening a Sydway I can see that Lane Cove West is due north of Lane Cove North... Randwicked 11:21, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hey, let's move this to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Sydney/Suburbs page! - Ta bu shi da yu 07:31, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Project areas

I'm going to do some reorganinzing at the WPM, and came up with this:

  • Geography
    • Suburbs and Local Government Areas
    • Parks and gardens
    • Rivers and waterways
  • Government
    • Mayors
    • Town Halls
  • Transport
    • Railways
    • Tramways ← whoops, how'd that get there! Unless someone wants to do some history writing :-)
    • Freeways and highways
  • Landmarks
    • General landmarks
    • Streets
    • Buildings and skyscrapers
    • Institutions

I'm putting this here to make it easier for you WPS folk to steal it too, if you want :P T.P.K. 08:44, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea! When I get half a moment I'll try to put this new structure in place! - Ta bu shi da yu 13:10, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Where is the history section? The bellman 12:31, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Not there =) where do you reckon we should put this? I'm not entirely sure. - Ta bu shi da yu 12:40, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

LGA base map

Hiya, I made a base map of Sydney showing the Local Government Areas. See it here (32K gif) and tell me what you think. It's unlabelled. Randwicked 10:52, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hey, that's good! Can we upload this to Wikipedia with the appropriate license? I'm hopeless at graphics... I'll only be able to add feedback to start with. Perhaps we could discuss the colour scheme? :-) - Ta bu shi da yu 15:41, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Yeah you can change the colours if they clash with your desktop. :) The only thing on the base layer are the land and LGA boundaries. Anything else I can add. ANYTHING. I even made a layer showing where the golf courses are (useful!!). I gotta go to bed soon but wait till tomorrow and I can upload a B&W labeled starter and we can tweak it from there. -Randwicked 15:57, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Take a look at my talk page, at the infobox I banged together. The data isn't correct, of course. How is the map? -Randwicked 10:49, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Wow! That's actually really good. We need to change the colour from pink to another colour. Anyone would think we're still part of the British empire or something... ;) - Ta bu shi da yu 12:40, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Great find, Randwicked. Ambi 13:37, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Mayors of Sydney

Moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sydney/Mayors and Lord Mayors#Mayors of Sydney

Template:Sydney tasks

I've created Template:Sydney tasks. Someone add a few more and check that what I've included are actually important tasks. It also needs some events added, as I was racking my brain and couldn't think of any. Now I can only assume that Sydney has a festival every week for every obscure little thing, so someone please add a few. And yes, the Mardi Gras article is done, so it doesn't count :P

Here are some open WikiProject Sydney tasks:
Missing: Sydney Wildlife World (new zoo), Cumberland Plain, Australian Major League Baseball,

North Sydney Institute of TAFE, Hornsby Plateau,
Wayne Cooper, Fairfield Hospital, Sydney Children's Hospital,
Mona Vale Hospital, Manly Hospital, Mortlake Punt / Mortlake Ferry,
Chipping Norton Lakes, Appin.

Missing Roads: Henry Lawson Drive, Heathcote Road, Bathurst Street,
New South Head Road, Druitt Street
State Politics: Expand Parliament of New South Wales (e.g. a few photos could be good).
  • Past members timelines moved into each electoral district's talk page. A-G have been merged into the article resolving differences. See each article under Category:Electoral districts of New South Wales.
  • Stub past members pages of past members listed in existing electoral district timelibes have all been created. There are still the past electoral districts and past members of those districts, but there are too many of them to tackle at this stage. The next step here is to make sure that all links to past members are valid, disambiguation templates, and redirection to more commonly used names.
Expansion: Steps needed for getting Sydney to Featured Article status.
The list of local suburban Sydney newspapers may be missing some.

Georges River articles: Woronora River, Cabramatta Creek, Prospect Creek, Salt Pan Creek.
King Georges Road, Anzac Parade

Cleanup LGAs: Removing suburb redlinks from these councils: Lane Cove, Manly, North Sydney,
Parramatta, Pittwater and Pittwater list.
Education: Missing NSW Government Selective Schools (what they are, how they work);
Expansion of UWS, ACU, UTS, UNSW, Macquarie, Usyd articles (in roughly that order).
Rail: The railway stations need photos!!! Please help - List of CityRail railway stations- if you can even
provide a photo of your local station that would be helpful - ones that need photos are here. Also, CityRail needs expansion - this
could be a great featured article in the future with a bit of work.
Edit or discuss this list.

T.P.K. 14:23, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Cross-project discussions

I've created the Wikipedia:Australian wikipedians' notice board/WikiProjects page for all your cross-project discussion needs. T.P.K. 14:34, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Cool! I've placed it on the front page... hey, how do you put a purge link in? - Ta bu shi da yu 14:45, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
As in the purge link at the top of the notice board page? Use "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Page_name&action=purge" What's it for? T.P.K. 15:55, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
As far as I can see, to help reduce load on the server a cache of the rendered page is created for each page on Wikipedia. The cache seems to only clear when a change is made to the page itself and a rerender of the page is required. This means that any "Todo" or templates with data that changes frequently won't be updated in the page that is held in cache, because it isn't the page that contains the template that's changing - only the template itself. Hence the need for a purge cache link. - Ta bu shi da yu 04:06, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Meetup

See Wikipedia:Australian wikipedians' notice board#Wikiproject Sydney strategy for info on a possible meetup of wikipedians in sydney. The bellman 12:54, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

local government areas vs suburbs

i disagree with moving all the various lga's to the various "municipality", "shire" links etc. it makes serendiptious links more difficult, and doesn't really achieve much. if a suburb and an lga share the same name, they most often can easily be discussed in the same article. in the rare case that a suburb article has enough material that it needs to be split off from the main lga article (or vice-versa), we can address it then, but otherwise moving the articles just fragments the sydney information and makes it less likely people will find the article in question (for example mosman vs Municipality of Mosman, i don't think many people would know that's a municipality rather than a council). until we sort out a policy, i'm going to fix the template:sydney regions template to point to the current suburb articles, so that the lga's can be found. clarkk 09:26, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, we need to name the articles accurately. Redirects will work just as well, IMO. Though if we aren't going to split up the two articles into suburb/municipality articles, then I would say you are 100% correct. - Ta bu shi da yu 04:59, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, in many cases, the actual name of the LGA includes 'Shire of', 'City of', etc. so they should be at they're correct articles. T.P.K. 07:42, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've strongly supported splitting them up. If we're going to do articles on suburbs AND muncipalities, then it's awfully confusing if Strathfield talks about a municipality, and Summer Hill only a suburb. Ambi 09:58, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

splitting them up is OK in some cases, but not all. i also think we shouldn't disambigate beyond the necessary, because it makes serendiptious links more difficult and makes it more likely that we'll have double redirects, and it breaks the naming conventions that articles should be at the most common name (assumming that it doesn't need to be disambiguated). it's the reason we have the sydney article at Sydney not Sydney, New South Wales. i also think that it's silly to disambiguate places like Wagga Wagga, when there's only one in australia, let alone the world. the americans have gone gung-ho on this, by having Chicago redirect to Chicago, Illinois, which is, frankly, silly, and i wouldn't like to see this on the australian articles. major cities/suburbs/lga's that are unique (like wagga wagga) should be left at the simplest name. clarkk 13:40, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
i wrote out on my thoughts on these issues a while back on talk:list of Sydney suburbs#naming conventions. clarkk 13:48, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well its not really the same thing, but in Tasmania if an LGA shares a name with a town, city, or or major suburb, I have put them in the same article, and done a redirect City of Glenorchy -> Glenorchy, Tasmania. -- Chuq 00:01, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

makes sense if there isn't enough info on the "city of..." article to justify a separate one. although in the case of sydney, there is enough material (and scope for expansion) for the City of Sydney article to be different to the Sydney one. clarkk 13:40, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Few Thoughts

Gday all. After I got a bit bored of Wikipedia, I was very suprised that Ta bu shi da yu sent me a message inviting me to join this Sydney WikiProject. I'm very interested to see what we can do, and seeing the Melbourne one I think we have a lot of work to do.

I just had a few ideas that I thought I might want to share:

  1. Schools? Having just finished school at St Ignatius College, I am interested in perhaps creating articles based on Sydney's famous schools, most probably starting with the GPS ones. However seeing some comments on other boards about the creation of school articles (eg that you are just talking up your own, and that the information itself is pointless) I am wondering if I should bother.
  2. I couldn't find anything related to the Sydney Club Rugby competition. And what about other local sporting events (as opposed to the NRL or ARL that are more national based)
  3. I'm also going to catergorise the landmarks section, however my current job is to at least start my own suburbs article (Lane Cove)

Jimm dodd 10:41, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

  • I was thinking that we should perhaps place schools into the local suburb article. If the information gets a bit much for the article, we should just add it to something like Strathfield schools. Then if this gets too much for the article, then we could add them to it's own page. The only thing would be to make sure that if it gets voted to VfD - which it will - that we advertise the fact on WP:AWNB and plead with everyone to vote keep. - Ta bu shi da yu 13:42, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Oh, with regards to the sporting competitions - good idea. I'm rather afraid I know nothing about sport however. There must be someone out there who knows about this stuff though. I'd be interested in reading a piece on that! The landmarks section, I feel, should also be in the article of the suburb that it is situated in. As with schools, if there is heaps of information about the landmarks and it gets a bit much for the suburb article, we could move them into their own article, say like Strathfield landmarks. If that gets a bit much, then we could put the landmark into its own article. - Ta bu shi da yu 13:45, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Just saw something else that I thought of interest. In the Template:Sydney regions there is a list of cities and a seperate one of councils/etc. Whilst this is technically correct, would it not just be better to have one alphabetical list of the local government areas? Jimm dodd 10:51, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

Photograph requests

I know there's a list of requested photographs on the Australian's wikipedia noticeboard already, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to list photographs you would like in relation to WikiProject Sydney here.

  • Urgent - can someone get a shot of the Spirit of Tasmania III before it is cancelled? The last service is on the 27th of August. (JROBBO 07:32, 5 June 2006 (UTC))

Stub templates

Discussion on the naming of stub templates relating to this and other Australian city wikiprojects is in progress at WP:WSS/P#Australian cities. Feel free to comment. Grutness...wha? 01:41, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Update

The changeover to the new stub types is complete. The change for Sydney is that instead of {{Sydney suburb stub}} leading to Category:Sydney suburb stubs, there is now {{Sydney-geo-stub}} leading to Category:Sydney geography stubs. This allows for parks, rivers, hills, and any other geographic features relating to the city to also go into this category. There is also now a {{NewSouthWales-geo-stub}}, for places in the state but not in Sydney.

A few other minor points:

If you think a separate {{Sydney-stub}} (for non-geographical items like the buildings and railway items mentioned above) would be worthwhile, feel free to propose it at WP:WSS/P. Given that there's an active wikiproject, I doubt there'd be any objection at all to one.

We at WP:WSS hope these changes aren't inconvenient, and will help your project! Grutness...wha? 06:52, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Street Names

I've just started working again on Beacon Hill and have decided to add in street names as well. I also have a collection of photographs which I started this year which are located off site. I may add them as part of the street articles at the very least. Has there been any thought of adding content down to the street level. I have followed the nomenclature - Suburb, State, Street. The first is Reynolds Crescent. Peter Konnecke

I since decided that this might not be such a good way to go and as such the street pages are to be deleted. Peter Konnecke 03:22, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

About Sydney railway Stations infobox

The infobox, which adopted from this template, by User:JROBBO is done well for the information, and some parameters are added which are specific to Sydney railway stations, it's good anyway and it maybe have some improvement to the template. :-) --Shinjiman ⇔ ♨ 20:00, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Update: Dysprosia did an update to the template, (which she didn't tell anyone about, considering that we did put this on here for comment and approval beforehand)). I've made a few improvements to it. Can people please comment on the changes? I think something needs to be done to differentiate between the headers on the left hand side and the variables on the right. I think the header needs to be in a brighter colour too. (JROBBO 12:11, 29 March 2006 (UTC))

Some station that do not have photos will be fall back to use the CityRail logo. However when the logo is enlarged, the logo will become ugly. So we can use the SVG version of the logo instead using the pixel version such as GIF, JPG or PNG. To make a SVG file, mostly we can search from the official website, and search its publications (mostly would have the PDF file which have a vector version of the logo). Then copy that symbol(s) into the software that supports SVG, then save and upload that. And after this, we can use a very large size of the logo without making that become ugly. :) --Shinjiman ⇔ ♨ 11:20, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Railway Station Template

I've done a bit of work on a possible template for railway stations. This one's not quite complete (it doesn't have a photo), but what do you think about this sort of format for railway stations? (JROBBO 05:01, 12 January 2006 (UTC))

sorry, forgot to add my example page - here: Eastwood Station
It looks great to me! I've tried adding it to Summer Hill station, and think it is very useful, but as a someone who is fairly clueless about CityRail, I do have some questions:
  • How do I find the station's "code"? (e.g. is there a big table somewhere that I can consult?).
  • I'm not sure which "image" to use - the station & tracks have a layout something like this:
---------- express line, no stopping ------------
---------- express line, no stopping ------------
---------- express line, no stopping ------------
---------- express line, no stopping ------------
        [ station platform ]
---------- line to central -----------
---------- line from central ---------
        [ station platform ]
(I'm not 100% sure of the number of express lines, but think it is most probably 4). Is there an image that I can use? Alternatively, should the image be composed of a number of building blocks, like Lego, that can just be snapped together to form the correct layout? If it's possible, this would save a lot of work and give maximum reuse (e.g. I would need 4 express line pieces, two platform pieces, one line from central piece, and one line to central piece).
  • How do I find the "servicearea_color", and "servicearea_textcolor"? And are these colours going to be the same for a whole line? If, would it be a good idea to have a template or page that stored this information, so that instead of a numeric code, someone could do something like "servicearea_color=[[CityRail/Inner West line colour]]", which is a bit clearer?
  • What are the various "stationtype" values? E.g. "ground" and "underground"?
-- All the best, Nickj (t) 01:17, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Ok, let's answer some questions...
  • The codes are not available on the net. There's actually a couple of different ones; I'm using the most commonly used one (from the working timetables I believe). I'll try and find a list somewhere - I've got them from a website where they are used as the picture names - but they are correct.
  • The space for the picture is for a picture, not a diagram - that's what I intended anyway (see Central for an example, or Redfern for another. Platform diagrams would be good where the platform layout is confusing, but I don't think they're as necessary as a picture of the station!
  • Good point about the colours - I will try and do that. For the moment, go to the Central station page here and do an edit but copy the colour of each platform allocation for the text of the lines listed - I copied the colours from the Cityrail website.
My intention was to have the colour of the line in the box behind, and to leave it black where there are multiple lines. I'm open to suggestions though.
  • The stationtype values are "Ground" (most stations), "Underground" (some stations), "Elevated" (only Circular Quay at present, and will be Chatswood when it's finished). I think there should be a "covered" or something like that to cover stations like Rockdale, Olympic Park, etc. which aren't really underground but aren't ground either - though it may just be easier to label them as underground as well.
(JROBBO 13:02, 13 January 2006 (UTC))
Thank you for your great answers to those questions, all sounds good to me! -- All the best, Nickj (t) 22:50, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I now have an example page to use as a template-type thing for all the stations, and that is Redfern railway station (here). I'm happy for any comments on it or what could be improved, but I think that's all the information needed on a particular railway station. Thanks! (JROBBO 05:14, 21 February 2006 (UTC))
  • Here is the example table (from Central station for the "neighbouring stations" section of railway stations in Sydney. Please use this rather than the Cityrail line template, which doesn't seem to fit the existing information properly. Some users have been editing this and stuff has been left out.
Preceding Station
(inbound)
Line
Following Station
(outbound)
terminus
Newcastle &
Central Coast Line
Redfern
terminus
Blue Mountains
Line
Redfern
terminus
South Coast Line
Redfern
terminus
Southern Highlands Line
Glenfield
Town Hall
Eastern Suburbs
& Illawarra Line
Redfern
terminus or
Museum
Bankstown Line
Redfern
Town Hall
Inner West Line
terminus or
Redfern
terminus or
Museum
Airport & East
Hills Line
Redfern
(via Sydenham)
Green Square
(via Airport)
Town Hall
Southern Line
terminus or
Redfern
terminus
becomes the
Western Line
North Shore Line
Town Hall
terminus
becomes the
North Shore Line
Western Line
Redfern
terminus
Olympic Park Line
(off-peak and special events only)
Redfern
Town Hall
Northern Line
Redfern

The Hex colour codes for each line are:

  • Northern, Newcastle & Central Coast = E54339
  • Western, North Shore, Blue Mountains = FEBE10
  • South Coast, Illawarra = 0066CC
  • Olympic Park = grey
  • Airport & East Hills, Southern Highlands = 006600
  • Inner West = 9999CC
  • Bankstown = FF9933
  • Southern Line = 99CCFF
  • Cumberland Line = CC0099
  • Carlingford Line = 000066
  • Hunter Line = 39089E

Please leave the order of lines as above (on the above table). It is the official order of lines on Cityrail websites and in timetables. If there are stations with them round the wrong way, they can be changed.

The Olympic Park line except between Lidcombe and Olympic Park has a "special events only" tag on it.

The Airport and East Hills line between Central and Wolli Creek via Sydenham has a "peak hours only" tag on it.

The North Shore line between Berowra and Wyong has a "peak hours only" tag on it.

Userbox

Sydney - Feature article nomination?

I haven't seen anything on this project discussing a possible feature article nomination for Sydney, but it does look fairly good and it's probably worth giving it a shot. Any comments? mdmanser 11:22, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

It's close, but it maybe that some of the things outlined at Talk:Sydney#Getting_Sydney_into_shape need to be addressed. After that I'd say list it, and suggest probably dropping a note on Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board so that others are aware of its FAC status. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 07:43, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Wow thanks for that link, I didn't realise discussions were already underway. I'll try to make amendments to the article where outlined in the near future, and then place it up for a featured article nomination.

Suburb title conventions - duplication of names

Just a note on conventions for naming suburbs within Australia. I work in the geosciences industry and at one point ended up building a complete suburb/postcode database for Australia (which is unfornately copyright and not mine to distribute). A couple of points:

  • Occasionally, suburbs have the same name intra-state, and can only be distinguished by postcode. Most often one is a suburb and the other is a rural locality, but there are important exceptions, such as Balmoral in Sydney and Balmoral, 2283 which is just south of Toronto near Lake Macquarie. (Anyone with a Newcastle street directory can find this.) To further confuse the issue, Sydney's Balmoral is actually a sub-locality within Mosman and therefore you won't find it if you do a postcode lookup on the Australia Post website.

My recommendations would be to continue with the current Suburb, State trend that is already established but for disambiguation due to the above causes, add the LGA in brackets, e.g. Suburb, State (LGA). I have created an example: Balmoral, New South Wales (Lake Macquarie).

I believe that using LGA for disambiguation is a more robust solution than postcode, since Australia Post updates its postcodes every 2 months. Most will never change, of course, but an LGA change is probably even less likely than a postcode change (says a resident of the city formerly known as South Sydney!).

See also my attempt at disambiguation in the original Balmoral, New South Wales article.

Gregwmay 02:27, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

That all sounds good to me! In the case of the same name in different states, we tend to make the page either a disambig, or redirect to a disambing (e.g. Richmond, Australia redirects to the Richmond disambiguation page). The idea of adding the LGA also seems good, such as the Balmoral example you give. I've updated Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sydney/Suburbs#Exceptions accordingly, but please feel to rephrase or update if it needs it. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 07:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Looks perfect! Gregwmay 10:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Image request

Hi, would someone from this WikiProject please create and replace the unfree image on ANZAC Bridge. Thanks. --nixie 12:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I should be able to get around to this next week. If someone is already working on it, please let me know! Gregwmay 02:22, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
New images taken and replaced. Gregwmay 22:28, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Version 1.0 Editorial Team cooperation

Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Places WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot! Titoxd(?!? - help us) 18:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

CityRail Map Replacement

On the CityRail page, we have a very bad map that is now out of date. I can't draw something that complicated, so I'd love someone to draw another one with all the suburban stations on it, and a second map showing the intercity lines. Use my talk page if you need all the line colours - as they should reflect the colours we have been using in the text. The official maps are found [here]. (JROBBO 22:22, 27 March 2006 (UTC))

Good news - we have a person willing to do this - Voyager is making a map for us (he made the Hong Kong MTR maps here. (JROBBO 06:21, 29 March 2006 (UTC))

He's done the map. And it looks wonderful. Thumbs up to him. Harryboyles 10:25, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Railway Station Altitude/Elevation?

What about adding the altitude of each railway station (in metres) to the template, right under the distance from Central? I've got a book that has the altitude for most stations (see West Ryde article for a reference). These altitudes are relative to sea level. (Eg. Central's country platforms have a distance of 0.000km and an altitude of 20.4m) John Dalton 21:57, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Railway Station Pictures

If we are going to get anywhere with the CityRail stations pages (at List of Sydney railway stations, we need some pictures of the stations. We have a fair bit of the Northern Line, the Upper Carlingford Line, and the City covered but not much apart from that. There are obviously people on WP here from all over Sydney, so even if people can provide a picture or two of your local railway station that would be great (light rail or monorail stops are good if you live around there as well.) There's a category at Commons for CityRail Sydney for non-station photos and "Train stations in Sydney" for station photos - you can upload them there. Can anyone help out here? Thanks to all who have helped so far. (JROBBO 13:28, 28 April 2006 (UTC))

Railway station userbox header redesign

{{Cityrail Station alt|code=EPG|image=Eppingstationsyd.jpg|station_name=Epping
|servicearea=Northern Line|servicearea2=Newcastle & Central Coast Line|servicearea3=Epping to Chatswood Line<br>''(under construction)''|
|suburb=Epping|street=Beecroft Rd<br>Langham Place|distance=23.32|altitude=?|traintype=Suburban all stations<br>Suburban limited stops<br>Intercity|platforms=3|tracks=3|platform_arr=2 island|stationtype=Ground|gates=Yes|connect=Bus|disabled=Yes|facilities=[http://www.cityrail.info/facilities/facilities.jsp?n=99&giveOutput=true&facility= Link]}}

This is from {{Cityrail Station alt}}. It's not on any page yet but I'm not going to use it unless people like it. Is this horrible or does it work well? Comments would be good (and photos of any stations if people have them or can take them...) (JROBBO 13:07, 1 May 2006 (UTC))

In my opinion, I like the header overall. The picture makes the header look more professional. But I do think that the header is a bit too big and puts the rest of the information, which should be the main focus, out of whack a bit. Maybe bring it down to 3/4 the size of it now and I'd be happier with it. Harryboyles 11:06, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, what Harry said. Overall it looks good, but the font of the details is so small and header is so large that it's a bit too jarring currently, but a small tweaking of font sizes should do it. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 07:46, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm still keen to see altitude added. Combined with the coordinates of each station, it would allow a rough 3D map of the rail network to be drawn. Combined with track distances, it would allow average grades between stations to be calculated and gradients maps to be drawn.John Dalton 13:09, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem with that, but how do we get the altitude data? -- All the best, Nickj (t) 01:26, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
WP is not really a thing to hold gradient diagrams, but altitude would be ok. To be honest though, I think we should think about what we include here on this box - ideally the userbox should be able to be seen on your screen without having to scroll down to see the rest of it. I can make the header smaller, but that won't solve the problem. What we need is:
  • Station name, code, suburb, street
  • Lines that the station serves
  • Types of trains that it serves
  • Distance from Central (and altitude can go here as well)
  • Type of station, how it's accessed
  • What you can transfer to
  • Disabled access

(JROBBO 09:09, 6 May 2006 (UTC))

This book has altitude data: State Rail Authority of New South Wales Archives Section, How & Why of Station Names: meanings and origins..., Second Edition, 1982, State Rail Authority of New South Wales,
Agree, gradient diagrams shouldn't be stored. If we are going to give the location of each station though (coordinates and distance from Central) why not do a complete job of specifying location and include the third dimension (altitude)?John Dalton 06:46, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm tempted to leave things out like staffed, short platform, telephones, toilets, etc. A link to the CityRail facilities page for the station, or some info in the article (which is what this box is taking away from) would suffice for anything else. What do others think? (JROBBO 14:33, 5 May 2006 (UTC))

How about removing the info from the box, but creating a bunch of categories: Staffed City Rail Stations, Unstaffed City rail stations, City Rail stations with telephones, City Rail stations without telephones... and so on. Most of the information seems to be binary, so would be suited to being specified by a category. It also has the advantage of being able to answer the question "Which City Rail stations have property 'X'? Best to have a yes and no category, so unknown is coded by the absence of a category.John Dalton 06:51, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
That's what the CityRail website is for. The categories are just a waste of space. I agree with JROBBO in removing some of the info from the box. I think the box will really come into its own when more of the station articles have more content in them. Harryboyles 08:35, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
There was a category of "Sydney railway stations with easy access" or something like that but it was voted for deletion. I don't think you'd have much luck starting all those categories. I think disabled access should be on the list, but not anything else. I'm all for the altitude if John Dalton can find a source for them that's accessible - John, perhaps you can do a list like Harryboyles and I did for the codes (List of Sydney railway station codes)? (JROBBO 09:09, 6 May 2006 (UTC))

I've updated the box with some new categories and shortened it quite a bit. Any comments? The old box is at {{CityRail Station alt 2}} now. I'm trialling this one at Goulburn railway station, New South Wales. John Dalton, the onus is on you to get the altitude data. I don't have it, and all the boxes are going to look strange until we get a comprehensive list. Something else I have added is the ability to change "suburb" to "town" for regional railway stations - you can substitute the variable for the other one and only one of them will appear. If it isn't in there, the colours will be out of order. (JROBBO 01:31, 23 May 2006 (UTC))

If or when this box repaces the current one, thre's going to be a problem with some of the parameters not being filled and others becoming redundant. With over 300 stations to update it's not going to be easy. Harryboyles 08:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Do one line at a time - a lot of the intercity lines don't even have boxes yet (only where we had photos for some lines), so it won't be too hard a task! I'm more than happy to help. I just want the design finalised before we finish them all. (JROBBO 13:21, 31 May 2006 (UTC))

Strongly Oppose changes. I personally believe the old template Template:Cityrail Station was better. This one is bricky and clunky. I don't agree with changing the templates over in any way shape or form. The other one showed more information and was less dependant on external links. I note with strong interest that the old one is still being used at Central station's page. MyNameIsNotBob 09:04, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to address some of the concerns just presented here and on my talk page:
  • The old template is too long for most people's screens. Even at 1280 x 1024 the infobox doesn't fit the page for most stations. Especially on the article for Central station which at 1024 x 768 only half of it is visible. The new one congregates some of the facts, like transfers provided, so that only useful information is provided. Most stations don't have ferry or light rail transfers and the spots for them contributed to the "bloatiness". The link to CityRail's website provides more information which in the old template wasn't provided anyway. Who's really going to want to know whether a station has toilets and telephones.
  • The header on the new template makes it much easier to identify that it is a CityRail station. Those stations in Melbourne also have a similar header (see Flinders Street Station for an example) and it also identifies the network easily and at a glance. It makes the article more "personalised".
  • As to the comment on my talk page, "...if you are going to do this it would make sense to change every stations info box. This would make it all uniform across the stations.", it is a work in progress. Have you tried updating 301 articles in one day. It's relatively impossible. I added many of the infoboxes and it took me a few weeks to do it. See above.
  • Morisset image. The original uploader of the image (Leam Mark) attempted to put the image in the infobox. He is a newbie and instead of complaining to the person who just corrected the minor mistake made as to putting it in correctly, encourage Leam Mark to correctly tag the image so we can use it. JROBBO, who is the major contributor to CityRail articles, has been constantly asking for images and it would be a shame to let this one go. Once copyright's sorted it would be easy to fix it in Photoshop or another image editing program. It's a decent size for use. Harryboyles 10:47, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not about external links. Someday the hope is to have a print edition of the online encyclopedia. In that version external links would be kept to an absolute minimum (for obvious reasons). Replacing data with an external link is IMHO not the way to go. Also, you don't keep an image just because it is needed. You can't fix over-exposure in photoshop, and its generally best to check image tagging before you go posting it, regardless of whether you are making a correction or not. MyNameIsNotBob 19:56, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
The header on the new user box is definately better then the existing one, as for the reduction of information through the substition of an external link I have to agree with MyNameIsNotBob. Chances are the people looking specifically at the station pages will want to know the given information not have to be refered to yet another link to find out what they need to know. As for the photo, I am planning to take a better photo and upload it as soon as possible and I apologise to Harryboyles who obviously was only trying to help. Woldo 09:52, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
The image I think is ok (but if you could get another one that would be good) - if that one has to stay, at least remove the date stamp. (JROBBO 13:48, 22 June 2006 (UTC))
Additionally, in relation to the image links, I'm not planning to add any more. I think things like train services are encyclopaedia, whereas toilets and telephones are not. They don't belong in an encyclopaedia, so in a paper version they should be mentioned in the article if they are unique in any way, but if not then they should be left out. Online, an external link is fine. (JROBBO 13:48, 22 June 2006 (UTC))

University of New South Wales

I noticed that you're looking to expand and improve the article about UNSW, I'll be happy to do so and provide some pictures at the same time. They are however, film photos so the quality will not be off the chart, it will be acceptable though. Nebuchanezzar 12:22, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

If you want pictures I'll take whatever you want around UNSW. I'll get them them on my new camera (it's got good resolution e.g. Image:Sydney skyline.jpg) and I'm always there as I'm a full time student of UNSW. Also, I'm very involved in campus community there so I can write (or find someone who knows) about current events, clubs, community activities etc. It would be really good to get this up to FA. I look forward to helping out. Witty lama 13:02, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
A page for this project has been set up at User:Witty lama/Sandbox and is currently taking ideas, references, photo requests, suggested layouts... Cheers, Witty lama 15:18, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

CityRail Neighboring Stations - Intercity Lines

I have a problem with the color scheme for the intercity lines on the neighboring stations box: especially the Blue Mountains Line. It's too hard to read the name of the line and having the coloured background behind the station, in my opinion, makes it look unbalanced. 

{{start CityRail box}}
<tr>
<td bgcolor = #{{Blue Mountains line colour}}><center>[[Bell railway station, New South Wales|<font color = #{{Blue Mountains line font color}}>Bell</font>]]</center></td>
<td bgcolor = "#EFEFEF"><center><b><font color = #{{Blue Mountains line colour}}>{{Blue Mountains line link}}</font></b></center></td>
<td bgcolor = #{{Blue Mountains line colour}}><center>[[Lithgow railway station, New South Wales|<font color = #{{Blue Mountains line font color}}>Lithgow</font>]]</center></td>
</tr>
{{end box}}
Originally when deciding to distinguish the intercity lines from the suburban lines I designed it so the station links had the grey behind them to make it easier to 'blend' in with the white page background:
{{start CityRail box}}
<tr>
<td bgcolor = #D2D2D2><center>[[Campbelltown railway station, Sydney|<span style="color:black;">Campbelltown</span>]]</center></td>
<td bgcolor = #{{Southern Highlands line colour}}><center><b><font color = #{{Southern Highlands line font color}}>{{Southern Highlands line link}}</font></b></center></td>
<td bgcolor = #D2D2D2><center>[[Menangle Park railway station, Sydney|<span style="color:black;">Menangle Park</span>]]</center></td>
</tr>
{{end box}}

When it got changed I don't think it got fully thought through and I don't think the current look is the best one. I'd like to see some discussion just like the station infobox about what would look best. -- Harryboyles 13:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

The second box is wrong - Except for the Hunter Line, the CityRail website has the line in grey and the stations in that colour. I preferred the original way (the same as the suburban lines), but that second box just looks bad. (JROBBO 10:06, 26 May 2006 (UTC))
How does it look bad? You might prefer it that way but the fact remains that the Blue Mountains line link is darn near impossible to read. This has to be fixed because yellow on light gray looks so bad. Harryboyles 10:24, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Ok - fair enough. I have good eyesight so I don't find reading that a problem - it is harder to read though on the grey than on the white in some of the other boxes. I propose we scrap both of these and look for another solution. So... how about this one? This includes the grey, the line colour, and it's easy to read - we'll need to change some variables on some lines, but that's fine. I've put a suburban box below to show how it fits in:
{{start CityRail box}}
<tr>
<td bgcolor = #EFEFEF style="border-top:2px solid #{{Blue Mountains line colour}}; border-right:2px solid #{{Blue Mountains line colour}}; border-bottom:2px solid #{{Blue Mountains line colour}}; border-left:2px solid #{{Blue Mountains line colour}};"><center>[[Bell railway station, New South Wales|<font color = #{{Blue Mountains line font color}}>Bell</font>]]</center></td>
<td bgcolor = #EFEFEF style="border-top:2px solid #{{Blue Mountains line colour}}; border-right:2px solid #{{Blue Mountains line colour}}; border-bottom:2px solid #{{Blue Mountains line colour}}; border-left:2px solid #{{Blue Mountains line colour}};"><center><b><font color = #{{Blue Mountains line font color}}>{{Blue Mountains line link}}</font></b></center></td>
<td bgcolor = #EFEFEF style="border-top:2px solid #{{Blue Mountains line colour}}; border-right:2px solid #{{Blue Mountains line colour}}; border-bottom:2px solid #{{Blue Mountains line colour}}; border-left:2px solid #{{Blue Mountains line colour}};"><center>[[Lithgow railway station, New South Wales|<font color = #{{Blue Mountains line font color}}>Lithgow</font>]]</center></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor = #EFEFEF style="border-top:2px solid #{{Southern Highlands line colour}}; border-right:2px solid #{{Southern Highlands line colour}}; border-bottom:2px solid #{{Southern Highlands line colour}}; border-left:2px solid #{{Southern Highlands line colour}};"><center>[[Marulan railway station, New South Wales|<font color = #{{Blue Mountains line font color}}>Marulan</font>]]</center></td>
<td bgcolor = #EFEFEF style="border-top:2px solid #{{Southern Highlands line colour}}; border-right:2px solid #{{Southern Highlands line colour}}; border-bottom:2px solid #{{Southern Highlands line colour}}; border-left:2px solid #{{Southern Highlands line colour}};"><center><b><font color = #{{Blue Mountains line font color}}>{{Southern Highlands line link}}</font></b></center></td>
<td bgcolor = #EFEFEF style="border-top:2px solid #{{Southern Highlands line colour}}; border-right:2px solid #{{Southern Highlands line colour}}; border-bottom:2px solid #{{Southern Highlands line colour}}; border-left:2px solid #{{Southern Highlands line colour}};"><center><font color = #{{Blue Mountains line font color}}>''terminus''</font></center></td>
</tr>
{{CityRail line|line=South line|previous=Liverpool|next=Glenfield}}
{{end box}}

Comments anyone? (JROBBO 01:24, 27 May 2006 (UTC))

Much better. I like it. It looks even better on the actual pages than here. Harryboyles 10:26, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

T-Ways

I think we should have some articles on the rapid bus transitways proposed and built for Sydney. I've done a short article on the Liverpool-Parramatta T-way (called the "Liverpool-Parramatta Rapid Bus Transitway"). Maybe someone can do one on the North West T-way which is under construction (between Blacktown and Parklea, and Parramatta and Rouse Hill)? (JROBBO 08:50, 30 May 2006 (UTC))

Regions template

There is some discussion going on at Template talk:Sydney regions concerning whether Lower North Shore and Upper North Shore should be included on the template. Please add your opinions to the discussion. JPD (talk) 16:35, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

New Online Reference: Dictionary of Sydney

The new Dictionary of Sydney may be a useful reference for Wikipedia to draw on.

An SMH article makes the comparison "The dictionary may be similar to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, for which hundreds of people contribute information each day." Hardly accurate when you look at the Dictionary of Sydney's copyright terms: "All information, text, graphics, photographs, files, audio and video content on this website is Copyright. ... Content must not be modified, copied, reproduced, or republished except with the written authorisation of the Dictionary of Sydney." Maybe someone should whisper in their ear to point out the error of their ways and why their copyright position potentially dooms them (anyone remember Nupedia)?

Rather then reinventing the wheel, why doesn't the Dictionary of Sydney cooperate with Wikipedia? They could write some great articles and upload them to Wikipedia. If they still want a repository of their own articles they could run a Dictionary of Sydney website in parallel. John Dalton 01:18, 14 June 2006 (UTC) (retrospectively signed)

Okay, hope is not lost: Another copyright notice on the site. Maybe wikipedians should work with Dictionary of Sydney to make sure that their license is compatible with (or is) the GFDL? John Dalton 01:18, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Interesting quote from a Dictionary of Sydney Newsletter No 2 - June 05
"This is possibly the place to explain that, unlike this newsletter, all articles to be included in the Dictionary will be refereed before they are included on the site. Some people have assumed that we are embarking on a kind of ‘wikipedia’ for Sydney, where any contribution is accepted. This is a long way from our aim of producing a site that is carefully researched and trusted by its users."
"If you are not familiar with the world of the wikipedia, have a look at some of the product on-line. Many people now use the term ‘wikipedia’ in the same way they use ‘google’ to find information. None of the information is authenticated, and if you were to decide to post some information yourself, you may find that someone else later comes along and rewrites it or alters its meaning. While most of the information is posted with good intentions, and it may be good fun to participate, it is impossible to ascertain the level of reliability of such material. Every entry in the Dictionary of Sydney will go through an editing process and the authorship of each article will be acknowledged on the site. Users will be able to comment on the content, and changes may be made, but always only after a further transparent editing process."
Maybe someone should write an article on Wikipedia and WikProject Sydney and submit it for publication in the Dictionary of Sydney Newsletter? The DoS editors don't seem to appreciate that a well written Wikipedia does include links to reliable sources allowing users to check reliability and authorship is traceable via the history page. Yes, Wikipedia has a long way to go in providing tools to make this verification of sources easy (see note below) but it doesn't deserve to be written off. Incidentally, the newsletter mentions that the DoS is supported by a AUD 1 million [Australian Research Council] grant. What will happen to the DoS once this funding runs out?
Note: Maybe an automated "web of trust" for wikisources that colour codes each sentence with a measure of reliability and an indication of authorship in a pop up? A job for the semantic web? As info is cut and pasted arounf wikipedia (or eventhe web) this providence information might automatically follow? John Dalton 02:23, 14 June 2006 (UTC

Politics and House Prices in Suburb Articles

Politics

I've noticed that some suburb articles contain election results. Do other people think election results really belong in suburb articles?

Wouldn't it be better to create a separate article for each electorate? The electorate article would contain electoral results leaving each suburb to link to its respective electorates. The Ermington article (which I look after) is an example of what I mean. (Don't have an article for the state electorate yet.)

  • It is technically correct. Electorates and suburbs are different things, deserving separate articles. It might be argued that the booth results for a particular suburb go into its article, but, for example, the electoral results for Ermington, Paramatta, Dundas (and every other suburb in the Parramatta electorate) hardly belong in an article about Rydalmere.
  • It avoids duplicating electoral results across multiple suburb articles (pretty well every electorate contains multiple suburbs)
  • It makes updating the electoral results easier, due to the lack of duplication.
  • It provides a logical place to keep a record of past electoral results.
  • It makes it easier to clearly provide information an all three levels of elections: Federal, State and Local.

Is there a consensus on this?

John Dalton 23:53, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Strong keep - You can actually differentiate different polling booths for a particular suburb. These should stay, so long as the polling booths for the suburb, not the electorate are put in (as in the Summer Hill article). (JROBBO 05:10, 22 June 2006 (UTC))

House Prices

What does the median house price contribute to a wikipedia suburb article?

It doesn't idicate how much a house in that suburb will cost. Anyone who has bought real estate will tell you that price is determined by the individual property, not a suburb median. A typical suburb will have 'good' areas and 'bad' areas and have a wide range of house prices. On top of that many (most??) houses in each suburb only come to market every few decades so fall outside measures such as an annual median.

There is no timely official (government) reporting of suburb house prices. What statistics there are are incomplete, gathered by a drone from a company ringing around real estate agents. The real estate agents report whatever price they feel like and are free to not report properties as they see fit.

House price statitics are retrospective. They lag the market by a couple of years. Sydney prices can swing up or down by double digit percentages in this time. It is impossible to extrapolate current house prices based on past medians. If it were possible, real estate speculators would be out of business.

A "median price" is a real estate marketing tool, used by real estate agents to drum up the cost of lower priced properties or add to snob value.

Summary: Median real estate prices don't contribute any useful information to a suburb article and should be deleted. They definitely don't deserve the status of being in the info box.

In my opinion Sydneysider's obsession with real estate prices is a transient obsession which will probably die with the real estate boom

Do others think median prices should go or stay?

John Dalton 23:53, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Strong keep - The fact that it is an obsession doesn't make it unworthy of a WP article. The median housing price is a measure of what the average or middle housing price in an area is. It doesn't take into account everything, but this isn't the ABS site - it's an encyclopaedic-type article which is going to give a good indicator of the suburb's information. The median housing price should stay. Definitely. (JROBBO 05:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC))

CityRail Station page wording

On the station pages the wording at the start goes e.g. Morisset is a railway station located near... Morisset isn't a railway station in every sense of the word, it is a suburb. My point is the wording should be different so as not to imply that "Morisset" is the name of only the station. This type of wording only works if the station had a specific name not shared with the suburb i.e. The Telstra Dome. Woldo 23:37, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Myself and MyNameIsNotBob have begun rewording the stations starting with the Central Coast & Newcastle line. Woldo 10:44, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I really don't think anyone's stupid enough to think that. To say under the article "Redfern railway station, Sydney" that "Redfern is a station near Sydney's CBD" is totally understandable. All the station pages for the Hong Kong MTR, London Underground, Paris Metro, Melbourne MetLink, Brisbane CityTrain, TransAdelaide, etc. all have it written this way. Why should we change? There are some stations on the CityRail network that don't share the name of the suburb eg. Hawkesbury River... they don't need to change! If you really have to, can you at least capitalise the names to make them a proper name, eg. "Central Railway Station" not "Central railway station"? (JROBBO 03:45, 23 June 2006 (UTC))
All the stations I just checked by referring to List of railway stations have it the way Woldo suggests. It is also recommended under lead section guidelines that it be done this way. MyNameIsNotBob 04:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
The Hong Kong MTR is as you say but the London Underground is done the same way as my suggestion. Also the Paris Metro is named after places it isn't the name of the suburb it is located in. I think you will find if you look closer that the majority is done as per suggestion. Also the capitilisation I think is a good idea but then the page names will be different to the lead. Therefore unless someone wants to move all the pages then we can just leave it. Woldo 04:42, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
No - the page names are done according to Wikipedia convention. They shouldn't be touched. (JROBBO 07:57, 24 June 2006 (UTC))
Then it makes it simple, the lead sentence needs changing, because Wikipedia convention is that the article name should be bolded in the first sentence of the leading paragraph according to WP:LS. MyNameIsNotBob 01:15, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think you understand - the "x railway station, Sydney" or "x railway station, New South Wales" uses are a decision of the users of WikiProject Sydney to properly characterise Sydney and NSW railway stations. They should be "x railway station' but this is done to avoid confusion. In the article, their proper name should be "x" (which is confused with the suburb, I agree), or "x Railway Station" as its proper name. (JROBBO 01:22, 26 June 2006 (UTC))
I agree with you entirely. Except for the fact that you can't get away with having the first sentence as '"x" is a railway station' as it is very ambiguous. It would be the same as having the first sentence of Sydney FC as 'Sydney, founded in 2004, is an A-League club based in Sydney, Australia.'. MyNameIsNotBob 02:40, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I wasn't being literal, I was giving an example... (JROBBO 10:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC))

Queen Victoria Building

Someone moved the Queen Victoria Building article to Queen Victoria Building, Sydney. Given that there is no other QVB in the world, I think this should be moved back, with the Sydney suffix made a redirect. There's no point in adding the suffix when there is only one well-known building of that name in the world and no one is going to think to add Sydney into the article. (JROBBO 05:15, 22 June 2006 (UTC))

Agreed, most of the stuff on what links here go to Queen Victoria Building. MyNameIsNotBob 11:11, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Agreed aswell, just filling up the server with extra bits that are not needed. Woldo 11:17, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
I've moved the page back. Harryboyles 11:41, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Railway Station Discussion

I've made a page (it's been there for a while actually) for railway station templates and a related discussion page. If anyone can be bothered, railway station templates and the like can be discussed there. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Sydney/Railway stations. (JROBBO 13:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC))

100 Years of Central Station

For anyone interested and available, Central Railway Station is having a 100 years celebration on August 5, 2006. They are running tours of the station, the new CityRail OSCAR trains will be there, and lots of other stuff on display. This would be a great chance to get some sources for information on the station, and some photos of areas where you can't normally get photos (maybe platforms 26/27?) If anyone is available, it would be good for someone here to go (I can't unfortunately). (JROBBO 02:01, 30 June 2006 (UTC))

Thanks for the heads up! Details from Cityrail John Dalton 03:05, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
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