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Second oldest city?

Is Hobart the second oldest city in Australia as claimed in the article? Or is it Newcastle as also comes up in a Google search? Is Launceston the third oldest as claimed in the article? I can't find any references.. Should we abandon these claims? Barrylb (talk) 11:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Barry. You might get a better response at Misplaced Pages:Australian Wikipedians' notice board where more than a few editors have an interest in Australian history. I think the claims are certainly verifiable and the crew at AWNB should be able to point you in the right direction. Cheers, Mattinbgn\ 11:50, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Naming convention (places) - renewed discussion - towards a single convention

I am pasting the following discussion pertinent to this heading as copied from my talk page. The conversation follows some action undertaken by me in relation to articles in Tasmania and the subsequent interest shown by other editors with regards a revisit of the current Misplaced Pages:Naming_conventions (places)#Australia and reconsideration to the development of a single convention.

I invite editors to consider this issue and put their views towards the development of a such a single convention....--VS 10:37, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Copied from user talk:VirtualSteve

Gudday mate,

moved Bruny Island to Bruny Island, Tasmania: All Australian town/city/suburb/place articles should be at Place, State no matter what their status of ambiguity is.

You should read the naming conventions again: Misplaced Pages:Naming_conventions (places)#Australia. You'll find that Australian cities, towns and suburbs are always at Place, State no matter what their status of ambiguity, but geographic features are only disambiguated when necessary, and then with the parentheses convention. Hesperian 11:22, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

• Yes thanks Hesperian - I have noted my error on Bruny Island. Cheers. --VS 11:27, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

• • No worries. It's a stupid convention. Why we have two clashing conventions is beyond me. But it's all that stands between us and total anarchy ;-) Hesperian 11:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

What you just wrote couldn't be better stated - but I didn't want to say words to same effect first in case anyone thought I was being uppity! Cheers again. --VS 11:41, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

It's too late for me; everyone knows by now I am prone to get bees in my bonnet over such issues. I was heavily involved in framing that convention, and if I recall correctly I was the long voice amongst many calling for a single convention. The fact that we could potentially have a town article at "Margaret River, Western Australia" and a river article at "Margaret River (Western Australia)" was of no concern to anyone but me. I am glad to have an ally after all this time, even if it is too late to change, which it isn't, but I suspect most people would think it is. Hesperian 00:42, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Pardon me for butting in but if you are saying what I think you are saying (i.e. All disambiguation for Australian places should be done with parentheses) then I am all in favour of this as well. If you are saying that towns like Orroroo for example should not be disambiguated then I am not so sure. I am prepared to raise option 1 again if there is any interest and if someone can tell me where. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattinbgn (talk • contribs) 00:53, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

My priority would be a single convention for all places. Any single convention is bettern than multiple clashing conventions. My personal preferences are (i) to disambiguate only when necessary, and (ii) to disambiguate with parentheses. However I would happily concede both points if we could attain a single convention. Hesperian 01:05, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

• Never any need for you to apologise for coming to this page Matt. And, well because this is my talk page and I am happy to maintain the thread of the conversation here (until we decide a more suitable location and copy paste) I would add that my preference is also to have a single Australian convention. Personally I prefer the following for all (other than capital cities and obvious impossible places like Murray River) >>> Place, State i.e. Orroroo, South Australia or Mt Buffalo, Victoria but for the sake of a single convention I would also concede to another convention of similar common sense. --VS 02:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not entirely in agreement - I think the need for separation between geographic features, regions and informal locations on one hand, and gazetted suburbs and localities on the other does need to be made, although there may be a better way to make this distinction. I use AWB a fair bit to make mass changes and it's handy to be able to search on one string and know I'll pull in only one type of article. Orderinchaos 02:12, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Is categorisation a way of allowing for this to occur?--VS 02:18, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

They're already categorised, but that doesn't work as well as it could when you've already isolated a list and can simply use the filter option to get what you want. I did this the other day with links to the major political parties. Orderinchaos 06:54, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I'm also opposed to mandating a "State" disambiguator. Admittedly the state is the best disambiguator 90% of the time, but that still leaves ten percent where there are better disambiguators: islands in an island group e.g. North Island (Houtman Abrolhos); islands in a river or lake e.g. Alexander Island (Collie River); tributaries, sometimes; arguably suburbs in a city. Hesperian 03:42, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Yep that's a good point - and shows me I wasn't putting my thoughts down as clearly as I could have. I guess that means that the point of this discussion revolves more around whether we use a comma "," , or parentheses ()in the case of any disambiguation? So the next thing might be to re-open the discourse (with a cut and paste of this conversation) in a central location. Any ideas?--VS 05:46, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The current convention was hammered out at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Australian places. But that page was more active then than it is now, so if you move this discussion there, consider advertising the discussion at WP:AWNB. Hesperian 07:06, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Please add further discussion below this sub-heading

I'd like to lend my support for a better convention because I've found it quite confusing at times but I think part of the process should be working out what we are actually naming. One example that is close, both figuratively and literally, is Newcastle which has several identities commonly referred to as "Newcastle":

• Seventh largest city in Australia - Actually not Newcastle per se. Actually "Greater Newcastle" or the "Newcastle Statistical District" or more commonly "The Lower Hunter Region" which covers several LGAs including Newcastle.
• The LGA - Should be simple but isn't. In NSW the city called Newcastle is officially the LGA called Newcastle but I've had "heated discussions" with other editors about what the city of Newcastle actually is. One editor argues that the Newcastle UCL is the city while another argued that Greater Newcastle is the city. The fact that such arguments occur demonstrate why a better convention is needed. That said, we did eventually agree, although one editor isn't really happy about it, that the UCL is the city.
• The city - As agreed this is the UCL although officially it's the same as the LGA.
• The suburb - Yes, there is a suburb called Newcastle.

The suburb based on what's been done elsewhere should be Newcastle central business district or Newcastle city centre. Care would need to be taken to avoid a clash with the Newcastle in England, but I'm just highlighting that city centres have their own issues with naming due to the inevitable clash with the city they form the centre of. Orderinchaos 20:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Newcastle CBD isn't limited to just the suburb called Newcastle. It includes, according to Newcastle City Council, Newcastle East and Newcastle West as well (but it doesn't include every part of those suburbs!) so it would be quite reasonable for anyone editing the Newcastle city centre/CBD article to include information that isn't related to the suburb called Newcastle and it's really easy to write a huge article on just the suburb. Individual suburb articles get their own articles like "Adamstown, New South Wales", "Wallsend, New South Wales" and "Stockton, New South Wales" so, following convention, "Newcastle, New South Wales" should be about the suburb and not the city. The article about the city of Newcastle should probably be City of Newcastle, which is currently about the LGA, which is actually and officially (I just got off the phone with the Department of Local Government) called Newcastle City Council although, as I've already pointed out, Newcastle City Council and The City of Newcastle are actually the same thing. --AussieLegend (talk) 04:39, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Under the current naming convention the suburb's article should probably be at Newcastle, New South Wales but that article, which we had agreed should be the UCL which includes part of the City of Lake Macquarie and one suburb from Port Stephens Council, is primarily (~98%) about the Newcastle LGA. The Newcastle LGA has it's own article which seems to be named in accordance with the naming convention but I don't see how Greater Newcastle or the UCL, which are both essentially just statistical regions, fit into the convention. --AussieLegend (talk) 15:42, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

People are getting way confused about the extent of the guideline. The state disambiguating naming convention only applies to localities. It was never meant to apply to local government areas, which are and have always been referred to by their actual names. It's not exactly relevant, but the Newcastle article you refer to does exactly what it's supposed to do - cover the content about the city. Very little if any actually pertains to the actual entity the City of Newcastle.

I don't have a problem with the LGA naming convention. That seems fairly clear. It's only what people choose as the "official" name that I have issue with. Regarding the Newcastle article, as I've said in response to Orderinchaos, the Newcastle, New South Wales article should really be about the suburb as this follows convention. Also as I pointed out, the entity the City of Newcastle and the city of Newcastle are the same animal. --AussieLegend (talk) 04:39, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Equally, Hesperian's example above about the Houtman Abrolhos suggests that others are overdoing the guideline as well. His example of North Island (Houtman Abrolhos) is a perfectly sensible means of disambiguation in the circumstances, and there's no real need to get stressed out about trying to fit conventions to it.

I'm not really fussed about what happens with the geographic features guideline, but please don't try and get rid of the locality one. We instituted it in the first place because disambiguation was an absolute bloody nightmare - if you wanted to know where an article on a town might be, you had to (and I'm not exaggerating) at times check about six different potential article names. It's a pretty minor inconvenience, but it's meant that for the last couple of years we've been able to ensure that every link to a town or suburb actually points where it's supposed to, whether the article exists or not, which we certainly couldn't before. Rebecca (talk) 16:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Rebecca's pretty much summed up my point of view on this. Orderinchaos 20:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The conversation so far still leaves the question whether the same disambiguator, for example a comma or paretheses could be used for all disambiguations? In other words rather than parentheses in the case of North Island (Houtman Abrolhos) could it have been disambiguated as North Island, Houtman Abrolhos? Orderinchaos' point therefore about searching would need to be further considered which he puts above and then notes: I think the need for separation between geographic features, regions and informal locations on one hand, and gazetted suburbs and localities on the other does need to be made, although there may be a better way to make this distinction. Maybe there is no easy solution but still - Is there a better way to make this distinction whilst using the same style of disambiguation for all articles?--VS 21:22, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the Houtman Abrolhos case shouldn't even fall under our geography guideline so it's up to editors on that set of articles to determine the best standards for subsets of subsets. As long as it's internally consistent I see few problems. Orderinchaos 23:57, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Can I throw in two cents worth of support for:

• commas for localities (Tallong, New South Wales);
• parentheses for geographic features (North Island (Houtman Abrolhos)); and
• no appendage for LGA's (City of Newcastle)

Localities should always be associated with a State/Territory name. Geographic features might be associated with a State/Territory name, or might be better described by reference to another geographic feature (per the North Island example above). LGA's will have various names (City of .., Shire of....., xx Council and so on) depending on circumstance)

Where there is overlap this could potentially give us Canada Bay, New South Wales, Canada Bay (Parramatta River) and the City of Canada Bay. The small number of anomalies could be addressed in whatever manner seemed best, in the comfortable knowledge that the vast bulk of articles were easily locatable and that disambiguations were uniformly handled.

So - this is essentially a comment in support of the status quo. Combining the convention for localities with the convention for geographic feaures would be more confusing for readers than having two simple systems (the commas and parentheses). Euryalus (talk) 00:29, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I think Euryalus is spot on. Rebecca (talk) 01:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I think Euryalus is close but I believe expansion is needed to avoid ambiguity in the situation where there are two or more things with the same name. For example, where a city and suburb have the same name, "name, state" should refer to the suburb while "City of name" (or something else that can be agreed upon) should refer to the city. For an explanation of my reasoning please refer to my edits above. --AussieLegend (talk) 04:39, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree there is a problem in the case where there is a suburb name that matches the town name. Both are localities, so both in theory deserve the "name, state" nomenclature. Thankfully these circumstances are pretty rare.

I don't think the town article should be renamed "City of xx" because that would clash with standard naming of LGA's. Using "newcastle CBD" doesn't always work either,a s the CBD is bigger than the suburb. Could I suggest as a one-off alternative to address these rare occasions that we use "Newcastle (suburb), New South Wales" for the suburb, then keep "Newcastle, New South Wales" for the town and "City of Newcastle" for the LGA? Euryalus (talk) 05:23, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

We have the problem anywhere there is a major town or city which also has suburbs, and there's a need to write about the central suburb. This applies to every Australian capital city and many regional cities. I agree that "CBD" or "city centre" are incorrect in factual terms - the Perth CBD would also include any part of West Perth or East Perth south of the Fremantle/Midland railway, which would exclude a fair proportion of Perth the suburb, while Melbourne's would exclude any part of Melbourne the suburb south of the Yarra. My personal solution would be eg Perth, Western Australia (suburb) - we have that for Melton which is a rather strange case of its own. Orderinchaos 23:57, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

This "City of ..." issue is a red herring. If you check the Gazetteer of Australia, you'll find that every state gazettes its local government areas with names of the form "City/Town/Shire of ...", except for South Australia, which doesn't gazette its local government areas at all. "City of Newcastle" is therefore the formally gazetted name of a local government area. The name is not the outcome of our internal naming conventions. It is neither disambiguated nor in need of disambiguation. Confusing it may be to some, but it is completely outside the scope of this discussion. Hesperian 05:40, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Still it bothers me that the conventions clash wherever a locality is named after a nearby geographic feature. People seem unconcerned by this, and understandably so because these are still fairly rare edge cases. Yet the fact remains that if I want to create separate articles for Margaret River the river and Margaret River the town, I would be expected to create them at Margaret River, Western Australia and Margaret River (Western Australia) respectively. To the passing casual reader, this looks utterly ridiculous, and any attempt to explain it away by recourse to our naming conventions would sound like a load of navel-gazing nonsense. Hesperian 05:40, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Discussion on hybrid possibility

True, but there seems no alternative other than creating articles such as "Margaret River (river)" and "Margaret River (town)". This could have been done instead of the current system but would have generated its own set of edge cases. In its place I think the current system works pretty well but I won't die in a ditch if consensus changes it to something else. Euryalus (talk) 06:02, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

"Margaret River (river)" and "Margaret River (town)" aren't exactly the titles I would have chosen, but I'll accept them for the sake of the argument. The reason why these are superior to "Margaret River (Western Australia)" and "Margaret River, Western Australia" is because the former are clear and obviously not arbitrary, whereas the latter are completely arbitrary and give no clue as to the subject of the article, unless you've been a Wikipedian for a year or so. To put it another way, if we're going to choose "Margaret River (Western Australia)" and "Margaret River, Western Australia" for a town and river respectively, then we might just as well number off all the "John Smith" articles as John Smith (1), John Smith (2), etc. This example is no less obscure and arbitrary than what we're doing here. Hesperian 06:15, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

And it seems would allow for superior searching techniques. What titles do you suggest Hesperian?--VS 06:29, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Since there is a Margaret River in the Northern Territory, I'd prefer Margaret River (Northern Territory), Margaret River (Western Australian river) and Margaret River (Western Australian town). But I'd have no objection to the last being just Margaret River (town). I would also happily accept a hybrid convention: Margaret River, Northern Territory, Margaret River, Western Australia (river) and Margaret River, Western Australia (town). A pure comma convention i.e. Margaret River, Western Australian river doesn't do much for me, but I could tolerate it. In short, anything that disambiguates meaningfully rather than arbitrarily has my support. Hesperian 11:02, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm new to all of this, so forgive my ignorance, but in my short time editing I have often encountered specially written 'disambiguation pages' to deal with articles that may otherwise have shared exactly the same name?

By way of example, taking Hesperian's lead, I typed John Smith into the search bar and arrived at the following John Smith disambiguation page.

If there is a very good and effective disambiguation page .. then that actual naming of articles that might otherwise share the same name (ie articles that do not have unique name) would seem to be largely irrelevant, as long as the given name is unique. Perhaps, instead of seeking to use names and naming conventions to 'disambiguate', effective and efficient use of disambiguation pages could be used for situations like Margaret River, which currently simply redirects to the town irrespective of any naming conventions, and irrespective of whether or not there is also a Margaret River (River) in Western Australia or a Margret River in the United States.

With regard to 'Australian place names' and place naming.. perhaps attention could be given to a template map of Australia to be used for Australian place name disambiguations.. on which places or features sharing the same name might be numbered/located, with symbols indicating 'town', 'mountain', 'river', such that users searching the name arrive at the page and use the map to select the appropriate article.

Just some thoughts from a complete novice who believes single and/or simple, wholly unique names of places should be able to be entered on their own without being encumbered with whole pile of add ons (whether in parenthisis, or comma's or what) ..Cheers Bruceanthro (talk) 15:16, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment Bruceanthro. Perhaps the use of John Smith is not as useful as it appears. This discussion really only relates to the naming of Australian places. However your reference to a disambiguation page still brings up the issue of how a place (or for that matter person) is disambiguated on that page to point to the correct article. Bearing in mind then Rebecca's reminder points above on (a) retaining the current locality system, and (b) on only disambiguating places that are not localities (i.e. geographic features) where necessary, it would seem to me that Hesperian's idea of a hybrid (when disambiguation is necessary) would provide us with something that retains the current locality guideline and then with the parenthesis addition of (town) (river) (lake) etc would also add to the neatness and logicality of the system. Other thoughts? --VS 21:44, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

The hybrid option is growing on me. But we're begging the real issue here. In order to adopt the hybrid option to resolve conflicts, we would need agreement to adopt the comma convention for geographical features, and there appears to be no consensus for that. Hesperian 00:08, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

• Agreed - that is I agree we need to seek a joint consensus on moving to a comma convention at the same time as gaining a consensus on using a hybrid similar to what you have first suggested. To my mind the comma is best because (a) it means no variation to current locality disambiguation; (b) therefore means no adjustment to most existing pages of this type, and (c) would allow for a relatively easy adjustment for current geographical feature disambiguations (where disambiguation is necessary). I would be very interested to hear more views on this possibility - both from editors already commenting here and from Aussie editors in general.--VS 02:01, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

  Would moving to a comma convention for geographical features imply moving to compulsory preemptive disambiguation of geographical features? I don't think I like that idea very much. How do you like the sound of Uluru, Northern Territory? Ugh.

  To be frank, I've never understood why it is necessary or even desirable to preemptively disambiguate any articles, even those on localities. Why is it necessary to put our article on Jerramungup at Jerramungup, Western Australia rather than the obvious and intuitive Jerramungup? I realise I'm heavily outnumbered on that point, but I simply can't see any merit in the arguments for doing so.

  By the way, there is a locality gazetted by New South Wales under the name New South Wales Queensland Border Crossing Boonanga. Would anyone care to put a ", New South Wales" after that?

  Hesperian 03:38, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

• I don't want us to get too far off track on this issue so I would respond by saying I understand your view on locality disambiguation - however the issue with localities is far more likely to result in more than one - for example Mitta Mitta and thus automatic disambiguation seems a good idea. However in terms of geographical features Rebecca makes the point (as agreed by most it seems) that they need only be disambiguated if necessary. That is why I have written (where disambiguation is necessary) above. I assume (hopefully correctly) that there is only one Uluru and thus no need for disambiguation (comma or parenthesis). Similarly the one off border crossing you refer to is by definition one off and no need for further disambiguation. If this is agreed then the comma/hybrid possibility (including the overall convention that disambiguation only occurs for Geo Features where necessary) still appears to be a valid solution.--VS 04:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

• Support Euralyus' proposal above - it's good. JRG (talk) 12:44, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Question - Euralysus has two proposal's above - I assume you mean his modified one? --VS 21:42, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not proposing a modified one - I support the current system. My second post above was just to say I can see some logic in the alternative as a second-best choice. Euryalus (talk) 01:02, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Railway stations

Can I add a comment on railway stations? I've been doing some work on these for a while and it would be nice to have a consistent style here as well. What has been done officially is to have "X railway station, City" where the station lies within the capital cities' metropolitan rail system (and they are all externally defined) and "X railway station, State" where it falls outside of that. The only exceptions are where the station name is the same as the city's name (eg. "Perth railway station, Perth" is ridiculous, so Perth railway station is fine) or the station is a major landmark (eg. "Southern Cross Station" but there is a redirect from the consistent one as well). Can we have some agreement on this so we can have something to show others when they attempt to redirect an entire city's stations (this has happened before)? Thanks. JRG (talk) 12:43, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it's just been adopted as an unofficial convention in the past, because there's enough coinciding names between cities that it'd be a pain to have to keep checking when one adds links. As such, I think we may as well just codify the norm. (And in the event that someone tries to redirect an entire city's stations, I think the only proper course of action is to tell them to get stuffed.) Rebecca (talk) 13:07, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I am pretty much with Rebecca on this. (An interesting exception applies to stations on the new Mandurah line, and I don't doubt it exists elsewhere too, where Mandurah which is beyond the Perth metropolitan boundaries has a Perth station and a Perth line). Orderinchaos 03:31, 6 January 2008 (UTC)