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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Lowercase sigmabot III (talk | contribs) at 01:43, 21 May 2017 (Archiving 1 discussion(s) from User talk:ScottDavis) (bot). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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South Australian places

I remember we talked about this a while back, but god, South Australia's vague place names are infuriating. I'm going through one of the history books I grabbed some stuff from when I was in Adelaide, and I've come across a school that is variously referred to as Apoinga and Brady Creek, in a church formerly called Koonoona, and near the post office in Emu Downs, despite the fact these days they're four separate places. *bangs head* The Drover's Wife (talk) 15:27, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

@The Drover's Wife: Yes, it makes life "interesting" for family history research too. A place might have been on a pastoral lease (and their boundaries change over time), then taken up for closer settlement, and initially named for the Hundred. A railway station might have been named for a nearby town/village, the hundred it was in, or nothing in particular. Towns then sprang up and got named for the hundred, railway station, local backsmith/pub, land developer's best mate or nothing much either. The much later partitioning into formal LOCBs across the entire state has picked up many of these older names, but also dropped a few and left them as LOCU with coordinates that are far more precise than is appropriate for a handwave in the direction of the map. Churches popped up wherever the congregants wanted them, and locality boundaries have moved over time or been obliterated by later settlements or other developments. Areas that never really had a name have either been subsumed into a nearby LOCB (moving its centre away from the historic centre), or created new place names with no real history (which moves old names' centres the other way). My family history has found one person died at "Apoinga", but I haven't tracked a 3rd-great aunt any further yet, so don't know if it refers to the Hundred, or something smaller. I also have lots of family events that occurred at "Hundred of English", which isn't very precise these days, either. --Scott Davis Talk 11:33, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
...to continue the Apoinga confusions, I just noticed I have historic relatives who were married at "Zion Chapel (Emu Downs), Robertstown" in 1875 and 1881. --Scott Davis Talk 13:49, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
Even more so, isn't that the Zion church that was at Upper Bright? :P The Drover's Wife (talk) 17:17, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
I don't know. Robertstown had a Zion Lutheran on the edge of the town on Church Street/Black Springs Road, and our article says Robertstown was also known as Emu Flats (without dates). More work required :-/ --Scott Davis Talk 22:08, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
The "Emmaus to Worlds End" book suggests that the district was known as Emu Flats at the time of the town's settlement, and says "when Mr Roberts opened a Post Office in his store the town obtained its name - first Roberts Town then Robertstown" but doesn't give a specific date because it wasn't a gazetted town. The post office would make it 1874 though, which a Trove search supports, and the Zion Lutheran you're talking about opened in 1871, so it seems likely. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:07, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Great idea for an article, though could use getting fleshed out a bit with the context so it isn't just a rehashing of that day's news - a bit more about the before and the after etc. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:34, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes, I didn't consider it to be a complete article yet, but started writing to see if it could look like it had potential. The topic is a bit more vague that politicians, places, and events that I normally write about. I have added a bit of early history and moved it to Draft:German schools in South Australia. I don't have time to fill in the gap this morning. --Scott Davis Talk 21:58, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

They're all at "state by-election" around the country after a discussion years ago. Didn't agree with it then, but can't be bothered changing umpteen hundred links so I try to standardise them. It was a ferociously controversial by-election though so shouldn't be hard to find sources on if someone has the election results - maybe someone like Kirsdarke01 could help? The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:45, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Dukes Highway

Hi. I've added a comment on a recent edit of yours at Talk:Dukes Highway. Adpete (talk) 23:58, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Surat roads

Hi Scott, I have left a message for you on my talk page. Regards Summerdrought (talk) 22:06, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Great Central Road

Hi Scott, I noticed in your Junctions edit for the Great Central Road there is a note that says "Great Central Road is now considered concurrent with Gunbarrel Highway". I am wondering if you have a particular reference that can be quoted for that note, as I have done a lot of travel and study of the works of Len Beadell and there is only a short section of the GCR of about 45km which is actually concurrent. I am aware that some people may confuse the two roads, but as Wikipedia should quote references, then I think one may be required here. Regards, Graham. Summerdrought (talk) 22:07, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

@Summerdrought: the main source I used for that claim (which should have been explicit as "between Warburton and Warakurna" rather than just using the colour) was the map on Gunbarrel Highway and the (uncited) text in the "Conditions" section of that article. You are right, we need more references, which I didn't have to hand for my purpose. It is possible that tourist information sources will conflict with local and official knowledge and historical usage, too.
I have been doing a few of these junction lists, not just for outback tracks, and find that the effort often takes longer than expected because articles have developed independently and don't always agree. Thanks for noticing this one and for any help on working out which version is "true". I suspect that by the time I ever get there, the Outback Highway will have developed enough to remove some of the "adventure" in the past and present. --Scott Davis Talk 23:22, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
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13:37, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Status of towns and townships in South Australia

Hi ScottDavis

In the recent past, I remember reading a comment by you either on your talk page or on someone else’s page that you were looking at relevant state legislation concerning the existence of towns et al. The following summarises what I have found in the recent past.

Firstly, in 2016, I edited a number of articles about towns/localities/suburbs to include former names that were officially discontinued in 1940 (please refer NEW TOWN NAMES APPROVED). In a couple of cases, I started new articles including Walloway where I discovered that the town had been ‘ceased’ in 1988 by a proclamation made under the Crown Lands Act 1929. When one looks at a source such as Property Location Browser where the layer for ‘Government Towns’ has been selected, no boundary is shown for the former Town of Walloway which suggests that those towns whose boundaries are visible still exist. Presumably, these towns exist until proclaimed otherwise. Previously, I was of the view that towns ceased to exist after the proclamation of suburbs and localities in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.

Secondly, I noticed that section 4 of the Local Government Act 1999 includes the following definition of a ‘township’:

"township" means—

(a) any government township and any land laid out as a township where plans of the township have been deposited in the Lands Titles Registration Office, the General Registry Office or the Surveyor-General's Office; or

(b) any part of the area of a council that contains at least 20 residences and that is defined as a township by the council by notice in the Gazette;

It would be possible to locate townships of the class listed in (a) above via Property Location Browser reports while the class of townships listed in (b) above could be found by a search of the SA Government Gazette from the date of proclamation of the Act on 26 August 1999. In summary, I think it would be possible to identify what towns and townships do exist with the result that various lists could be upgraded and categories associated with placenames in South Australia could be revised.

Please reply on this page.

Regards Cowdy001 (talk) 23:59, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi @Cowdy001: I don't remember exactly the conversation you mention, in particular I don't recall saying I would look at the legislation about towns. I do recall a few conversations around that kind of stuff, so maybe I said something a bit like that in passing. Others who are interested in this stuff include @The Drover's Wife and Donama:, maybe it was one of them? I suspect that class (a) is what we read as "originated as a private subdivision of..." and (b) is what were created as "government towns".
I hope we have recorded the "former names" in that news article in the articles about the current town/localities.
I suspect that the need to define "township" in the Local Government Act is because councils apply different rates to township and rural land.
I think that tagging places like Walloway as |type=suburb in the infobox is absurd by any meaningful interpretation of the word "suburb". Since the infobox doesn't do anything special for "locality", I figure there is no point trying to decide whether any article about a rural place is about the LOCB or the Township (current or former), and the state is neatly partitioned into LOCBs (and SUBs in urban areas), so they are an ideal way of naming articles about places in SA at the lowest level. It makes life a little difficult at times for deciding what to do about places that are on current LOCB boundaries but have historically been separate places. Examples I think of quickly include Oxford Landing, Craneford, Neukirch that have been redirected and described in one of the relevant LOCB articles. I think we do have one or two "town" articles that do not have a current LOCB by that name, but I can't think of them at the moment. Historic placenames that show up in family history research can be difficult, as they either don't exist now, or have well-defined boundaries now that may be different (and often smaller) than the historic area that had that name. Examples I've seen for that include Apoinga and Moorook that possibly once meant anywhere in the cadastral hundred of that name (along with Hundred of English, which at least seems to be explicit that it means the Hundred in records I have seen).
Collating data to make complete lists sounds like a lot of effort that would be borderline WP:OR and a maintenance challenge. Finding lists that someone is paid to maintain and a few lines of sed/awk/python to import them would likely be valuable though. --Scott Davis Talk 10:06, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
I more or less agree with Scott, I think. My reading was that the government towns had ceased to be of relevance once uniform localities were rolled out and that the "incorporated the Government Town of Blah" or "incorporated the ceased Government Town of Blah" wording for the LOCB entries functionally meant the same, just with the "ceased" ones having been eliminated earlier. As with Scott, I'm not seeing a great deal of benefit in trying to gather that sort of data: the localities, now uniform, make for sensible bottom-level articles in most cases. I feel like most of the historically-different-but-now-merged towns can be covered in the one article for modern localities (because usually neither are that big), though can always be spun out in the unlikely event they get enough content, and the Apoinga/Moorook examples best served by developing standalone articles on those hundreds as distinct from the localities. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:43, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Port Germein

Hi Scott,

I have been working on the history of Port Germein for about 10 years and never in that time have I seen it referred to as Hummock Harbour. I am currently collating every news story from 1881 onwards and have written a small book about the time when I lived there together with information about sailing vessels that visited during the grain races. Several news articles refer to ships calling at Hummock Harbour on the trip to or from Port Lincoln, but certainly did not give the impression that it was Port Germein. There is a Hummock Hill in Whyalla. I have been in frequent contact with HATS in Port Germein and have given them quite a lot of information. They would not be in a position to confirm that the place was ever Hummock Harbour, I would think. Louisenord (talk) 14:39, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I have continued the conversation at Talk:Port Germein, South Australia#Rollbacks - Hummock Harbour and Melrose District Council rather than splitting it further here. Please join there. --Scott Davis Talk 13:28, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

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Peter Georgiou

I've moved your draft of the above article into mainspace with some minimal changes after today's confirmation of Georgiou's election. Obviously the article could use some expansion at some stage, but I figured best to get it in place given likely attention on the subject today. Alaric004 (talk) 00:51, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

@Alaric004: Thank you. I have had a busy week away from home and had not heard the news yet. --Scott Davis Talk 06:58, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

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A favor

Hello ScottDavis, I'm asking you for a favor to leave your opinion here Talk:Visa requirements for Georgian citizens#RfC for map usage. You are an admin and your view will have more significance regarding the issue since you better know wiki rules and guides.--g. balaxaZe★ 17:43, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

MLCs

Thanks for starting that infobox discussion! The template does remove the "incumbent" thing if you have the "succeeding = " parameter filled in, but that obviously doesn't work for multi-member seats and I couldn't find any other way to get rid of it other than commenting out the entire thing. Hope someone can come up with something! Frickeg (talk) 10:54, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

@Frickeg: No worries. Choosing a predecessor might make sense if the party has the same number of members before and after, and only one changed, or only one seat changed party (I haven't checked if any of these make sense). I hoped that just setting a future start date would drop the word "incumbent" (it didn't as you know), or that readers would work it out fromthe future start date, but that is definitely suboptimal since "incumbent" stands out more than the date. I guess we could contrive something like |office=MLC-elect |term-start=11 March 2017 |term-end=22 May 2017 but that looks pretty lame overall. Last year it did not apply for the senate, but it is an issue for "normal" senate elections. --Scott Davis Talk 11:01, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
It would definitely be a good thing to get sorted out. I had a look at the history of Jacqui Lambie to see what we did for senators-elect, and it looks like we just had "office=Senator-elect for Tasmania" and then left out the dates altogether, which I guess is another possible compromise. But a better solution would be for the template itself to be fixed. Frickeg (talk) 11:06, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Lol

They ARE middle upper class suburbs But I see you're from the north so understand the hate. You ask for proof, well you give me proof they aren't! For example, Davran Park IS a crap hole! We just know that! No proof required! Wikipedia is about everything including Real Estate! Do a google search on the suburbs you removed that from and you May learn something — Preceding unsigned comment added by Target101 (talk • contribs) 06:27, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

You see where I live now, I grew up south of the city in the hills, but my address and background don't influence Wikipedia style anyway. Even the Domain reference doesn't say that, and it's in their interests to talk up every suburb as much as they can. Have a look at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch for example, and other pages linked from their sidebars. --Scott Davis Talk 08:15, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Time in Australia

I admit I do not have a reference but its a fact that the vast percentage of computers and security systems are not adjusted to Daylight saving times.

Hi ‪BernardZ‬. The vast majority of computers (including mobile "smart" phones and car navigation systems) don't need to be manually adjusted. I do know people who don't adjust the clock in their oven or car, but I don't have any evidence to suggest that is any more or less prevalent in Australia than anywhere else. --Scott Davis Talk 13:41, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
I was referring to the computer used in security systems. Few companies will pay a security company to come twice a year to change the time so they set them to the appropriate time zone

BernardZ (talk)

Gichuhi

Ok re Gichuhi. I didn't see the tweet. That is enough! I don't have time to fix just now. It needs to be updated in the Senators template, AUstralian senators article, Gichuhi own article and the FAmily First article all in one go for consistency is all. Donama (talk) 03:22, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Pacific Highway

I think we are both in agreement that the Pacific Highway articles need work, but as no one else really seems interested in stepping up to the debate, seems a bit of a lost cause given the totalitarian way AussieLegend uses to defend the status quo. But thanks for your attempts to address, may have to put it on the backburner until our esteemed colleague moves on. Silverserv (talk) 08:23, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi Silverserv. Yes, I think the job would be much easier if the NSW government gave the old road between Sydney and Newcastle a new name (like the Gold Coast Highway in Queensland). Then we would not have as much confusion about what is the Pacific Mumbleway vs its former routes. There doesn't seem as much dispute over bypasses of towns north of Newcastle. Perhaps incremental steps will get us to a better place eventually. --Scott Davis Talk 10:54, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
I'm having another go, but I'm facing the same resistance. Still it looks like there's a mood for change from everyone else involved in the conversation. Ausmeerkat (talk) 04:22, 20 April 2017 (UTC)
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