Talk:Winton, Queensland

Size of the asteroid strike

The Sydney Morning Herald reports the asteroid strike released energy equivalent to 650 Hiroshima bombs. It also says the strike was from an object 10 km in diameter. I very strongly suspect that a 10 km object would release orders of magnitude more energy than a 65 mega tons of TNT. Geo Swan (talk) 01:04, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't know either way. Maybe you (or another editor) could contact Dr Richard Blewett to clarify the matter. I thought the impact's long-term effect of changing the Diamantina River's course was notable so I added it to the river's article. - Shiftchange (talk) 01:09, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Excessive intricate detail in the history section

I've been following the development of this article, and while I was reluctant to say anything because I don't want to scare anyone off capable of that thorough research on historical topics, I somewhat agree with Shiftchange.

As an example of the kind of detail that could go: "Mr. Surveyor Jopp" was George Keith Jopp, a surveyor based in Blackall. His name was to be found on the "List of Surveyors licensed to act under the provisions and for the purposes of 'The Real Property Acts of 1861 and 1877'", which was published in Wright's Australian and American Commercial Directory and Gazetteer in 1881." None of this is relevant to Winton (why would our readers care which act the dude who surveyed Winton was licensed under?), and could be erased entirely, along with the previous quote, by merely noting that "Blackall surveyor George Keith Jopp" laid out the town.

There is so much great stuff here (this is one of the most thorough efforts at researching small town history that I've seen on Wikipedia in ages), and I really don't want to disparage the work you've done at all - it just needs trimming down on some of this bloat that amounts to very long-winded ways of saying things that could be addressed much more succinctly. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:30, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, lots of the content should remain but it needs to better summarised. As an example I might suggest "Robert Allen is considered to be the town's founder because...". I'm seeing the creeping trend of too many quotations in articles rather than original prose, which inhibits readability. Other editors don't like long quotes because of copyright. Events which are common or typical of rural and regional towns don't need to be included or should just have a cursory mention, like some of it is. To comprehend the details on the waterholes and setting up the town I have to read it at least twice. Sometimes a table can be useful to summarise historical events. I created one for railways on the Darling Downs page as an example. The details about things other than Winton led the reader astray. Of course we can have background material but it needs to be concise. If editors want to expand the history of Winton that should probably occur on a separate page, which I would support. There does seem to be a rich history for a small town. The template serves as a polite guide to regular editors that the direction may not be heading towards a good article. - Shiftchange (talk) 09:36, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Let there be no copyright worries about the quotes. Copyright worries are one of Wikipedia's greatest banes, but not here. Most of the quotes are from William Corfield's Reminiscences of Queensland 1862–1899, published in 1921, and Corfield died in 1927. The 70 years are therefore up, and besides, Project Gutenberg, which makes that book available online, says that all the website's contents are copyright-free. As for the other quotes, they come from old newspapers; the most recent of these is from 1891. Nobody can tell me that a 125-year-old quote still enjoys copyright under either Australian or American law. As for my inclusion of these quotes, my usual reason for doing so is that they were written by people who were there at the time. They can say it much better than I can (whatever "it" happens to be). Corfield, for instance, was one of Winton's founders, and the newspaper quotes come mainly from correspondents who were right there, then, in Winton. For some quotes, there are other reasons for inclusion. For instance, the quote "The station hands have left Vindex and Oondooroo stations in the Winton districts in consequence of the new wages tariff formulated by the Pastoral Employers' Association." expresses through its very brevity something of the feeling of the time. The Great Shearers' Strike was an enormously important event in Australian labour history, and yet that correspondent felt that that was all that he needed to say (or perhaps his editor did). Why? Were they afraid that reporting more details of this news would lead to even more widespread labour unrest? Were they afraid that some of the more conservative readers might accuse them of abetting these committers of outrages (as the press eventually dubbed them)? I say that if reading doesn't make you think, then there's little point in doing it. Drover's Wife, I included the information about George Keith Jopp because he is important to Winton, even today. Look at this. That grid pattern that you see there is the one that Jopp laid out in the 1870s. I simply wanted to make it clear that he was a recognized professional, not just some fool who thought he knew what to do with a theodolite. Now both of you: It seems to me that what you are talking about is dumbing the article down so that anybody with nothing more than a grade-six education can understand absolutely everything. There is none of that on Wikipedia. If you believe that replacing some more advanced writing with simpler Subject-Verb-Object constructions, or using less advanced vocabulary is a good idea, and if you think my writing is murky, then I suggest that you look at this article and see whether you even make it through the introduction without being utterly blown away by your inability to understand what the writer was going on about. I quite frankly believe that the Winton article is eminently readable, quotes and all. I could have written something very much more abstruse, complete with analyses of events (like that attempt just now at explaining – or at least asking questions about – why the strike story was so succinct, terse even) but I bore in mind that this is an encyclopedia, and that some thinking is best left to readers who like to analyze these things for themselves (and besides, that would have put too much of my own interpretation on Winton's history). Thus, for instance, the history is in strict chronological order, the way time always is. And what is this about waterholes? Only three are mentioned in the article (Conn, Pelican and Mistake Creek). I thought I made it quite clear that the first is near the Collingwood site, the second was where Allen was for a while before he got flooded out, and the third was the one that was threatening to dry up in 1895 (and RLJack suggested evacuating the townsfolk to the first one). By the way, waterholes were exceedingly important in pioneering days in drought-prone Central West Queensland, of course, for obvious reasons. So were artesian bores. As for having Winton's history on a separate page, why not? Kelisi (talk) 04:11, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

It isn't a matter of copyright - it's a matter of quality, and the excessive amount of quotes detracts from the article rather than adding to it. The shearers' strike quote is a good example, as that doesn't say anything Wikipedia couldn't say in its own voice - it may have been because the newspaper (like the rest of the Queensland press) was notoriously conservative about the shearers' strike, or perhaps because that particular paper was disinterested, but either way, the attitude of one Rockhampton newspaper to the strikers is not relevant to the history of Winton.

Again with Jopp - Jopp's qualifications as the dude who surveyed the town are irrelevant to the vast, vast majority of our readers, and the inclusion of random irrelevant asides makes the article much less readable. (If he was notable enough for his own article, they'd go there if anyone cared - however, if he isn't, then it really is not relevant to the history of Winton.) It's not that I can't understand it, but that it meanders so much from the point that it takes away from the good content, of which there is plenty. You correctly note that we need to be careful of getting into one's own interpretation of history, but there's just no need to get into that here: you've got plenty of good content as long as the article gets to the point. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:19, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Every now and then, one encounters a truly encyclopedic article on Wikipedia; this is one of them. I agree that quoting seems excessive and the usual narrative paraphrasing would be better in some cases, but quotes are set off in the usual way and are easily skipped, if desired. On the other hand, details about locally important people should be part of the article. There is often not enough general significance of a person's life to warrant a stand-alone article, so articles like these are the only place they get mentioned. This is a fascinating account and Kelisi should be congratulated. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:03, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

So the consensus seems to be towards inclusion. We have History of electricity supply in Queensland and History of infrastructure development in Bathurst full of intricate details where (in my opinion) its more suitable. I would encourage Kelisi and others to create a stand-alone article and expand it there. Then some balance can be returned to this article with a summary of the most significant history here. - Shiftchange (talk) 12:06, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

I think there are two issues here. Kelisi clearly enjoys doing historical research in great depth, for which a History of Winton article would be well suited (a great idea, actually, because the depth of the research alone isn't the problem here), and some of the contents of the current history section could clearly be relocated there. But there is also a matter of just decent concise and encyclopedic writing, and regardless of whether or not a separate history article is created some of the quotes and irrelevant asides need to be reined in. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:01, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

I still don't know what your problem is with quotes, especially those from people who actually experienced, and even made, the history that this section is about (after all, who could say it better?), but give me a little time, and I can set up a separate History of Winton article and figure out how to pare the history section in this article down.

One of the best ways to strike a balance in articles is to look at (around five) other Featured Articles or Good Articles and in this case, FA which are about the history of a place. Make a note of how many lengthy full sentence quotes, exact phrases and single words they contain on average and use this figure as a guide. - Shiftchange (talk) 07:23, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Map

Perhaps somebody can add a map, showing the location of Winton in Shire of Winton or Queensland? Debresser (talk) 00:29, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Done! Kerry (talk) 06:03, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Great. Thanks. Debresser (talk) 12:37, 28 October 2016 (UTC)