2024 is Underway

Welcome

Here are some lamingtons to welcome you to WikiProject Australia!

G'day 2024 is Underway, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions; they have helped improve Wikipedia and made it more informative. I hope you enjoy using Wikipedia and decide to make additional contributions.

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If you have any questions, please see Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, try the Wikipedia:Help desk, or ask me on my talk page. Or you can just type {{helpme}} on this page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Thank you for signing up! Kerry (talk) 23:40, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Woodridge railway station

In your recent edit to this article, you removed information about the 15 Mile Siding, and replaced the more precise date of January 2017 with a less precise date. And you did so with an edit summary that you had "fixed" the history, as if the history was previously in error. Writing for Wikipedia is a collaborative activity and, as a general principle, it's always better to add information than delete what's there. Maybe you didn't think the information about 15 Mile Siding was interesting or that the month mattered, but whoever added it evidently thought so and they did appropriately cite it, so you don't have a justification to delete it. Remember every piece of information was added by another person who may be upset to find someone else has removed it or implied they were in error. In a collaborative activity, keeping other contributors happy matters, even in terms of what you say in an edit summary. I can see you are making good contributions to articles and I hope you keep on doing so, but could you please go back and reinstate the information that you removed about Woodridge railway station. You can see the last version before your edits here. If you need help to do it, don't hesitate to ask me. Obviously it's ok to rewrite existing content so that it flows better with new content you are adding (just don't lose the information). Similarly it is ok to remove uncited content or flag it with citation needed (do this with Insert > Template > type in "citation needed" and then Add). If you find a conflict in information between two sources, e.g. a different date, then we usually provide both dates as alternatives, each appropriately cited. But again if you are a tricky situation, just ask for help. Kerry (talk) 00:02, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback, the mistake identified was corrected, and the article sounds a lot better now. 2024 is Underway (talk) 04:33, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for that! By the way, if you are looking for help to learn how to contribute to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Australia runs free monthly introductory sessions and "drop-in" (ask anything) sessions via Zoom. I am a member of Wikimedia Australia and I do free training sessions one-on-one or with small groups via Zoom or face-to-face (if geographically possible) at any mutually convenient time. The best way to contact me is kerry.raymond@wikimedia.org.au Kerry (talk) 04:41, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Minor edits

I notice you are marking most of your edits as "minor" (as most newcomers do). However, Wikipedia's understanding of minor edit is not about the size of your edit, but about whether it is changing information. So fixing a spelling mistake is minor, but adding or deleting information is not. If in doubt, don't click minor. And even something like changing punctuation can change the interpretation of a sentence, so even the most trivial changes might not be minor. So my general advice to newcomers is to not mark edits as minor. Kerry (talk) 00:08, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I understand now, Thank you! 2024 is Underway (talk) 04:38, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Opening of Kingston railway station

I think there was a station at Kingston in 1885 given this newspaper article from 23 January 1885 says

the line then continues, with much the same kind of formation, and through thickly timbered country, until it reaches Kingston, which is the next station, and which is situated on the road leading from Brisbane to Beenleigh,via Waterford, at a distance of 12 miles and 52 chains from the Junction, and 16¾ miles from the Stanley-street station.

Of course, back then a "station" is a place where the train is able to stop (I guess in the sense of to be "stationary"). It didn't always imply the existence of platforms and buildings as we expect today. Kerry (talk) 00:24, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I added that reference to the article and added this to the edit summary "Added reference to the year of the railway station, to corroborate that the Kingston railway station was built in or around 1885."

Thanks for your feedback! 2024 is Underway (talk) 04:36, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

census data

It's great that you are adding 2021 census data, but please don't delete the data from earlier censuses. We retain that data for comparison. Leave it (or move it) as appropriate to the Demographics section (if there is one, or create a Demographics section) or leave it in the History section. Thanks Kerry (talk) 06:26, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia and copyright

Hello 2024 is Underway! Your additions to Marsden, Queensland have been removed in whole or in part, as they appear to have added copyrighted content without evidence that the source material is in the public domain or has been released by its owner or legal agent under a suitably free and compatible copyright license. (To request such a release, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission.) While we appreciate your contributions to Wikipedia, it's important to understand and adhere to guidelines about using information from sources to prevent copyright and plagiarism issues. Here are the key points:

• Limited quotation: You may only copy or translate a small portion of a source. Any direct quotations must be enclosed in double quotation marks (") and properly cited using an inline citation. More information is available on the non-free content page. To learn how to cite a source, see Help:Referencing for beginners.
• Paraphrasing: Beyond limited quotations, you are required to put all information in your own words. Following the source's wording too closely can lead to copyright issues and is not permitted; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. Even when paraphrasing, you must still cite your sources as appropriate.
• Image use guidelines: In most scenarios, only freely licensed or public domain images may be used and these should be uploaded to our sister project, Wikimedia Commons. In some scenarios, non-freely copyrighted content can be used if they meet all ten of our non-free content criteria; Wikipedia:Plain and simple non-free content guide may help with determining a file's elegibility.
• Copyrighted material donation: If you hold the copyright to the content you want to copy, or are a legally designated agent, you may be able to license the text for publication here. Please see Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
• Copying and translation within Wikipedia: Wikipedia articles can be copied or translated, however they must have proper attribution in accordance with Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. For translation, see Help:Translation § License requirements.

It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices. Persistent failure to comply may result in being blocked from editing. If you have any questions or need further clarification, please ask them here on this page, or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you. — Diannaa (talk) 13:16, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Contribution statistics

If you want to see your contribution statistics, go to your Contributions page, scroll to the bottom and click the "edit count" link, and a wealth of statistics will appear. Or just bookmark https://xtools.wmcloud.org/ec/en.wikipedia.org/2024_is_Underway

You can see anyone's statistics by the same method. It's a lot easier than updating your user page :-)

The size/number of edits doesn't really matter. It's the less-easy-to-measure "quality" of your edits, it's how much you improve the encyclopedia (or do important back-of-house work as our administrators do). And you are doing fine in that regard, as you are adding cited content to articles. Don't be discouraged when people point out your mistakes, there's a big learning curve for a new user and making mistakes is always going to be part of that. I've been on-wiki for many years and many edits and I still make mistakes. I note that, as part of Wikimedia Australia, I and others do free Wikipedia training via Zoom, or give help on how to learn to do something new. It's just a matter of finding a mutually agreeable time. Contact me if you want to do this. Kerry (talk) 11:35, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Archiving URLs for citations

I noticed you added archive urls to some citations. This is a very good thing to do. There are some tools that can make the task easier. One is the Internet Archive Bot (aka IABot) to which you supply the Wikipedia article title and it does its best to archive any cited URLs and, if you tick the box, add those archive urls into citations in the article, etc. It does quite a reasonable job, although it can be rather slow (and prone to timing out), so don't do it until you've finished with all the edits you want to make to that article. The other handy tool if you use Chrome as your browser is the Wayback Machine extension. If you add this extension to Chrome, when you are looking at any webpage that you are about to cite in Wikipedia, you can click on the extension and ask it to save in in the Internet Archive, so you know it is saved (where the website involved permits to be saved, some don't sadly). I often do this as it makes the IABot faster to run (reducing the likelihood it times out by reducing its workload by having the URLs already saved). I don't know if this extension is available in other browsers, but it might be. Kerry (talk) 04:55, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestions, I'll be sure to try them out. As for the extension, I just checked, and it is available in Microsoft Edge as well. 2024 is Underway (talk) 05:11, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Article ratings

Since you mentioned ratings for the Islamic College article (which I re-rated after your edits), I thought you might like to know a little more about ratings. Once upon a time, articles were manually rated and frankly the ratings were pretty arbitrary at times (people tended to rate articles they worked on more highly etc) and many articles didn't get rated or hadn't been re-rated for years (despite further article development). Today we have an easier way of doing it, by using the Rater tool (developed by a fellow Aussie) which (as well as other useful things like easy project tagging) provides an automated rating service. Now it too can be arbitrary (sometimes you look at what it suggests and think "really?") but it does eliminate having to think about the issue and it does eliminate personal bias. And you can do it a touch of a couple of buttons so keeping the ratings more up-to-date is a lot easier and so ratings are now more up-to-date. Just follow the installation instructions and, after that, whenever you are looking at an article (in Read mode, not Edit mode), Rater should appear on your "Tools" or "More" dropdown on the toolbar (many of us are using different interfaces so things may appear differently to each user, which makes explaining more difficult). It will give you a predicted rating (lower right) and then you can add it to any project banner (using the drop-down). I usually put it onto the the Wikiproject Banner Shell at the top and set the WikiProject Australia rating to "inherit from shell". Some Wikiprojects (like military history) have their own strict rules about rating their projects but WikiProject Australia does not. I realise without seeing it in action, this may sound a little confusing. Independently, if you want to see the article quality assessment displayed as one/two words on the article when you are reading (and not have to go to the Talk page), then go to Preferences > Gadgets > and put a tick against "Display an assessment of an article's quality in its page header" and then scroll down to the bottom and click "Save" (on the bottom left). Enjoy! If you need any help, just ask. Kerry (talk) 05:48, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for telling me about this, I originally thought I would need to copy the source code from similar articles and adjust accordingly. However, I used the Rater tool on Talk:Edens Landing State School - Wikipedia, and it is a wonder and saved so much time. I will be using this from now on. 2024 is Underway (talk) 09:08, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

I see you are using it with great enthusiasm. It is quite easy to use, but some people get put off by the need for the magic in the common.js file as part of the installation. Kerry (talk) 02:16, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I have to admit I was originally put off it, due to a number of errors popping up every time I pasted the code, and it not showing up on any of the articles but waiting seemed to somehow make the rater icon pop up. I am glad it worked out, because it is a significant help in identifying what is still a school stub and what isn't. 2024 is Underway (talk) 03:02, 15 August 2024 (UTC)