Wikipedia:Peer review/List of former territorial authorities in New Zealand/archive1

List of former territorial authorities in New Zealand

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I hope to put it forward as a featured list candidate in the future. I am currently trying to obtain a copy of a book which should fill a number of gaps with respect to dates.

Thanks, dramatic (talk) 10:20, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is a good start on a complicated list, but it isn't ready for FLC. I have several suggestions for further improvement.

• I wonder if the article title is appropriate. Two words, "former" and "authorities", are questionable. The trouble with "former" is that it is not specific. It doesn't tell the reader that it means "before 1989". The trouble with "authorities" is that it might be taken to mean the people (Smith or Jones or John Doe) in charge rather than the governments or political districts. Would "political subdivisions" or "administrative districts" be better? Would it be possible to expand the list to include local governments through 2010 and simply eliminate the word "former"? That way, the list would be set up to accommodate any future changes to the New Zealand system.

Firstly, I agree that the scope should include authorities which have ceased to exist since 1989. So far these number one: Banks Peninsula District Council was subsumed by Christchurch City a few years ago. And later this year, four cities and two districts will vanish and be replaced by a much larger Auckland City Council. This will be addressed by rewriting the lead.dramatic (talk) 02:04, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Secondly, "Territorial Authority" is the correct technical term in New Zealand - it is used in legislation, and by Government websites, e.g.[1], and to a reasonable extent by the populace, although the informal terms "local authority" is also used, and the phrase "local body politics" is common. "Political subdivisions" sounds more like parliamentary electorates to me. However, I see that 17 of the top 20 hits for "Territorial Authority" on Google are for New Zealand usages (subject to Google localising results of course), so it appears that the term may be unique to this country. In which case I don't believe we should change the title, but explain the term in the lead, and possibly use redirects.

• The "orphan" tag at the top of the article needs to be addressed.

• The existing lead is far too skimpy. It mentions only a 1989 change. I would suggest doing the research necessary to write a fairly detailed history of territorial authorities in New Zealand, beginning with the earliest rather than the most recent. A chronological explanation might help readers understand the complicated relationships among the various kinds of governments. I imagine the process started with the naming of New Zealand by, I suppose, the British, and the setting up of the first colonial subdivisions. All changes since then presumably followed a kind of logic that an outsider could understand.

• Maybe the lists should be ordered chronologically, starting with the provinces. The logic of this arrangement would parallel the logic of the re-written lead I am suggesting.

Broadly speaking, there are three eras of territorial administration in New Zealand: the Provincial Era, in which the country was divided into about ten large provinces; the counties era from 1876 - 1989 (which is the era covered here) and the current era following the 1989 reorganisation. I agree that these should be explained better, perhaps by summarising the articles on the Provinces and the post-1989 era. However I am not sure how to go about doing this (I am only an occasional contributor and am a bit confused by some of the ways of doing things). Perhaps by dividing the article into the three separate eras, and then covering each era? I also think that all the cities in existence in 1989 - not only those that were amalgamated into other areas that year - would be worth adding to the list. Daveosaurus (talk) 07:19, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

• It's often helpful to look at featured articles or lists to see how other editors have handled similar content. WP:FL#Geography_and_places includes several that you might find interesting.

• Would it be possible to include maps showing where in New Zealand these places are?

It would be fairly difficult given the number of subdivisions and mergers which have occurred over the years. I'm sure we already have a post-1989 map, and I have seen a map made soon after the original 1876 subdivision into counties. But many of our references to existence are merely gazetteer entries.dramatic (talk) 02:04, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

• The citations are all incomplete. Citations to Internet sources should include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and most recent date of access if all of these are known or can be found. The "cite" family of templates can be helpful in doing the citations. WP:CIT has details.

• The areas in the tables should all be given in imperial units as well as metric. The {{convert}} template is a handy tool for embedding conversions in the text or, if you prefer entering them by hand, for doing the conversions in your sandbox.

• "fl. 1972" - "fl." should be spelled out as well as abbreviated on first use.

• "When the provinces were abolished in 1876... " - What provinces? Should the list include a sublist of the provinces?

• The tools in the toolbox at the top of this article find 19 disambiguation links that need to be fixed and one dead url in a citation.

I hope these suggestions and questions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 19:48, 13 June 2010 (UTC)