Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Territorial evolution of Australia/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by PresN via FACBot (talk) 18:22:01 31 May 2019 (UTC) [1].

Territorial evolution of Australia[edit]

Territorial evolution of Australia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Golbez (talk) 14:49, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Following in the footsteps of FLs Territorial evolution of the United States and Territorial evolution of Canada, I offer Australia. Unlike the others, it includes the colonial period because, helpfully, no colonies joined it after it became a country so I avoid that complication. (and the colonial period was a lot more interesting!) Well-sourced, well-illustrated, and, at least at this time, appears comprehensive. --Golbez (talk) 14:49, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • A longer lead would be nice, maybe summarize the major events and the difference between a state and territory.
  • Along with that, the timeline overall is amazing but lacks context of what were relatively minor procedural changes and bigger ones that affected people. Some discussion about changes related the most populated areas could go in the lead.
  • I recall seeing a gif somewhere, would go well at the top, especially since the images are somewhat small, with more blue sea than Australia in the maps. I know the table has all the same information but the maps are simply illegible.

Reywas92Talk 06:10, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

    • Lede: I've tried to flesh it out a bit.
    • Context: When I originally made these articles, I wanted them to be just ... facts. No context, just say what happened and don't bother with why. But now that the initial information is in, I feel more confident going back and trying to supply context. I'll work on that today.
    • You might have seen it on Reddit, where I posted it last week? :) The maps I guess are designed to be clicked if you want to see what they say, I hadn't considered making a tiny version of the maps, without text, just showing the change in a visible form... do you think that might be worth the effort? --Golbez (talk) 16:17, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think that was it! Found it again at List of proposed states of Australia. I may let others comment if they think you should go through that work but honestly I think the tiny unreadable text in the thumbnails doesn't look great, and they didn't need to be extended through the sea for just two changes about uninhabited islands. They're terrific when bigger but not as good as thumbnails. Reywas92Talk 18:38, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • I'm not sure what you're referring to about 'two changes' to 'uninhabited islands' - you mean Heard + Macdonald? Removing those only shrinks the map a little bit- all of the other corners (Nauru, Cocos, South Island) are pretty close to their edges. --Golbez (talk) 18:51, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • And that gif was made by someone else based on an earlier version of the article. --Golbez (talk) 18:51, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
          • Haha I only read until I saw your name credited for the original file, but it looks good. I did mean Heard and MacDonald but yeah the others are out there too. I suppose as a reader I'm not as interested in the low population territories but they're certainly parts of Australia that shouldn't be left out, but most changes don't involve them. Perhaps use different maps for Australian mainland and external territories (or pre and post-independence)? I guess the maps have the same small text as in the US and Canada map and it's not that necessary to read them – maybe just increase the size to 250px like the others! I thought your test change looked good though but I don't want this to be a ridiculous amount of work. Reywas92Talk 20:06, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
            • It's not ridiculous, it's actually fun, but... I'm worried that if I put these up, the more detailed frames will be lost. Very few people will click through to see them... --Golbez (talk) 04:39, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hope you don't mind I made the images bigger and legible to match the US and Canada articles. With the longer lead now, I support. A review on my FLC below would be appreciated. Reywas92Talk 06:08, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from — RAVENPVFF · talk · 12:04, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  1. As above, the lead isn't long enough for a list of this size; one paragraph just won't do. You could try summarising the major events in rough chronological order and defining the scope for "Colonial history" and "Federation", ultimately to fill the lead to about three paragraphs in length.
  2. One of the two Australian history GIFs could go in the lead as well.
  3. Legend: is it necessary to indent it? I feel it should be flush against the left-hand side, although this is really more of a matter of taste.
  4. Capitalise disputed and area in the legend.
  5. Also, another entry to the legend could be made for the grey areas on the map.
  6. The dates in the first column of the tables don't look good text-wrapped – especially if they're broken into three separate lines; they should ideally be formatted to appear on a single line each.
  7. The Change Map table header can be simplified to just "Map".
  8. Your tables have scope attributes for rows, but not for columns.
  9. The Proposals for new Australian States link in the See also section should use the actual article's title, avoiding a redirect.

Overall, this list isn't bad and has potential, but it needs some work, especially on the lead. — RAVENPVFF · talk · 14:37, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • How's the lede now?
  • Personally I'd kill the legend, if no one else minds then I will. It was never my idea.
  • Added scopes and nowraps. Fixed the link. --Golbez (talk) 14:57, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies for my delayed reply. Anyway:
  • The lead definitely looks better. I would briefly list the "several small island territories" and link "a large claim" to Australian Antarctic Territory in the last sentence. Otherwise, there's a bit of room left for expansion of the lead, but I'll leave that up to your judgement.
  • I think the legend is still somewhat useful, as it provides additional information that may not be otherwise apparent for other readers.
  • Also, alt text needs to be added to all images in the article.
That should be it for now. — RAVENPVFF · talk · 10:14, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've linked and alt-texted and unindented the legend. Not sure what else more could go in the lede. --Golbez (talk) 15:15, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support: comprehensive and detailed enough for my liking. — RAVENPVFF · talk · 12:04, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 19:56, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
  • Lead image caption is a fragment, no full stop required.
    • Done.
  • "Key to map colours" now then, this is a probable MOS:COLOR violation, as we need more than just a colour to denote something, (Ensure that color is not the only method used to convey important information, so those map images need something more than just colours.
    • Ehhhhh I mean, the info is already in an image. This isn't like using color to convey information that could be conveyed in text. Like if people have a list of cities and say "capitals are bold" or "capitals are blue". In those cases, yes, you need some other indication than formatting. But in this case, there is no browser text. And the map images do have something other than color, the labels. They only label the relevant changes, there are full maps which include labels, though I haven't thought of a way to properly integrate them in this article.
      • Screen readers can't read text embedded in images. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:57, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • Exactly. The images are entirely opaque to someone using screen readers; therefore, there's no way of sharing information in the image that they can see, therefore there's no problem with giving a color key. How would the color key be against accessibility, but not the images themselves? The images complement the text, and vice versa; so unless you're suggesting I change this to SVGs, I'm not sure I see the complaint. (Now, if the complaint was "the color key is bad and should go away," I'm fine with that, as I said in previous statements, but this one is about accessibility and that argument doesn't seem to make much sense...)
          • So there's nothing in those images that isn't available by other means to people using screenreaders? The Rambling Man (talk) 06:29, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
            • I'm sure there is, but that issue is far beyond the color key. If you want to talk about the nature of images containing more information than is accessible with screenreaders, I think we'll need a bigger discussion. Then again, the only information that's in the images that isn't in text is probably specific positional information, rather than information about the change. But again, this is far beyond the color key. How about this: Can you explain why any particular image would disqualify this article as inaccessible, instead of me stumbling along trying to figure out how the color key figures into any of this? :P --Golbez (talk) 07:43, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
              • Well, the discussion has evolved. Initially my concerns were that the key and the associated images weren't compliant with MOS:COLOR, which is fair. Subsequently, I'm not also concerned that information exists in the images which is pertinent to the list which is only accessible to those who can see the images. I guess if you have sufficiently covered the details of each image in the text for each entry and/or included ALT text, then we're all good. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:04, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
                • The alt text describes them as maps. The maps describe what is in the article text. I don't think we can ask for more, can we? --Golbez (talk) 16:29, 13 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean" this looks like an unattributed quotation.
    • It's attributed to the source that's done earlier in the graf; should I move the source to the end, or repeat it?
  • " 3.6 kilometres " since this is an Imperial-esque article, let's at least provide conversions to miles.
    • Done.
  • Several statements without references in the Event column.
    • Like? I've gone through this many times and thought I'd sourced everything I needed to, so I don't trust myself to be able to proofread my own work in this regard.
      • Any quotes without a source inline, for example. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:01, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • OK, hit all the ones I saw, removed one I couldn't source.
  • The table isn't sortable so suffers from large amounts of overlinking.
    • It wouldn't exactly make sense to be sortable (would I add a column of "all entities modified by this date"? [and yes I actually considered this at one point]), so is this necessarily a problem? I figured each cell should be self-sufficient in terms of linking. This isn't normal prose where one can trust earlier paragraphs to supply context. The last mention of an entity could be 30 cells earlier.
  • Dozens of refs aren't comprehensively defined.
    • You mean the ones using {{Cite Legislation AU}}? I guess I could add a manual 'access date' to them, but it makes me wonder if there's a reason they omitted that from the template?
      • I don't know, I didn't look, but there are dozens of refs without publisher information, publication date, access date, author names etc. Not good enough. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:01, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • I'm not trying to be a dick when I ask this, but I am a bit unsober and run the risk of doing it inadvertently: Who would the author name, publication date, and publisher for a law be? --Golbez (talk) 04:11, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
          • Publisher is the host for the website you're referencing. There may not be an author. I imagine a suitable publication date would be the date the law was put into effect, or even when the law itself was published to the general public. Access dates should be there if you can't find a suitable method for publication date. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:04, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
            • We've both been here for a very long time, so please help me with this: Zero of the legislation citation templates include accessdate, publisher, author, etc. Could it be that these are allowed as exceptions? Sadly, WP:REF does not have any statement on the matter of citing legislation. I'm not necessarily against it, I'll do it if you feel the need (again citing your experience here) - I'm just wondering if we're building precedent rather than following an existing guideline. --Golbez (talk) 16:29, 13 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
              • I see that template is very limited. It is odd because at the very least you know the publisher is Australasian Legal Information Institute, you know the publication date of the legislation and you can always find out an accessdate (after all, the Australasian Legal Information Institute may unilaterally decide to change its URL structure at any point rendering this entire template usage dead). I suppose the limitations you're explaining are down to the dependency on a mediocre template. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:09, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
                • I've gone through and cleaned up all the refs. --Golbez (talk) 19:54, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Enough for a ten-minute browse. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:31, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks for taking a look. :) --Golbez (talk) 19:47, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • "the vast, sparsely populated center of the country" - don't Australians spell "centre" the correct way same way as we do in Britain?
  • link Letters patent on first use.
  • Our article on Letters patent doesn't capitalise the P, but here you do. Not sure which is correct?
  • Think that's it from me -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:46, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Fixed; I coulda sworn I saw somewhere that said letters patent was always capitalized, but now I can't find it. Maybe I mixed up where our article said always pluralized. *shrug* --Golbez (talk) 14:42, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 15:00, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Source review passed; promoting. --PresN 18:22, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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