Talk:Ballarat

Untitled

In response to earlier questions the battle site is where the current education center is now. It was left as a park for many years in honor of the fallen but eventually had the current center built on top of it. Bakery Hill was the site of the raising of the Eureka flag a few kilometers from the battlesite.

WRT the supposed J. Bruggeman, I've never heard of him either. --Robert Merkel

Should National Trust be disambiguated/clarified? jimfbleak

I really should do something to expand this poor little stub, seeing as I've lived here for ... er ... close on 20 years, and must have learned something about the place in that time. Instead, I'm planning to carry right on writing about an obscure rodent that I've never seen and which is found only in the USA - a place I've never been to and probably never will. Doubtless there is some sort of logic behind that. Somewhere. Tannin 15:47 26 May 2003 (UTC)

I just nuked the fuzzy thumbnail code (an obvious fix) but also fixed an older problem that I wasn't aware of till just now:

Someone, in all good faith, "corrected" the image by doing two things: twisting it to make it seem level, and changing the colour values. It's easy to see how these might have looked "wrong". They were, however, perfectly correct in the original image, which I have now restored. The skyline does slope from the lower ground at left up towards Mt Bunninyong, and the picture was taken on the sort of day that Ballarat is famous for: cold, wet, and bloody miserable. The gloomy grey cast is accurate in both senses: as a record of the scene that particular winter day, and as an indication of the essential Ballarat. Ballarat in July is not a Greek island in May!. Tannin 14:07, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• I'll give you the color difference (I was the person who made the changes), but the picture is in fact crooked. It may well be that the land slopes, but I'd guess that the buildings don't lean, as they do in this image. Denni☯ 16:15, 2004 Nov 15 (UTC)
  • They look straight to me! But I have a better idea. What say I go for a walk sometime and take a better picture of the town? This one is really just a picture of Lake Wendouree in the tourist precinct. Then we can delete this one and move on. Tannin 23:43, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • PS: maybe I could take a few shots of the area where Eureka took place (general area: the exact area remains unknown. There are two main theories, I believe: one says that it was more-or-less where today's park and memorial stands (between Victoria St and Eureka St), the other that it was on Bakery Hill, on a site now occupied by, of all things, a discount supermarket. Tannin
    • Excellent suggestion! I look forward to seeing what the Eureka site looks like today. Denni☯ 21:01, 2004 Nov 19 (UTC)

Hmm... should mention be made of the School of Mines, and the University of Ballarat? The sheer number of round-abouts we seem to have. The fact that we actually have a bus service, despite being outside of Melbourne and Sydney. The prisoners of war memorial? The arch? The saleyards? (anyone have statistics?) The begonia festival? Sovereign Hill? Kryal Castle? (well... it's kinda nearby) Martin Rudat(T|@|C) 13:36, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

The avenue of honor is longer than 15 kilometers, it is somthing like 29kms. seriously.

Entertainment & Nightlife

This sentence "Hotels are popular meeting places for young people and more recently several speak easy's have opened around the city." makes no sense. Dance clubs are more popular meeting places for young people, and the term "speak easy" means nothing in Australian English.

Better Photos

This article seriously needs some better photos. The current ones mostly all have grey skies! I know that shows the true Ballarat, but it just looks plain dull. I have seen some pretty special photos of the city that would be really great here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.254.105.46 (talk) 12:13, 13 December 2006 (UTC).

Thanks for making all this info available. Now I can at least get an idea of the environment where my children live. 04.05.2007

Henry Anderson

Henry Anderson is mentioned in History of Ballarat as being as being the partner in Yuille's grazing property. The link to Henry Anderson brings-up a Henry James Anderson who, it seems, is a different person. Can anyone clarify this important point?

Etymology of placename

It is often said that the name Ballarat was derived from local Aboriginal dialect meaning 'resting place'. Is there any evidence for this? Celtic settlers from England might have named it Balla (the place of) Rat (the rat), especially if they were living under extreme pioneer conditions. Obviously I'd be very happy if there was evidence for 'resting place'. (Northernhenge (talk) 23:54, 9 February 2008 (UTC))

Kryal Castle

I have made a page for Kryal Castle. If anyone would like to help add to it feel free as it was delewted earlier.

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move. Jafeluv (talk) 11:34, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

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Ballarat, Victoria → Ballarat — All of these places have unique names that do not require disambiguation, other than Ballarat which is unquestionably the prime use of the name ("Ballarat" redirects to "Ballarat, Victoria" now). In line with the long standing Wikipedia-wide policy at WP:COMMONNAME, these titles should not be disambiguated. The idiosyncratic practice of mandatory disambiguation of place names in Australia now longer has any clear consensus (see Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 36#RM -- moving forward) and renaming these articles would bring them into line with other Australian regional cities such as Toowoomba, Bundaberg, Coffs Harbour, Dubbo and Wagga Wagga. The discussions at Talk:Deniliquin#Requested move and Talk:Coffs Harbour#Requested move may be useful background for editors participating in this discussion. Mattinbgn (talk) 11:22, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

• Bendigo, Victoria → Bendigo
• Geelong, Victoria → Geelong

• • Support- this is clearly the sensible thing to do. When people use the search pane, they're going to type "Ballarat", not "Ballarat, Victoria", and when an editor who is not familiar with the irrational current practice wants to link to the city they're going to link to Ballarat, not Ballarat, Victoria. Putting the articles in the right place will save work in the long run and just makes more sense. Reyk _YO! 19:46, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

This could be the start of something big. Do we intend this proposal to flow on to every uniquely named Australian place? There are probably thousands of them. HiLo48 (talk) 21:19, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Have you read the earlier discussions linked to above? This is not the start of something but follows months of discussion in various forums. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 23:23, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

No. A simple yes or no would be fine, thanks. HiLo48 (talk) 08:14, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

My feeling is that eventually this is going to happen. There is no longer any consensus for the "Town, State" format, and current practice is moving away from it. But I don't think anyone is going to start moving thousands of articles Australian towns and cities based on what we decide here. Reyk _YO! 07:00, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose based on the actual naming convention. My understanding is that while there has been an effort to modify the convention there is no consenus to do so. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:36, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

• As I mentioned above there is no longer any consensus for that naming convention and yes, the naming guideline should be rewritten to reflect what current practice actually is but I am not in the mood for an edit war. Many Australian places are no longer disambiguated, including many regional cities comparable to these three cities(see the abovementioned Toowoomba, Bundaberg, Coffs Harbour and others listed at User:Mattinbgn/Undisambiguated Australian places). If the naming convention you link to was not previously in existence, there is no way that it would gain consensus now. I suspect it was also an attempt to follow a US precedent to fix a problem that never really applied in Australia, and such is deeply flawed. Lack of consensus for a local exemption should mean referring back to the default policy I am not sure why a local guideline with no consensus should overrule the broad naming policy that covers the entire encyclopedia that does enjoy wide consensus. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 23:23, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

• You proposed a change, and it crashed and burned - now you're venue-shopping to attempt to get things through where those who disagree with you won't notice. Rebecca (talk) 04:51, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

• I think that is an unfair mischaracterisation. Establishing that a convention that used to have consensus doesn't have it anymore, that doesn't sound like "crash and burn" to me. And given that support for the "Town, state" format is evaporating I do not think it is forum shopping to deal with the ones that least require disambiguation on a case-by-case basis. Reyk _YO! 01:24, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

• What we did establish though, is that there is no consensus in either direction. So one can't act as if a consensus was established in the opposite direction and go around trying to implement it in a piecemeal fashion. Orderinchaos 08:26, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

• The Australian naming convention, which has no consensus, is an exception to the Wikipedia-wide naming convention, which does. In my opinion any exception to a widely accepted rule needs continued support- once that support evaporates then we should revert to the more global rule. This is especially true if actual practice is heading that way anyway, as it is here. Reyk _YO! 02:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support - having read through most of the previous discussions, I didn't see any compelling reason why placenames should be predisambiguated in violation of WP:AT, and certainly for placenames that need no disambiguation at all it seems entirely redundant. Gatoclass (talk) 01:10, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support Ballarat is known as Ballarat, disambiguation of unique placenames in Australia isn't needed and unnecessary. Non-placename article are disambiguated when there is another article which is has the same or similar name and isn't disambiguated just for the sake of it. Bidgee (talk) 02:39, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. No consensus for changing the naming convention; venue-shopping is not the answer. This is about the fourth venue Mattinbgn has tried to move articles through after failing to gain consensus for a change. Rebecca (talk) 04:49, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
  • So no actual reasons for favouring the status quo? Didn't think so. Reyk _YO! 06:16, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support - definitely. Afterall there is only one Ballarat and only one Geelong. The rest if any would have to be named after them. Stupid to move in the first place when there was no need, IMHO. --Biatch (talk) 03:58, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support - No reason not to. Keeping it the way it is gives the impression that it could be confused with some place else. Anoldtreeok (talk) 12:20, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support - For true consistency across Wikipedia, the principal criteria that applies to all articles with respect to title determination should not be trumped by a desire for consistency with similar articles. Consistency with similar articles should only apply when disambiguation is required and the principal criteria that applies to all articles does not clearly indicate what title to use. That is not the case here because WP:COMMONNAME, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and "only as precise as necessary" clearly indicate Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong. Since disambiguation is not needed, consistency with similar articles is not applicable. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:53, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support Ballarat and Geelong, Oppose Bendigo Purplebackpack89 18:00, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

• Um, how is Bendigo any different? Bendigo is just as much of a unique name as Ballarat and Geelong. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 19:57, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

• I'm also curious why you oppose Bendigo yet support Ballarat and Geelong. If anything, Ballarat would be the one that would cause most confusion (though only because of a ghost town in California). I don't see how Bendigo needs to be kept "Bendigo, Victoria". Anoldtreeok (talk) 01:10, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support These three names are much less ambiguous than Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart or Adelaide.--Melburnian (talk) 00:15, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support to eliminate distracting and pointless disambiguation.--Kotniski (talk) 06:33, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support per my view that there should be a wider set of exceptions than capital cities (although I support the general Australian convention for all other cases). Ballarat, Bendigo, Mildura, Shepparton, Geelong and Warrnambool would be Victorian cities I'd immediately identify as candidates. This discussion, though, should be occurring in a more central venue. Orderinchaos 08:26, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support. I think this is sensible action on some major Australian cities, and also per Gatoclass. hamiltonstone (talk) 02:45, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

School Rankings

We have just had an addition to the article telling us how highly ranked some of Ballarat's schools are, according to a commercial site that does such ranking. School ranking is a controversial matter. There is little agreement over both its accuracy and what it really means. I'm very uncomfortable with this addition. HiLo48 (talk) 05:24, 3 September 2011 (UTC)