Talk:Otago

Terrible HDR photo

The "North from Macrae's Road, Otago, New Zealand" photo is a perfect example of HDR/Photoshop gone horribly wrong. Do such things belong on Wikipedia?

Flag

This is the first time I've ever seen this flag for Otago. Is it an historical one? Where did the picture come from? Is there a link anywhere? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Auccl799 (talk • contribs) 02:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I edited the link to the regional council, deleting everything after the .nz part. This is because the URL that had been there was a broken link. Oddly, the shortened version redirects to the other URL anyhow.--Coryma 03:50, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

The flag was chosen after a competition about three years ago, and is currently used by the ORC, as well as being fairly common among the Otago public. The picture was one I created from the winning design of the contest (I was one of the judges of it). Grutness...wha? 00:31, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you could caption the flag, then; I'm a member of the "Otago public" and have never seen it in common use . The "unofficial" blue half/gold half flag seems to be much more widely used.60.234.233.29 —Preceding comment was added at 08:06, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Wines - POV?

Is there a verifiable source that we can find to say that Otago's wines are excellent quality and that the extreme climate is a factor? Not that I doubt it, I don't, but verifiability and POV and all that Kahuroa 19:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Both of the following sites are (understandably) POV, being commercial sites, but they do list a lot of international awards won by Central's wines: [1] [2]. Perhaps something can be weaved into the text to make it less POV...? Grutness...wha? 00:35, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

What about this link along those lines but from a more independent news source: [3]. Calls Central 'New Zealand’s leading pinot noir region' Kahuroa 00:50, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that looks useful. Grutness...wha? 01:17, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Iagree with these proposed changes. I'll try and edit them into the page.Bruce896387 04:14, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Link to Peterborough?

"Otago also appears as a street name in Whittlesey near Peterborough in England. There is Otago road and Otago Close. There is a mystery as to why this small fenland town should choose this name for two of its streets.

Also, the College of Piping in Glasgow, Scotland, is situated in the city's Otago Street. But, considering Otago's Scottish roots and New Zealand's strong piping tradition, this comes as no great surprise."

This has no place in this article, surely. Any objections to deleting it? Aaadddaaammm 05:40, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Infobox

Posted to my talk page:

I note that you have added the regional council infobox back into the Otago article. I am separating the geographical info from the political info. The info box is now repeated in two articles and I feel it is not needed in the Otago article. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 06:45, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I want the infobox to remain on this page, because it has the map of the region, statistics and list of places. I didn't agree with the edit moving the infobox to a two sentence stub, and don't see the need to split the articles when they are so small.

My suggestion is to revert the Otago Regional Council to a redirect, and add the ORC content here until the size would justify a split, per WP:SPLIT - like the subheading Politics in the New Zealand article for example. XLerate (talk) 07:32, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

A far better idea, surely, is to try to expand the article on the ORC. There should be plenty of information on it suitable for a Wikipedia entry. After all, Otago and the ORC have slightly different meanings, as is clear from the text. If that can be done, then it would make sense to move the infobox to that article. There would be no reason why a similar binfobox dedicated to Otago itself rather than the ORC couldn't also be used on the Otago article in that instance. Grutness...wha? 23:56, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Of course, the end goal being two good articles. But I don't see the sense deleting location maps and other basic facts from the region articles, as has happened with Southland and Canterbury also. The infobox was uniform across all the NZ region articles. I don't see a big problem with duplicating the current infobox on both Otago and ORC, but if anywhere should stay with the region. XLerate (talk) 05:58, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Otago looks like africa

Just thought i would mention that the map of otago kind of looks like africa! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.57.247.93 (talk) 05:10, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Southern Oscillation

This came up about 6 months ago, where I found the description of the daily to weekly weather patterns in terms of the Southern Oscillation misleading. It was clarified, so that I now understand what is meant by the section. I am still unsure, however, about how the SO "produces an irregular short cycle of weather which repeats roughly every week" - perhaps a citation or link to a more in depth explanation would be appropriate? What does the SO have to do with it? Is this common knowledge? I'm throwing this to the talk pages because NZ climatology is not my specialty, but I would be interested in seeing more information added. Ovis23 (talk) 20:38, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... Seems on further examination that I've been confused by two distinct uses of the term Southern Oscillation. The usual meaning seems to refer to the El Niño/La Niña cycle - but there's a common use of the term to describe someting which I can't seem to find any other name for either on line or in hard resources that i have on hand -a regular barometric pattern which travels east around the globe approximately between 40°S and 50°S, driven by the circumpolar westerlies. This pattern, which consists of a series of high-pressure anticyclones separated by troughs, passes over southern New Zealand, repeating roughly once per week, leading to alternating warm, dry winds from the northwest for several days followed by cold, wet winds from the southwest for roughly the same period. It isn't caused by the El Niño/La Niña cycle; it is caused by a different pattern also known (locally at least) as the Southern Oscillation, for which I don't know any other name. Some small amounts of reference to this pattern can be found at [4] and [5]. Grutness...wha? 23:00, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah - okay. In work in South America, we've referred to that same phenomenon as the 'southern hemisphere storm track.' There are some good descriptions in the opening pages of Trenberth 1991 (Storm Track in the Southern Hemisphere, Am. Met. Soc.) and Hoskins and Hodges, 2005 (A New Perspective on Southern Hemisphere Storm Tracks, J. of Climate). Both are available online. Assuming that this is the same thing (sounds like it), I suggest that we either change the terminology on the page, or that we at least make it very clear that this weekly oscillation is distinct from ENSO. Thanks for the info! Ovis23 (talk) 19:26, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. Is there an article on the S.H.S.T.? If not, there probably should be. Grutness...wha? 23:48, 2 December 2009 (UTC)