User:Innesw/sandbox/Australian Places & ASGS - Good Practice - History

This page is where I am accumulating the results of historical discussions about the relationship between WP articles on Australian Places and information in the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) or at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). It will also include issues involving data held in Wikidata and various mapping resources.

The eventual aim is to produce some form of user guide to Good Practice for how editors of articles about Australian places should use information in the ASGS or from the ABS. That guide will be a different page.

The resources used for the information below are:

• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Australian_places and its archives
• Template_talk:Infobox_Australian_place and its archives
• WikiProject Australia Notice board and its archives and talk page.

Note: In order to avoid overlap with any existing terms, I have used the term 'land unit' to mean a generic geographic parcel of land of unspecified size and characteristics. (I know 'land unit' has a useage in farm management practice and ecological studies, but as far as I am aware it has no useage in the statistical geography space.) This means terms such as 'area' (an LGA-equivalent in South Australia) and 'region' (usu. the next smallest land unit within a state or territory) are used with their relatively specific (though sometimes contested) meanings.

Comments in italics are my personal editorial comments.

Does a locality justify an article?

Some writers consider that every locality (in the official lists created by the state governments, or the lists of SALs used by the ABS) deserves an article simply because it is on those lists. Others consider that, unless there is some other notable reason for creating an article, creating a stub article that effectively just says the locality exists is not an article worth creating.

Land unit maps

It seems at this stage that the best available map data (ie: boundaries of land units) is from the ABS. Certainly the [foundation data] web interface has lots of names for obscure things (including no-longer-existing places like courthouses), but not necessarily for actual towns (only the SALs). The downloadable data sets may provide better information.

Population figures for what land unit?

There was a proposal for automatically creating links to ABS postcode data, possibly to go at the bottom of the infobox. Nothing seems to have come of it.

The problem of a given town name having both a UCL and (what was then) an SSC, potentially giving very different population figures, was explicitly raised in March 2017. There was a suggestion about standardising the use of the |pop= and |pop2=, or adding |pop_ucl= and |pop_ssc= (to eventually replace |pop= and |pop2=), but no further action was taken.

Lists of Cities / Places / Localities in <State> by population

Mention of a List of places in <State> by population being out of date. These discussions seem to assume that the smallest 'place' to be considered was at least a UCL. Earlier (2010) there was discussion about similar Lists of Cities / Places in <State> by population. Most of this discussion was about the necessity for lists of Cities / Places / Localities in <State> by population, partly because it was hard to keep them upt to date. Most states seem to currently (2023) have 'List of Places' articles, but the criteria for inclusion seem to vary.

Victoria has a list of localities by population. There seems to be no equavalent WP list for NSW. I have not investigated the other states yet, but presumably the lists and boundaries exist on state govt. sites, as they are used by the ABS/ASGS for SALs.

Automatic population figures

An initial discussion of automatically getting population figures from the (2016) census into articles started in March 2017. (Discussion overlapped on the Noticeboard (AWNP) and the Infobox talk.) The process involved importing census data into Wikidata, then using the wikidata (for a specific property for the 2016 census) for each article. Part of the problem with the 2016 census data was ensuring a match between the land unit the article was about and an ABS 'State Suburb' (SSC). SSCs were based on ABS SA1s, which was probably too course for the purpose. There were suggestions of only using figures where the ABS gave a sufficiently high confidence for the match. Here also was the first suggestion of using UCLs instead of (the then) SSCs.

Similar discussion after the 2021 census occurred. It implies that the process suggested in 2017 never resulted in change to the Infobox. The discussion also mentions that, for the 2021 census, SSCs were based on mesh blocks - presumably producing much better approximations of the state-defined boundaries. The discussion is actually pre the 2021 release of the ASGS, which changed SSCs to SALs.

The Module:PopulationFromWikidata was implemented in the Infobox template in June 2022. (Announcement)

Automatic population density calculation

Added to the infobox in 2013. Experiment shows that this only works if the |pop= parameter is explicitly set, and not if a population is displayed by Module:PopulationFromWikidata because |pop= is empty.

Which demographic data to have in articles

It was asked what demographic data should be in a Demographics section of a [land unit] article. Part of the discussion was about whether lots of information (in an article) from a single census was likely to be kept up to date.

This discussion fizzled out, with the last substantial contribution saying, in effect, 'let article editors put in as much as they want', with others more-or-less agreeing, so long as the data is referenced & dated. It's possible an up-to-date demographics table could be automated - the problems will be (a) agreeing what might be inluded in 'basic' data, and then (b) actually getting the required data imported into Wikidata.

There was an early discussion (I've lost the link, it was I think before Template:Infobox_Australian_place) about loading large amounts of census data into articles. One issue raised was about ABS Copyright (something about maximum 500 cells of data). I assume this is somewhat resolved now the ABS releases its data under a Creative Commons Attribution licence.

Definitions of 'City', Town', 'Suburb' etc.

There has been lots of discussion about these types of definitions (and therefore what categories should be applied to articles, and what |type= should be used in the infobox), and whether common-use, name, 'legal' definitions or population criteria should be used. Possible authorities include state-based place name authorities, the ABS (using either population criteria, or as an authority on place-names) and Geoscience Australia (GA).

There is a bit of a problem with 'unbounded localities' (LOCU, as opposed to LOCB for bounded ones), which seem to be defined in some states & not others, and may sometimes justify their own articles.

There is a lot of discussion about 'why is this place a suburb, when it is clearly [rural / in the middle of nowhere / in a city but too small / calls itself a town / ...], with similar problems for 'city', 'locality' and 'town' (and a number of others).

A good deal of this results from differences between states in their definitions, usages and names in official lists. It's not helped by the ABS/ASGS once using a term like 'state suburb' for these relatively small named land units that completely cover the country, even though many of them are probably at least semi-rural in character. It now calls them 'Suburbs and Localities', which only helps a bit because people still try and find the distinction between 'suburb' and 'locality' - when for the ABS there isn't any distinction, it's just a single 3-word term for these land units whose names and boundaries are defined by state authorities, and which it reports statistics for. There are further problems when dealing with LGAs and their names, and with what suburbs / localities / towns are included in them.

There is an article on the definition of Suburbs and Localities. This may be due for an update, as I understand in the ASGS the whole of the country is now covered by state-authority-decided SALs. The article title is precisely relevant now, as 'Suburbs and Localities' has now become the official ASGS term for these land units.

Some of these issues the ABS/ASGS now (2023) just tries to avoid. The ABS explicitly does not define towns. It suggests using UCLs when wanting statistics for urbanised areas with populations greater than 200 people, or SALs for smaller settlements. It also now avoids the issue of types of LGA (City, Town, Rural City, Borough ...) by using a name (eg: Benalla) for the LGA without using any form of designation.

There has been some discussion about whether the central land unit of a city like Melbourne is in fact a 'suburb', but the discussion was more about article-naming and the specific boundaries in this case.

Use of Type ('City', 'Town', 'Suburb' etc.) in the Infobox

Soon after it was suggested (May 2006) (and apparently decided) that Template:Infobox_Australian_place was to become a merger of other infobox templates, the proposal for a type field was put up (Oct 2006), with the proposed effect of (a) changing the infobox background colour, and (b) possibly limiting the display of some fields. With LGA templates brought in to the amalgamation, both uses seem to have been accepted. However the uses made of the |type= value have since expanded somewhat.

Sources in the Infobox

There was an early proposal that providing a source for some infobox fields should be compulsory. The 'compulsory' part never seems to have been taken up, but fields like 'pop_lnk' allowed entering of a source. This seems to have eventually stabilised as a series of xxx_footnotes fields, for which the related xxx field is (according to the documentation) a prerequisite.

Sub-localities

A proposal to list sub-localities or sub-suburbs in the infobox was generally opposed.

City / Metro Area

There was a suggestion for the major cities (state capitals & canberra) to be able to distinguish populations for the 'city proper' and the 'metropolitan area'. The suggestion did not go any further, although now the ASGS defines Greater Capital City Statistical Area (GCCSA) areas, maybe it could now.

Regions

There have been discussions about regions (ie: sub-divisions of states, usu. larger than LGAs), with proponents of different authorities for names and boundaries. The ASGS does not use Non-ABS 'Regions' - the largest sub-state land units in the Main Structure are SA4s, which represent labour markets, and are defined by the ABS.

For Victoria, there are articles on each of the Economic Development regions.

There was also a proposal for |type=region to be added to the infobox template. Part of the discussion was about states that officialy define regions and others that don't. The type was eventually added, as well as a |region= field for the region any smaller land unit is in.

List of available templates

Infoboxes

At the moment the Infobox_Australian_Place seems to be universal. Search for 'Infobox_Australia'. The only other useful result from a search is Template:Infobox_Australian_Electorate.

Other Templates

Template:Gazetteer_of_Australia

Out of Scope

The following topics of discussion, though they may look relevant, are out of scope for this investigation:

Article naming conventions

The semi-perennial 'townname' vs 'townname, State' issue (and how to disambiguate), and similar discussion about other geographic features, the names of articles about LGAs...

LGAs and their councils

The difference between the LGA (the geographic area) and the council (the governing body of the LGA), and whether they can/should have different articles.

Similar Places templates

Templates that list LGAs by state, or towns by LGA, or... The number of these is large and probably hard to search for even to get a comprehensive list. In many the issues of definition have not been resolved.

Cadastral land units

Whether cadastral (land survey) land units like (in most states) counties & parishes should be in the infobox. They currently are. And despite one user removing |hundred=, it was restored to the template.