User talk:Ping
Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149
Thanks
- No problemo. :) --mav
Re Culture of New Zealand - Cultural Cringe - I think it makes a good addition to the topic. Concerning NPOV - much of the Culture area is opinion and it is very hard to obtain a completely NPOV - I think some opinion and humour is necessary, provided it is not too excessive. If anyone else disagrees thy can always change it! - kiwiinapanic 09:17 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Fair enough Ping 07:11 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Hello, Ping. I'm not sure if I've interpreted you correctly, but in Talk:Madge Oberholtzer and Dog Tax War, you seem to be advocating including personal knowledge in Wikipedia that cannot be found in published sources. Original research is great, but Wikipedia is not the place to publish it. (See Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, particularly point no. 10 in the second section.) We should aim to include only information that can be verified. Admittedly I may be guilty of including a couple of bits of knowledge from personal experience myself, but I'll go back and take them out later... If you mean that there are publically available sources but that they are obscure, then it's best to cite your sources at the bottom of the article. But if you have included stuff that only you know about, then you should remove it. You could publish your research elsewhere, and then use that publication as a reference, I expect, but even then if you are the only person to have published the information, the article should say something like, "According to Ping's article in New Zealand History Monthly," to make it clear that this is just one person's statements, and not common knowledge. And in any case, you shouldn't refer to "this writer" in articles; all articles here are intended to be collaborative efforts, so the phrase "this writer" becomes meaningless as soon as someone else edits your work. Sorry if this has come across as rather negative; apart from that quibble your stuff looks great! -- Oliver P. 00:35 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I just read your Tauranga Campaign article. I have reworked the first paragraph to set it's scene more certainly. Could you please quote sources or link to websites as this sounds like something copied from a book or other text, or rewritten anyway. You may also want to link these from the List of battles 1801-1900. - kiwiinapanic 11:44 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for the fantastic articles on the various Maori Wars! As a fellow New Zealander I'm sort of ashamed I don't know more about them (aside from Maurice Shadbolt novels...). Keep up the great work Lisiate 20:52 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I just read the new article on the East Cape War. I rather liked it, although it appears to be a work in progress. I write here because I would like to recommend that you greatly expand the definitions, many of the names in the article are not defined and this made it very difficult to understand. I've done some minor cleanup, but some linkage and longer explainations would be greatly appreciated.
To Whoever?? Thanks, could you be a bit more specific, ie quote examples. Are you asking as a New Zealander or from Elsewhere? Ping 11:01 30 Jun 2003 (UTC)
- The Imperial Troops and then later the Colonial Forces never captured a completed and defended Pa but they did learn how to neutralise the problem. Although cheap and easy to build a Modern Pa did require a significant input of labour and resouces. By the wholesale destruction of the Maori economic base, the destruction of the society itself, they were sometimes able to them unaaffordable. This was the reasoning behind the bush scouring expeditions of Chute and McDonnell in the Second Taranaki War.
This is a very strong statement Ping, and in fact I don't think this language can be justified. As far as I know there was never any attempt to bring about either "the wholesale destruction of the Maori economic base" or "the destruction of the society itself". Both of these things would have required a nationwide campaign. Yet none of the campaigns in the maori wars was ever truly nationwide in scope. Both of these things would have required a policy of attack on maori civilian (non-combatant) populations away from the area of immediate conflict. That never happened, indeed almost all of the fighting occurred around fortified pa, and the British aim seems to have always been to achieve a 'decisive' military victory by defeating maori combatants in the field. Wouldn't it much more accurate to describe these bush scouring campaigns as simply efforts to cut off supply lines. The language you are using suggests a campaign of genocide. hawthorn
+
Hi Ping, I've added a link to Te Kooti's bio in your excellent new page on Te Kooti's War and links to Maurice Shadbolt's novel and the movie Utu (which I think borrows some scenes/themes from it). Hope you don't mind. Lisiate 09:17 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Re your comment on my page, I may have got the two mixed up. Have you already done an article on VOlkner? If so we should probably move the movie reference there. My recollection of the movie is also pretty hazy, but I remember thinking some of Te Wheke's raids reminded me of Te Kooti and the movie seems to me to be based in the East Coast region. Lisiate 09:26 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Ping, I think your observation of Maori marriage customs and ceremonies has some merits but not in the Iwi article. Perhaps an article on Maori Ceremonies or Maori Marriage Celebrations might be more apppropriate. But how often have you seen this ceremony occur; is it a common one for a whole culture or just a tradition of one family? See my comments in Talk:Iwi -- kiwiinapanic 07:21 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
He was fairly easy to get, I just went to Google and did a search on the image tag (photos over 100 years old aren't any longer copyrightable). For maps, there are a lot of public-domain ones at the PCL map collection (my alma mater *grin*). I use Adobe Photoshop to alter them.
I was wondering which text editor you've been using for your articles, it seems to leave a lot of extra spaces in the text. (Those have been some really good articles by the way.)
(Forgot to mention, that specific image came from http://www.tki.org.nz/ which is run by the education ministry. Good site, well worth checking out.)
- Hephaestos 14:41 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for the welcome to the New Zealand wikipedians Ping ! :D I'd have to say the Culture_of_New_Zealand article is the most neutral article I've seen so far on the Wikipedia, ka pai to all the contributors :D . Us Kiwis being tolerant eh ? ;)
- Hauser 9:51 20 Jul 2003 (NZST)
Hi Ping I belatedly came across your comments on Talk:Culture of the Maori. The article is a good start as you say, but I have a couple of niggles, especially with the first sentence. If I do an edit, and let you know when I do, could you have a look to see if I have managed to put it in better perspective or whether it should remain as is? I've put this (your) page on watch, so please answer here. Cheers. Moriori 21:04, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Go for it mate! I had another look at it and I really don't like that opening sentence. As I said elsewhere, I do not feel qualified to write that article, although I have lived with it for many years it is still not my culture. But I will be happy to discuss things with you, make suggestions on perspective etc, if you want to have a go at it. Kia ora ping 08:20, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)