Ballarat and District Industrial Heritage Project:Community talk

Community Talk

This is the place to ask any questions you have about the Ballarat and District Industrial Heritage project. Any general discussions or anything of community interest is also appropriate here.

You might also find an answer on Help:Contents, a listing of helpful pages.

You may reply to any section below by clicking the "Edit" link, or add a new discussion section to this page. Please sign and date your post (by typing ~~~~). Please add new topics to the bottom of this page.

Please note that old discussions on this page are archived periodically. If you do not find a discussion here, please look in the archives. Note that you should not change the archives, so if something that has been archived needs discussing, please start a new discussion on this page.

Is this working?

I'm finding this page difficult to use, and I'd like to re-float the email user group idea. I find the streams on this page too difficult to follow and it's difficult to see if things you've posted have been responded to. An email group would be easier to use, easier to follow, and if we needed to trace back through the discussion, there will be a record of each subject stream on the group page. What do others think? --Neil Huybregts 19:38, 4 March 2015 (AEDT)

--Beth Kicinski 10:15, 6 November 2016 (AEDT) - I'll take a look at this, as it will require the IT Department making some additions to the software. It might be a while before anything happens, though.

New discussion page

Hi, this is a possible new community discussion page. You can add your comments and start a discussion about the page below here. To make it easier to follow threads, start each edit with a colon. It indents the entries. And sign your name too. If you want to start a new topic you can click on the new topic link in the comment on the top of the page, or simple start one below by putting in a new sub heading. Interested to get feedback.--Peter Waugh 23:27, 27 January 2015 (EST)

I have used the colon to indent this reply.--Peter Waugh 23:28, 27 January 2015 (EST)

The next reply uses two colons, then three, four etc.--Peter Waugh 23:29, 27 January 2015 (EST)

Hi Peter, Neil and Beth. Thanks for starting this community talk page for us Peter. I think it is a great idea. I haven't had a good look, but am wondering how I get into this page without the link you provided. Also, how do you archive the topics when needed? --Clare K.Gervasoni 09:36, 28 January 2015 (EST)

Hi Clare, your computer person should be able to add the page to the side bar "quick links", which would make it easy. I can also add some links on other project pages. Archiving is quite easy. We simply make a sub page of this page by naming it "Ballarat and District Industrial Heritage Project:Community talk/Archive 1" and then copy and paste the talk page to it. Over time you build up a collection of old talk pages. You know the page is ready to archive when it becomes too long to scroll down comfortably. --Peter Waugh 11:43, 28 January 2015 (EST)

At a guess, we should all tick 'Watch this page' at the bottom. I presume that means we'll be notified if anyone adds something.--Neil Huybregts 19:04, 28 January 2015 (EST)

Also, what happens if two or more people edit it at the same time?--Neil Huybregts 19:04, 28 January 2015 (EST)

You get what's called an "Edit conflict", and the person who saves first has the version that is kept. Can be frustrating at times. But you can copy and paste anything you have written and re-edit the page.--Peter Waugh 23:15, 28 January 2015 (EST)

I've now added a link to this page to the sidebar. --Beth Kicinski 10:17, 30 January 2015 (EST)

Looks good.--Peter Waugh 13:41, 30 January 2015 (EST)

Hi. It is almost impossible to read the 'blue' text at the top, right hand side, of this page. ie: the text we click on to login. .... The text says " Ingrid - my talk my preferences - my watchlist - my contributions - log out - " ......The blue text is on a dark background, can you see the horizontal banner , a section of a photograph of steel machine parts? ......Would it be possible to make the LOG IN section much easier to find, please? ..... Ingrid ... 27/07/2021

Hello. Could someone check my recent contribution please. I entered info re: 'Eureka Stockade' and Patrick 'Patsy' Tully. The news article is a jpg image. I attempted to 'link' the two, but did not succeed. Cheers. Ingrid

Hi again. Camp Hotel Sturt St. Photo added.

Ballaguy/Ballinguiy Hotel

Peter, this is the pub my business partner, Dot Wickham, has been looking for over the last couple of years. She thinks it was originally run by French guys but no proof. In her book 'Freemason's on the Goldfields' she has the following listed in the index - Madam Jean-Marie Ballinguiy and she spells the hotel Ballinguiy, Black Hill. Sometimes the name appears to be spelt Ballaguy which i assume is the bastardization of the French Ballinguiy. I will put a few things up via the current listing. You can work out what to do with the spelling.

BIH wiki page - http://bih/index.php/Ballaguy_Hotel

--Clare K.Gervasoni 13:27, 17 February 2015 (AEDT)

PS Thanks for attending our morning tea this morning.

Index to mining companies and shareholders

Does anyone know anything about the Mining shareholders index [electronic resource] : an index of shareholders in mining companies 1857 to 1886[1]? I'm buying a copy from the author, which I plan to give to the library when I'm finished with it, but it strikes me that our wiki is repeating some of her work. Should I (or the Uni) approach her about incorporating it into the wiki?--Neil Huybregts 19:05, 28 January 2015 (EST)

Hi Neil. I don't think it hurts to ask. She could then have her name listed at the bottom of each relevant page. --Clare K.Gervasoni 16:07, 29 January 2015 (EST)

I've written to the author, and she has given us permission to use her work provided we attribute it to her. I'm hoping we can find a boffin to import it all in one big whoosh, including checking if a page already exists before creating a new one. It links companies to shareholders and places. --Neil Huybregts 19:28, 4 March 2015 (AEDT)

Categories

What are the rules about creating/using categories? Is there one for mining companies?--Neil Huybregts 19:04, 28 January 2015 (EST)

I have been creating nearly all the categories so far, using the structure that Beth has devised on the contents page. I haven't done one for mining companies yet, but can do so. There is some inconsistent naming for mining company articles - some are written for example as "Smiths Gold Mining Company", some as "Smiths Gold Mining Co.", and some as "Smiths GMC". I think it would be better to have them written in full. Thoughts?--Peter Waugh 23:15, 28 January 2015 (EST)

Peter, you are a man after my own heart. As well as Co. vs Company, many companies are referred to by shortened names - the Port Phillip and Colonial Gold Mining Company is usually referred to as the Port Phillip Company. I mentioned the naming variants to Clare and suggested the name we go with should be the name it's registered under (and the other names become redirects), but many companies changed their names, or wound up and reformed under a different name, or split into several companies, or amalgamated into one, and so on. --Neil Huybregts 07:30, 29 January 2015 (EST)

I checked and found that I had created a category for Gold mining companies last January, seems like a long time ago. As to naming variants, I like the idea of going with the registered name. With pubs, which often changed their name, Beth suggested that there needed to be an entry under each name, as often they were different businesses. at least there should be a redirect from each variation --Peter Waugh 07:38, 29 January 2015 (EST)

The registered name for the companies is the optimum, but it is often difficult to find when in a hurry, or concentrating on something else. How about we work towards the full, unabbreviated, registered named wherever possible, and if we find other references we poach the info into the correct page, but leave the old page with text saying something like 'See Ajax Company Limited ' My reasoning for this is users may search one particular name, and if it does not appear may assume it doesn't exist. --Clare K.Gervasoni 16:12, 29 January 2015 (EST)

We can use a redirect to point any name variation to the proper title. We can as Clare suggests, merge content into the proper title. Sounds good. How do we find the registered name, and when we have found it, we need to both state it in the article and reference it.--Peter Waugh 17:35, 29 January 2015 (EST)

The problem becomes even more complicated when you take into account that sometimes they refer to the actual mine as the company or the company as the mine. Again, the best solution is to create a separate page with a link suggesting that it may also refer to the other name. Until we've reached a critical mass of collected information on the mines and mining companies we won't really have a chance of accurately determining the references to different entities. Up to now I've been capturing them all on Gold Mines and Mining Companies. The standard I've adopted in the naming of the page is to shorten 'Company' to Co. - then I ensure that the longer form of the name is also on the company's page - so that it Googles with that variation. You'll also see that I'm working towards identifying the leads and reefs they each sit on. Although the Gold Museum and others have already done some work with maps, I've already discovered that a lot has not been captured. And I recently compared our current page with some of the supposedly most thorough databases available for the historical mines and mining companies of Victoria and found that we already had quite a few not listed - and those databases had apparently searched the complete back-catalogue of Gazettes. --Beth Kicinski 10:02, 30 January 2015 (EST)

--Neil Huybregts 17:03, 31 January 2015 (AEDT): I'm spontaneously adopting a new format so we can see easily who's saying what. I suggest name in bold, then following paragraphs indented.

Beth, I've got a few questions:

1. Have you got an example of where you've identified the leads and reefs they sit on?

2. What are the databases you refer to? Like I say above, I've got a copy of one index, and as with the indexes you've been looking at, it's missing companies, at least prior to 1857.

3. Are you aware of the "Visualising Ballarat' mapping project? I recently got in touch with Pete Dahlhaus (a geologist at Fed Uni - Clare knows him) and the stuff he's doing might connect with our wiki, possibly via something like the GIS work I'm doing with old maps. I'm having problems connecting with the Gold Museum, but if they've got material that could fit in, that's good.

--Beth Kicinski 10:06, 17 February 2015 (AEDT): Neil, I think this spontaneous idea looks good.

Re. your questions:

1. I work largely with Trove - when I'm transcribing articles with info about the foundries I also transcribe info about other "things" on the wiki. (Sometimes it takes a while before I add this.) Some of the articles, particularly from the early 1860s, give the info by reef or lead. Looking online I sometimes work laterally. There are a myriad of sites dedicated to different aspects of the gold mining history of the region. I regularly find info this way. Local historians usually understand the misuses and abuses (even mistakes) made in reporting in newspapers and gazettes. Of course, they also would benefit from wider cooperation. Last year I presented the wiki to the Buninyong and District Historical Society - and they were astonished to discover that the wiki named numerous mines/companies they hadn't identified in their catalogue. (And that was after more than 20 years of working on that catalogue!)

2. There is a defunct mining companies register given as an Excel file that I've been through and added all companies listed. Some of these only had registration districts, others actually had the name of the lead.

3. I've had an intro to "Visualising Ballarat" and was very excited about the possibility of linking. I also believe that if we could get some active contributors to go out and take photos that we should link through online forums like Pinterest.

Beth, I wonder if the defunct mining companies register you've been using is the shareholders index I refer to above. --Neil Huybregts 19:34, 4 March 2015 (AEDT)

Creating/using categories

Please expect that for the next several months we'll probably have to go back and forth about this. Using the Contents page and subsequent links allows us to do our best to fit our information into the Australian and New Zealand Industrial Standards Classification. This is incredibly important - in order to ensure that the wiki is able to be properly used for advanced academic research. But Clare and I have already had several instances of finding it difficult to determine the right spot for some things. These standards are devised for use now and don't always reflect the industrial categories of the past. I would suggest that our small group needs to discuss these as they arise and work out what would be best. Also, some categories have had no work (or next to no work) done on them; so I don't really expect you'll all be comfortable with the terms. E.g. proto-industrial. Whenever you find one of these, please quickly send me a note to get a proper explanation up. This way I'll at least have some idea what to prioritise. --Beth Kicinski 09:54, 30 January 2015 (EST)

A lot of this classification is quite academic, so it makes sense for you get these sections completed, it's way over my head! When I am adding categories, I am following the content structure. Here are a couple of ones that I need to place: locksmith, Gunsmith (is a gunsmith the same as a gunmaker?) and Fitters and Turners. --Peter Waugh 13:41, 30 January 2015 (EST)

--Beth Kicinski 11:37, 3 March 2015 (AEDT) - There are pages for these. Locksmiths is sorely in need of work. I've made an assumption that a gunsmith is equivalent to a gunmaker and put them all together on Gunsmiths. I think with further work this could be divided into those who made original pieces, those who mass-manufactured original pieces, and those who simply carried out repairs. The same thing probably applies to locksmiths. Taking a basic definition - fitters and turners are machinists who manufacture and fit mechanical parts and devices. You'll find the entry under Machinists.

Thanks Beth.--Peter Waugh 15:31, 15 April 2015 (AEST)

--Beth Kicinski 10:12, 6 November 2016 (AEDT) - In my travels around the wiki, as I'm adding the foundries content, I've come across a couple of instances where links appeared in Categories pages but not in the Content lists. Please make sure that the Categories links are duplicated to the Contents lists, the link to the Contents page is added to the See also section of the page you're working on - and then DELETE THE CATEGORIES PAGES! I know it may take time to become comfortable with using the Contents rather than the familiar Categories, but we need to make sure that we're accurately collating in the most concise format for future academic use of this resource. Would it be worthwhile running an information session about why it should be done this way?

See below. I'm in. --Neil Huybregts 08:37, 23 November 2016 (AEDT)

Face-to-face meeting

--Neil Huybregts 17:07, 31 January 2015 (AEDT) I reckon a face-to-face meeting would work wonders. What do others think?

Count me in.--Peter Waugh 22:56, 1 February 2015 (AEDT)

--Beth Kicinski 11:38, 3 March 2015 (AEDT) - Sounds good to me.

Health Care

I am assuming Doctors and Dentists would be included under this heading?--Peter Waugh 21:12, 26 August 2015 (AEST)