User talk:Giantflightlessbirds

— billinghurst  sDrewth  01:22, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

You're on the Main Page!
Hi, Hokitika, N.Z. is on the Main Page in the new texts area. Don't know how long it will stay there as we only show seven at a time. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:52, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Cleanup script
Hi, realised I didn't get back to you on your query about the cleanup script I use. TemplateScript has the details of what to copy into your common.js page. I just went to do it for you, but I seem to no longer have that right. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:30, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Portal for Trans. N.Z. Inst.?
Hi, I'm thinking about creating a portal here for the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, however I'm not sure whether to call it that, or to go with a wider portal for the Royal Society of New Zealand and have the Transactions as a section. There are 55 volumes through to 1924 (none issued in 1925 according to Nat. Lib.). At present I'm working on bringing in the volumes and setting up the TOC. My thoughts are to create the portal and then point to it from the WP page as another potential pathway for contributors to join us here. Would also, eventually, provide the sources for WP articles. What do you think?

I also need to think about whether to just list the volumes or to include lists of the articles and proceedings of the member societies. If the latter, then would need to subset them by broad topic, rather than simply transclude the TOC pages. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:34, 3 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I would certainly make a Royal Society portal given the name changes, and the separately-issues Bulletins. From my point of view I'd like to be able to skim at least by member societies, as I'm particularly interested in the Westland Institute. And I'd be keen to expand the Wikipedia article about the journal(s), which would dovetail nicely. —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 09:54, 3 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Okay, it's at Portal:Royal Society of New Zealand with only the Transactions at present. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 23:47, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Thomas Turnbull
Hi, I'm slowly making my way through the TOC for the ''Trans. N.Z. Inst.'' and have come across Thomas Turnbull, the Chief Harbour-Master for Westland in the 1870s. He had articles published in Volumes 7 & 8. I'm going to need to disambiguate him from the Wellington architect (1824–1907), but can't easily find his vital dates. Does your History Room have anything that would help? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:15, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I found an obituary for him (d. 2 August 1887) in the West Coast Times which should do the trick. Just popped up to the cemetery but his plot no longer has a headstone, and there's no birth and death information in the register. I'm planning on putting all of the contributors to the Westland Literary Institute into Wikidata eventually, so could start with him. —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 07:12, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * And here he is: . —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 07:38, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Author page done: Author:Thomas Turnbull (1828-1887) Thanks, Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:09, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

template for images in Pounamu
Hi, I suggest you change to img float, like I have for page /24. This template is designed for images, while the float left etc. templates are really meant for text blocks. The "img float" template has the caption within it and doesn't break paragraphs, as happened on page /27 with "float left". Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:34, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah thank you! I thought there must be a took for floating images with an integrated caption, and searched the Help but couldn't find it. —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 08:50, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Some notes on copyright for books at West Coast Task Force
For Baughan: everything published before 1927 is in the public domain in the U.S., so Arthur's Pass and the Otira Gorge should be good for transcription.

For Mundy: His 1954 death means that the works are copyrighted in the U.S. from 95 years from the date of creation, so There's Gold in Them Hills (1948) is copyrighted until 1948+95+1=2044. In general, New Zealand authors who published works after 1926 will need to have died before 1945 for that author’s works to be in the public domain in the United States. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:20, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, even with NZ's shorter term (for the moment! It's about to be increased to 70 years, like the US), their work would have to be out of copyright in NZ in 1996 to qualify, so 1945 deaths or before. Luckily almost everything of Baughans is pre 1927—there's just three (1929, 1936, and 1949) books that won't be available yet. —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 01:08, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Quartz Reefs problem
There were two problems, one of which I have fixed (for the time being). The first is that the entire book was transcluded on one page; I have separated it out on to multiple pages, both to make it easier to display and to try to fix the transclusion problem. The second problem is the formatting in the index; owing to a known problem that no one seems to want to fix, pages with lots of table-of-contents formatting often display poorly. To avoid this, I will probably work on switching over the “dtpl” instances (one per line) to “TOCstyle” instances (one per page). That should fix the problem, although “TOCstyle” is less flexible than “dtpl,” it should still work mostly the same. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:41, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah, thank you so much for your help with this. While it's annoying that the index is not rendering correctly, at least I know what to do in the future. —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 08:22, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Poetry templates
Hi, Help:Poetry covers the poem tag method and the linebreak/em method of doing poems. The template that is a viable alternative is Ppoem. It seems to work reasonably well, but because the entire poem is contained within a single template it probably wouldn't work well for a long poem like some of Byron's effusions. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 02:02, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Ppoem looks really interesting; we can try it out on the next volumes of Blanche Baughans='s. Thanks! —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 11:01, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Beautiful Shells of New Zealand
This should be fixed now. I tried the export, and it seemed to work. I don’t think you have any relative links that would mess with this, either, so this work looks pretty good to me. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:04, 11 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Brilliant, thanks. I haven't done an auxiliary TOC before, so will add that one to my notes. Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 21:43, 11 December 2022 (UTC)