Talk:Sydney/ArchivedDistrictDiscussions

Larger districts

I made the districts into subpages for the following reasons:

• Sydney/City - There is already a Sydney page and Sydney (city) is just too confusing. Maybe it should be Sydney/Central.

Maybe Sydney/CBD -- although what is meant by "City" here is I think a larger area than the CBD? -- (WT-en) Hypatia 15:31, 14 Sep 2004 (EDT)

• the Sydney/Eastern Suburbs - And how many other citys inb the world have an eastern suburb?
• the Sydney/Northern Beaches - Northern Beaches is ambiguous, so I moved the page.
• the Sydney/North Shore - North Shore is a disambiguation page.
• the Sydney/Inner West - Ambiguous as Inner West.
• Parramatta - Consistency.

I also unwikified the bodies of water, Port Jackson and Parramatta River. I am doubtful about the plains being wikified too. -- (WT-en) Huttite 20:05, 4 Jun 2004 (EDT)

I don't think the suburbs should be wikified either, although I see Manly already has its own stub. By and large the suburbs of Sydney are too small to deserve their own pages. If the Rocks doesn't get one, Manly definitely shouldn't.

Well, maybe the Rocks should have its own page.... I would support such a move. There's certainly enough just within the Rocks for travellers to warrant a separate article AND the area is sufficiently different in character from the rest of Sydney City and the CBD to create the distinction. I strongly disagree with Hypatia re Manly (I know, as a Manly boy, I may be biased on this point....). I created the article as it stands because Manly - like Bondi - is a destination in itself, the sole and purposeful target of many a ferry trip across the harbour from Circular Quay.... I also think it will have enough to fill a decent-sized article.... Once we have finished! (WT-en) Pjamescowie 15:56, 14 Sep 2004 (EDT)

OK that might work, but Sydney/Northern Beaches seems to have wikified everything. I can see the case for Sydney/Manly and quite likely Sydney/Palm Beach and a few others (and perhaps some non-beach suburbs like Newtown), but I'm not sure every beach-side suburb in Sydney deserves its own page when, for example, even Paris is only divided into districts.

Perhaps talking about deserves is wrong.

I suppose my idea is to not divide too finely at the beginning. So for example, I think there is no point creating Sydney/Newtown when Sydney/Inner West doesn't exist yet. Wouldn't it be better to start filling out Sydney/Inner West and then later moving or expanding into Newtown itself? In the same way, having a reasonably complete Northern Beaches article might be a better aim than a bunch of very small articles for each suburb. At least as a beginning. -- (WT-en) Hypatia 04:11, 15 Sep 2004 (EDT)

Another note is the "do you sleep there" rule of thumb. A few suburbs pass this (Bondi certainly, Manly I imagine so), but I'm not sure about the Rocks. -- (WT-en) Hypatia 05:29, 17 Sep 2004 (EDT)

Smaller districts/suburbs

Note, please update this to reflect the consensus on Talk:Sydney/Refactoring

Discussion with User:(WT-en) Pjamescowie shows that the current consensus is:

Larger district articles like Eastern Suburbs and Inner West will be linked from the main Sydney page, and be districts immediately under Sydney: Sydney/Eastern Suburbs, Sydney/Inner West.

Individual suburb articles like Manly, Balmain, Kings Cross etc etc will be created when we have enough information to warrant an article on them and will also be districts immediately under Sydney: Sydney/Manly, Sydney/Balmain, Sydney/Kings Cross. However, they won't be linked from the main Sydney page. Instead, Kings Cross would be linked from Sydney/Eastern Suburbs, Manly from Sydney/Northern Beaches and Balmain from Sydney/Inner West.

So, a partial example:

• Sydney is a huge city page and it links to:
  • Sydney/Northern Beaches
  • Sydney/Eastern Suburbs
  • etc etc

• Sydney/Northern Beaches is a district article and it links to:
  • Sydney/Manly
  • Sydney/Palm Beach
  • etc etc (for suburbs which have enough data for their own article)

Sleep entries

I thought a big city article didn't get sleep entries on the front page, but there are several at Sydney. Should these be moved to districts? (WT-en) Hypatia 21:42, 22 May 2006 (EDT)

Moved and a note added in comments (WT-en) Hypatia 09:08, 24 June 2006 (EDT)

Sleep entries seem to have returned, many with descriptions copied verbatim off the hotels' websites. I'm moving them to their districts, and removing any text that's obviously a copyvio. (WT-en) Spiv 10:56, 21 September 2006 (EDT)

Argh! The sleep entries are back, despite the comment in Sleep section saying that individual items do not belong there. How can we avoid misguided contributions here? (WT-en) Spiv 01:14, 2 November 2006 (EST)

I think Saturday morning cartoons say it best - "Destroy them!" Seriously though, sometimes people actually read and pay attention and for the most part when no one does what he/she is directed to do it's best to curse your computer and grudgingly filter the listings and explain it directly to the user the proper way to do something. Thanks for your help! -- (WT-en) Andrew H. (Sapphire) 02:32, 2 November 2006 (EST)

More on suburbs

I'm still dubious about the current practice of starting an outline for seemingly every suburb in Sydney. Certainly, a number of suburbs do have enough infrastructure to merit an article. Sydney/Manly and Sydney/Parramatta for example. But there are over 200 suburbs in Sydney: do we really think that it's helpful to the traveller to write 200 articles about it, or even 50 articles? Compare Singapore for example, which has about the same population and is of reasonable geographical size. My own feeling is that we should concentrate on really getting the existing district articles done well before writing articles for individual suburbs. With this in mind, I'm going to re-direct some articles, for example Sydney/Newtown and Sydney/Chatswood to their respective districts. (WT-en) Hypatia 09:08, 24 June 2006 (EDT)

For what its worth, suburbs I'm currently dubious about: Sydney/Clovelly, Sydney/Bronte, Sydney/Mona Vale, Sydney/Woollahra, Sydney/Warriewood, Sydney/Collaroy, Sydney/Beacon Hill, Sydney/Malabar, Sydney/Chatswood, Sydney/Newtown. I can kind of see how this could go either way: most suburbs of Sydney do have a little shopping strip and probably at least one or two places to sleep. But is it to the traveller's advantage to write each of them up as an article? Other large cities don't seem to be going this way. (WT-en) Hypatia 09:16, 24 June 2006 (EDT)

For an idea of the size and number of Sydney suburbs, see [1], and note that that is about one sixth of the Sydney area. (WT-en) Hypatia 06:50, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

Oatley

This page is orphaned. I appeal to others as to where it belongs. (WT-en) OldPine 11:58, 2 November 2006 (EST)

Probably in Sydney/Sutherland when anyone else actually starts to care about our districts... :) (WT-en) Hypatia 21:53, 6 November 2006 (EST)

Except that it isn't in the Sutherland district

This is now merged into Sydney/Southern Sydney

Southern Beaches

Is there really a district of Sydney called Southern Beaches? The current entry really only repeats information that is the the Bondi and Eastern Suburbs sections. The Cronulla beaches are usually called that, and considered part of the Sutherland Shire district. It would also make sense to entend the South Sydney district area to be as far south as the Georges River, and not stop at the Airport as specified now. That means we have the south eastern suburbs of Sydney covered in three districts. Eastern Suburbs - including Bondi, Coogee etc, South Sydney, including airport, Botany Bay, and closer in, and the Sutherland Shire, for the Cronulla beaches, etc.--(WT-en) Inas 19:20, 11 January 2007 (EST)

Feel free to make that change. I don't know a lot about districts south of the airport. (WT-en) Hypatia 19:32, 11 January 2007 (EST)

Ok, I have redirected Southern Beaches to Eastern Suburbs, since most of the info contained in there related to Bondi Beach, which is in that district. I made sure all the attractions were already referenced in the appropriate articles. I have changed South Sydney, the Southern Sydney, since South Sydney could be confused with the area that used to be the South Sydney Council area, around Redfern etc. This district is now described as going from the CBD south to include the aiport and Botany Bay. There is no page for that district yet. I have created the Sutherland Shire district page and populated it, without duplicating anything that is only in the Cronulla and Royal National Park entries. It would be nice to think that the Sutherland Shire district could be covered by that article, with just two additional ones for Cronulla and the Royal National Park, being the real areas that would be frequented by visitors, but we will see, I guess..--(WT-en) Inas 23:35, 11 January 2007 (EST)

Please make sure the links match the names of the articles! Also, things like "Sydney/South Sydney" are redundant, why not just "Sydney/South"? (WT-en) Jpatokal 01:23, 12 January 2007 (EST)

I checked the links and names again, and I can't find anywhere that I have made the mistake of the links not matching the article names. I have removed the wikified link in the By Plane section, which is the only remaining link I can find to the non-article Sydney/South Sydney. Since there is no Sydney/South Sydney in existance (unless I have made a mistake somewhere) the argument over whether it should be Sydney/South or Sydney/South Sydney is academic in this particular case. I can see an argument for keeping, say, Sydney/North Sydney, over just Sydney/North, where North Sydney is the name of district, rather than just a directional thing within a city.--(WT-en) Inas 03:21, 12 January 2007 (EST)

South Sydney is something of an artefact of the former South Sydney city council area, now amalgamated into the City of Sydney. I do support keeping "North Sydney" over "North", because "the North" refers to everything north of the harbour, and "North Sydney" refers to the group of suburbs immediately north of the harbour. (WT-en) Hypatia 07:32, 31 January 2007 (EST)

South West

Seems like there isn't a article on it yet.

There is now --(WT-en) Inas 18:43, 29 October 2008 (EDT)

Sydney Districts - Are they Working?

It seems to me that the Sydney districts still aren't working well. Much of the information on the main page relates to Sydney CBD. People continue to post accommodation and other entries on the main page, causing administrative overheads.

In my opinion - we should remove Sydney CBD as a district. We can then relocate all the information to the main Sydney page. We can then link off to other districts for people who want more information about other districts of Sydney, but make the main Sydney page packed with central Sydney goodies, rather than the half hearted page it is currently, containing some references, only a little accommodation etc?

Are there any other opinions?

(WT-en) Inas 21:01, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Unfortunately that's not the way we do things — cities are either districted or not, we don't do halfway houses.

Districts work rather poorly everywhere, and presently the only solution is constant vigilance. Some technological fixes are in the pipeline, but I'll let Evan say more about that... (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:03, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Okay, so are we prepared to remove things like "Skate", "Museums and Galleries", and put them in the appropriate district where they belong?

(WT-en) Inas 01:58, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

Suburban

Hey! I was wondering, prob inas will help, if, and only if, cause I don't know Sydney tat well, is if some of the districts listed in the ummm main article are actually not within city limits, rather just within the metropolitan region? Like in Edmonton, Southgate is a suburb but it's within city limits, whereas Sherwood Park is a suburb that is it's own city and should not be discussed in the main article except GET OUT or a link to the metro area page. Those should have minimal information, rather just a link to the city's page. I don't know. Wanted to clarify, hope I helped, if not, sorry if I am being like stupid with this. Keep smiling, (WT-en) ee ^talk 18:08, 4 November 2008 (EST).

Its a reasonable question. There is a suburb, Sydney, in the centre of the city. locally this is known as the City, it is a few km across, and you can think of it as the CBD. There is a local government area, called the "City of Sydney" [2] this takes in the City, and some surrounding suburbs. This grouping is really only used when talking about local government issues. Then there is the Sydney Metropolitan Area. This is what most people mean when they talk about Sydney. It is around 100km across, with a population of around 4.5 million. Greater Sydney extends even further out to the lower Blue Mountains, Central Coast, Wollongong, and Camden but these areas are covered in separate articles. To make matters even more confusing, some of the major local government areas within the Sydney Metropolitan Area, like Parramatta are officially cities as well, although the only person who would ever actually call Parramatta the City of Parramatta would be the local government officials. Every other Sydneysider would just call it Parramatta and (correctly) consider it a suburb in the Sydney Metro Area. So, after that, I guess the answer to your question, is yes - all the districts listed are within the Sydney Metro Area. The upshot is (as with other huge cities on Wikivoyage) that there is more often more focus on the districts of metropolitan areas, then the areas that are the focus of normal travellers. I would think most travellers to Sydney would not go much further than the City Darling Harbour and Bondi Beach, but still the information is there for the traveller who may be interested. --(WT-en) Inas 18:50, 4 November 2008 (EST)

Aiiight...so I'm not an idiot? Ok! Well I do believe as I said you aren't supposed to consider suburban municipalities/satelite towns/whatever as a city disttrict of the main city. I am sorry if I am adding peressure-you seem to be under some. ANyways...I hope I am not making things worse like if you have to move these into new articles because they aren't within city limits. I understand some of the suburbs ARE within city limits, but some are their own city and shouldn't be shwon as a district...like Parramatta, you said it youresefl , ittt's it's own city!!!!! Yeah, it doesn't matter if peeople in Sydney would consider it apart of the city---in Seattle, people would call Redmont, Edmonts, Lynnwood, Kent, and Auburn apart of the city, which is all fine and whatever because in a way, it is, like it is just another thread to the quilt of Seattle, but it's own city, and it would need it's own article, not just a district. I know like everybody calls it like apart of the city, but OFFICIALLY it isn't so you can't have it like that, I believe .Sorry! Keep smiling, (WT-en) ee ^talk 19:01, 4 November 2008 (EST).

This article is on the Sydney Metropolitan Area, this is a both the practical (what people think of as Sydney), the political (as defined in the maps), and a tourism region [3]. When you drive into the Sydney Metro Area, you will see large road signs, that say "Welcome to Sydney". Sydney metro is split into about 40 local government areas (LGAs), for adminstration purposes. About 20 of these LGA's are called cities, 3 are called shires, and the rest are just plain old LGA's. Using LGA's as districts for Sydney Metro was considered, but many of these are obscure. Sydney/Bondi is world famous, but who knows it as the Waverley LGA, and are we making a guide for travellers, or town planners? It would be doing the traveller a disservice to have Bondi Beach, in the Get Out section of the Sydney article. Cities in Australia don't really work the way they do in the US and Canada. The equivalent would be saying that the City of Westminster should be excluded from the districts section of the London, as it is also a city in its own right. Doesn't really make sense. See the wikipedia entry for Sydney [4] for more geographical info if you are interested. --(WT-en) Inas 20:22, 4 November 2008 (EST)

Oh, ok, points well taken! I see they are different than Can/America! Thanks, have a wonderful day! Keep smiling, (WT-en) ee ^talk 21:05, 4 November 2008 (EST).

Thanks for raising the ideas. It made me do a double take, and think about it again, to make sure we were doing it the right way. Got to be a good thing. --(WT-en) Inas 21:44, 4 November 2008 (EST)

(first time talker!) I've thought long about how the Sydney article is districted, and conclude that although it loosely follows geographic or LGA boundaries, we should really re-focus it for the benefit of the traveller. I've been using this fantastic site as a traveller for only 18 months and find the best sites on large cities are those that focus on relevance to the traveller. That is, you woud have the high level article describing the "inner city" or "old city" relevant to travellers, which would also include pointers and links to big attractions in other districts (eg, Bondi, Fox Studios, National Parks), then just a half-dozen or so other district articles. So for Sydney, the relevant articles would be Sydney (CBD, harbour islands and west to Casino), Sydney/Beaches, Sydney/Inner West (west to Balmain-Enmore), Sydney/Inner East (east to Paddington), and Sydney/Suburban. I'm of two minds whether Parramatta deserves an entry as a district. There's a lot to write about Sydney and its districts but most of it belongs in Wikipedia. Wikivoyage works best when it uses a traveller paradigm. (WT-en) Ronaldo123 17:45, 12 January 2009 (EST)

That wikivoyage users a travelers paradigm goes without saying, really. That is certainly the mission here. However, in every case I am aware of, districted cites push the main content down a level, and don't maintain the "old city" content in the high level article. Look at Chicago, San Francisco, London, Paris, etc for examples. If they didn't do this, the sections like Get In, become confusing. Country trains, sydney airport etc, have to be covered in specific area articles, not in a covering article. Not that this invalidates your point in any way. There is still a requirement to get the districts to best suite the traveler.

Lets start simple. Let assume we are talking about the "inner city" relevant to travelers. At the moment, we have Sydney/City, Sydney/The Rocks, Sydney/Darling Harbour, Sydney/Haymarket, Sydney/Kings Cross, and Sydney/Darlinghurst to describe this area. Would you make all these into one article? It is is a lot of content - different ways of getting in and out, lots of different attractions to list. It seems that the first thing you would do is to group the attractions, accommodation, and transport information into geographical areas - light rail is no good for kings cross, etc.

Huge cities are hard on Wikivoyage. Canberra is the perfect size, and country towns are easy. I don't think we should omit parts of Sydney because they are not relevant to the normal international traveler. Sydney is more than that, and many people travel for different reasons, and end up in different places. Lets give them the info on how to get there, and what to see. People visit family, travel for work. The absence of a tourist infrastructure doesn't mean wikivoyage shouldn't cover the area.

--(WT-en) Inas 18:30, 12 January 2009 (EST)

You're absolutely right, and I admire your line of thinking (+ your user page comment about a Sydney district map - of which I also have thoughts). In response, I agree that Sydney/City is needed to distinguish from the headline article. Part of the "City" is The Rocks, Chinatown/Haymarket, and Darling Harbour. They each may have enough content for their own article as currently exists. I differ with your inclusion of Kings Cross, Darlinghurst and Paddington in Central Sydney - they would form the core of Sydney/Inner East. Similarly, Sydney/Inner West should be limited geographically to the Pyrmont-Balmain-Enmore-Erskineville ring. Sydney/Beaches can include eastern suburbs beaches, northern beaches, southern beaches, harbour + bay beaches; the challenge here is defining the getting in/out for the broad geographic area; but at least it makes sense for a traveller: Sydney=beaches. Sydney/Suburban is covering the remaining area, which as you suggest provides content for relevance to those travelling for family or work, the national parks, or even to include interesting "secret and unique" areas like Cabramatta! There are some well written articles here which I think are redundant, either because the detail level is too much or they are so specific they in fact regurgitate what's on the location's own website (eg, Sydney/Sydney Olympic Park - this should be mentioned as a prime attraction of the city, with a paragraph description and location plus link to the official site (which for the traveller is kept up to date much better than Wikivoyage contributors) - but this can be discussion on separate page). I don't want to sound like I'm trampling all over the great work that's been done for Sydney so far, but as you know the districts are tricky and I think some tough decisions need to be made so we can select a core group of around 6 districts, hopefully derived somehow from this discussion. (WT-en) Ronaldo123 19:41, 12 January 2009 (EST)

I'll try an address your points.. I'm sorry that each point ends with a but..

1. Inner East - I agree that Darlinghurst, Kings Cross, etc don't form part of the City proper, as The Rocks and Haymarket do. However - this may not be a travellers perspective. Distance wise, Kings Cross Station is closer to downtown than Star City, and many people stay there, go out there etc. Also Inner West is a common term used in describe Sydney areas. Inner East is just made up. No one will actually know where it is, and if a traveler were to ask directions, or discuss the area with others, or on another site, they would just get dumbfounded responses.
2. I don't agree that wikivoyage should not cover areas covered comprehensively by other guides. There is a link to the official site if people would rather go there, they are free to. But - this guide is not free. It is copyright, it can't be distributed, can't be modified, corrected etc. There are lots of good guides out there for lots of areas, but wikivoyage is here to develop an unencumbered, free, editable guide. The official site will never be this. The official site won't tell you that there is nobody at Sydney Olympic Park pretty much all of the time, outside of the events and Bicentennial park. It won't tell you that you'll be stuck eating a $10 hot dog if you are don't eat before 10pm on a weeknight. Hopefully a proper wikivoyage article will. The official site won't tell ever tell you train to Concord West is $1.00 cheaper than the train to Olympic Park. Wikivoyage is the guide, not a link to a guide.
3. Sydney Beaches. I agree this would make a great article. Have a look at what I did with beach descriptions in Sydney/Eastern Suburbs, where I went through each of the beaches, put a small amount of access information and some description of the beach. Its difficult to make it fit the district format though. Get it, Get around, See, etc, would be different for each beach. Many beachside suburbs in Sydney have their own restaurant strip, own accommodation. Take Sydney/Cronulla for example. It has its own Get in, own bars, accommodation. What would an article actually look like on Sydney Beaches? Could we fit it within the manual of style at all? Perhaps its not a destination at all, but a travel topic, Beachgoing in Sydney?
4. Inner West, is basically as you have described it already. It also in theory includes areas like Leichhardt, Annandale, etc, which are commonly considered to be part of the Inner West. I think of the areas heading west as Inner West, Olympic Park, Parramatta, and Outer West/Further West. This leaves areas like Granville, Lidcombe probably in Parra, Strathfield probably in Inner, Flemington probably in Olympic Park, Auburb in Parra? Who knows, really, when it comes to these places. However, I don't really want to add another district between Inner West and Parra.

I don't want to sound like I'm being negative, but without any real precedent for some of your ideas, I'm trying to figure out how they should work. It sounds like you are suggesting rings around Sydney, so we have Sydney/Coast, Sydney/City, Sydney/Suburban, or something like that? Surely something like Sydney/Suburban would be so large as to make most of the wikivoyage sections meaningless? I'm thinking some sort of middle ground, might be the districts Sydney/City, Sydney/East Sydney (rather than Inner Eas), Sydney/Inner West, Sydney/Eastern Suburbs (including beaches), Sydney/Western Suburbs, Sydney/Southern Suburbs (including southern beaches), Sydney/North Sydney, Sydney/Northern Suburbs, Sydney/Northern Beaches, Sydney/South Western Suburbs, Sydney/North Western Suburbs. This covers pretty much the entire region. Then we have specific article for areas of tourist interest, like Sydney/Bondi, Sydney/Sydney Olympic Park, Sydney/Darling Harbour, which we don't really consider as districts per se, but destinations of specific interest. At least with a scheme like this, it is immediately evident where everything goes, and we leave those wiser who come after us a conventional system which can be divided, split or merged with relative ease. --(WT-en) Inas 21:35, 12 January 2009 (EST)

I've had a go at the district section of the main page. Now there are sections for the centre (including starting to merge the three suburbs into East Sydney. Then major leisure destinations, and then the suburbs. If people aren't interested in visiting the suburbs, and just want the major visitor centres, then they don't have to read them. Do you think this is an improvement, or on the way to an improvement? --(WT-en) Inas 17:46, 13 January 2009 (EST)

You might want to have a look at how I did with Copenhagen#Districts, small districts in the center where the attractions are packed, and then two (or 3 depending on how you look at it) huge districts where the attractions are further apart - I think it works quite well. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 18:25, 13 January 2009 (EST)

In repsonse to Copenhagen, I think that we are that much bigger that the structure becomes unwieldy. Inas, I like what you've done with the districts on the main page, and it certainly feels like it's heading in a good direction. And perhaps with these slight changes we can sit back and watch how it settles down for a bit. The structure of the beaches in [Sydney/Eastern Suburbs] reads very well. Thanks for setting me straight on the Olympic Park example, I agree with most of what you've said. There's something about Southern Sydney which doesn't quite fit right. I'm not sure whether St George area shouldn't be part of Sutherland, and it is puzzling that there isn't more content especially considering the accommodation options around the airport. Nevertheless, we should see how it grows over time. Back to Beaches, the topic idea is a good one but would "Beachgoing in Sydney" be too narrow ... should it be "Beachgoing in Australia"? More work for the keen! (WT-en) Ronaldo123 00:24, 14 January 2009 (EST)

I've put a merge notice on Sydney/Darlinghurst, that it will be merged with Sydney/Kings Cross into Sydney/East Sydney. I'm still not a 100% sure that this is a good idea, because in effect Sydney/Darlinghurst is an article about the Oxford St Gay Scene, and I imagine that this makes it interesting to a gay travellers, without having to wade through all other info in Kings Cross. And Oxford St does have a different vibe and feel to the cross, as well as different ways to get there and away. As always, comments, suggestions appreciated. --(WT-en) Inas 17:39, 14 January 2009 (EST)