Talk:Port Chalmers Post Office

Article content and focus

@Grutness is edit warring and misusing rollback really appropriate behaviour for an administrator?

I do not object to more content about the museum but I object to the overall structure of what you have done and providing the same amount of detail on museum exhibits, sourced primarily to the museum itself, as the history section. That is clearly undue. You have also added unreliable sources like travel guides and blogs, surely someone with your tenure knows what a reliable source is?

You added 'When the post office was closed in 1987, Port Chalmers Historical Society took over the building' sourced to the Heritage New Zealand magazine. I actually was going to look back at this source and add more content about the museum from it and I noticed it does not give such a date to that claim.

Other claims you have added do not match the sources either: 'The building was constructed on reclaimed land on the site of the former Koputai Beach. This was the original landing site of the John Wickliffe, the first of the settler ships for the new settlement of Otago, which arrived in 1848' this is sourced to The source does not mention Koputai and the mention of the post office and Wickliffe as as follows: 'On the other corners are the bluestone Post Office' and 'The two [plaques] at the front commemorate the signing of the deed to purchase the Otago Block from the Maoris on July 31st 1844 and the landing of the pioneer settlers from the ship John Wickliffe in March 1848. In the 1840s the site of the two plaques would have been on the foreshore which is now some 100 metres away.'

I have added more content about the museum from Heritage New Zealand magazine here Draft:Port Chalmers Post Office. I think this is much better as it summarises from reliable sources without going into excessive detail. Traumnovelle (talk) 20:51, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

is edit warring and misusing rollback really appropriate behaviour for an administrator? No, but replacing enitre sections of an article with no logical reason given is a perfectly valid reason to rollback. In fact, it's a valid reason to revert and issue a warning, but I felt that in these circumstances that was likely to escalate things.

I do not object to more content about the museum but I object to the overall structure of what you have done and providing the same amount of detail on museum exhibits, sourced primarily to the museum itself, as the history section. That is clearly undue. You have also added unreliable sources like travel guides and blogs, surely someone with your tenure knows what a reliable source is? — Well, they're not in the "History" section to start with; they're in the "Exhibits" section, which is entirely appropriate. Some of the sources are from the museum website, others are from other sources, yes, including travel guides, which are not normally regarded as unreliable sources, and are frequently used as reference material on Wikipedia. And yes, they have weight in the article because they are important to it. The result of the afd was "merge", not the "smerge" which you did by reducing 9500 bytes to 730. I added under half the museum article, around 4300 of the 9500 bytes, which was highly appropriate.

You added 'When the post office was closed in 1987, Port Chalmers Historical Society took over the building' sourced to the Heritage New Zealand magazine. I actually was going to look back at this source and add more content about the museum from it and I noticed it does not give such a date to that claim. Apologies for that - I accidentally switched two references when adding that. The date is given in the Salterton article. I would add more, but my only other source is direct convrsation with museum staff, which would count as OR.

Other claims you have added do not match the sources either: 'The building was constructed on reclaimed land on the site of the former Koputai Beach. This was the original landing site of the John Wickliffe, the first of the settler ships for the new settlement of Otago, which arrived in 1848' this is sourced to The source does not mention Koputai and the mention of the post office and Wickliffe as as follows: 'On the other corners are the bluestone Post Office' and 'The two [plaques] at the front commemorate the signing of the deed to purchase the Otago Block from the Maoris on July 31st 1844 and the landing of the pioneer settlers from the ship John Wickliffe in March 1848. In the 1840s the site of the two plaques would have been on the foreshore which is now some 100 metres away.' It seems you read the article, but not the text on the plaque itself, which is shown in a photograph on that page. It reads "On this spot the pioneer settlers landed from a boat off the 'John Wickliffe' on the 23rd day of March 1848 to found this port and province". As for Koputai, it is the former name of Port Chalmers. Koputai Bay might be more appropriate than Koputai Beach, however.

I have added more content about the museum from Heritage New Zealand magazine here Draft:Port Chalmers Post Office. I think this is much better as it summarises from reliable sources without going into excessive detail. Why add them there? Add them to the article itself? Any draft article is redundant once a full article exists. Grutness...wha? 05:23, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Really? There is nothing in WP:ROLLBACKUSE that justifies that. And I did give a reason, its in the edit summary?

>It seems you read the article, but not the text on the plaque itself, which is shown in a photograph on that page. It reads "On this spot the pioneer settlers landed from a boat off the 'John Wickliffe' on the 23rd day of March 1848 to found this port and province". As for Koputai, it is the former name of Port Chalmers. Koputai Bay might be more appropriate than Koputai Beach, however.

So you are referencing a plaque located on a separate building to justify the claim here? Why not just go with what the high quality secondary source says here instead of a plaque on a separate building and connecting it to the post office? It also just duplicates information presented earlier, as in the description we have 'Situated on reclaimed land at the corner of Beach and George Streets' and is also out of place chronologically.

>Why add them there? Add them to the article itself? Any draft article is redundant once a full article exists

Because the version you have restored introduces unreliable sources and puts undue weight to the museum. The weight given to topics should be based on their presence in secondary sources.

There is no reason to include all the exhibitions if the only sourcing is the museum and travel guides, that is not the focus and scope of an encyclopaedia.

Traumnovelle (talk) 05:50, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

So you are referencing a plaque located on a separate building to justify the claim here? Yes I am. It relates to the spot where the John Wickliffe's boat arrived, which is the intersection where that building and the museum stand. It includes information - that the first settler ship arrived here - which your source and the earlier text don't include (and therefore is not a duplication).

It also just duplicates information presented earlier, as in the description we have 'Situated on reclaimed land at the corner of Beach and George Streets' and is also out of place chronologically. It is now in a more appropriate position at the beginning of the history section, and because it was a slight duplication, I've removed the "on reclaimed land", which didn't really belong in the description section anyway. The reclamation is part of the history of the site, so belongs in the history section.

Because the version you have restored introduces unreliable sources and puts undue weight to the museum.' The sources, as explained earlier, are reliable and in keeping with Wikipedia's guidelines on references. As to "undue weight", the building is today primarily known as the museum, and the museum article was larger than the post office article. It cow amounts to under 1/3 of the information in the current article - one screen-full on my laptop out of an article length of three and a half screens. If anything, that's underweighting the museum part of the article. The weight should be on the current extent of the needs of readership. In any case, that doesn't explin why you put your extensions to the article into a redundant draft rather than putting them here where they would have added "more reliable sources" to the article. And here we have a contradiction - you say that you want there to be more reliable sources in the article, yet you don't add those reliable sources when you have them.

There is no reason to include all the exhibitions if the only sourcing is the museum and travel guides, that is not the focus and scope of an encyclopaedia. And yet that is standard practice on Wikipedia, and exactly what its focus and scope should include. It is precisely what is done with other museum articles - especially when, as in this case, that is not the only source of information. Of seven references to the "Exhibits" section, three are sources which even your higher-than-normal standards would agree are reliable secondary sources: The Otago Daily Times, nzhistory.govt.nz (the website of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage), and Neville Peat and Christine Dann's book. FWIW, I've also added a couple of other references, and assume you will agree that the Dunedin City Council website is reliable. Grutness...wha? 13:06, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

>Yes I am. It relates to the spot where the John Wickliffe's boat arrived, which is the intersection where that building and the museum stand. It includes information - that the first settler ship arrived here - which your source and the earlier text don't include

I have yet to see the encyclopaedic relevance of it to the post office. There is an article on Port Chalmers which should be more broad and in-depth on the general history of the town. This article should focus on the building. The fact the Wickliffe landed at a spot in 1848 has no relevance to the building.

>The sources, as explained earlier, are reliable and in keeping with Wikipedia's guidelines on references.

One of them is a random blog. I will go to RSN if required but you should seriously know that random self-published websites are not reliable sources.

>As to "undue weight", the building is today primarily known as the museum

The AFD outcome was to merge the museum into the post office article.

>In any case, that doesn't explin why you put your extensions to the article into a redundant draft rather than putting them here where they would have added "more reliable sources" to the article

Because rather than edit-war and force my version in I've put up a draft of what I believe the article should look like, making adjustments as a compromise (e.g. changing the infobox to mention the current use as a museum) and expanding coverage of the exhibitions from the Heritage New Zealand magazine.

>The weight should be on the current extent of the needs of readership

No, per WP:DUE: 'Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources'. The 'needs of readership' is entirely subjective and a poor standard. Besides WP:NOTGUIDEBOOK makes it clear that content that is helpful is not encyclopaedic inherently.

> And yet that is standard practice on Wikipedia, and exactly what its focus and scope should include.

Please cite some policy or FAs. Not some local consensus.

>three are sources which even your higher-than-normal standards would agree are reliable secondary sources: The Otago Daily Times, nzhistory.govt.nz (the website of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage), and Neville Peat and Christine Dann's book.

And these sources do not support any weight given to an exhibition section, with some not even verifying the claims the citations are given for. The NZ History source does not mention the museum nor post office. The Otago Daily Times is an art review and does not support the claim that 'The Main Gallery also includes an art display area featuring regular exhibitions by local and visiting artists'. It does not mention the main gallery, it just says 'a small space for art exhibitions' and makes no mention of recurrence nor of whether the artist is local or visiting. I can't access the book so I have no idea what it actually says, but I will take your word for it. I have already included information from that source and even expanded upon it with a secondary source.

As for the Dunedin City Council heritage assessment, your link is wrong. and whilst it is good to finally get a date for these things from somewhere other than a blog the source cites Wikipedia, which is an obvious red flag. It is a draft too. But it isn't citing Wikipedia for the establishment dates of the museum and historical society, regardless the report is about the Pioneer Hall, not the post office so doesn't establish due weight for the exhibition section. Traumnovelle (talk) 21:23, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Tell you what. Since you're so keen on owning the article, why don't you do what you like with it? If every edit I make is going to be the subject of a long inquest by you, there's really no point in me continuing, is there? Have fun remodelling it and any other articles you decide are your property. Grutness...wha? 04:44, 2 May 2026 (UTC)