Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Yesterday the Te Ara site moved to the open-source Drupal content management platform and made a number of relatively minor changes to the site navigation.

Of course quite a few things went wrong yesterday morning, but the site is now (mostly) performing better than it used to and it offers us so many possibilities that, though a tad exhausted at this point, we’re looking happily towards the future. Kudos to HeadFirst, our developers, who not only migrated the entire 30,000 pages but also gave us a new authoring system and some Easter Eggs too. Hallelujah! And to have a search engine that actually returns relevant results in a logical order is almost a religious experience for some, including the General Editor. It’s faster and more accurate than our old one. (For them as wants to know, the engine is Sphinx, also open-source.)

The site is mostly as it was (if it ain’t broke …) but here are some of the differences that you might notice:

URLs to pages have been simplified and now appear in the form

http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/story-name (or /mi/ for the Māori interface)

A comprehensive redirection is in place and any bookmarks shouldn’t break, but please update them. Links deeper than a story (entry) page may not be resolved correctly but our error page gives a number of helpful suggestions.

Other changes include:

• You can now browse Te Ara’s contents (groupled (ha ha) in a variety of ways) on any page by clicking on the ‘Browse Te Ara’ command at the very top every page.
• The Short Story icon and link has been consistently positioned on all pages, to the right of the title.
• The Short Story has a new ‘lightbox‘ treatment.
• Biography links (to the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography website) appear at the foot of the story pages, and the Biographies Gallery has been removed.
• To move to the text from an image or other media item, click the ‘Back to story’ button.
• Images or media which are grouped together have improved internal navigation (thumbnails appear above the main image).
• Further Sources pages have been placed within the story navigation.
• Related Stories are now managed through an automated process based on key words on the page. This is still subject to refinement, and we’ve signalled the lack of human intervention in the process by labelling the feature ‘You may be interested in…’ No guarantees, but there may be a serendipity…

If any of the navigation is unclear, try reading through our ‘How to use Te Ara’ page.

There have also been a number of small cosmetic changes to improve the look of the site. We’d be pleased to have your reactions to the changes. Leave a comment below.

Jackson Bay – no relation

Yes, it’s true. The talented artist sometimes disparagingly referred to as Wacko Jacko has heard the last trump, and he never got mentioned in Te Ara. It could still happen, of course, but it won’t do him much good now. Passed over by New Zealand’s national online encyclopedia, and now he’s passed over Jordan himself, it’s the final insult really.

And we tried. Search Te Ara for Jackson and you’ll get plenty of hits (just like Michael) but they’re mainly about Jackson Bay in South Westland. Not that it isn’t interesting – it was the site of a government special settlement in 1884. This was a complete fiasco. They shipped in Germans, Poles and Italians to work in farming and forestry, but the combination of extremely wet weather  (Jackson Bay has one of the highest rainfalls on the already wet West Coast), the rugged bush-clad landscape and the fact that they couldn’t understand each other’s languages, meant they soon shipped out.

One of the sodden survivors was Joseph Wladislas Edmond Potocki de Montalk, born in France of Polish heritage (and his mother was said to be the illegitmate daughter of King George IV of England) and notable as the grandfather of the card-carrying barking right-wing poet ‘Count’ Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk (pretender to the Polish throne and briefly imprisioned in the UK for obscenity in the 1930s).

But I digress. Edmond de Montalk (as far as we know, no relation to Michael Jackson) had been teaching at the University of Otago in Dunedin until he spat the dummy in desperation and headed for the West Coast ‘to do the best I can for my family, as I could do nothing for them in the Scottish, cantish Dunedin, where it is useless to teach anything unless your mother has had the wisdom to give you birth north of the Tweed.’

What’s that got to do with Michael Jackson? Well, nothing, by the looks of it, but everyone else is blogging and twittering about him so let’s get on the bandwagon and see if our blog gets a few more hits this week.

Lord Bledisloe, a former governor general, or was that governor-general?

The following is (more or less) verbatim from a recent email exchange at our offices on a freezing cold June day when the heating wasn’t working too well.

Writer (who shall remain nameless):

A small matter. When going through some proofs I corrected ‘governor general’ to ‘governor-general’. I now see that the Te Ara style guide specifies ‘governor general’. I’ve always used ‘governor-general’ because that’s how it appears in the letters patent defining the office [PDF 157KB], in general usage and on sites such as the GG, DPMC. Perhaps the style guide should be changed before we hit the governance theme?

Equally nameless editor (self-righteously):

This style was inherited from the DNZB, which eschewed hyphens in such compounds as governor general and also lieutenant governor, or lieutenant general, or sergeant major and others too numerous to mention.

Also the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (10th ed, revised), which we use as our authority for hyphenation at Te Ara, leaves out the hyphen in governor general.

The DNZB applied house style across the board in titles and proper names, as actual usage varied and would be seen as inconsistent. It also meant that editors did not have to research every instance of a name like this, but could confidently apply the consistent style.

I am not in favour of making an exception because 19th-century letters patent used a certain style. I do not believe that legislation and editorial decisions make good bedfellows! It’s not a question of an incorrect fact, merely a stylistic preference. Most arguments along these lines reflect an individual’s familiarity with or personal preference for a particular style of usage.

As it is not an error, and there is a substantial body of pre-existing content, I do not support any change here.

(Personally I also think it’s old fashioned, pretentious and pompous in a way that is not appropriate in egalitarian NZ in the 21st century. Like a blind insistence on capitalisation, it’s a legacy of empire and too much reading of the King James Version!)

Writer (patiently):

Far from being C19th legislation, it’s the 1983 letters patent, the one that ‘indigenised’ the office, so it’s about as antiquated as the DNZB. Curious that we slavishly follow that creaking old relic of empire, the OED.

Ed (sheepishly):

Touché! That’ll teach me for not even looking at the reference!

But I don’t care anyway. And the later revisions of the OED are remarkably forward-looking (given its heritage). Always seemed a pretty conservative and safe choice as arbiter (obviating innumerable arguments and mind-numbing ‘scholarly’ discussions).

The main argument for not changing the style is the implication for the many similar compounds. And the retrospective work.

As someone once said: ‘If you think too long about hyphens, you will surely go mad.’ QED. I rest my case, m’lud.

[Scholarly aside for pedants: 'If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad.' This dire warning was issued by John Benbow in his book Manuscript & proof: the preparation of manuscript for the printer and the handling of the proofs, published by Oxford University Press in New York in 1937.]

General Editor (judiciously):

Yep, consistency and extra work are pretty powerful arguments to me, but its probably worth a blog!

Writer (provocatively):

Probably better (and more enjoyably) done over drinks. I don’t read institutional blogs and from the response rates to them, don’t think many non-institutional people do. With a second glass of the grape, I may even let fly at macrons (the typographical equivalent of skidmarks on underpants, a friend said recently), grocers’ apostrophes, the current journalistic fad of replacing ‘will’ and ‘shall’ with ‘is set to’ and … Gawd, this could go on forever!

Ed (cowering):

No, not forever, please, make it stop!

Writer (graciously):

OK, I’ll hang up my pith helmet.

Postscript for the insane:

Those sad souls like me who find this kind of thing fascinating may be reassured to know that we are not alone: it hit world headlines when the sixth edtion of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary knocked the hyphens out of 16,000 compounds. Mind you, those with an excessive fascination with what is ‘good’ style do run the risk of being labelled ‘grammar fascists’ (see Wikipedia). Like  Lynne Truss, whose rather smug little book has been accused of laying down the law as if there is some moral superiority involved in speaking and writing ‘proper’. Though her worst crime is that she bowdlerised the classic definition of the Kiwi bird (or the male) in her book’s title. We all have our hobby horses, sigh.

It was very gratifying last night for Te Ara to win the 2008 WriteMark New Zealand Plain English Award for best plain English website. And it was a bonus that another of the ministry’s websites, NZLive.com, received an honourable mention in the same category.

Te Ara editors past and present were on hand to share that rare moment when all the largely invisible work behind the scenes takes centre stage.

Good plain English is one of those things that, if done well, nobody notices. That’s as it should be. Plain English just means saying what you mean in a simple way - rather than using fancy or complicated words unnecessarily. So it should be easy to read and understand. From the beginning Te Ara staff have been committed to reaching a really broad audience. This means we’ve put a lot of effort into using clear and comprehensible language.

So far we’ve published over a million words by more than 100 writers on thousands of pages covering hundreds of topics. Some of the topics are highly technical, and we’ve recruited experts in their fields to write for us. All of their words have been edited for consistency and style by a small team of very talented editors.

In the early days, voices were sometimes raised and teeth gnashed as writers feared the ‘dumbing down’ of their high concepts or blunting of their finely honed prose. But that’s not what plain language is about, and the editors persuasively argued that the most abstruse concepts can usually be presented in a clear and plain way, avoiding jargon and complex vocabulary. That’s one of Te Ara’s real points of difference (along with its richness of illustration and attractive design).

Editors are usually the unsung heroines or heroes of publishing. They certainly are appreciated at Te Ara. Not only do they help writers to make their words speak clearly, but they also write the Short Story for each entry – lively and succinct summaries for a younger audience.

So we are really proud of this award, which honours the core of our work, no jiggery-pokery, bells and whistles or technical gizmos required.

From the judges’ comments:

Readers young and old can get immersed in this website. The website is very well structured in layers to draw the reader from general information into more technical detail. It shows sophistication of writing as well as wide appeal across many types of readers and groups of New Zealanders. The site uses wonderfully plain language and an engaging style with good use of headings, layout, and sidebars.

Hometown boy makes good – David Grant

Te Ara launched its coverage of Southland on Monday night, 8 September, with a celebration at Invercargill’s Civic Theatre. Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Mahara Okeroa cut the virtual ribbon.

Our friends at NZLive.com also put on a show. There was an excellent turnout – possibly partly because Jackie, NZLive.com’s manager, hails from Gore, and I think she invited all her relatives!

Author David Grant, who was raised in Southland, spent three months researching in the southern province. Te Ara General Editor Jock Phillips and Resource Team Leader Janine Faulknor also made field trips to capture some of the region’s highlights in digital form.

David says he particularly enjoyed writing about things that were uniquely Southland, like swedes, Bluff oysters and the rolling ‘r’. (’Good for picking up chicks’, says one hopeful Gore-ite in our rather cute video clip).

One of the nice things we’ve been able to do this time is to add a gallery of images from our Flickr group. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

This brings us to the midpoint of our Places coverage – 11 to go. Next up, The West Coast. Watch this space.