Win opens ‘can of worms’

Hundreds of Wikipedia pages will need to be changed after Christchurch has taken the capital’s crown as the second-most populous city in New Zealand.

Currently, Wellington and Christchurch’s Wikipedia pages both name the cities as second, which has caused a flurry of conversation.

The controversy stems from a new geographical standard quietly announced by Statistics NZ at the end of 2017, which splits Wellington into two ‘‘major urban areas’’ (Wellington city and Lower Hutt city) and two ‘‘large urban areas’’ (Porirua and Upper Hutt), and gives Christchurch a slight upper hand.

A previous standard made Wellington the second city on Wikipedia because it included the populations of Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt and Porirua (resulting in a combined population of 418,000 vs 404,000 in Christchurch).

New Zealand’s first Wikipedian at Large, Mike Dickison, said when Stuff reporter Charlie Mitchell pointed out Christchurch had a higher population than Wellington, ‘‘he opened a whole can of worms’’.

‘‘He started a conversation and it was really quite good he

Opinion is divided even on the streets of greater Christchurch about where New Zealand’s second city begins and ends.

In Rolleston, Sonia Loader believed the town was part of Christchurch, simply because ‘‘Christchurch is Canterbury’’.

Noel Hickland did not agree. He said Rolleston was not part of Christchurch, but was a ‘‘mushroom town that had grown out of the need to expand’’.

Both agreed Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt were not part of that great pretender Wellington.

Debbie Grice of Rangiora said she did not consider the town to be part of greater Christchurch.

did,’’ Dickison said.

New Zealand has only about 150 Wikipedia volunteer moderators, who work full-time jobs and edit pages in their spare time.

‘‘Our editor body is small partly because of population, we’re a bit isolated and were a bit slow to get on board with Wikipedia.’’

A long discussion took place between the moderators about the greater Wellington region and greater Christchurch region, and

‘‘If people from out of town ask us, we say we’re from Canterbury. And people come out of Christchurch to North Canterbury so I guess it’s not the same place,’’ she said.

Trent Morrison summed up the feeling of Kaiapoi residents when he claimed his town was better. Andrea Aitken, also of Kaiapoi agreed. ‘‘We are our own little standalone community,’’ she said. ‘‘In fact I hardly ever go over the bridge.’’

Sonia Loader

Noel Hickland

what it meant to be an urban area or a city.

‘‘It’s very much like getting something sorted on a marae – everyone sits around and gets a chance a talk and everybody comes around to the right point of view,’’ he said.

They came to the conclusion that Christchurch is the secondmost populous city in the country.

Now comes the long and arduous task of changing everything on Wikipedia – which could take

ChristchurchNZ chief executive Joanna Norris said she was more interested in talking about what the city was number one at, because population was only one measure. She pointed out that Christchurch was the country’s newest city and was named friendliest city last year.

Mayor Lianne Dalziel said she agreed Christchurch was New Zealand’s second city ‘‘regardless of what metric is used’’.

weeks. Hundreds of pages would need to be updated as well as references and every Wikipedia page which referred to the places and their populations.

‘‘It’s a big job but we’ve got good editors.’’

A Christchurch man himself, Dickison said his heart felt a swell of pride. ‘‘I’ve always known Christchurch is bigger than Wellington, having lived in both cities.’’

It had felt like cheating include the Hutt and Porirua.

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