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).

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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 did."

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."

KEVIN STENT/STUFF New Zealand's Wikipedian at Large from 2018 to 2019, Mike Dickison, says hundreds of pages will need to be updated.

A long discussion took place between the moderators about the greater Wellington region and greater Christchurch region, and 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 second-most populous city in the country.

ROSA WOODS/STUFF Currently, Wellington and Christchurch's Wikipedia pages both name the cities as second which has caused a flurry of conversation (file photo).

Now comes the long and arduous task of changing everything on Wikipedia - which could take 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."

ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF Wikipedia moderator volunteers will be changing pages to say Christchurch is the second-most populous city in New Zealand.

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 to include the Hutt and Porirua.