Category talk:Mountains of British Columbia

Splitting category

It's so huge LOL......wondering if it's time to split this into by-region and/or by-mountain range (or plateau) where applicable. Category_talk:Mountains_and_ski_resorts_in_the_Okanagan#Category_name_is_not_appropriate and also the similarly titled discussion on WP:CANTALK. Category:Mountains in the Lower Mainland or Category:Mountains of the Garibaldi Ranges (and Douglas Ranges, and North Shore Mountains, and Lillooet Ranges, and Skagit Ranges) or all of the above? by-region and by-range? A long while ago, someone was sorting all these by RD, which just ain't right.....for too many reasons to go back into here.Skookum1 (talk) 16:23, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that we're starting with a political/administrative subdivision here (BC). The logical step down would be to use the RDs. We could use the divisions in Category:Geographical regions of British Columbia, but what is the authority for these subdivisions? Dividing by range is also desirable, but the ranges extend past B.C. (Category:Mountains of the British Columbia Rockies? Category:Mountains of the British Columbia Cascades?) We could use a parallel system - one by administrative sub., and one by range. The Interior (Talk) 19:27, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Those mountain categories exist; Category:Canadian Cascades and Category:Canadian Rockies and as with Category:Coast Mountains and Category:Boundary Ranges that they have parallel AB/BC and BC/AK state/province cats there's no need for further subdivision as the parallel categories establish that; in the case of the BC-AB and BC-AK boundaries many of those ranges are already in the Boundary Peaks pages (as each one of them is a legal definition of the boundary...).....NB Canadian Cascades is a subcategory of North Cascades of Washington (state) already, same geographic grouping but the nomenclature is different in the US side of the border, hence Canadian Cascades redirects to North Cascades, hm I see both those cats are subcats of Category:Cascade Range rather than one being sub to the other; it was tangled to sort out "Cascade Mountains" is the actual official CAnadian usage how it appears on the map; likewise their definition of the Rockies includes their part of the Selkirks, as well as the southward continuation of the Purcells (the Cabinet and Salish Mtns; north of the border that's the Columbia Mountains. MTn ranges exist independent of transient political administrative units; and as below RDs are scarcely the least used of those within BC, as each ministry/act set out different regionalization systems; the mountain range categories are different than those 'geographic regions; (better title "historical geographic subdivisions" if not for the wiki convention that would mean ones that don't exist anymore; I mean it in the sense that they have evolved historically and as part of local identities/definitions. Yes, hard to cite but the language and names are built into all other regionalization systems including MoF and MoE and Tourism as well as RDs; I just don't see RDs as relevant whether it mountains, lakes/rivers or historical articles, or anything to do with native government or culture.....they weren't invented to be rational, they were invented expressly to be expidient. And as someone noted you'd never say someone was from the Central Okanagan Regional District; you'd say from the Okanagan, from the Central Okanagan, or yo'ud specify the town/area.16:44, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

that's just it, y'see. WHICH administrative subdivisions? For the same reason "Indian reserves in X-Y RD" is not suitable nor appropriate (they are outside RD services and jurisdiction and have their own upper=tier organizations, not just TC's but also under INAC and of course by language/culture), "provincial parks in X-Y RD" is not appropriate also; they're administered and organized under the BC Ministry of Environment; when you look at research papers on mountains and lakes, then tend to use the Forest Districts/Regions in their bibliographies and citations and descriptions; same with mines and mining districts. Then there's the "attractions" issue raised on another page somewhere (I'm gonna have to find a central discussion point for all this I guess)- RDs are NOT top-tier subdivisions, they are very subordinate to other official divisions of the province; all they are is the administration of very basic urban services to outlying areas, and some collective planning and research; they are not counties, not in the Ontarian sense, not in the Nova SCotian sense, not in the US sense; counties are coalescent; health authorities/hospitals, schools, parks etc are organized and define them; this is not the case in BC at all.......the mountains system applied here (I know because I applied it, and also used it as the basis of the range system in bivouac.com and that's been carried over into peakbagger and similar sites), is a BC Ministry of Lands (or wahtever it was) in the 1950s research paper, that came to be used as a school textbook, which is why you'll find dozens of copies of it in post-sec libraries; original publ. in the '50s, Landforms of British Columbia by Stuart Holland; it's also coordinated with BC Names (formerly BCGNIS) and also by GSC and has a certain cohesion and science to it; its inleaf map is linked as a pdf on one of the BC landforms pages, maybe the main list page? Now, other than the Lower Mainland, which BC Names does have a cite for, the traditional region-names aren't in BCGNIS, though their occur in combinations in RD as well as Tourism BC names and Environment and also Forestry; but not always by the same agglomerations; Tourism's "Coast Chilcotin Cariboo" if I've got that sequence right, is the Coast, the Chilcotin, and the Cariboo - but also including the Bridge River-Lillooet Country. well, yes and no, because the Lillooet country is lumped in Thompson-Okanagan by MoE, and so on; so the various subunits need clarification and citation, yes, but they're clear enough if you come those areas; there are some vagaries like the relatively obsolete North Kootenay (Revelstoke and Big Bend), now part of the Columbia Country; the Shuswap is sometimes connected to the Okanagan, or to Kamloops; sometimes you'll hear Kamloops mentioned (wrongly) as part of the Okanagan; an argument can be made for it being part of the Cariboo, but only peripherally......so yeah the traditional regions are problematic but not as jurisdictionally-complicated as RDs......which are flexible and mutable, and not fixed (unlike counties), and have no real power or relevance unless you need a building permit or a septic tank, or are talking about a regional park or garbage collection.....they are not cities and people do not say "I'm from the Thompson-Nicola Regional District"; they may say Thompson-Nicola if not being more specific, but that pairing existed long before the RDs were invented; its northwestern area is part of the Lillooet Land District and historically part of the greater Lillooet Country (which was pretty much the Land District, and generally referred to as the Lillooet District even though that included Clinton and Clearwater or thereabouts; worht pointing out that governments created this overlapping series of regional subdivisions to prevent coalescence and cohesion for any one region, to maintain strong central control.....anyways I really don't think the RDs are valid for mountains; the Forest Districts and Regions have some more validity and more citability, and also MoF has jurisdiction (it's Lands and Forests and Natural Resource Operations now, btw); this is why I didn't want to plunge into non-range subcats; easy enough to make a hierarchy based on the ranges. But administrative units should be topical, as to which branch/ region of government is in charge of whatever; which is why hospitals and schools should similarly be organized by Health Region, etc...I've partly discussed recognizing the historic region names, which are ultimately defined by geography, with BC Names; they're up to their eyeballs and underfunded, of course....Skookum1 (talk) 07:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Had more thoughts on structuring things earlier, then found this CfDS on one, which I'm fine with as I told CDFS but they seem to be sic'ing Cydebot on BC geo articles harmonizing the main article titles to the cat; in Okanagan's case I feel it needs qualification as "region", also with Chilcotin and others that don't have full names; "Shuswap Country" and "Lillooet Country" are citable, ultimately, though......as with "Lower Mainland" (maybe that should have "region" added too?). Asked 'em to hold off Cydebot on this for a bit, hopefully can get some others to input and resolve these usages once and for all.....systematically; imposing RDs as divisions alone would be original research, because it has to have people look at the map to figure it out, when a mountain range or lake is mentioned, as I said, it would be by Forest District or general region, not the RD.....and Parks and Attractions and so on; maybe there have to be several parallel categories; I don't know. the historical reason for so many overlapping subdivisions is to prevent the growth of strong local government so that Victoria was in charge, there could be no local powers of premier=like qualities like in the days of the Gold Commissioners (who were virtually first ministers for their districts, e.g. Cariboo, Atlin, Kootenay etc among the first; this is all citable btw htough I'd have to scratch my head as to where I read it; Gold Commissioners were all powers of the government, including justice of the peace and with the power to invest constables as well as all taxataion and licensing, typically they were the Indian Agent too.....even though that was also a federal position.....anyways ther's reasons in BC history why all services aren't coordinated via regional governments, and that's foremost among them. Which is why MoF, MoE, Tourism BC, and the Municipal Act and Mines and more, don't have the same districting systems; compiling them by RD, i.e. things that don't belong to RDs, is like compiling municipalities by what Forest Region they're in, and Hospitals by Tourism region for further example. Just not done.Skookum1 (talk) 14:35, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

a propos of the RD issue, please see here.Skookum1 (talk) 15:32, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I think the best way to split this category is by creating subcats using land districts. There is a whole list of them here. This system should be more developed/organized than what it is right now so users can use it. There are 59 land districts but not even a quater of them have their own pages, categories or templates unlike regional districts or school districts. No wonder why people are using the regional districts for landforms insted of the more proper land districts. I don't think I have ever seen a land district map before to see what features are in what land district but when you search for something in BCGN it does give information on what land district it is located in. Volcanoguy 10:31, 14 February 2013 (UTC)