User talk:RVCCS

Managing a conflict of interest

Hello, RVCCS. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you have an external relationship with some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Rocky View County, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

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Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
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For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations.

Note that this notice has been sent as your user name, the acronym "RVCCS", appears that it could stand for Rocky View County Corporate Serivces (or Community Services), and a portion of one of your edits appeared to be non-neutral. Hwy43 (talk) 01:12, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Rocky View County

Hello RVCCS. I just want to explain a few things regarding this article. First, see the following sentence.

At a population of 38,055 in 2013, Rocky View County is the most populous municipal district in Alberta.

This is actually correct. Your edit summary referred to Strathcona County being more populous than RVC. While it is true Strathcona has more people, it does not hold the same status as RVC. Strathcona County is a specialized municipality, while RVC is a municipal district. Thus, RVC being the most populous "municipal district" in Alberta is accurate.

Second, see the following sentence.

Though predominantly rural in nature, Rocky View County is home to 14 hamlets, including Langdon, one of Alberta's most populous hamlets.

The point of this sentence is to present the urban aspects of RVC. You added country residential development to the sentence. Country residential development is not urban in nature and is therefore not appropriate for inclusion in this sentence. However, as country residential development is rural in nature, I have since mentioned it in a new sentence at the end of the paragraph. Hwy43 (talk) 02:51, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Third, regarding this edit of yours, no articles on municipal districts in Alberta explicitly list their rural neighbours within their "Communities and localities" sections. Instead, these neighbours are presented in the geographic location template at the bottom of the article. I'll approach others in the WikiProject Alberta community to see if we should move this template up, remove the template in favour of a list similar to what you have attempted, etc. I'll keep you apprised. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 05:53, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The County is having massive problems with people from Chestermere, Cochrane, Airdrie, Crossfield, Irricana, and Beiseker thinking they're a part of Rocky View County when they are not. Even some Calgarians think this, since the municipal office is in the city. There is confusion with the U.S. model of a fourth level of government (municipal, county, state, federal) that we do not have in Alberta (municipal, provincial, federal). Including these independent communities that have nothing to do with the County on the County's page is highly confusing, particularly in a listing that has the same relative weight as communities that are in the County. (RVCSS)

This problem is not dire as asserted. The residents of these municipalities know they have their own mayors and elected officials, and that surrounding Rocky View County has its own separate council. The ratepayers of these municipalities know that they do pay their municipal taxes to Chestermere, Cochrane, Airdrie, Crossfield, Irricana and Beiseker, not Rocky View County. This is English Wikipedia, not American Wikipedia. As such, we do not have to pander to the American reader, and we can't assume the readers assume the US model of municipal governance. No doubt the majority of visitors to this page are Canadian and even Albertan and are aware their is a different model of municipal governance in Canada and Alberta. We need to give our readers much more credit.

Also, relative weight is not an issue as the wikilinks in the sentences introducing the urban municipality and hamlet lists help differentiate. Most importantly however is the sources from the Province of Alberta. Even though urban municipalities are independent, they are considered communities of the counties/MDs per this source despite the counties/MDs not having any jurisdiction over them. Further, see Rocky View County's Location and History Profile also published by Alberta Municipal Affairs that specifically states "urban municipalities within the municipal boundary" as well as "hamlets/urban service areas within the municipal boundary". Overall, there are over 70 articles on Wikipedia for Alberta's various specialized and rural municipalities that consistently follow this format and there has not been widespread concern among the other articles.

Notwithstanding, all 70+ articles have been discretely edited to now say "The following urban municipalities are surrounded by Foo County" and "The following hamlets are located within Foo County" to further help to differentiate. Not sure if you noticed this change to the RVC article. Hwy43 (talk) 07:02, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]