Military history of Canada has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Labattblueboy (talk • contribs) 15:49, 8 July 2008
Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.
The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.
Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.
Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable)22:12, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
Link to "Historica Heritage Minute" deleted from "External Links" section of "Louis-Joseph Papineau" article
I posted a link to the "Historica Heritage Minutes" feature on "Hart & Papineau" in the "External Links" section for this article. This link, and similar "Historica Heritage Minutes" links in other articles, were deleted the next day. These Historica "Heritage Minutes" are very informative mini-documentaries about interesting people and events in Canadian history. Can someone at Wikipedia please tell me why the links to the "Hitorica Heritage Minutes" sites were deleted from the Wikipedia pages on Papineau and from similar Wiki articles?
This is the URL of one the links that was deleted:
Hart & Papineau http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10131 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Elmridge (talk • contribs) 15:28, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
It looks like User:Tedickey reverted them all, thinking they were spam. He probably thought this as you had added the links to several articles all at one time. My suggestion is to leave him a message on his talk page explaining the links - that they are documentary links from a non-commercial website, and that you feel they are a useful addition to the article. Their removal is likely only a misunderstanding resulting from several links to one website being added at once. Regards, Resolute15:53, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Hello there! I've been creating radio station articles for Quebec and in Canada as well. The most recent radio station article I created was CHDO-FM at the Dorval Airport near Montreal. You may notice that most radio stations in Canada have articles as of July 2008, however, there are quite a few red links left in Quebec and I may not complete them all since I find it hard at times to try and gather all the information on the uncreated radio station articles in Quebec. I'm sure someone out there who knows the radio stations very well in Quebec can help out and finish off creating the articles? Thanks and take care! :-) User_talk:Webfan2904:00, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Automate Deletion sorting to Candidates for Deletion
I was just over at the Australian Wikipedians' notice board, and noticed that they have set up a bot to automatically update their candidates for deletion section from the deletion sorting. Is there support to automate this process here as well? I believe we could request Maelgwnbot to perform the task. - DigitalC (talk) 23:38, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
There is currently a proposal for a bot that would notify WikiProjects when their articles have entered certain workflows, e.g. when they are nominated for deletion or for Good article reassessment.
The question is whether a relevant number of wikiprojects would be interested in using such a bot. You can find details of the functionality, and leave your comments, at the bot request page.
I am posting this message to the 20 largest WikiProjects (by number of articles), since they would be the most likely users. Thanks, --B. Wolterding (talk) 12:07, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
I was considering adding a complete list of Canada's statutes. I see no reason not to, however, as this is an exhaustive list, I wanted to get support from Canadian Wikipedians before I went ahead. NorthernThunder (talk) 03:13, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Should we address date formatting in WP:CANSTYLE? The Order of Canada talk generally seems to discourage removal of date autoformatting, and given that Canada uses variable date styles, autoformatting may be something we'd want to encourage for Canadian-related articles. Dl2000 (talk) 02:50, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Do we really have to rebut a single-editor campaign project-by-project? Autoformatting offers the possibility for people to customize their viewing. Yes, that's only for registered users, but wouldn't we prefer that everyone in the world sign up to Wikipedia? For the immediate purpose, support adding to CANSTYLE a clause supporting (but not necessarily mandating) use of autoformatting, and maybe also addressing uniformity of date styles. Franamax (talk) 03:28, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
No, I wouldn't prefer that everyone sign up to Wikipedia. Anyone can contribute, even without having an account. - DigitalC (talk) 04:37, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, I take the point - but I didn't say forced to sign up. I was thinking more in the spirit of wouldn't it be great if we could get everyone to want to sign up! Nothing at all of Wikipedia should dissuade anyone from contributing, you're absolutely right - my point was more along the lines of the convenience for users who do have a login: autoformatting is not a horrible thing, it's easily copyable and can be fixed by those more wiki-knowledgeable. I'm commenting here on the initiative to remove autoformatting, not on any movement to require logins - I guess I wasn't too clear, I often tell myself to stop typing :) Franamax (talk) 04:48, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Is it a "single-editor campaign"? It looks to me as if most editors of featured articles are going along with changes that User:Tony1 is suggesting. I find his list of "Disadvantages of date autoformatting" makes for a strong argument for removing all the date links. That Canada has varied date formats does not dissuade me. Paul Erik(talk)(contribs)15:59, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't see how this is a Canadian-style issue. MOS:DATE no longer makes a recommendation for or against wikilinking dates for the purpose of autoformatting. The next step is either to discuss on a case-by-case basis the usefulness of a particular date being wikilinked or to continue the evolution of MOS:DATE to be more clear on when dates should and should not be wikilinked. DoubleBlue (Talk)16:34, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
I have to agree with DoubleBlue. There's nothing inherently Canadian about date autoformatting, so WP:CANSTYLE isn't really the place to state a uniquely Canadian position on it. Bearcat (talk) 17:10, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
I also agree with DoubleBlue. Canadian articles should follow Wikipedia style guides on this issue. There is no reason for us to be a distinct society when it comes to date formatting. For my part, date linking serves little purpose – everyone understands both formats, and the links simply add clutter for everyone in order to cater to a very small population who are bothered by seeing dates in a different format. Ground Zero | t15:45, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
I believe it has to do with what exactly the content is. If it's just a list of ghost towns, than it's List. If it's talking about the history of Ghost Towns in Blank, than it would be just Ghost Towns in Blank. Course all the pages are presented as lists, so they should be moved. Category:Ghost towns in Canada would be used for articles about the individual towns. JQF • Talk • Contribs19:33, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
While we're ont he subject of ghost towns, I just wanted to comment that many on the BC list are still-extant towns, only greatly dwindled from their heyday; Lillooet and Hazelton are even incorporated communities and larger than they were "back then", but "back then" they were also a quite different pair of places; unincorporated but still-towns are Boston Bar and Yale. Some were never much more than promotional/speculational in nature, such as Volcanic City and Birmingham, others were transient gold and railway and logging camps, or ranches.....Skookum1 (talk) 20:11, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Important update to television station articles
I've just noted that Nelson Media, a directory of Canadian television stations which was an extremely common reference for our articles on television stations a few years ago (and whose webmaster basically folded it up soon after becoming a Wikipedian himself), has now been cybersquatted by a netspam company that's using it to sell masturbation implements. So, needless to say, any remaining links to Nelson Media as a reference in Canadian TV station articles need to be removed as soon as possible — not that I'm a prude or anything, but sex toys just aren't that relevant to Canadian television broadcasting (KinK and Bleu nuit notwithstanding, maybe.) I think I've got most of them already, but I'd appreciate it if somebody could do a quick spin through Category:Television stations in Canada just to make sure I haven't missed any. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 21:13, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
From the External links page it seems you got all the articles. It's just image sources that remain. I'm not sure how these image descriptions should be edited, as we need to specify a source. For a logo, I presume the station itself could be deemed the source. --Rob (talk) 21:29, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Question for y'all: there's been a lot of back and forth over the years as to whether radio stations in Windsor, Ontario should be directly included in the Detroit, Michigan radio template. The state of things at this particular point is that three of the Windsor stations are listed in that template, while the other 10 aren't. I'd like to ask what criterion is being used to draw that distinction — it clearly isn't reception, because CBE and CBEF are known to get at least to Ann Arbor — and what should be done about it: should the Windsor stations come off the template, on the basis that the Detroit template already contains a text link to the {{Southwestern Ontario Radio}} template, or should the ten Windsor stations that aren't on the Detroit template be added to it? Either way, the current situation isn't acceptable. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 01:00, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Hm. The same would apply with BC, particularly the Loewr Mainland/South Island, where Bellingham, Seattle and Tacoma stations are part of the daily fare, or Halifax with Boston's stations, likewise TV channels. Although I'm unaware that Seattleites listen to Canadian radio or watch Canadian TV stations much; could the reason be that only those three stations are watched in Detroit? Ratings maybe might determine inclusion?Skookum1 (talk) 05:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Bearcat, is Detroit-Windsor officially considered a media market for ratings purposes, the same way Ottawa-Gatineau is? If yes, then I would include all the Windsor stations. If not, then I would stick to the link. Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:15, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Only under the provisions of fair use (US) and fair dealing (Canada). Everything on that site is covered by Crown copyright, with use of material limited to instances of no commercial reproduction. Mindmatrix13:04, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Mindmatrix's response makes sense, but I'm not sure if current policy is quite that reasonable or logical. I know that there has been a crack down on the usage of fair use images for living persons, on the basis that if the subject is still alive then it is possible to get a free image (no matter how difficult it might be to get a free image). For example, the Knowlton Nash article contained a fair use image of Nash at the peak of his career as the CBC's main anchor -- even though Nash is long since retired, now suffers from Parkinson's and is out of the public eye (and it would be impossible to create a free image today of the man while he served at the CBC), the image was deleted on the basis that Nash is still alive and it is theoretically possible to obtain a free image of the man. Ironically, when Nash dies, then we could potentially use the deleted image of him.
Therefore, unless there is some sort of exception for political leaders, it is possible that images of living PMs would not qualify for fair use. Perhaps there are some Canadian Wikipedians with more knowledge of this issue who could shed more light on it. Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:19, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Just out of curiosity I checked recent L-G of BC articles - Steven Point (current L-G) has no image, Iona Campagnolo has what looks like a phone-pic taken at a dinner, while Garde Gardom has this template on the image, which is an official portrait from the Office of the L-G - {{Non-free fair use in}} accompanied by:
This image is of a historical figure being used as identification of the subject in an article on the figure written for non-profit educational purpose. There is no known free alternative available that depicts the figure in context during the most notable portion of his life. As a government image, it is believed there is no commercial activity surrounding this image that would be affected.
Fair use/fair dealing is meant to include instances like Knowlton Nash where, though he may still be alive, it is unlikely to get a free-use image of him during the notable period of his life. I'm sorry that I missed the deletion discussion of the image. DoubleBlue (Talk)16:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
I note that most interstate highways in the United States are divided into multiple subarticles, which give significantly more detail on the highway's route through each particular state than the primary highway article does. I'd like to know if there's any interest in reorganizing our Trans-Canada Highway article along a similar format, so that instead of its current and somewhat arbitrary breakdown into sections separated by somewhat randomly chosen cities, we would instead do a separate article on the route(s) through each province, which could then be more detailed than the current article is. Bearcat (talk) 23:31, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
The TCH article should be an overview article on this important and unique road and its national implications and the different sections articles should go into more local detail. If I understand your proposal correctly, then, the TCH article should be divided into headings/sections based on the official provincial highway sections/articles rather than by chosen city-to-city sections (like Victoria–Winnipeg) now. I could agree with that if it left the TCH article clear and rational but it is not necessarily needed to be done like that. It can just as easily be justified to break the article into sections based on the highway as a whole. The main and Yellowhead routes from Alberta through to Manitoba, for example, can be pretty easily discussed as an entire section rather than by (somewhat) artificial breaks at provincial borders. DoubleBlue (Talk)16:53, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
We don't seem to have an article on Carol Huynh, the first medallist for Canada at the Beijing Olympics...
According to the SRC commentator, she's from BC, studies at UofAlberta, and is guaranteed a silver in greco-roman wrestling by winning the semifinal. 70.51.11.210 (talk) 04:13, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
The Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada is running a candidate in the Guelph by-election, but attempting to add her to the results table by way of the CanElec4Row template isn't working — I've had to temporarily add her as a manually-coded row. To make this more clear, while it displays correctly to the user, the coding of the results table currently looks like this:
{{CanElec4-by|September 8, 2008|On Ms Chamberlain's resignation, [[7 April]] [[2008]]}}
|[[Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada|Animal Alliance]]
|Karen Levenson
|align=right|
|align=right|
|align=right|
However, the final five rows should be able to be replaced by a single {{CanElec4Row|AAEVP|Karen Levenson| | | }} row. Can somebody who knows more about the table row templates help sort this out?
I've also asked on the talk page whether there are people who are willing to help expand the subsections on each individual by-election with additional content and sources, so that they can be spun back out into their own separate articles. The only reason they were merged into a single one is that they were all short, unreferenced stubs which basically contained nothing but a one-line introduction and a results table — but they could certainly stand alone as individual articles if they were properly detailed and sourced. By comparison, British and Australian by-elections, as well as US special elections, consistently get written up as individual articles. The difference is that they typically get written up in much greater detail and depth than Canadian ones do — of the twelve by-elections covered to date in Canadian federal by-elections, 2006, Canadian federal by-elections, 2007 and Canadian federal by-elections, 2008, Outremont is the only one whose subsection is already of sufficient quality to stand alone as an independent article. But so far there's been no input at all, so any discussion or assistance would be appreciated. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 18:06, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
I wrote an e-mail to the DCB the minute I discovered they had moved from IIS/ASP to Apache/PHP and broken ALL THE LINKS. I told them I could not imagine that it could be a technical challenge for them to write a simple Apache rewrite rule so that all the old URL requests would redirect to the new URLs. I was replied:
Hello Mr. Gauthier-Pilote,
I have spoken with our Technical Services group, as well as our Web Services group, regarding your suggestions for redirect re-writes for bookmarked biographies (ASP to PhP) from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (DCB).
Your suggestions are taken under advisment, and could be implemented, however Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is currently engrossed in a site-wide conversion to Treasury Board (TB), Common Look and Feel 2 (CLF2) standards http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/clf2-nsi2/clfs-nnsi/clfs-nnsi-3-eng.asp
Our technical resources are maxed out at the moment, and unfortuanately, we are unable to estimate a timeline as to if or when we would be able to revisit this particular issue in the near future.
LAC appreciates your comments and suggestions, and apologizes any inconvenience that the DCB site updates may cause.
Regards,
______________________
Gordon Jung Project Manager / Gestionnaire de projets Web Content and Services Division / Division du contenu et des services Web Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada 395 Wellington Street/ rue Wellington Ottawa, Ontario K1N0N4 E-mail / Courriel : gordon.jung@lac-bac.gc.ca www.collectionscanada.gc.ca
Consequently, I invite you to e-mail them as well so they feel pressure from the public and actually do the job. Maybe we can even find a programmer among Wikipedia users who has real Apache experience and is able to write the rule off the top of his/her head? If we had the code, what excuse not to do it could they possibly come up with? -- Mathieugp (talk) 23:00, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Bureaucracy always has an excuse, even if they won't tell it to you. In this case it's "lack of technical resources", which is a codeword for underfunded and/or being shortstaffed (pretty much the same thing); otherwise known as "cutbacks". The other aspect of this, which speaking from experience with writing a small applescript item for my government department boss once-upon-a-time, then getting a call from BC Systems dressing me down for not being in conformity with standards (my boss stood ground for me, as she'd asked me to do it); I was an amateur and got going at something that it would have taken them an afternoon to write, if that long (took me three weeks). Point is they don't like the public making them looki bad by doing their work; they only like to outsource if there's a political benefit (Digital Collections would have benefitted greatly from a Wiki-type interface where its many political agendas and eitehr amateurish or politiciaed historical writings could be amended;consensualized). I'm not sure, is wht I'm saying, that if someone came forward with an Apache script, or offered to do it for free, that they'd approve it. Do you have any idea how many committee meetings it would have to go through? And it would have to abide by the standards mentioned above; and it may be from those standards that no script acn be written by people without a security clearance, given the sensitivity of even being networks in these evil times....what seems like a freebie can easily be made, if not itself a liability, an accusation of one....so whoever's in charge, either this guy or the head of his system branc, ain't gonna like it. Just a guess/prognostication but again speaking from esxperience....Skookum1 (talk) 04:06, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
Digital Collections links are also all toast, at least the ones that used to be; some Wiki links are from the new system; old ones will redirect, annoyingly, to the main DC page, with only "English" and "French" as buttons, not even "search" in either one. Another re-indexing script is needed, in other words.Skookum1 (talk) 04:08, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
Essentially something provided for free, or done too fast, is unpopular with people on the government payroll, and also with contractors who get the outsourcing of various tasks; these factors have influence on teh aforesaid committee meetings and personal inertias....something shelved for later is still something that can keep you hired; if it gets done you may wind up not having something to be paid for...it's one of the reasons, since ancient times, that bureaucracies have their stonewalling ways.....Skookum1 (talk) 04:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
Surprised no bio on him yet; I think it's Charles N. but can't remebnmer exactly, mabye it's not even Charles, but he's best known by "Chunky". Founder of Woodward's, or scion anyway, owned the Douglas Lake Ranch as well as the store-chain. I'm not good with bios, so leaving this here for someone who maybe is.Skookum1 (talk) 21:59, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
It's enough of a bother that the RD system has been used to "countify" British Columbia in Wikipedia, which overall I maintain is form of synthesis/original research. That being said, if they're going to exist at all they should conform to standard wordings of how they're used; to whit, when creating Nicomen Island just now, I had to make several edits to get he "communities in the RD" cat applied properly - the existing cat is Category:Communities in Fraser Valley Regional District, British Columbia which is on the one hand ungrammatical and on the other doesn't need to have "British Columbia" tagged onto it. As with the former use of "seat" in relation to the location of RD HQ offices in many articles (which I've removed and put in the British Columbian usage), not having "the" in cat titles such as the one cited is an application of usages and ideas associated with counties elsewhere; but as I've stated before, RDs are not counties and should not be spoken of or written of or used as if they were. The only rationale I've found here is that because StatsCan uses them for census divisions then, supposedly, it's enough of a rationale for Wikipedia to use them to classify everything with (parks, mountains, people, whatever). This tendency/assumption is seen in such as the absence of "the" in the created catnames, which is just plain incorrect. I put a request to move/rename the cats on Wikipedia:Requested Moves but they were taken off wichtout action, apparently because that's for articles, not categories. So where do I make application to have the necessary corrections made? All need ", British Columbia" dropped from them, and all, communities and people subcats, need "the" before the RD name.....Skookum1 (talk) 20:24, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Could you clarify what you perceive the actual difference between a BC Regional District and an Ontario county to be? Because the article asserts that there's a difference, but from the description of what an RD actually does and is, I think there's less of a real identifiable difference and more of an abject misunderstanding of what counties actually are. Bearcat (talk) 16:55, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
I'll break down the administrative differences by commenting on the quoted sections below from Census divisions of Ontario, but for starters the primary difference in usage is that statements like "a lake in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District" is artificial, unless the affairs of the TNRD are specifically involved in the story. BCers do not use RDs as region-designators in the same way that someone from Ontario might say "I'm from Suffolk County" or "there's this place in Elgin County". In the same context in BC we'd say "I'm from the Bukley Valley" or "there's this place in the West Kootenay". Somebody from Telegraph Creek is not going to say they're from the Kitimat-Stikine Regional District, they'll say they're from "the Stikine" or "the Stikine Country/District"; someone from Atlin will only refer to the Stikine Region when speaking of it as such (i.e. re para-municipal services), otherwise they'd say they're from the Atlin District/Atlin Country. Confusions on this abound; because Liard River Corridor Provincial Park is in Northern Rockies Regional District, somebody put that park - which is in the Liard River floodplain and nowhere near the Rockies - in the {{Canadian Rockies}} template; the Cariboo Regional District boundaries, while taking in the Chilcotin and part of the Nechako Country, does not include about half of the South Cariboo (which is in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District); "Cariboo" makes a lot more sense to British Columbians, likewise West Kootenay vs "Central Kootenay", a term which is of immediately recent coingage because of the RD named that way but nobody that I know of would think of/refer to Nelson or Castlegar that way, except in the sense of being central within the West Kootenay. Somebody in Port McNeill or Woss might know that they're in Mount Waddington Regional District (or Strathcona Regional District, as may be the case, I'm not sure). but they would say they're from the "North Island" (in cats in Wiki that's been adjusted to Category:Northern Vancouver Island, which happens also to be the rebranding of late used by BC Tourism. I could go on about such usages and the confusions they create, but I'll try and compare/contrast RDs and ONCounties now:
Counties have fewer responsibilities than regions, as the lower-tier municipalities (cities, towns, villages, townships) within the counties typically provide the majority of municipal services to their residents. The responsibilities of county governments are generally limited to the following: maintenance and construction of arterial roads, health and social services, and county land use planning. Counties are only found in Southern Ontario.
In RDs, the "lower-tier municipalities" within them do not provide municipal services to residents of the RD; such services as exist for Electoral Areas are provided by the Regional District. Regional Districts also do not provide arterial roads, health and social services, or other services which are delivered by government agencies outside the jurisdiction of the regional districts and which have their own regional organizations/territories. Land use planning, even, the RDs are only partially involved in as stakeholders in planning process known as Regional Management Planning Units where the Ministry of Forests and other resource ministries, as well as the Ministry of Environment/BC Parks have greater weight at the table than the RD would.
I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding what this means. Each lower-tier municipality in an Ontario county only provides services (i.e. those which are designated as being municipal rather than county responsibilities) to its own residents — so unless you're telling me that the city of Kelowna doesn't even provide any municipal services to residents of Kelowna, there's no difference between what you're saying and what the statement you're responding to says. Bearcat (talk) 02:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Counties may be as large as regional municipalities in population, but their population density is generally lower (although not as low as in a district.) Counties may include major cities, such as London, Kingston and Windsor, but these cities have generally not evolved into urban agglomerations with other communities, as in regions and "megacities".
RDs are inherently larger than "regional municipalities" (closest ON equivalent to district municipality I think; the onlly other comparison woudl be RDs themslves), because they include those municipalities (see next).
You're definitely misunderstanding here. A regional municipality is not equivalent to a district municipality, because an RM still has lower-tier municipalities under it. A regional municipality is a county on growth hormones. An RM is not contained within another level of government; it is the county/RD level of government. Of the eight RMs in Ontario, six of them are larger than any RD in British Columbia save Metro Vancouver. And even the two puny little stragglers, Oxford and Muskoka, are still larger than some BC RDs. Bearcat (talk) 02:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Counties may also include separated municipalities, communities that are considered part of the county for census purposes but are not administratively connected to the county. Municipalities are separated when regional or single-tier status is not appropriate for the municipality's population patterns, but their population is still large enough that it may adversely affect the county's ability to provide services to its smaller communities.
This is a big difference; cities and other incorporated settlements inside RDs are not just counted for census purposes, they dominate the government of the regional district and contain the bulk of its population; RD boards vary in composition depending on the number of municipalities and electoral areas within them; but generally a city will have more weight than a village or electoral area - 2 or 3 votes instead of one.
Not all cities and towns in Ontario are administratively separated from their counties. Only ones that have an extreme population imbalance between the city and the rural part of the county get that treatment (e.g. the fact that over 80 per cent of the population of Middlesex County lives in London); most towns and cities remain part of the county's administration. And again, this doesn't make counties and RDs fundamentally different things — it's just a relatively minor difference in how each provincial government chooses to structure their day-to-day governance. Counties in New York aren't governed in exactly the same way as counties in Michigan either, but that doesn't make them fundamentally different. Bearcat (talk) 02:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Summing up/recapitulating, the reality is that Wikipedia's use of RDs to classify non-municipal "objects" just doesn't work, but it has become current on the internet because of Wikipedia's usage; it's and original usage and not part of the public reality of the place/politics. RD cats should only be used for member communities of the RDs and any agencies or bodies run by the RD; Indian Reserves in particular should not be stated as being "in thet so-and-so regional district" as they're not part of the communal/political organization of the RD and do not see themselves as being part of it. That's why their use as geographic-region indicators is just a no-go in terms of BC's political/geographic reality. BC has a multi-layered system of politically-defined regions of which the RD system is only one of many, and their boundaries, particularly in remote regions, are obscure to the public and not used by the public except when they're figuring out which RD they have to watch for a building inspector from, or in which town they have to apply for their septic field license. Or when they're having their heads counted by StatsCan.....RDs also, unlike counties, do not have a history prior to 1967 when they were invented by the Social Credit government as an end-run on municipal govenrment issues and a way to pre-empt the Lower Mainland Regional Planning Authority's report (which WAC commissioned and balked at, so castrated the Lower Mainland Regional Planning Board by creating hte GVRD, DARD (Dewdney-Alouette RD), CFVRD (Central Fraeser Valley) and FCRD (Fraser-Cheam); all of which has lately been rearranged - again for reasons of political expediency rather than any sense of "natural region" - into Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley Regional District. Boston Bar and Spuzzum may be inside the boundaries of the FVRD and their citizens (except IR residents) may vote in FVRD elections, but anyone from those towns would say they're in the Fraser Canhyon, not in the Fraser Valley.....the RD name is no more useful or relevant than Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon (the federal electoral district) or Yale-Lillooet (their provincial) or, for that matter, the local Timber Supply Area or the MoE region (in that case, I think it's Lower Mainland-Sunshine Coast but might be Thompson-Okanagan....."Fraser Canyon" is so much more relevant/real and much less of a political fictino/arbitrary designation. Just because Wikipedia needs to parcel things out by "discrete boundaries" doesn't mean it can randomly pick a particulary governmemtna lunit and impose it as a classification system for non-governmental objects. To do so - to invent a classification system - is clearly original reserach. The "region" system using the historical "Country" names (not all including "Country" in the usage) are on the other hand in long historical usage and remain current in speech; the BC Parks page for Columbia Lake Provincial Park, for exampel, says it's in the East Kootenay, not in the Regional District of East Kootenay.....Skookum1 (talk) 15:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Some kind of municipal or municipal-esque division of categories is absolutely necessary, or else British Columbia categories would be unmaintainably large. How else would you propose to categorize people from a small town that isn't large enough to merit its own town-level category, or geographical features in or near that same town, or buildings in that town? You can't simply throw every topic related to such a location directly into Category:People from British Columbia or Category:Buildings and structures in British Columbia. You're also wrong if you think Ontario counties have that much more currency in day-to-day conversation as a cultural identifier than BC RDs do — with rare exceptions, Ontarians identify with their town or city first and foremost, and then with their broad geographic region (i.e. Western Ontario, Northeastern Ontario, etc.) far more than with their county or regional municipality.
The county level of government in fact has exceedingly little impact on day-to-day life except as a provider of a fairly limited range of government services and as a strictly geographic "this thing is in this part of the province, not that part" marker. You are never, in your entire life, going to have a conversation with anybody who identifies themselves as being first and foremost from an Ontario county rather than a particular town or city within that county.
Long story short, they're far less different from how you're describing RDs than you seem to think they are. The fact that the division of political responsibilities between the various levels of government isn't exactly the same in Ontario as it is in British Columbia doesn't change that fact — it speaks to different ideas about which level of government should fill which particular role, but it doesn't make them fundamentally different things.
You really sometimes seem determined to cast BC as some sui generis province so utterly unlike anywhere else in Canada that you vastly overstate minor differences into major ones, and you sometimes even invent differences that don't even exist in the first place. (You even claimed once that British Columbia speech constituted a completely unique dialect of the English language, citing as proof mainly words that are completely standard coast-to-coast-to-coast Canadian English.) From the evidence I've seen, frankly, I think you misunderstand the way things work in Ontario far more than any Wikipedian in Ontario misunderstands the way things work in BC. Bearcat (talk) 02:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
And, to repeat, RDs do not have "seats", a term which I've excised from all the RD articles but which was clearly inserted/written by the authoring editor under teh misapprehension that RDs were like counties and used similar nomenclature. There is no "seat" of an RD, only a head office located in some town within its boundaries; that town is not a "seat".Skookum1 (talk) 15:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
That's not how it was worded; in each case it was the town that was the seat; in any case, it's an "external term" for RD head offices, never ever heard in BC, it sounds downright from somewhere else; we say "the regional district office" (though "we" think that in caps); tellins us that's the same thing that Ontarians or Americans mean by "seat" and so that makes it OK to use for BC is like saying it's OK to refer to BC or Ontario as a state. It's just not the way regional district offices/headquarters are spoken of or written of; except in Wiki clones and sites which have used these wiki pages, apparently, for sources (as evinced by parallel wording). It's a wiki-invented usage that's only in currency on the net because of wiki, which is why it's important to get it right; the replication-factor of wiki articles is huge, and can create realities/terminologies where there were none, or were different, before the quasi-Heisenbergian result of the wikipedia cyclone of repeated "facts". Back to the unacceptable phrasing - it was "the seat is Burns Lake" or "the seat is Wililams Lake"; it was not "the seat is in Burns Lake" etc. which is what you're saying it means; but again that's just not teh way regional district offices are spoken of.......Skookum1 (talk) 02:00, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
The legislation or order-in-council for each RD, that created it, probably has a specific legal term or mandate for the location of the RD's head office; I don't think it's that specific in the Act/OIC's but it may be; and i stand ready to be corrected if the legal/charter language uses "seat". Likewise any major or minor BC newspaper, but again perhaps I'm wrong and you may know better; but if so it's a rare usage....in the Washington usage the meaning is the town, usually laid out in the charter/act establishing the county; the seat is the location of the head office, not the head office itself; i.e. "the county seat" means a town in the same "the provincial capital" means a city/town....and not just an office in that town. RDs also have a relatively minor bureaucratic existence, relative to the municipalities themseelves; their offices are often less important locally than the town/district hall....Skookum1 (talk) 02:02, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
I was looking for an image of Audrey McLaughlin, to improve this article, and I found this one. I'm not sure about the legality of using it. Can it be used in the article about her? NorthernThunder (talk) 02:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
I strongly doubt that it's in the public domain. If it were, it would be usable, but the proscription against fair use images of living people doesn't disappear just because you're taking a copyrighted image of a living person from Collections Canada instead of from the parliamentary website. Bearcat (talk) 02:52, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Silly question
Am I crazy for thinking that the flurry of attention on Kwame Kilpatrick right now means we should whip our article on Eddie Francis into better shape, if only because the fact that he has a minor role in the Kilpatrick mess (i.e. the tunnel meeting) means he'll probably also get more Wikihits than usual in the next few days? Bearcat (talk) 01:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
The actual convention is that if the name is unique, then the province isn't necessary. Anybody who told you otherwise is either lying or misunderstands our naming conventions. Bearcat (talk) 20:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Here is the request for move which was denied[2]. The last bit pointed me here and here I am. I did email the city requesting supporting doccuments, they didnt have any to link me but they put me in touch a city staff member to clarify the name change. Here is an except from my corispondance:
You are correct that it was sometime after 1991. In 1991 the Spaxman Plan was completed and adopted by Council. At that time, the area was still referred to as the Whalley Town Centre. It is my understanding that the terminology changed in 1993, when Surrey formally became the City of Surrey. There was evidently a corporate report to Council at that time, setting out this new terminology in keeping with the City's new status. The City is broken up into six "communities" for the purpose of data collection (population, employment, etc.) The larger Whalley area is one of these six. The City Centre is further identified as a centre within the Whalley area, in much the same way as we identify Town Centre boundaries in our other community areas. The formal City Centre boundaries were adopted in the mid '90s in conjunction with zoning by-law amendments to set city Centre standards to implement the 1991 plan, and to implement things such as reduced parking standards in the area of transit stations. We do find it useful to keep data for our larger community areas, in addition to information on the City Centre.
I did a search for documents from the city, there arent any that outright say "We changed Whalley to Whalley/City Centre" but all the documents past 1993 call it Whalley/City Centre and before as Whalley.
I'm an administrator, and consensus isn't required for a straightforward move that's consistent with WP:NC. The deed's been done already. Bearcat (talk) 21:14, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
That was really fast, I see there are some links that are still pointing to the old title, and the template used for the city page Template:SurreyBCNeighbourhoods has yet another name (directing to the old name. Is it propper to point pages to the new title or leave them to go to the page for the redirect, and to update the template for the current name? Knowledgeum : Talk 21:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Templates should be changed (I've done that now), mainly so that the template's link to the article you're reading turns into bold text instead of a link to what looks like a different topic — but as long as they still get you to the right topic, it's not considered urgent to update article links that are using a redirect instead of the primary title. In the long term, sure, make those changes as you come across them, but it's not considered an urgent task that needs to happen right away. Bearcat (talk) 21:34, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
I'll freely admit that I'm unfamiliar with Surrey but I wonder if Whalley, British Columbia isn't the best name for the article. A cursory google search seems to indicate that it's more popularly referred to as such over Whalley/City Centre. Even some of the sections on the City of Surrey's website refer to it only as Whalley and the quote above from the City staff member says that the City Centre is a centre within Whalley area. Perhaps this discussion belongs at Talk:Whalley/City Centre though. I'll double-post there. DoubleBlue (Talk)22:09, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
That's definitely what the "/" means - a combination form of two names, like the riding-name Fleetwood-Port Kells. "City Centre" used to be Surrey Centre, really the name of a shopping mall so when the Skytrain station opened it had to be "Surrey Central" rather than Centre because of some issue with other malls at the location (Surrey Place and any number of plazas); originally "Whalley" had a "taint" to it, because of the area's historical roughness and, er, unique character - gun/pawn shops, infamous bars, tattoo parlours, mixed in with regular middle-class shopping and a certain kind of derelict-car frontyard decoration in the surrounding residential areas ;=| it's cleaned up much, I better add, but the point is that "Surrey Central" acquired a similarly tainted cachet, just by being popular as a street slang, so Whalley was reinstated; but Whalley takes in a wider area than the commercial core of what's not "City Centre" (as if it were the centre of Metro Vancouver....which geogrpahically it's actually rather close to being); the meaning is "Whalley and/incl. City Centre"; in combination Whalley/City Centre it's a formal district/neighbourhood-unit within the municipality of Surrey's organizational system; but Whalley is the name of teh area, City Centre is something that was built there. This all boils down to the fact that "Whalley" is by far the most common usage for this area, unless someone's referring specifically to a certain plaza/building there; Gateway is also in the same league as City Centre, though not part of the formal district name. I don't know the Surrey formal neighbourhoods well, but I do know that this area has been Whalley for nearly all of its post-indigenous history; the next most common name for hte area would be "North Surrey" which includes Guildford (E) and Bridgeview (N/NW) and Hjorth Road (what's across the freeway from Guildford).Skookum1 (talk) 01:37, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
The election has now been called, so as with all elections we'll need to keep a close eye on the main article, party articles and candidate articles to make sure everything is conforming to policy (read: NPOV) and to watch out for likely edit wars.
Of course it will all be nothing compared to what happens on election night, October 14th, as packs of anon editors update ridings according to who won the first 1% of the vote, so mark that date on your calendar too. -Royalguard11(T) 18:11, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Indeed. I'd like to remind everybody to watch especially carefully for unelected candidates with unreferenced articles that are essentially copied and pasted directly from their own campaign websites. Election candidates are only entitled to their own articles if they're already notable for one reason or another, or if they receive significant press coverage during the campaign (i.e. if somebody gets national coverage for saying something dumb about a social issue, or gets dumped for committing a crime) — but if their candidacy is their only claim of notability, then they only get a short blurb in a merged list.
There's so much mess from past elections that still hasn't been properly cleaned up — so let's do our best to keep things clean right off the bat this time. Bearcat (talk) 18:39, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
I have two ideas, but both would go against some established protocols and policies we have. We could preemptively create-protect all potential candidate articles (based off of official party websites & Election Canada), referring people in the summary to somewhere like here telling them not to create pages of candidates because they aren't notable unless they win office. A second option would be for us to create all the articles as redirects to the proper candidate article (like Liberal Party candidates, 2008 Canadian federal election) and protect those. We could get rid of the orphan ones after.
I'd prefer if we preemptively create redirects to the appropriate party candidate lists. We have to be especially careful of situations in which a candidate has a common name, and for which an article or dab page already exists. We also have to ensure that someone doesn't decide to replace the redirect with a bio. Mindmatrix23:54, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I wasn't clear there. What I meant to say was create the redirects and then protect the redirects (like full), obviously not the party-candidate-2008-election articles. If there is already a page, then regular wiki-rules apply (if they create an article overtop, we revert it, possibly transferring the info the the election article). -Royalguard11(T) 04:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, I don't really like that idea. Create the redirects, put an editorial message that unelected politicians are not normally notable; fine but prohibiting an article without just cause is a bit too preemptive. There are notable people who run for election but are not elected. If someone can create a well-sourced, NPOV, NOR article on a candidate, that should be encouraged not put up blocks and special requests to do so. Protecting a redirect is done where an article has already been discussed as not appropriate and is repeatedly created anyway. DoubleBlue (Talk)04:29, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Agree with DoubleBlue, disagree with protecting the redirects. The election may be a vehicle for a number of good biographical articles to be created so we shouldn't protect unless there is an imminent need in specific cases. I like the idea of creating the redirects and, if we're creating them, then they'll already be on our watchlists, right? So it should be easier to identify spammy articles and revert them back to the redirects. justinfr (talk/contribs) 11:31, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
That works too I guess. The idea is to have to avoid all the extra AFD's that'll come with a bunch of spammy bios, so that should work too. If there hasn't been anything added about the candidate by elections end and they aren't elected, we could get rid of the redirects after, no? -Royalguard11(T) 19:32, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
It's the same rationale as the one behind bolding the article subject's name at the top of an independent article. Nothing special beyond that; it just hasn't been applied consistently across the whole list as of yet. Bearcat (talk) 06:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
OK. I fixed it by taking out all the bolding. At the same time I tried to make all the listings the same style. The NDP one had a table in it for some of the ridings which I removed due to size issues. CambridgeBayWeatherHave a gorilla20:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Article feedback
Hello, I hope this is the right place to make this request. Usually, I patrol newpages or watch for vandalism, but I made my first attempts at creating articles recently. They're a few articles related to Manitoba justice issues: Taman Inquiry, Martin S. Minuk, Raymond E. Wyant, and Conditional sentence (Canada). I also wrote this section Winnipeg Police Service#Controversies. Just wondering if anybody from the area would like to provide any feedback or suggestions for improvements or future directions. I know the bios are short--I'm more focused on the inquiry and police pages.
Could I ask that a few more editors add Sainte-Marie among the Hurons to their watchlists? It seems to be an unusually common target for anonymous-IP vandalism, for some reason I'm not too clear on, so it probably needs a bit of extra babysitting. References need to be upgraded to footnote format, too, but that's a secondary concern. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 01:46, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm not 100% sure whether it gets vandalized more than seemingly higher-profile articles, or whether it just seems like more than usual because so few people had it watchlisted that I was the only one ever catching vandalism on it, but every couple of months there's a burst of anon IPs who blank large sections of the article persistently for a few days and then disappear. Go figure. Bearcat (talk) 19:58, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Canada-related
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We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot23:06, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Before making any nominations to the Release Version team, let's discuss which articles we believe, as a project, need to be included. I've started a list of potential candidates below; please update the list. We should compare to the Release Version team's overall list, to ensure we're not nominating articles already included as part of other projects. Mindmatrix01:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
I made a recent to the page for Gerry Ritz (re: today's events regarding his comments about the Listeriosis outbreak) and it seems that, for some unknown reason, the succession box and categories below have disappeared since I saved the page. NorthernThunder (talk) 01:59, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
The Quebec City provincial electoral districts should be created to subcat for Quebec City electoral districts. The other categories I have requested seem to have corresponding provincial electoral districts. NorthernThunder (talk) 04:48, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
YMMV, I suppose, but for what it's worth I don't think we should be categorizing electoral districts by the individual city that they serve. For one thing, the phrase "(City) electoral districts" is much too easily confused with municipal wards — any such category should more properly be named "(Federal/Provincial) electoral districts serving (City)". I'm also not particularly sold on why it's necessary to categorize electoral districts by which city they're located in — why isn't it sufficient for the electoral district and city articles to simply text link to each other? Bearcat (talk) 14:23, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
I think the articles are OK, since they can deliver far more detail than categories could. The only advantage to the categories is that they can then be sub-categorised to the city cat too, but I think an article within that cat (such as Vancouver (electoral districts)) could serve just as well. Mindmatrix16:38, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Also to note that once an article is "inside" such a cat, it won't be apparent that the articles in that cat may include areas not in the city in question, especially in the case of historical ridings. Dewdney (electoral district) and Chilliwhack (prob Chilliwhack (electoral district) as that may redirect to regular ol' Chilliwack) were "descendant" ridings of the original New Westminster riding - not New Westminster City, which was the city-only, but essentially the whole of the New Westminster Land District (rough equivalent would be the combined GVRD/Metro Vancouver, FVRD and Sunshine Coast RDs) which was entirely rural/wilderness (in fact, much of it still is because of hte uninhabitability of much of its terrain). The Vancouver ridings are ultimately "child" ridings of the....Dewdney riding I think, i.e. ultimately of New Westminster District (the original/temporary name from 1871)...one of New West's four original "children" anyway; and child-ridings of the CoVancouver riding(s) include West Van, North Van etc. Nanaimo is aonther agglomceration - I think I made Nanaimo (electoral districts), and also Vancouver Island (electoral districts), which obviously overlap. Point is taht ridings assocaited with a city are not just city ridings; in Vancouver's case they now are, but nearly all other urban riding-areas in BC include non-city areas (e.g. Esquimalt-Point Renfrew, Saanich and the Islands, Prince George-Omineca and variants.....also note, in passing, that Vancouver (electoral district) was not a CoV riding, a but Vancouver Island one.....Skookum1 (talk) 17:35, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, that confused me, too, but as far as I know there isn't actually any airport in the Thunder Bay District called Cambridge. But then again, it wouldn't be the first time I've ever seen something on Google Maps that had me mystified. Bearcat (talk) 18:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Thank you to Bearcat
Most Canadian Wikipedians have come across the contributions of User:Bearcat but I doubt most have noticed that he has reached an impressive achievement as the first Wikipedian to exceed 200 000 edits (List of Wikipedians by number of edits). We are fortunate to have such dedicated and prolific contributors as Bearcat and User:SimonP amongst the Canadian workgroup and they have helped make the Canadian coverage in Wikipedia among the best. Cheers! DoubleBlue (Talk)17:38, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Congratulations Bearcat, it’s with your tremendous efforts and keen eye that has made Wikipedia what it is today. A great achievement indeed; to reach 200,000 edits. --HJKeats (talk) 17:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Oh, har. I got there largely by spending the last two days creating a whole lot of redirects from regional election templates to the candidate lists in a semi-futile attempt to stave off the creation of dozens of copy-pasted campaign brochures. (A process which is far from done, I might add, and I could really use a bit of help...) Bearcat (talk) 18:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
The IP user in question is now blocked, and apparently admitting this was a hoax.[3] Also the IP involved appears to be going through Saint John, New Brunswick St John's, NL, not Ottawa [4]. Dl2000 (talk) 19:24, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
This is being played out in Talk:Toronto where it should be. But generally speaking, montage pictures seem too busy and complex for the confines of a settlement infobox and probably should only be considered when there is disagreement over which of multiple pictures are worthy of the infobox. Dl2000 (talk) 03:34, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
I just called my cable company (Persona) and asked about HBO Canada. They told me that HBO Canada would completely replace TMN because (her words) "it's the more popular name". I can't believe that TMN would surrender their name so easily, assuming this is true. NorthernThunder (talk) 21:06, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't take one Persona customer service rep's word for it unless and until we can find sources to support it. According to the current media sources, HBO Canada is going to be one channel within the TMN/Movie Central multiplexes, so we certainly need to stay with that unless and until TMN or Movie Central themselves indicate otherwise. Bearcat (talk) 17:32, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
Speaking of which, though, as things currently stand, while the content about HBO Canada currently exists in both The Movie Network and Movie Central, the title HBO Canada has been created as a redirect to TMN. I don't think that's appropriate (it sort of sets up a POV about which of the two services is more important), but since it's supposed to be one channel within the TMN and MC multiplexes rather than a standalone channel, I'm also not entirely sure that it's notable enough in its own right to stand alone as an independent article, either. Any opinions about how we should handle this? Bearcat (talk) 17:52, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm trying to decide whether, in light of last week's fire, the Sudbury Steelworkers Hall could be considered sufficiently notable for its own article. I'm a bit ambivalent about it, because I'm not sure whether my own born-and-bred-in-the-Sudz familiarity with the building is colouring my judgement regarding its actual encyclopedia-worthiness, so I'd like to ask if anybody else has an opinion one way or the other. Bearcat (talk) 17:40, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
Were there other significant events in the building's history other than the fire? Does the building have a historic designation e.g. under Ontario Heritage Act? Since building fires are commonplace, that factor alone might not survive an AfD. It could be safer to include this in Greater Sudbury perhaps under an Architecture or Neighbourhoods section. Dl2000 (talk) 03:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
I can't believe that there isn't an article about one of the greatest human rights abuses in Canadian history (not my words but those of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples). I refer to the forced relocation of scores of Inuit from northern Quebec to the High Arctic so the federal government could claim sovereignty during the Cold War. I have created a draft here User:BrainyBabe/Sandbox and have been inserting variants of the text into several articles, e.g. History of Nunavut. I am not terribly proficient with the niceties (as you can see from my being unable to rename the sandbox page). So I am asking for help:
1. With a suitable title for the article (I may go ahead and create it in this burst of wiki-enthusiasm, but renaming is on the cards)
2. With content
3. With suggestions for where links to it should go
4. With more sources
5. With anything else helpful.
I'd like to note that the more general article Human rights in Canada, while certainly a good idea on BrainyBabe's part, currently contains only a section on the human flagpoles incident and a see-also link to Canadian residential school system. The topic itself is obviously something we need on Wikipedia, and the article has the potential to become an excellent showcase piece for Wikiproject Canada — but it really needs some deep expansion to get there. Bearcat (talk) 17:38, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Thank you Bearcat for your prompt attention! I was even more astonished that there was no article Human rights in Canada. Apparently it was deleted once for being full of emptiness -- literally random typing. I hope my re-start doesn't get pressured into AfD just because I had to start it lopsidedly. I do hope lots of editors join in. BrainyBabe (talk) 18:11, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
I am concerned about the title of the article Human flagpoles, which I think is not that intuitive for people searching for the information, nor perhaps of totally of NPOV. It also contains some statements that need some clearly sourcing, e.g. the part about the dependency on government programs, and that there is a cause and effect with the relocation. I personally doubt it: as someone with considerable interest and experience in the North, the same dependency applies to many (non-relocated) peoples in the North. And interestingly enough (OR warning) Grise Fjord has, I believe, a very, very low crime rate compared to other Northern communities. --Slp1 (talk) 18:36, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
I too am not entirely happy with the title, as I said in the first post, but it was the best I could come up with at short notice. Any suggestions? As for sourcing...I think that too was from MM's book. BrainyBabe (talk) 19:11, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
"Inuit relocations" is probably too broad of a title and would cover much more than just those two relo's (though "Human flagpoles" could redirect into it). I've noted my concern about balance at the article talk. Franamax (talk) 19:22, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
hello all, i like to know what is the relationship between Thomas Skinner and Thomas Skinner, Jr..
can't be major Skinner's father since he lived well beyond 1818. so i think Thomas Skinner may be major Skinner's uncle whom he mentioned in his autobiography as a military officer, but not his name.
thanks--chanakal (talk) 03:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
In my opinion a single flag or coloured element may be used to visually identify this as a Canada-related navbox, but a serious encyclopedia shouldn't be festooning interface elements with national symbols. I don't like the communist imagery used in navboxes at USSR#External links, and I'm glad that the editors of Nazi Germany and Nazi Party haven't gone overboard. —MichaelZ. 2008-09-18 21:45 z
I wouldn't necessarily object to using a bit of red in Canada-related navboxes — but {{Canada topics}}, to my eyes, looks like something that should be on a vat of toxic chemicals. I'd recommend toning that red down somewhat, frankly, not making other navboxes look more like it. Bearcat (talk) 22:42, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Yikes!
Hard to tone down the colour without making it look pink, brick, or wine, and it's arguably wrong to use any colour different from the flag's to represent the national symbol anyway.
I think the little flag is sufficient to identify the topic, and it will look professional next to other navboxes. I took the initiative and purged the red scourge, but see this diff for an example. —MichaelZ. 2008-09-18 22:54 z
Yeah, one option would be to leave the flag on but change the colour of the template itself away from red. Another option would be to leave the title bar in red, but change the subheadings to a different-but-compatible colour. But I'd also note, for example, that the colour we use on political templates to represent the Liberal Party is a much softer, more pinkish red than the one that the party actually uses, so we're not necessarily bound to a strict shade match. Bearcat (talk) 18:39, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree with PrinceOfCanada's idea to have a consistent format and colour scheme for all Canadian templates, but I do also agree with others here that the use of red is a little excessive. The idea of a red title bar only (with flag, of course) seems workable. --G2bambino (talk) 02:57, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
That would still make it stand out over just about any other interface element of Wikipedia, including the project logo, main navigation, and page heading, and any content including photos, maps, logos, or other graphics.
How about red text on white? Just a maple leaf may be more distinctive than the tiny flag. We could clip one from the flag, image:Flag of Canada.svg, or make a solid red graphic from a good photo, image:Canadian Maple Leaf.JPG.
This example will stand out just fine in Wikipedia. Pretend the leaf doesn't have a background:
The Canadian government's graphical standards recommend using pure red #f00 for the actual flag logo.[5] They use this for the flag and leaf, and it looks like a flag back-lit by the sun. But for their main-page graphical elements they use a darker #ccf—with discretion—which looks more like the colour of the flag under normal lighting. I've done the same in the example above. —MichaelZ. 2008-09-25 01:18 z
You know, even this is more red than the government generally uses, for example on its wordmark. If you ask me, nothing will draw the eye better than a single red-on-white leaf or flag in a monochrome setting. Tarting up the template just distracts from the main visual element.
Think of it this way: you don't represent the country by painting the whole parliament building red, you do it by flying a splendid flag on the Peace Tower. —MichaelZ. 2008-09-25 01:43 z
[undent] No moose and Mountie, with a Rockies backdrop? Just kidding. Worth noting maybe that {{WikiProject Oregon}} uses the beaver on their templates, by way of their state seal and mae-tag the Beaver State. Also should note the politics involved in maybe keeping the Govto f Canada symbol off FN-related templates; OldManRivers, who's on egtende wiibreakright now, averred that even {{Coast Salish in British Columbia}} vs. {{Coast Salish}} was a political/cutlrual gaffe, as the border is only our conception and still outside the native polity in many ways; to add the maple leaf on the {{Kwakwaka'wakw}} or its cousins; also note his selection of black as the theme colour on at least Northwest Coast peoples, or that was in the intent, it's not been applied across the region's templates; {{Skwxwu7mesh}} I think he also embellished with an image; there are other examples, particaurly around the Puget Sound peoples and some in teh Southwest, that use national logos or images to flavour-up the template, at least in its opened form. The sere fine-line mostly white with red highlight and modernesque look I'm not particular about; is tehre something that could make it less....corporate? The government of Canada logo btw was one of the first big marketing/ad contracts of its kind, and was originally associated very much with the Liberal Party's own design scheme; as in other things I'm old-fashioned and prefer the coat of arms, but then I'm a neo-monarchist too :-) If there's a maple leaf can it maybe look less like te government one? - the ones on the penhy7, more natural-llooking? Kind of like the one on military sleeves. Just an idea, and a question of taste rather than POV, as the Liberal legacy assocaited with the government design is now in the past.....the black signs are a trip, though, the black-and-white maple leafs and particular government typeface; architecturally both inobstrusive and dominating, interesting...anyway is there anything less severe looking I don't mean to denigrate the very pro-looking graphics, I'm just concerned about the opitcs; it'll look like a canadian.org or historica.ca or other para/non-governmental heritage site and others of their kind (though again their maple leaves are not government-style maple leaves). I know the one in the second image is not quite the same as the govt one in the flag logo, but it's close; why not "leaf it up"? BTW at least WP:Oregon has the beaver on its seal, and {{{WikiProject California}} a bear on theirs, but {{WikiProject Washington}} is stuck with George Washington and that haircut of his;. My own tastes would be for the centre of teh coast of arms, the shield itself - as on the old flag, or in more elabvorate form on the 50 cent piece (my fave), but that's the Old Canada, not hte New One that the new flag represents; maybe the coat of arms could be used on History templates, though? Just thoughts, no graphics handy or skills to offer, just design/theme considerations....probably {{Hudson's Bay Trading Company, L.P.}} has the full company escutcheon, bearers and motto and all, on that template; not sure about the NWC one; similarly Geography-related topics could maybe use a little more landscape flavour etc.02:41, 25 September 2008 (UTC)Skookum1 (talk)
A propos of nothing, it took me four tries to find the template that Skookum1 actually meant to link to for HBC. Can we please rename that to something a bit more straightforward? Bearcat (talk) 02:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Sorr didn't know that was its name; I've never added it, just seen it displayed. The other one maybe goes to the mercantile/retail company, not hte historical operations?
Oh, it ain't your fault, I'm making fun of whoever named it that way in the first place. As far as I know, though, this is the only HBC template we have right now. Certainly it's the only one I saw on any HBC-related articles when I was trying to find it. Bearcat (talk) 03:08, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
an d taht's not the HBC template I'm thinking of; I know I've seen it somewhere, I'll go looking on various pages, maybe it's only on some; know iI saw it somewhere.....Skookum1 (talk) 03:16, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Can someone link to the HBC template, and an Oregon template with a Beaver?
The functional requirement is to make a 25-pixel tall collapsed template visually identifiable (I cheated, and nudged it to 30 px so the leaf would have a nice setting and the template would be subtly distinctive). The coat of arms and shield aren't designed to be used this way. But they incorporate the leaf as a symbol, and it is recognizable throughout the world.
If someone can find an old-fashioned red maple leaf, that would be great. Maybe one can be extracted from the old air force roundel or some other source. I can create a leaf myself, but it will probably be a few days before I have time. —MichaelZ. 2008-09-25 14:23 z
If it must be red text, then just the title, and not the interface elements in the corners (I just adjusted my first proposal above this way). —MichaelZ. 2008-09-27 06:39 z
Thank you. I don't really like the grey, though.. surely one of you can suggest something better? Also I think there should be some kind of delineation between the titlebar and the rest of the box, but I'm not sure what parameter that is. Prince of Canada t | c07:19, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Followup question: once we land on a version (keeping in mind First Nations issues as mentioned above), is it possible to set the style as a template, to make updating all the Canada templates easier? Prince of Canada t | c07:38, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I think the default groupstyle is better. I think the only way for delineation is to have differing colours; perhaps a very light grey (like f6f6f6 ) in either the title or list section.
Yes, you could just use the navbox template in the Canada navbox template and select different default settings. Probably a wise idea. DoubleBlue (Talk)07:49, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
[De-indent] Yes, the black text is better, though I do prefer the stylised maple-leaf for some reason; it just looks crisper. But, I don't feel strongly about it. The grey should definitely be lighter, though; more a warm grey like I used. I would avoid brighter colours in that area; the clean look of the template comes from a minimal use of colour, though very Canadian ones.
Is there any way to make the thin line around the perimiter in red? Just something subtle if the text is going to be black. --G2bambino (talk) 21:02, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
I think the red lines are attractive, but much too busy and distracting for the reader. I'd rather see grey tones filling the title boxes on the left. —MichaelZ. 2008-10-04 03:43 z
I received the following message on my talk page. I just wanted to let everyone know so that what changed need to be made to keep the image will be made properly so I don't make any mistake that leads to the image being deleted.
Image copyright problem with Image:Sandra Oh at 28th Genie Awards.png
Thanks for uploading Image:Sandra Oh at 28th Genie Awards.png. You've indicated that the image is being used under a claim of fair use, but you have not provided an adequate explanation for why it meets Wikipedia's requirements for such images. In particular, for each page the image is used on, the image must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Can you please check
That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for each article the image is used in.
That every article it is used on is linked to from its description page.
This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --FairuseBot (talk) 04:25, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Promo images such as Image:Sandra Oh at 28th Genie Awards.png are classified as non-free by Wikipedia standards, even though they may be widely distributed for press or promotional use. WP would expect that a free image of the awards be used if possible. If a fair use image needs to be used, then a rationale is required for each article the image is used, often specified by using a template like {{non-free use rationale}}. Dl2000 (talk) 18:43, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Northwest Territories
As many of you already know, our Yukon-related categories were recently standardized on the form "Yukon" without the word the in front. I'd also like to request that we review the situation for our Northwest Territories categories as well, since they're also currently using a mix of "Northwest Territories" in some cases and "the Northwest Territories" in others. I don't think there's ever been as clear a consensus about which form is preferred as there has been for Yukon categories, and I certainly can't claim to know what's considered standard. Thus, I'd like to request that we revisit what the naming convention should be for NWT-related categories, so that they can be standardized on one form or the other.
I don't have a problem if "the" is included or the "the" is deleted. To me it just seems kind of wierd because why should "the Yukon" be changed to "Yukon" if "the Northwest Territories" stays as "the Northwest Territories"? I always see them as "the Yukon" and "the Northwest Territories". Black Tusk (talk) 23:38, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
I'd agree that a lot of people do say "the Yukon" rather than just "Yukon", but Wikipedia isn't necessarily bound by common usage in a category name. There was a review of the Yukon situation, and it came to the conclusion that per the Yukon Act and other official usage, Yukon-without-the is now the preferred format even though most people still use the older style in casual speech. It's rather comparable to the Ukraine situation, actually: people still quite commonly refer to the country as "the Ukraine" in day-to-day conversation, but Ukraine-without-the is the accepted standard in formal and encyclopedic contexts. IMO, though, it's far more important that NWT categories be internally consistent among themselves, and that Yukon categories be internally consistent among themselves, than that NWT and Yukon categories be consistent with each other. YMMV, I admit. Bearcat (talk) 19:24, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
I distinctly remember having this discussion sometime in 2005 (or perhaps 2006). At the time, it was decided that using "the" was the preferred choice for both territories. Unfortunately, the result of that discussion wasn't codified into any of the standards (or maybe it was, but got lost in the continual cycle of revisions to the style guide). I'll see if I can find the discussion. Mindmatrix23:54, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't know how much weight this carries, but I work for Northern News Services, and our guidelines for referring to it are as "the Northwest Territories" or "the NWT". Does anyone know if the GNWT has a guideline for what format they use in Statutes or official documentation? -YK Timestalk20:19, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Judging by their own website, the government typically refers to itself as Government of the Northwest Territories. Bearcat (talk) 14:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Navbox/infobox consistency, deuxième partie
Hi all. I'm guessing many of you have probably seen my username cropping up all over watchlists like a bad rash. I'm most of the way through making all the Canadian navboxes consistent, as well as any infoboxes I run across. The criteria I've been using are basically: applicable across Canada (not regional), not changing styles dictated by larger WikiProjects.
However, one user pointed out here that there is a (maybe minor? your call) issue with lack of other identifying images in the templates. So, on to step two of the process:
If people here agree, I would suggest adding a second image to the right-hand side of the titlebar that pertains to the article in question. So maybe something like for music boxes, and for law-related, and for monarchy boxes, etc etc etc. What do all of you think? I'm not 100% sure I like it, maybe placement is the issue. But on pages with multiple Canada boxes, it would be a quick visual differentiator.
I am big believer in less is more, and that a clean, clutter-free template is preferable to and looks better than one with unnecessary icons. I think the simple maple leaf, by itself, is far more attractive. Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:43, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I think I'm with you on the second image being unnecessary, upon reflection. Tome to go reformat all the Supreme Court boxes... Prince of Canada t | c23:11, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
What about using some of hte little logos on the stubs, e.g. {{BritishColumbia-park-stub}} and {{BritishColumbia-stub}} and such, I don't mean throughout hte template, just on teh masthead; as Prince of Canada knows, I feel that mountains are as thematically important in a mountain range tmple, namely {{Canadian Rockies}}. Certain kinds of templates span wikiprojects, in tehis case WP:mountains (even though there are few WP:Mountains templaes at present). When they do, as with the law example above or in teh case of any "crossover relevance" with other wikiprojects/tpics, especially if there are symbolic themese there already; I'm not asking for complexity, only a dual-icon masthead, the maple leaf and whatever else; what to do in t eh case of Canadian Rockies I'm not sure; it's adeparture in colour from other geographic/mountain tempaltes, that's for sure....is it just about being Canadian, or is it also about being the Rockies?Skookum1 (talk) 00:08, 5 October 2008 (UTC).
BTW I don't mean to sound extreme about this, but I'm curious about the use of the stars and stripes and/or red white and blueon US Wiki templates, likewise Britain's and France's; national templates do seem to feature flags, I'm trying to remebmer shat else?Skookum1 (talk) (and Russia's and...a buncha othres...I'm curious now about templates, if any for things like the Bavarian Alps and others to see if the Bavarian/German flag /emblem is used....maybe...Whiel it's a beautiful design, I do ahev t o say it reminds me very much of Air Canada's business lounges and various bank investment publications; in that sense ,very Canadian, or Canadian asd efined by its dominant metropole. All very modrne and all; I guess my tastes are just more rustic and heritage-oriented; but I hope {{History of Canada}} can ahve something a little more flavourful; again, it's a beautiful design, as design ;maybe something as simple as a change of line-colour (or flag-clolour?) for {{Parks in Canada}}{{History of Canada}} and the like (Heritage Sites templat etc); green for parks, brown trim for heritage/history etc; extra icons don't ahve to be the solution - I juts think here has to be one. Canadian Rockies is a mountains template primarily...just some thoughts.00:22, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Template:Canadian Rockies looks kind of broken to me. When collapsed, it has a subdued appearance, but when I open it I see some brilliant red lines screaming out. Then there's an extra red rule over the content area, but for some reason it doesn't carry around on the other three sides. Finally, the secondary titles under parks are glaringly contrasting, with roman text instead of bold, a grey toned background and for some reason thick white rules separating them where the primary titles have thin double red rules. Looks like the committee-produced horse, to me. —MichaelZ. 2008-10-05 00:42 z
"Screaming" is a bit of an exaggeration, no? I agree that the grey used is too dark (I mentioned this earlier), and maybe the rules around the secondary titles need some finessing, but I think the rest is quite restrained and elegant. --G2bambino (talk) 05:26, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Personally, I'm with G2bambino on this one. I quite like the appearance overall, though I'd tweak the grey a bit too. Bearcat (talk) 20:45, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
This is such a misdirected effort: if breaks consistency over wikipedia, and adds un-necessary html markup that contravene with WP:accessibility#Style and markup. Let's stick to defaults as much as we can, and also keep things as simple as possible. The extra html does not add any kind of content and only loads up the template. Thank you. --209.115.232.65 (talk) 15:02, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
While the overall formatting (e.g. using the navbox template rather than manually coding each individual template) should be consistent across all templates, Wikipedia doesn't really have any sort of requirement that templates need to keep the exact same colour and visual appearance. And simply making use of style switches that are already coded right into the base template isn't the same thing as introducing unnecessary HTML coding. I don't see this effort as unreasonable or misdirected, personally. I think the default blue is rather ugly, actually. But maybe that's just me. Bearcat (talk) 20:43, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
It's not just you; I find the default insipid. As for the grey.. ehhh. Too light and the whole template looks like a bunch of white screen. But someone has said they can write a simple bot (and go through approval of course) for making any changes rapidly. Prince of Canada t | c20:52, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
And so we produce circuses like {{Hamilton}}, as everyone starts implementing their own artistic vision. And all that without adding any kind of content. --Qyd (talk) 14:21, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
From: Gerrit Verstraete, founder Drawing Society of Canada.
This a personal request.
Claire Cellucci was a Canadian fashion model and actress who appeared in one or two eposides of "Due South" as well as numerous fashion / product shoots.
Her birthyear is listed as 1968, with the disturbing news she died in 2006, in Canada, at age 38.
Is this the same Claire Cellucci, fashion model? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gverstraete (talk • contribs) 23:39, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
The article List of universities in Ontario is currently at FLC; since the article falls under this WikiProject's scope, I am posting this notice here. It needs more comments, so if you've got time, please post comments on the FLC. If you do not believe that the article can be improved further, feel free to Support it; otherwise, if you find issues with the article that are actionable, then please Oppose it. Thanks in advance! GaryKing (talk)04:17, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
Why are most Canada-geo-stub templates say location insted of geography? Not all geography-related subjects are "locations". Earthquakes are geography-related but are not locations. I know this project too often seems to be restritive by way of insisting on national standards that play down important content, and sometimes relevent perspectives, that are outside the supposed national norm; this applies in all things, not just this project. I can also see this because most geography-related subjects on Canadian geography are stub and start class. Therefore this project should smarten up and the geo-stub descriptions are most likely errors. Black Tusk (talk) 01:38, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand your entire rant here but if you can improve our coverage on geography topics, go for it. I suppose the Canada-geo-stub should just say geography-related. DoubleBlue (Talk)03:27, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Black Tusk, it would be helpful is you could kindly review WP:AGF, and perhaps future posts could focus on the substantive issues minus the insults. Thanks. Skeezix1000 (talk) 15:20, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Uh, Skeezix1000 how are my suggestions above insults? My suggestions are common sense and simple. Geography of Canada is vast and diverse and therefore it is a major topic. Yet I haven't seen any improvements to major Canadian geography articles (except my own) since I joined Wikipedia in 2006. And having at least one user working on all this stuff is surely not enough. Look at most lengthy Canadian-related geography articles and you will realize it's mostly me expand them. If this keep up I'm better off retiring and there would be nothing..... Black Tusk (talk) 19:51, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Mostly you have a good point, Black Tusk, but telling people to "smarten up" isn't really the best way to express it. I can understand that it seems at times like far too few people are actually working to improve our articles, and far too many are perfectly content to let badly written, unreferenced stubs stand untouched forever and ever — I've felt that way myself at times, too. But personalizing it into a statement about this whole wikiproject is going a bit too far, because there are a lot of us around here who take our work on Wikipedia a lot more seriously than that. Bearcat (talk) 20:57, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Note from WikiProject Stub sorting - geo-stubs are always specifically about locations, not about geography in general (which uses other stub types) - they are not for events relating to locations, which are by their very definition historical. As such, earthquakes NEVER get geo-stub designations. There is a good case for making a separate stub type for earthquake events, and I shall be making that suggestion at WP:WSS/P - but under no circumstances should geo-stub be used on such articles. Note that I have also changed the wording of {{Canada-geo-stub}} back to the correct wording. Grutness...wha?22:06, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Do a simple google search ("earthquake geography") and you will find descriptions. There's areas in Canada that experience continouous earthquake activity. See the1985 Nahanni Earthquakes for example which would not be a 100% history article. Black Tusk (talk) 00:28, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
And areas of where I live (New Zealand) are the same. But these events are just that - events. There's no way that you can describe an earthquake as a location, therefore it doesn't get a geo-stub. And for articles in which the title starts with a date (such as 1925 Charlevoix-Kamouraska earthquake) clearly relate to specific historical events. Grutness...wha?21:49, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
Then why are geo-stubs just for geographical locations and not for geography itself? I'm sure saying "geography" or "geographical" insted of "geographical location" would make the stubs more useful. There's probably other geography-related things that arn't locations either. This stub change will possibly have an impact on the Geography of Canada WikiProject as well because Canadian geography stubs and categories are part of the project and includes earthquake articles.... As for earthquakes articles that start a date, how are you supposed to discribe a continuing event - Nahanni earthquakes? Black Tusk (talk) 01:40, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
You're right - there are plenty of things that aren't locations that are geography-related stubs. But they don't get geo-stub templates, since geo-stub templates are specifically for locations, as explained before. They get other types of stub template, such as topology-stub, geo-term-stub, and the like. As for continuing events, they are still events (as you called them yourself - you wouldn't call them "continuing locations") - and as such get history-stub subtypes and geology-stub subtypes (such as tectonics-stub). Grutness...wha?04:29, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Events may have a long duration, but they're still just events. Regarding the reason why geo-stubs are reserved for "geographical location" articles, that's really just an historical artefact from the beginning of the stub project (if I recall correctly, Grutness may have better info about this). Most geography-related stub articles at the time were location articles, and the project's use of geo-stub slowly transformed into using it for locations because there were just so many of them, and it was easier to split off everything that wasn't a location (for example, mountains and rivers). This really reflects the vestiges of an older Wikipedia, circa 2004-2005. There's nothing nefarious, covert or even conspiratorial about this. Of course, wording changes on the templates to more accurately reflect the situation is welcome, but changing the names of the templates would require a monstrous amount of work (there are over 100,000 location articles, most of them stubs). Mindmatrix04:32, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
That's pretty much right. It was mentioned here earlier that the Canadian template had been moved from place-stub - the only reason for that was to make it consistent with the other location stub templates, all but two of which were at geo-stub names. That was over three years ago, and even then there were over 100 different geo-stub templates for locations. The number is now in the low thousands. The amount of effort that would be required to change them all over to a name that accurately reflected they were for locations only would cause the stub-sorting project to grind to a halt on all other projects for several months minimum - it's simply not worth the effort. Grutness...wha?05:06, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, if the geo-stubs were originally created for geographical locations just because it reflects the vestiges of an older Wikipedia, it's about time things should be updated. I know what you're saying, but it's 2008, not 2004-2005 and this "geographical locations" thing is just misleading to the present-day Wikipedia, since more non-location geography articles exist and the present-day categories say geography, not geographical locations. Seems rather awkward. Black Tusk (talk) 22:18, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
You misunderstand me. They were named geo-stub because of vestiges of older Wikipedia. They're quite definitely only for locations, as indeed they should be - and that is not a vestige of older Wikipedia, but rather the most practical and appropriate way to split things now. As pointed out, things that are geography-related but are not locations have other stub types wwhich are far more appropriate to them. Grutness...wha?00:05, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Geo-stubs are commonly used in mountain, river, volcano etc stubs all over Wikipedia and are not locations, probably because it's a better and simple stub..... Black Tusk (talk) 00:10, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
What makes you suggest that mountains, rivers, volcanoes, etc., aren't locations? To quote wiktionary, a location is "a particular place in physical space"; mountains and the like are all marked as geo-stubs precisely because they are locations. They aren't events, like earthquakes, which cannot be described as places in physical space. Grutness...wha?00:21, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Huh? You've never heard a mountain described as a location? Uh..."other than in geology or geography" - which would be the main places anything would be described as a location, I would have thought. I must say I'm very surprised if you haven't. What would they be if they're not locations? They are specific places which exist and can be pinpointed in physical space. As such, they are locations. Grutness...wha?01:30, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I agree 100%. And if the articles were about the epicentres of earthquakes - i.e., about the locations where earthquakes occurred - they would be geo-stubs, no doubt about it. But they're not. The articles are about the earthquakes themselves - events that happened at those locations, not the locations themselves. As such, they clearly not canada-geo-stubs in the same way that, say Battle of Loon Lake is not a saskatchewan-geo-stub, Charlevoix provincial by-election, 2007 is not a quebec-geo-stub or - perhaps most ridiculously - Canada at the 1936 Summer Olympics is not a berlin-geo-stub, since they relate to events that occurred at those locations, but not to the locations themselves. To put it as simply as possible - mountains are places, rivers are places, earthquakes are not places. Grutness...wha?01:30, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
I just found this. Anyone interested in taking a look. There are no sources and I found at least one person isted as being elected but she isn't even running so there may be major problems with it. CambridgeBayWeatherHave a gorilla03:01, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
There should be some form of current events tag and a disclaimer that the results are subject to official confirmation and/or judicial recounts. Other than that, somebody has done a lot of good work, albeit somewhat premature. PKT15:12, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
They're not MPs yet
Editors are updating electoral district info and templates (eg - like this), despite the fact that the elected members don't take office until November 12. Should we just allow these updates, or per precedent of earlier elections restore to the incumbent entries until Parliament convenes? Mindmatrix14:59, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
IMO, the updates should be allowed but with caveats that the results are unofficial until Elections Canada verifies them. PKT15:42, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
For what it's worth, while we certainly monitor references to the Prime Minister (in infoboxes, etc.) after an election in which there's a change, there really hasn't ever been any sort of concerted effort to monitor and revert individual electoral districts. And in fact, if we wanted to get really technical about it, those ridings are actually vacant right now, because even on Parliament's own website an MP's term in office is denoted as ending the day the writs are dropped, not the day their successor is sworn in. My own view is that we have enough other stuff to do right now — starting articles on newly elected MPs, etc. — that it's not worth worrying that much about individual electoral district articles, and that we should just let such edits stand. But maybe that's just me. Bearcat (talk) 15:56, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I agree with you and PKT, which is why I didn't revert the edit I noted above. My apologies for my faulty recollection of what precedent we had set, though. Mindmatrix16:27, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Question about the passivity of Canadian Wikipedians
I'll make a note here. I have asked a question on the talk page of the Stephen Harper article about passivity of Canadian Wikipedians which in my perception appears to be bordering on negligence. I hope some of you will take the time to address my query. __meco (talk) 09:52, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
I hope you will take the time to re-read policies on being nice and no personal attacks, and then meditate on the saying "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." After you have done these things, I invite you to reformat your question. [ roux ] [x]10:37, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
There have been 2 attacks and rumours as to who it could be. Investigation are building up, and there was a release about it's potential as a terror target b/c of the oil/gas reserves. I think it would be worth creating an article about the 2008 Dawson Creek terror incidentLihaas (talk) 21:53, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
New userbox and stuff
Hi all. I've been bored and not in much of a writey mood today, so I thought I'd spruce up our project banners and so on, based on all the navboxes. I haven't replaced anything yet, wanted to solicit input here first. What do you think?
Spanky new barnstars:
(Added bilingual barnstar for work on translating Canadian articles to or from frwiki, or articles relating to French Canada... [ roux ] [x]02:49, 20 October 2008 (UTC))
Hello there. Looks good, is it possible to give choices, and have both the old and the new to choose from? In all the above cases! SriMesh | talk23:01, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Well... I suppose that would be possible (not for WikiAds, though), but the point was to establish a continuity across WP:CANADA articles, templates, navboxes, and projectspace. [ roux ] [x]02:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
(crossposted)
Hi all. I've been (am still) working on redesigning the page a bit, making it a bit simpler and easier on the eyes.
One of the things that's come up is the matter of content. I would like, if nobody objects, to set the following standards for inclusion at the page:
Pictures - must be of Featured Picture status
Articles - must be of Featured or GA status to be included in 'Selected article' or 'Selected biography' section
Symbols - must include a good-quality image to be included
DYK - hooks are already vetted by the good folks at DYK; must have been an approved DYK (featured on the Main Page) to be included. I'm working on a way to have them appear more randomly on the page (individually randomly, as opposed to groups of three).
News - is handled by a bot
I'd like to get back into a scheduled rotation of articles to be featured at the portal. I'm not sure if we have enough to do a day-by-day schedule, but it would be nice to be able to:
Feature articles on some date relevant to the article (e.g., the Grey Cup article on Nov 29, with related articles in the week leading up; feature provincial articles on the anniversary of their entry into Confederation, etc etc etc)
Feature biographies on the subject's birthdate (or death date, I guess, or both)
DYKs on specific dates, where appropriate
Other thoughts:
Some other country- or state-level portals have a 'featured' or 'spotlight' city component. What do we think of that? (And yes, Toronto can go last...)
The design isn't finished yet; I wanted to bring it down to something very simple before adding anything else in by way of visual bells and whistles.
And yes, of course, once the hockey season starts we can have a daily countdown until the Leafs choke and lose the Cup again Stanley Cup ;)
Adding: I'd be happy, if no one objects, to take over looking after the portal along with SriMesh (who has demonstrated an interest), making sure articles get add, that sort of thing. [ roux ] [x]07:23, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi all, updating.
There's a new tool here for easily nominating new content to be featured in the portal. So far it only works for nominating new articles and images; I should have biographies, DYK, and 'other' ready by tonight.
I should have DYK reformatted and working by tonight;
I'd love to have a little box at the top that says "Today is $holiday in Canada/Province/(City?)", but I'll need help compiling a list of all holidays/special days (Flag Day, eg) across Canada that have articles, and the specific dates for 2008/2009 for movable days. Anyone interested?
There's a list of all Canada-related WikiProjects and task forces on the 'Projects' page, but would we like to feature one per week (actually one every 6 days, repeating every 6 months) on the main page? Just a short little blurb like:
WikiProject Canada was formed to foster better articles on the nation of Canada within a spirit of cooperation. To participate, simply add your name at the project member page. Redlinks don't mean we're being patriotic—they're articles that need creating! To see how you can help out, click here.
This boy has been missing since October 13. I suggest creating an article as his status has made national news and other missing children have their own articles already. NorthernThunder (talk) 22:35, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
How does WP handle this on similar articles? How do we balance encyclopedic content with the sensitivity required for such a tragic situation for his family? [ roux ] [x]22:52, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Presuming that foul play is involved, generally I don't believe an article is warranted about a victim unless s/he has done something else that's notable. In this particular case the story belongs in Wikinews certainly, and perhaps it could be mentioned on Portal:Canada, but not an article at this time. PKT01:25, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Would we expect to find such an article in a different encyclopedia? I would say no, and since not it shouldn't be created here. DigitalC (talk) 05:26, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
On the other hand, doing our bit to help with something entirely uncontroversial (getting a young teenage kid back to safety) is probably a good situation to IAR. NorthernThunder, I've left a message on your talk page. [ roux ] [x]14:26, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
I completely agree with PKT and DigitalC, this belongs on Wikinews, not Wikipedia. A portal link to the Wikinews story is certainly worthwhile. Mindmatrix15:15, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Picture for Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia page
I'd like to bring to the attention of the community here that the picture for the article on Annapolis Royal, NS is incorrect. The picture that is featured is of Granville Ferry, NS, and not of Annapolis Royal (Granville Ferry is across the water from Annapolis Royal).
Hi, I'm not sure where to put this on the main page, or if at all. There has been an ongoing issue with these articles. Both are about martial arts. Basically, my understanding is that "Combato" and "Defendo" are names given to martial arts conceived by Bill Underwood, a Canadian. "Defendu", on the other hand, was created by William E. Fairbarn, a Brit who taught at Camp X. To make matters more complicated, it seems that there are rumors that Underwood also taught at Camp X. But even more complicated than that, it seems that current inherits of Fairbairn now (seem to) claim all the terms are theirs. So in short there is an attempt by a certain group to delete any mention of Underwood. I am trying to make room for both by directing Fairbairn's to Defendu and Underwood's to Combato and Defendo, but this has actually been going on for more than a year. I think it's about time to get this resolved. Any help is appreciated. --Mista-X (talk) 20:56, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Found resource for Arctic-basin rivers
I was looking up someting on the obscure Sikanni Chief River, part of the Peace-Mackenzie drainage, and found this great resource on all Arctic basins, the Saskatchewan-Churchill, Hudson's Bay, Yukon, Yenisey, etc etc. Just dropping it here for refernce if someone happens to be looking for flow/discharge rates on those rivers.Skookum1 (talk) 22:19, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Towns of Alberta has been nominated for a featured list removal. Lists are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the lst to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.
Dammit, DoubleBlue! :P It would be nice to have one that looked Canadian, maybe contained specific Canadian terms, though... [ roux ] [x]04:06, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm about as pro-Canadian as you can get but there's no need for duplication and it makes life easier to have wide-use templates rather than have to search around for project-specific infoboxes for articles. DoubleBlue (Talk)04:09, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
(er, that comment was for DoubleBlue). Northern Thunder, if you feel it should be deleted, then propose it at TfD. [ roux ] [x]04:35, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
While creating a template for current Members of Parliament has traditionally been a tricky endeavour because of the sheer size that such a template would entail, and several prior attempts to solve this (separate templates for each province, etc.) have failed to garner any sort of consensus, I've tried a new potential solution and would like to ask if there's any input.
Specifically, what I've created is a parent template at {{Current Members of the Canadian House of Commons}}, which contains a separate child template for each individual party caucus and one for independent MPs. (I haven't actually finished creating the BQ template yet, however.) The parent template itself doesn't actually contain links to any individual MP, but merely serves as a "nest" for the smaller party templates which actually do link to the individuals — but the primary benefit of doing it this way is that the child templates are collapsed until a user chooses to display them by clicking on "show", thereby significantly reducing the template's display size.
The way this template would work, if there's a consensus to go forward with it, is that only the parent {{Current Members of the Canadian House of Commons}} template would actually be applied directly to any individual MP's article, while the child "grouped by party" templates would be indirectly applied via their inclusion in the parent template, and not transcluded directly into individual articles. If somebody crosses the floor during the next parliament, their name would be moved from one party template to another; in the unlikely event that such changes in party composition actually change the ranking of the party caucuses, or when a future election results in a change of government, then the parent template would be edited to move the party template links around as needed.
As of now, I haven't added the template to any articles yet, and even if we do agree to use it the BQ child template still has to be finished anyway — but I'd like to ask whether people like this approach or not before I proceed with it any further. Bearcat (talk) 22:14, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Bravo! Only minor tiny quibble... I would bold the name of each party leader, but it's hardly a huge deal if you don't. [ roux ] [x]03:04, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
An anonymous user, 99.242.103.80 (talk·contribs), has been on a bit of a spree today, removing properly sourced content and wikiformatting from our articles on Russ Hiebert and Stockwell Day and inserting inappropriate POV commentary into the article on Jean Chrétien. They also vandalized my user page at least twice during my resulting reversions of their vandalism — and the same IP number also previously made an inappropriate POV edit to Egale Canada and removed properly sourced content from Jeff Watson. The user's been temporarily editblocked, but I'd request that the articles be monitored closely for the next few days since an anon editor can't be permanently blocked and can always sneak back in under another IP. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 18:03, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Regarding the Canadian current events subportal...at Miscellany for deletion. Updates have been made to the Canada portal re current events tab and wikiquotes additions and header colours. Additions have been made to the suggestions automated input form it can be tried out now. I am not sure how else to keep the current events page up to date besides the note left on the Portal Canada talk page. What thinks you'se?
Can someone explain the signifigance of these seven buildings to me, other than they are/were owned by Public Works. Is there anything else notable about them? Why does Public Works have a photo gallery for them See pictures --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 23:37, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Um, yeah. Well, I've been to a couple of them and all I can add is that they seem to be ordinary, boring office buildings which happened to be owned by the government. But that's all I can offer. DoubleBlue (Talk)06:36, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I seem to recall reading in the newspaper that these buildings are for sale, thus the Public works gallery. The Thomas D'Arcy McGee Building in Ottawa is relatively interesting when viewed from its Sparks Street façade -- the Public Works gallery shows it from the rear. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:48, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I just expanded this; it had had no lead on it and had only been a list and should always have been more; a "short" historical precis is so far completed, more or less, on the Queen Charlotte, Fraser and Cariboo Rushes; I don't have the energy to tie together all the minor gold rushes into a short narrative but intend to do so soon; many of them need much fuller writeups or new articles, particularly the Stikine and Cassiar rushes. More citations to come, sorry can't do inlines, working from memory not books on hand. I'm thinking that History of the British Columbia gold rushes, might work better and there hsould be a parallel History of mining in British Columbia (is there a History of mining in British Columbia article already? Not sure...) because coverage of gold mining is often impossible without discussion of silver, galena and also even coal; the mining industry is one industry; there's also a need for articles on teh "silver rushes" particularly the Silvery Slocan....anyway g'nite, it's 2:31 am; I never did get to the passage I had framed in mind when I started writing it, maybe it'll still be fresh tomorrow....see Talk:British Columbia gold rushes for further comments.Skookum1 (talk) 06:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm hesitant to edit this because of a WP:COI (card-carrying member of their opponent), but AFAIK this organization has covered no media coverage whatsoever and probably fails WP:Notability. The idea behind their petition, co-operation amongst non-Tory parties as a counterpart to Unite the Right, has extensive coverage and I have no problem with seeing an article about it at some point, but I've never heard of this particular organization or anyone behind it. Also a link at Canadian federal election, 2008: [7]. Kelvinc (talk) 11:21, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Speedied. You're right that the article, as written, doesn't contain any indication of, or references to support, the notability of the group; the references only support the notability of the broader concept that the group happens to have taken on as its mandate. Even the organization's website itself, at this point, is just a petition, which in no way indicates that they're actually incorporated or organized, or have any notable supporters. Bearcat (talk) 17:02, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Chartattack.com weblinks scrambled
Chart overhauled its website recently. Article references using chartattack.com will mostly be reduced to HTTP 404s and will need to be revised, in most cases a new article link should be available. There does not appear to be a straightforward URL conversion, since the new URL drops the date numbers and incorporates the article title. Dl2000 (talk) 20:47, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Oh boy. Are the new URLs formatted in some predictable way? Meaning, could a bot be programmed to crawl pages and make the edits? [roux » x] 22:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for setting that up. I've fixed a few links so far, but chartattack.com uses a brutally slow search engine and Google doesn't seem to pick up many of the new links. This could be a moderately long haul. Dl2000 (talk) 01:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Just a reminder to everybody who takes this on — and thank you for that — that if any updated link proves really frustrating to locate, remember that it's also acceptable to simply unlink the web url and cite the article in plain unlinked text. While it's certainly preferable to provide a link to the article on the magazine's website whenever possible, it's not mandatory. We can still cite the reference without providing a weblink. Bearcat (talk) 13:44, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
You're more than welcome to solicit input for this discussion, but please don't dictate what action other editors should take. Some may not have the same opinion as you, after all. (For the record, I have yet to review the articles, so I have no opinion of them right now.) Mindmatrix01:22, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
What? Of course we're pro-Canadian. But we need to adhere to a neutral point of view when it comes to editing WP. Besides, that isn't even the issue here. The issue is that policy expressly asks everyone not to solicit opinions in a way that either influences the outcome, or in a way that only asks people who (appear to) support one side of the dispute. The better way to ask for an opinion is: "There is currently a discussion regarding the deletion of $article. Your input would be appreciated." It's neutral and merely alerts people to the existence of the discussion. It's not a huge deal, everyone makes mistakes, just try to be more careful in the future. [ roux ] [x]01:49, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Please don't use that kind of rhetoric. Each of us is perfectly capable of analysis and formulating conclusions based on that analysis. Simply pointing us to the discussion and requesting input is sufficient. Imagine that the editor who had put this article at AfD had come and asked us to "visit the AfD to support deletion of the article". You'd clearly have an issue with that, no? Mindmatrix00:54, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
I'd agree that if properly written and referenced, such articles are relevant and encyclopedic and add depth to our coverage of Canadian-American relations. I'd also suggest, however, that we don't necessarily need a separate article for every US presidential election — while longer and well-referenced ones can certainly stand alone, we could also have a parent article discussing the Canadian perspective on US presidential elections in general. That article could simply summarize the ones which can't easily support full articles of their own, and then outlink to the ones that can. Just a thought, anyway. Bearcat (talk) 19:04, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
So as things currently stand, the 1st, 24th, and 60th assemblies are in the right place, but we have no 23rd and there are no gaps to fix in the years as far as I can tell. We know that we're on the 60th, yet we can only find 59 past elections and assemblies about which to make articles. Anyone who wants to help me solve this mystery, check out List of Nova Scotia General Assemblies and give me your two cents. Thanks. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 00:50, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Check the Legislative Assembly website to see if there's an appropriate contact (an assembly historian, a staff person at the legislative library) who might be contactable for assistance figuring out what we're missing. That's about all I can suggest. Bearcat (talk) 03:03, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Couild it be that the First Assembly was not by election, but by appointment, or by grandfathering from the colonial assembly? So the first election generated the Second Assembly, in other words; when BC joined Confederation, the seats were filled by something between appointment and acclamation until proper elections were held as part of the next general election...not quite the same thing though. I'm not sure how Nova Scotia works, but a "Parliament" in BC, i.e. a sitting of the Hosue starting with a Thhrone Speech, isn't tied diretly to an election; a single election can theoretically engender two Parliaments, if the term of the first expires and tehre is a need for a new sitting before the election...usually they don't stretch out hte term that long, it's not good for re-election, but I think it's been known to happen. i.e. the other logic is that there's no diret connection between elections and assembly sittings; it's incideental that they seem to conicde, and maybe in Nova Scotia it's customary that they do. I'm pretty sure the same applies federally, i.e. an already elected government, having finishied a sitting of Parliament, can theoretically launch another one without having to call an election; in fact, it's an option at the end of the mandate to spend; in BC on April 1 1983 the govenrment's mandate to spend ran out; the L-G called Bennett to Govt House on the 4th or 5th and read him teh riot act; he had to either call a sitting of the House and/or a budget. drop the writ, or resign and let another party create the government; at thatmoment because the mandate had run out, no government cheques were valid; the election was run, and a sea of bouncarbl govenrment cheques of all kinds, on "emergency warrants" and held within the month; Bennett's mandate to spend had run out....this was a darke constitutional impasse than a mere run-out of a parlimaent's term; Bennett himself had no more right to be Premier under the Constitution; but there were no devices to remove him. I know Nova Scotia's not that snakey, but it's stuff like that in BC history that accounts for why sittings and elections don't always jibe; another I think is the Joe Martin imbroglio.......have there been any long-term govenrments in Nova Scoti i.e. to the five-year maximum (actually five months from the sitting of the House, not of th election?) such taht two parliaments - excuse me, Assemblies, might have convened in t he space between successive elections?Skookum1 (talk) 04:12, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
This does seem like the most likely possibility. I've been thinking about whether the first election formed the second assembly, and I've found some documents in the archives that mention "forming an assembly" several years before the first election. However, I still don't have proof that can be cited here, so I'm going to take Bearcat's advice and email the assembly historian and maybe a professor or to to see if I can get a solid answer. Thanks to both of you! --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:38, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Okay, so according to the Information Services Manager at the Nova Scotia Legislative Library, the hilarious answer is: someone in 1860 made a mistake and labelled the 21st Assembly as the 22nd, and that mistake has been perpetuated in the official numbering ever since. So it is the 21st Assembly that does not exist. This will be bit tricky to express. Should there be a redirect on 21st General Assembly of Nova Scotia or should there be a stub there saying "this assembly never happened"? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 15:46, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
I suggest moving the article to 22nd (after 22nd is moved to 23rd), since that's the official position, leaving a redirect with a hidden HTML comment explaining the reason for the redirect, and editing the article to explain why 21st was skipped. If a template is ever created (a la {{Canada parliaments}}), then it should skip 21st, and have a footnote explaining it. Mindmatrix15:59, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be better to simply merge that information into a separate section for the 22nd assembly? I doubt there's much to say about it, and it would provide context for the other article. Mindmatrix00:46, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
I know CCOTW's pretty close to dead, but I'd like to suggest an ad hoc project if anyone's interested. Eva Aariak was just announced as the new Premier of Nunavut a short while ago, but since she's a newly elected MLA her article's quite stubbish and brief. Anybody want to help hunt down some references? Bearcat (talk) 23:17, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Even before the election she was one of Nunavut's better known women and yet there appears to be very little available on her. She was a reporter for CBC back in 1997, and has at least one child, a daughter. She taught Inuktitut, I think for Arctic College, and was involved in book publishing along with a HR job. She was/is president of the Baffin Regional Chamber of Commerce. I missed this which may come up some more now that she is premier. She was chair of Nunavut Film which I'd never even heard of until 5 minutes ago. And my favourite, she came up with ikiaqqivik ("traveling through layers"). Don't forget to check under "Arreak" the older and incorrect spelling of her name. CambridgeBayWeatherHave a gorilla11:21, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
FWIW, I actually had seen the CBC article about gender parity when it was published, and was going batty trying to find it again so I could cite it as a reference :-) Bearcat (talk) 15:49, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Requesting image help
I was wondering if someone who lives in the area of Vancouver could assist us editors over on the Smallville pages. The show is filmed in the Vancouver and surrouding areas (primarily), and I was curious if someone would be able to take some photos of the episode production. It would be really nice to have some free images for the articles. If that's at all possible, then it will be greatly appreciated. BIGNOLE (Contact me)19:31, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Watchlisting redux
Our article on Andrei Brennan, a Canadian bishop in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, seems to be getting targeted for WP:NPOV-violating edits. The editor's tactics so far have consisted of making cheap personal insults about Brennan's weight and unsupported allegations about his state of mental health, and claiming that he's deliberately falsifying his biography because one web source gives him a different birth date than our article does. This all seems to be wrapped up in talk page rhetoric about "exposing the truth", although I haven't yet succeeded in sussing out exactly what "truth" they're trying to expose. The editor in question does have a valid point that the article needs some referencing and neutrality improvements, but everything they've added so far is a cheap and unreferenced piece of snark that would have no relevance to an encyclopedia article even if it were true.
I appear to be the only person who's been actively dealing with this so far, so I'd like to ask that a few more CWNBers add it to your watchlists. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 19:45, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Agreed on both counts - the new editor seems to ba making random, unverified statements, and the article needs serious work to remove the effusive fawning of the subject. By the way, should unreferenced piece of snark be made a redirect to "fiction", or better yet, "bullshit"? Mindmatrix05:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Dryden, Ontario needs a bit of cleanup work, as somebody from a department of the municipal government recently made significant edits to the article which read more like a tourist marketing brochure than an encyclopedia article. Some of the information can legitimately be integrated in a more appropriately encyclopedic manner, but some of it is pure promotional bumf. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 21:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Discussion on new citation template
Hi. I've started a discussion at MOS here regarding a new citation template I've created. Your feedback would be appreciated. //roux11:59, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
Université de Montréal was fairly recently moved to University of Montréal, on the basis that "1. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) 2. University department pages refer to it as such 3. It may only be moved if there is proof that the French title is the most commonly us[ed]". What are everyone's thoughts on this? Putting aside the question of whether the title should be in English or French for a moment, I am struck by the fact that the current title is half English, half French. Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:43, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
The current title isn't right, because as you noted it combines both languages. I would prefer that the title be reverted back to "Université de" - it's a French-language institution, and there are plenty of precedents for using French in such situations; for instance UQAM and École Polytechnique de Montréal. Conversely, I wouldn't support "Université de McGill" because it's primarily English-speaking. PKT14:46, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
The guideline at WP:CANSTYLE appears to follow the same logic. It states: "Note that Wikipedia's Use English guideline does not mean that the words in an article title must invariably be in English; it means that the title needs to be what an English speaker would most likely recognize as the usual name of the subject in actual usage. [...] For many current institutions (hospitals, universities, etc.) in Quebec, standard Canadian English usage is ambiguous and not clear-cut: some English speakers refer to the Université du Québec à Montréal, while others refer to the "University of Quebec at (or in) Montreal", while still others simply use the acronym UQAM (you-kam). In such cases, title the article with the proper name of the institution in French, and create redirects from any English translations that are genuinely likely to be used as alternate search or link terms. However, where there is a standard and generally accepted English name for the institution, use that rather than the French name (e.g. National Assembly of Quebec rather than "Assemblée nationale du Québec") regardless of whether that name is "official" or not." Skeezix1000 (talk) 15:17, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
By that standard, the article should be entitled "University of Montreal" with no accent in Montreal, although as I noted earlier I would prefer the French name. Note for anybody who doesn't know: UQAM is not the same institution as the University of Montreal. PKT16:47, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure that it does. It's not obvious to me that the usual practice in English is to refer to it as the University of Montreal. A search of the Globe and Mail site, for example, shows that there it is usually referred to as Université de Montréal. Skeezix1000 (talk) 17:24, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
It could be interesting to note that the university itself uses the term "Université de Montréal" as its official name, even on the English version of its site [8]. "University of Montréal" does appear on a few pages, as you may have noticed from the references added in support of the above name change. However I believe the use of "University of Montréal" on some website pages results from the lack of a clear naming convention. The fact remains that the french name, "Université de Montréal" clearly remains the most widely used term, even among English-language sources. --m3taphysical (talk) 16:59, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Which English language sources, in particular? EDIT: I noticed the Globe and Mail part. I'll see if I get a response from the university, then if the university says the English name is its official name I will compare which sources will use an "English" name. If the university says it uses the French name as its official English name I will drop the issue and it will be at its French name. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:51, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Should we contact the university and see what it says? I actually would assume (now that the English pages were uncovered) that the French name is the English name, but it may help to confirm this and/or to ensure a standard is set. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:02, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Seems to me that the university is generally known in English as "Université de Montréal" and should be entitled as such with a redirect from both "University of Montreal" and "University of Montréal". DoubleBlue (Talk)20:06, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I'll look through newspaper articles around the world and use them to determine which name the university is known as, but I will only do this if either I do not get a response from the university, or if the university says that its English name is different from the French name. WhisperToMe (talk) 20:12, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
The university's (or any particular responder's from the university) response to what the English name of the institution is (and most pages on their English website refer to it as Université de Montréal) is only of slight interest. The title of the institution should be what most English speakers would recognise it as and that appears to be Université de Montréal. DoubleBlue (Talk)20:21, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
For what it's worth, while my personal read on the naming issue here would favour retaining the official French name since it is widely used and recognized as is by English speakers, it's certainly acceptable to discuss and review what the title should be. But for what it's worth, I've moved the article back to its original title in the meantime. Just to clarify, though, I'm not attempting to forestall any discussion here — it's just that the title needs to be either in English (University of Montreal) or in French (Université de Montréal), not in a hybridized form that switches from English to French spelling in the same title. Bearcat (talk) 20:58, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
It's the official name in English, and it's also the most-used in English-language web pages, going by a Google advanced search. These are the easy criteria. The article should be moved to Université de Montréal. If someone is interested in challenging the name then they should do the hard work to demonstrate otherwise. —MichaelZ. 2008-10-20 23:09 z
Agreed, but for what it's worth you'd be very hard-pressed to find a French university in Quebec that doesn't meet this criterion. Bearcat (talk) 22:41, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Good idea. but just to note that the Coalition in question was a formal coalition, not a loose coalition like the Martin-Layton or rotating Harper-XYZ minority government coalitions-of-the-day. The instance in question in ivolves of Premiers elected (and in John Hart's case, re-elected) as the leader of a Coalition", i.e. elected with the intent to form a Coalition government, not to form a Liberal government. The "Coalition" colour creatd in the PPAP project long ago was expressly for the Wartime Coalition in BC; not sure what the ballot looked like, but the point is neither Hart nor Johnson would have been Premier without being the Coalition leader....they may have been members of the Liberal Party; they were not exactly elected as such.Skookum1 (talk) 20:07, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
To save you all some time in reading the past discussions, my counter argument is that the coalition colour is for lists about elections, parliaments, and ministries, not for individual people since they still have legal membership of a party. I do think that it should be mentioned that there was a coalition in the text, but since this colour is going under the "premier" column in the table I think it should reflect the premier's official membership. The one possible exception might be the coalition at the federal level during WWI, as in that case the party changed its name, but even then I'm not sure if it should be changed, as it was legally the same party as the Conservatives, just with a new name. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 12:08, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
With the possibility of a federal coalition, we should get this sorted out before Monday. Should the PM/Premier list use the coalition colour or the colour of the premier's party? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:14, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
I think that the thin bar of colour I used on premiers #23 an #24 in List of premiers of British Columbia works well. However, I can't decide whether it would be better to use a universal coalition colour set at {{Canadian_politics/party_colours/Coalition}} on to use the colour of the other party in the coalition. The bigger example of its use will be for the Prime Ministers list if the coalition passes; should it use Liberal colour with NDP colour, or Liberal colour with coalition colour? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 06:12, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Disambiguation pages
If anybody's looking for a project to take on, the disambiguation page at Gordon Campbell has a very large number of inbound links that need to be fixed to point to Gordon Campbell (Canadian politician). Ideally, somebody with AWB access could batch the whole thing, but please feel free to help out even if you don't have AWB — manually fixing even just a few at a time would be helpful too. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 00:28, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
One issue that should be addresed by whomever does that, and one reason it shuuldn't be "botted", is I've been finding all kinds of spam-like superfluous mentions of Campbell in many BC articles, e.g. press releases announcing proejcts on some lake or in some town, other bits of political fluff that aren't releevant directly to the topic of the articles where those links occur. It's election season, and we can expect to see all kinds of funny stuff of this kind; please, Bearcat, if you wouldn't mind, post this same notice at the PPAP sub-project; I'm just stopping by to announce the disambiguation page in the next section. I also suggest you review some of those links so you can maybe undersatnd the gratuitous nature of many of them; I changed a few in the last week once I found them, they're really quite inane. "On such-and-so-date Premier gordon Campbell announced the so-many-thousand/million dollar proejct" or "on such and so a day, Premier Gordon Campbell cut the ribbon on etc etc etc. Similar "fluffing" of individual MLA-connected pages should also be watched for.Skookum1 (talk) 01:52, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Just made this, can't remember what else I missed other than Coquitlam Dam which I'll go back and make now....anything else that should be added, please do so...I think there's more. Oh yeah, Coquitlam Mountain, and somewhere Coquitlam Range turns up (everything between Indian Arm and Pitt Lake south fo Widgeon Creek, but I don't think it's official).Skookum1 (talk) 01:52, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
A disambiguation page is not meant to be a comprehensive list of every article on Wikipedia that happens to have the word Coquitlam in its name. It's only supposed to be a list of articles that could actually be placed at the exact title "Coquitlam". Bearcat (talk) 17:55, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
So what to do then? I mean, is the preference then that they all have to be "See alsos" on each other's pages? As with Comox, which is another case where there are two primary meanings (a people and a city) and other para-disambiguation apges, there didnt' seem to be any other way. List of places with Coquitlam in their name?Skookum1 (talk) 19:01, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Given that a complete and thorough article about the city of Coquitlam is already going to contain links to every single one of the other topics anyway, there's no need to do anything at all. Bearcat (talk) 19:05, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, I guess the article wsn't complete and thoroiugh then as I had to find out by trial-and-error what had articles and waht didnt'; part of my point with such listings is to figure out what yet needs an article; if there' was a mention of Coquitlam Mountain or the Coquitlam Indian Band in teh article, it would have been a redlink and somebody would have taken them out jsut for that reason.....Skookum1 (talk) 19:42, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Me too, which is why I'm always making them LOL. I suppose in this case the Coquitlam article's "Name" section, once created, could bring up all the other uses of the name as well as its origin with the kwikwetlem/Kway-quiht-lum (I always thought "stinking of rotting fish slime" was a reference to rotting salmon-flesh in the bogs flanking the Coquitlam River, apparently it had to do with teh Kway-=quit-lahms being a slave class to the Kwantlens, assinged the dirty job of butchering salmon all day long while their masters sang, danced, made nice art and worshipped Mother Earth and otherwise huntered-and-gathered holistically/sustainably....Skookum1 (talk) 20:01, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
I'd agree that red links aren't an inherently bad thing, although we certainly need to monitor them from time to time given that some people redlink topics (such as non-notable relatives of politicians, etc.) that will never actually have their own articles under the holy troika of WP:N, WP:RS and WP:V. Not that the Coquitlam topics fall in that camp, obviously, but just to clarify that there is a difference between "good red links" and "bad red links"... Bearcat (talk) 23:36, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. I only reiterated above because I do occasionally see good editors removing links simply because they are red. Linking to an article that would not meet the core content policies is useless and ought to be removed for the same reason that red links to good article ideas should be retained. DoubleBlue (talk)23:47, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Re-establish article on Publisher Fitzhenry & Whiteside
It appears that a previous article on the publishers Fitzhenry & Whiteside was deleted for lack of notability and possible editing by someone associated with the firm. This is a significant publishing firm in Canada, with many current awards as well as three Governor General's Literary Awards in the past. The many awards were not mentioned in the earlier article that was deleted. Finally, I can find 82 hits where books they have published are used as references. I think the article should be re-established, with the previous text improved and with new text citing the many awards. Any thoughts? --papageno (talk) 02:50, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
The speedy deletion was entirely appropriate not only for the reasons given but also appears to be a copyvio of the About Us page of their website. I think that you can make a claim of notability easily enough to avoid CSD but to avoid AfD, it will need to have multiple, independent, WP:Reliable sources about Fitzhenry & Whiteside, itself. Best wishes, DoubleBlue (talk)02:58, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
An old article being speedy deleted does not prevent the creation of a new and improved article about the topic — if you'd like to take a stab at writing a new article, you're more than free to go right ahead and do that as long as it complies with Wikipedia's content policies. But we don't really need to restore the original article for you to do that. Bearcat (talk) 22:55, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Minority governments vs. minority parliaments
Here is another issue I would like to sort out before the confidence vote next Monday. In the list at the bottom of Federal minority governments in Canada, I cannot decide whether to list the minority parliaments (has here) or the minority governments (as here). The difference is that the 14th Parliament had two governments within it; one Liberal and one Conservative, so they can be listed either together or apart. What you you folks think? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 05:56, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
The article appears fairly innocuous in its genesis; and 2008 Canadian constitutional crisis has already been made as a redirect by the same author ([[User:Rupertslander). From what I can see, so far it's fairly NPOV, though didn't read closely for now (on my way out the door 'til later). I upgraded its importance to high, added PPAP in addition to the extant Gov switch, and launched a move/rename discussion, though without having a suggested name; it's just that's where such a discussion should take place "so it's not here".Skookum1 (talk) 20:15, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
coalition etc
What's the article on this constitutional crisis? and someone should work on prorogation and parliamentary process articles... (some of them have globalize/UK templates on them) 76.66.195.63 (talk) 10:09, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Gee, duh, see previous section. And what do you mean "someone should work on". I gather you had particular peple, and content in mind, huh? Prorogation hasnt' happened yet, unless you've got an inside track on that....Skookum1 (talk) 12:57, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
No, there isn't an article yet — our content about it at this point is being added to the existing articles about individuals and 40th Canadian Parliament, but there isn't yet an independent article about the situation itself. The discussion above is about what a new article about it should be titled, if one gets written at all. Bearcat (talk) 19:17, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
The s**tstorm, as Bearcat calls it, has begun; the new article is already rife with spin and spin-techniques; I removed a featured image of the PM only to see it re-inserted right away, despite its clearly POV placement; I removed it again and removed Dion's image as well (it was hidden way frarther down the page, with a speculative caption); I also think Lord Byng's image on teh same page is inappropriate and its presence is a reflect of the Tory spin in the media (nobody else but Tory backers are making the comparison to King-Byng). I think all images should be banned from the page, unless all four party leaders are feature at the top, without pride-of-place, and the only G-G who should be on the page is Michaelle Jean. I also placed a sect-POV on the "background" section as it dwelled on how long hte Tories had been in and otherwise was tainted as "selling" their legitimacy, without any mention of the seat-count and popular-vote totals of the Coalition. I'm getting heartburn already and wish this wasn't taking place; it's harmful to Wikipedia to write a news article as if it were an encyclopedia article; I say move the whole thing to WikiNews, and rigorously police it for POV style and content issues, as well as actual "facts" and such which normally are the core of POV considerations; design, language, phrasing etc are going to be subjected to professional "massaging" and it doesnt' help that most of the media resources in Canada are also POV. This is a test of Wikiepdia's integrity, and I've been through stuff like this on certain other articles/issues. Some kind of protect shoudl be brought to the article, and consensus reached on making additions to it only after they are debated on the talkpage. Otherwise it's a free-for-all and it's going to get ugly...uglier than it's been already, that is....Skookum1 (talk) 00:33, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
La confiance
Just a quick reminder to everybody that we're going to need to be especially vigilant about edits related to Canadian politics this week — we're going to need to watch extra carefully for partisan spin, vandalism and unsourced speculation about what might happen next week. We've already had an issue with one person posting several talk page comments about "the imminent coup d'état", for example, and somebody else inserted the speculative and highly improbable sentence Another option, given the state of disarray in the federal Liberal Party, would be for Duceppe to lead the coalition and assume the role of Prime Minister of Canada into Bloc Québécois. I'm confident that we'll get through it, but we just need to be on our guard a bit more than usual for the next few days. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 22:51, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
My time is quite limited right now, but I can watchlist some relevant articles and try to keep an eye out. Aside from the party pages, party leaders, Michael Ignatieff and the ones on the current parliament, any other articles we should be watching out for? Resolute00:31, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Bearcat, plaese see my talkpage for the latest salvo, which is a complete re-jigging of the line we heard earlier, now given a new twist, and even more spin....I'm too familiar with idiots provcateurs and know they're jmeant to be a waste of energy; mostly I'l l watch out for article-edits and try to avoid lessons in civics for thowe who arelady have all the answers they want to hear.....Skookum1 (talk) 00:45, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I saw that. For what it's worth, the impression I get from Ericl's edit history is that he's an American who thinks he knows more than he does about what's going on, rather than a Tory operative per se — though I wouldn't at all be surprised if his primary source of information on this wasBlogging Tories. But in terms of responding to it, yeah, the best thing we can do at this point is to keep as many eyes as possible on ensuring that article content stays in keeping with Wikipedia's content policies — and if Ericl violates a conduct policy we can deal with it at that time. Ideological debates can also be removed from talk pages, per WP:NOTFORUM; I see that Resolute has already quite wisely poleaxed the discussion on Talk:Stephen Harper. Good on you for engaging Ericl as much as you did — but you're right, it's probably not worth worrying about it too much more unless he actually violates a conduct rule. Bearcat (talk) 19:11, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Is there an article for this situation yet? I see there is a line about it in the election article, but I really don't think that article warrants much more than the simple statement that exists already. Even if this fails, it's already a hugely significant incident in recent political history. Resolute00:54, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Agreed about the first, unsure about hte 2nd, though it's Lib-NDP although it's also true the agreement itself is a historical fact, i.e. documented and done with; if the coalition forms a government perhaps any such article could be merged into the Liberal-NDP Coalition government 2008 article (or Liberal-NDP-Bloc Québécois Coalition etc; note my use of the capital-C; a formal agreement implies a formal name, I'd say. But again, everythign is in flux, and not all the cards are on the table yet either.01:19, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
[posted after edit conflict] As I said in teh related discussion on Talk:Stephen Harper, immediate news content belongs in Wikinews. These proceedings are by no means over yet. For now the best that can be done is update-snippets in the various politicians' and parties' articles and such; I can't imagine what an article about this week would be titled, or how it would be defined; it's a current event in progress, and hasn't been given a citable sobriquet yet either, ie.. something to call it/ name it. And it's very hard to update something that's not over yet; we're not journalist s here, but encyclopedists. If you'd like a political article to write, there's lots in need of attention, though....come to think of it we might all want to revisit the 14th Canadian Parliament article, whatever its title, and the Byng-Meighen series of articles, also materisl relating to the Trudeau and Joe Clark - and Martin - minorities....; the quagmire of BC history/scandals is ripe for the researching and writing though, whether the debacle in 1900 with "Fighting Joe" Martin or the Solidarity Crisis in 1983 and attendant constitutional impasse April 1-4 of '83 in BC that year (see new additions to British Columbia#History).Skookum1 (talk) 01:19, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I agree with the creation of an article, even if it remains mainly a news topic rather than a historical one, but it isn't really a constitutional dispute, however. Probably needs a rename. Resolute20:01, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
It is not a "constitutional crisis", the the constitution is pretty clear about how this works, neither of the words "constitution" or "crisis" should be in the title. Something akin to "2008 Canadian power struggle" would be more apt. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:38, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm not overly fond of the current title, though it's certainly less problematic than anything with "crisis" in it...but I don't have any brilliant ideas for a better title, either. And as another one for the "keeping an eye on Ericl" file, I just removed an edit of his which talked about "newspaper editorials throughout the Dominion". Er, no, this isn't 1908 here. Bearcat (talk) 22:47, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm confused, where's the second article? "2008 Canadian constitutional dispute" is now a redirect to "2008 Canadian political dispute" which is anything but a satisfactory title (politics is inherently all about disputes)...I found out when I placed a merge tag to the "original" article, but I don't udnerstand what happende; was it blanked and made arediret to the updated one? I guess I should look at the hstiory, or has something slilpped bwetween the cracks here. Also, somebody had placed a real nice smiling-pro-looking portrait of the PM at hte top of the article, which I of course took out; only if all four party leaders, plus the G-=G are shown , is any image relevant; the image of G-G Byng farther down should probably also be gotten rid of, this isn't about him and it's not the same kind of constitutioanl proceeding.....Skookum1 (talk) 23:54, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Maxim redirected the Constitutional Crisis article to 2008 Canadian political dispute. If you wish to merge anything from the first, it is still in page history, and this was the last version before redirecting. It was, imo, a good faith decision to focus the work onto one article, and while I haven't read both close enough yet, they did seem very duplicative. I would agree with you on the image of Byng. Until and unless Jean were to similarly deny a request to resign by Harper, the use of that image is quite speculative. I've removed it. Resolute01:20, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
This is a bit tangential to the thread of discussion as it stands right now, but another thing to watch out for is people who, for either partisan reasons or lack of understanding of the actual situation, portray the Bloc Québécois as having a much larger and more direct role in the coalition than they actually do. Agreeing not to defeat a coalition government on matters of confidence is not the same thing as actually participating in the coalition, but some people either don't understand the distinction or are purposely misrepresenting it. Bearcat (talk) 19:14, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Heh - could it be that those who are purposely misrepresenting it do so to sway the opinion of those who don't understand the distinction? Judging by some of the polling info, talk radio, and blogs, that certainly seems to be the case. Political rhetoric as usual, I guess. At any rate, I indirectly mentioned this in a discussion about the scope of the article about the dispute. Aside from the usual articles, are there others you've noticed receiving inordinate attention recently? My watchlist is not heavily weighted with politics articles (apart from electoral districts). Mindmatrix19:31, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Almost certainly. I've yanked BQ-overplay out of Elizabeth May's article a couple of times today, for starters, but that might not qualify as "aside from the usual". Bearcat (talk) 19:35, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Next one for the bullshit file: addition of BQ and PQ web pages as external links on the articles of several individual Liberal and NDP MPs — including Joyce Murray, Bob Rae, Ujjal Dosanjh, Ralph Goodale, Scott Andrews and Malcolm Allen. Update: fascinatingly, this set of edits came from the Saskatchewan government domain. Bearcat (talk) 20:03, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
That is certainly newsworthy, though not for us to report on. Mis-use of government servers for political purposes is an offense, I believe, or something along those lines.....certainly against guidelines if not rules; it amounts to the use of taxpayer money for partisan political causes, even if those costs are only miniscule. Is there any equivalent politicking on Conservative-MP articles coming from Lib/NDP biases, by the way?Skookum1 (talk) 20:40, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't state that talking about BQ/PQ levels of power is a "purposeful misrepresentation", but rather people interjecting their opinions. It does seem fairly obvious that the BQ is gaining a lot of power out of this, it's just in the back rooms. That is obviously just opinion, and not something that can go into the article. Duceppe's bragging about how this is good for Quebec, and what's good for Quebec is good for Quebec sovereignty is, however, something that belongs, since ultimately the federalist/separatist angle is going to cut to the heart of this entire issue. Resolute22:42, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Inciting paranoia about the BQ's motives and how the Coalition would help the sovereignty/separatist movement does not serve teh interests of this article, or this discussion; it is, to me and others, a sign of the Tory agenda to use emotional nationalist issues to derail the constitutional realities we're facing. Which s that the government does not contorl the majority of the House, period. That this may help Quebec, or Newfoundland, or Yukon, does not really matter; and it comes off as incitement of anti-French hostilities in English Canada, which certainly the Tories, and some of the media, ahve been pushing in the last 48 hours. If you wish to include it in the article, I suggest it be put in the context of "Tory spokesmen have been maintaining...." and "Coalition critics of the Tory position on this have been saying....". Your own feelings are not that relevant., i.e. to covering the emergence of this issue properly, which is to say, in a a neutral fashion, and also to attributing who it is that has been putting this argument forward and why, and what its impact is. You may agree with them, as you do, but it's not as if this is a neutral position. It's also an inflammatory position in the national polity, and an unfortunate as well as rather unsavoury one. We're also hearing that Albertans, who have a lot of power in the current government disproportionate to their population, are upset that the Coalition is an attempt to rob them of that power; and that, also, is citable, as are the counter-arguments (including counter-arguments from other Albertans). It's not as if it's only Quebec among the provinces that has a vested interst in how things turn out.Skookum1 (talk) 22:56, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
On the Sask. domain edits. Brad Wall was certainly singing from the Harper songbook in his appearance on CBC Newsworld today; echoing the talking points and phrases they've distributed. DoubleBlue (talk)22:53, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
New "Order of Canada citation" template
I came across a number of Canadian politician articles that have external links to their Order of Canada citation web pages, so I decided to create this template: Template:OCC. It can be used to link to OCC pages; documentation on how to use it is provided on the page. The number used is the "ID" number at the end of the citation URL. Gary King (talk)01:53, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
I try to keep away, but wiki being what it is, all roads lead back to the barbeque - I was checking up on why 2010 Winter Olympics was linked to the Ukrainian Orthodox catehdral article (link since removed as irrelevant) and in the "what links here" was Premiership of Stephen Harper, which is only in Category:Stephen Harper and reads like a promotional resume for his government/person; I suspect that 28th Canadian Ministry may also sound much the same, and there's {{Harper Government}} at the bottom of the page. I added a short "starter section" and tried to be as NPOV as possible; figured it best if I noted it here so others can amend it; I tried to add a resume=yes switch to the article issues tempalte, but apparently that's not the right switch. Also "Premiership" is an odd term; do we have Premiership of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Premiership of Brian Mulroney etc.? And why does it have to be a separate article from 28th Canadian Ministry (likewise an odd title)? I mean, how many wiki articles does one Prime Ministerneed....????Skookum1 (talk) 22:31, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Just looked at the template and added a link to this article; but noted these other articles which would seem to need content related to the current event:
Note: these are onlyl some of the articles linked in that template, just ones that are related to the policies which precipitated the events of this article. Surely there's some kind of policy for "article overkill" for one subject/person? are there this many articles for Trudeau, Mulroney, Chretien, MacDonald, King, Pearson, Diefenbaker etc???? of course, dead PMs dont' have taxpayer-paid staff to write up their bumpf, but I'm a bit shocked by how much there is (and how flatulent a lot of it sounds....).Skookum1 (talk) 22:42, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Oh goodness. There probably needs to be some merging and re-arranging of all that content. Let's bring it up at the Canadian notice board for broader input - it's more relevant there than it is here. Mindmatrix03:14, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I think article bloat like this happens for current topics much more easily than for past ones — writing a similar article for Trudeau or King or Dief would require actual research, but writing one for Harper requires only adding a sentence or two and a weblink every time he does something that gets mentioned in the news. The intention was clearly to mirror American presidential articles, which are often split out into subtopics like this (e.g. Presidency of George W. Bush, Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, Illinois Senate career of Barack Obama, etc.), but I would agree that some merging and re-arranging and trimming is necessary — the idea that we necessarily have to do things the same way the US contingent does not only obscures the fact that our political system is different, but it's led to a lot of seriously flawed editing in the past. And that's leaving aside the open question of whether such spinouts are really necessary for the US either. Bearcat (talk) 17:53, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
Well, as a corollary to taht, the theme of the increasing presidential flavour of the "Harper Premiership", so-called, is certainly a subject matter that there's enough material to have on the page in question; it's one of the main traits of his time in office, in fact (see the Rick Mercer item I linked in the "unity crisis" section on teh otehr talkpage). Adn I believe, with near-certainty, that this flurry of articles are not the work of ordinary wikipedians, but of information operatives/staff building the p.r. machine for their boss; if it is someone intentionally mirroring the presidential-article formats, staff or innocent-volunteer, it's a pity that they've bought int othe presidential comparison (which also features in much of teh political posturing/rhetoric of the current "crisis").Skookum1 (talk) 18:07, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
There appear to be 7000+ articles that link to Canadian. I appears that the vast majority of these articles are referring to the nationality, rather than to any of the other many entries at Canadian (disambiguation), and I would have thought that the readers of these articles would be better served by a redirect to Canada.
I also note that Canadian (disambiguation) isn't the greatest DAB page. Disambiguation pages are intended to be used where more than one subject would qualify for the exact same title -- that wouldn't be the case on this particular DAB page, where most of the entries (e.g. Irish Canadian, First Canadian Place, Canadian Pond Weed, etc.) run afoul of the guideline at WP:DAB that one shouldn't include entries on a DAB page that merely contain part of the page title. There are only a small handful of entries on this disambiguation page that are really proper content for a DAB page (e.g. The Canadian, etc.).
There's already the hatnote For other uses of "Canada" or "Canadian", see... at the Canada article. I'm going to revert to the original redir. Mindmatrix
I've noticed that we have no universal set of standards for using postnominal honorifics in infoboxes. Some of them are out of order, some include school names, some use commas, etcetera. I'd therefore like to propose this set of standards for honorifics in infoboxes of Canadians. Thoughts? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 23:16, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
The title of articles and the opening paragraph must conform to Wikipedia's naming policy, and as such, honorifics should only be included therein if they are issued by a country or organization the subject has been closely associated with, such as Hon., PC, MP or OC. Other titles, such as educational suffixes, Dr., and Fr. should not be used therein. Both kinds of honorifics may optionally be used in the infobox of a person if there is consensus to do so for that individual.
Honorifics in infoboxes should be put in a smaller font using the <small> and </small> tags and should be on a line above or below the name proper using the <br/> tag. Honorifics should be in the order according to the Canadian order of precedence for honorifics.
Post nominals should not include internal periods but should include commas between postnominals. All postnominals and should be wikilinked to the article about that title, with the exception of the Order of Canada, which should be wikilinked to the redirect for that level of the award (ie. OC) so that users mousing over the title can see the exact meaning of the title.
Prenominals can include full words, such as The Honourable. It is acceptable for prenominals to be redundant with the postnominals; for example, a person may have both Doctor and MD.
In the case of educational postnominals, only use the highest degree of each type; for example, MSc replaces BSc while LLD replaces LLM. Only include each degree once, even if the person has two of them. Neither of these rules apply if one of the degrees in honorary and the other is not. Degrees should appear in the order they are granted. If the degree is honorary, add (hc) after the postnominal.
Names of the schools granting degrees and honorary degrees should be added to the "alma mater" or "education" parameter, along with an indication of which degree was from which school. The alma mater section may optionally also include the person's major concentration for their degree. If the info box does include such a parameter, short forms of school names can be included in parentheses after the degree postnominal. In this case, school names should share the same parantheses as the hc, and degrees should be grouped by school so that each school name only appears once. Degrees granted by this same school should not include commas between them in this case.
I'm not bothered either way but "...infobox of a person if there is consensus to do so for that individual." might be better if it said "...infobox of a person if there is consensus to do so for that group." That way the articles on the various PM's either all get them or none get them. CambridgeBayWeatherHave a gorilla03:52, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
A standard is a good idea and I can mostly agree with these ideas. However, I believe important post-nominals like PC, OC, OOnt, QC should be included in the lead and Wikipedia:Honorifics#Post-nominal initials backs me up on this: "Post-nominal letters should be included when they are issued by a country or organization the subject has been closely associated with". On the other hand, I'd also really rather have the name unadorned in the infobox with the honours listed separately therein but I can live with them there if there's consensus to do that. DoubleBlue (Talk)04:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Question I can't find a definite standard about whether to separate postnominals with commas. Some sources say to separate all of them, some say none, and some say only use them between types of postnominals. Does anyone know what the official format is for comma use? If not, which do you think looks best? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:32, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Hey AG, I did some looking at online style guides a few days ago and I recall that they showed a pretty even mix of commas vs none. I don't recall finding a Canadian reference either. I intended to try and find my two Canadian style guide books but I seem to have boxed them up somewhere. My personal preference is rather mixed too. My grammar side says commas are preferred but my rational side says they don't really improve the usefulness or appearance any. DoubleBlue (Talk)20:50, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm fully aware that it's a losing battle, but I still vote for "kill 'em all", on the grounds that there's no way to make an infobox look good with a big long string of honorifics cluttering it up for no particularly compelling reason. Bearcat (talk) 09:03, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Isn't this kind of information the whole reason we have infoboxes in the first place? Why do they even exist if not to give readers quick access to the key statistics of persons? When reading about someone, one of the very first things I want to know is the kind of information found in the honorifics: what education they have, what honours they have, and what organizations they are members of. Having this information in infoboxes saves me from having to read through their biography section, career section, and awards section to find a couple statistics that I want. We could include this information in other parts of the infobox, such as having education only in the alma mater section. However, I think that including it as a suffix is useful in that it shows people what the person's full name is with all titles and honorifics, which I have used on several occasions (for example to address a letter to an MP). I think having the titles and honorifics at the top of the infobox makes much more sense than including a sentence somewhere in everyone's article saying "This person's full name with titles is...". --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:56, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
This is the kind of question where we ought to try for consistency within WikiPedia, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is no consistency. FWIW, I note that Winston Churchill shows his honofifics in the infobox, and the same is true for other British PMs. In my opinion it is appropriate to show them there. PKT(alk)22:36, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't think we would be able to find a consensus on the issue across the project. As far as I know, Americans do not use honorifics in the same way that Commonwealth countries do, so like with spelling, I think this has to be left to each country's wikiproject. I for one think that we should stick with formal Canadian standards while also adding this useful information to the article, so if we were to set up a straw poll my vote would be to keep them. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 05:58, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to see them (besides being in the lead) in other areas of the infobox: Education in the education parameter, honorifics in a new Honours line, and professional organisations in a new Professional organisations line. DoubleBlue (talk)07:06, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
So can I move this to the Canadian style guide, or is there enough opposition to postnominals in general that we should start up a seperate discussion about them first. I'd like to get an official standard in place one way or the other so that we can make the pages of the current political figures look the same. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:54, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
I created the article Canadian sovereignty based on a request. I don't know much (read:anything) about Canadian sovereignty, so I had to do a bit of researching, but even still, most of the article is just copied from other articles. Basically, I just centralized a bunch of other articles. If anybody has any knowledge and would like to improve it, that'd be awesome. Bsimmons666 (talk) Friend?17:42, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
HO-ho-ho-ho-HO-ho-ho-ho-HO-ho-ho-ho-Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho....(the sounds of elves pulling the sleigh home after Rudolph had a flat...).22:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
I can't remember who it is that had some opinions on such not-quite-disambiguation pages, which are connected to the reality in BC that certain words can have more than one "most common usage", os I'm bringing Malahat here before dealing with it much further, as it has some issues, or rather Malahat, British Columbia does. I'd just go ahead and do what I think needs doing (Malahat is rewritten from a redirect into something like a listing page, vs a disambiguation page; I've noted someone changing the ratings of such pages to List class lately. Anyway this is the first line of what should be only for the settlement article:
Malahat or The Malahat refers to an unincorporated district, region, highway, passenger train, and First Nations tribe located on the western side of Saanich Inlet on southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.
Now, the main/most common usage for Malahat in BC is going to be the region or the highway that passes through it. By "the unincorporated district" I'm taking that to be a reference to what the BCGNIS for Malahat, British Columbia refers to, which is a particularly locality within the larger region of that name; which itself is still pretty small relative to the Cowichan Valley to the north and Greater Victoria to the south. The two most common usages, thus are "The Malahat" region and "the Malahat (Highway)". Even somebody who lives inMalahat, British Columbia, would say that they live "in the Malahat" rather than "in Malahat", but "the Malahat" iincludes other places than Malahat, British Columbia means (by its latlong it would appear to be the longtime restaurant/post office near the summit of the highway). The Malahat Highway is only teh stretch of 1/17 from Mill Bay to the Goldstream, it's not a separate highway, but a stretch of highway. Anyway rather than choose which to target Malahat to, that would seem best to be its own page, with the following list its contents:
Malahat, British Columbia, an unincorporated settlement (not sure which RD, either Cowichan Valley or CRD but as it's not part of Greater Victoria, and also not in the Cowichan Valley, it seems inappropriate to use either and Category:Settlements on Southern Vancouver Island "feels" a lot better....)
The Malahat, a small region on Vancouver Island centred on Malahat, British Columbia and flanking the
Malahat Highway, also often referred to as "the Malahat" when the context is obviously thet roadway, a once-infamous stetch of the Trans-Canada Highway between Duncan and Victoria
Malahat, a passenger train service on the E&N Railway
Malahat First Nation, a First Nations band government of the Hunquminum-speaking group of Coast Salish whose main reserves are in the area of Malahat, British Columbia. ("Malahat, British Columbia" may refer to the reserve rather than the aforementioned restaurant, I'll look at the coords again in a bit).
So I'm actually asking for input here (gasp!). User:KenWalker is away, User:Fishhead64 who's also from the Island isn't around much, not sure who else frequenting this noticeboard is familiar with the Island. As noted, there were some issues people had with what I did in making Comox and Lillooet (Comox (disambiguation) maybe is the result in the one case now, but again that's not the most common usage; to white people in Canada it is, certaily, but not in ethnography or linguistics; ditto with Lillooet but less so with Malahat, because the FN people aren't hte namesake either of a language, or of a major town.Skookum1 (talk) 22:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
Having lived on the Island and driven on the Malahat numerous times, IMHO 'the Malahat' always refers to the highway first. If that helps. // roux22:09, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
yeah, that's kinda what I figured, but in the absence of an article on it, i.e. other than maybe a section on the Trans-Canada article (adn there probably isn't one), it makes it diecy to know where to redirect Malahat to....and the Malahat region really isn't much more than the highway corridor itself, no?Skookum1 (talk) 22:58, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
"Years in Canada importance"
Currently, many of these article are rather as "High importance", but most are not even tagged. I could make a request for a bot to tag all years as part of WP Canada, and give them importances of "High" if you want. I personally feel that "High importance" is exaggerated and would recommend a "mid" or "low" importance, but that's really up to the WP Canada community. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 04:19, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
I'd go no higher than "mid" importance. Even for years in which important events occurred (eg 1867 and Confederation) it is the event which is important, not the year. Mindmatrix15:22, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
To be clear, the request is to tag all pages in Category:Years of the 18th century in Canada, Category:Years of the 19th century in Canada, Category:Years of the 20th century in Canada, and Category:Years of the 21st century in Canada (no subcategories of any) with {{WikiProject Canada|class=XXX|importance=XXX|history=yes}}. Articles in any category ending in "stubs" will be class=stub; redirects, dabs, and non-article pages will be class=NA; and all other articles will not have a class specified. Articles that are not dabs or redirects will be importance=mid unless they already have the WikiProject Canada banner with a different importance specified; and dabs, redirects, and non-articles will be importance=NA.
Yes, but the categories are relatively clean so there's wont be a lot of redirects etc... leave the non-article namespace alone (templates and cats) since I never saw them tagged as part of WP Canada. Also the "No subcategories" applies to all of them. Overide already present importance ratings. They should all be Mid (or NA if that applies).Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 04:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Ok, non-articles will be ignored, and I clarified the comment above. I'll wait until the two of you decide exactly what to do about the importance before running the task. Anomie⚔04:50, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
I'd agree with "low". The year in Canada articles are really just timelines that serve mainly as a convenience grouping to help the reader locate what's actually important, which is the events, but the years themselves aren't particularly important in their own right. Bearcat (talk) 15:01, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Either "mid" or "high" for the federal elections. I'd say "mid" for the provincial and territorial elections, except for those that were particularly notable, in which case "high" may be warranted. (Note that this is from the perspective of the Canadian WikiProject; for provincial projects, the rating would be higher.) Mindmatrix15:26, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
To be clear, the request is to tag all pages in Category:Elections in Canada by year and categories directly in that category (but not subcategories of those categories) with {{WikiProject Canada|class=XXX|importance=XXX|cangov=yes}}. Articles in any category ending in "stubs" will be class=stub; redirects, dabs, and non-article pages will be class=NA; and all other articles will not have a class specified. Articles that are not dabs or redirects will be importance=mid unless they already have the WikiProject Canada banner with a different importance specified; and dabs, redirects, and non-articles will be importance=NA. A human will have to go through and mark any "high" that should be high importance. In addition, if the article title contains any of the following phrases, the corresponding parameter will also be added:
Seems good, though I'd argue that an article on any particular election is only of low importance. For all these bot tasks, I think replacing the WPCANADA redirect is a reasonable thing to do. DoubleBlue (talk)04:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
As far as a bot is concerned, I would agree that Mid is appropriate. Human editors can adjust the rating where they think it makes sense - perhaps the Trudeaumania election might be rated High, but a bot can't make that distinction. PKT(alk)12:18, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to start this soon. DoubleBlue, can you accept "mid"? Or can everyone else accept "low" or "leave it to humans"? Anomie⚔12:48, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't notice the question added here. Since there is sufficient argument and rationales for "mid", I certainly accept using it for this task though I will still argue that, while certainly elections are important, any one election or the articles on them are "not required knowledge for a broad understanding of Canada" and delve into the minutiae of that election's candidates, issues, and results. DoubleBlue (talk)21:05, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this problem for a while and I'd hoped to structure it better for discussion here. Basically, what figures should be used for population and area numbers for city, metro and urban areas - best, or most recent?
In Canada, Stats Can is the only organization that consisently gathers population data. Provincial statistical agencies, like BC Stats use population growth models for the inbetween census years[11]. After the census, BC Stats updates their input in their models (providing an end figure (2006) to the beginning figure (2001) which affects all the inbetween years). It has been my practise to use BC Stats to the most current year. maclean23:26, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
The 2006 census figures should be used as official population measures (in infobox and intro), and most recent population estimates should be included in the demography section of each article. Valid sources include provincial, regional, and municipal planning estimates, but should exclude other sources. For example, I've seen articles trying to use town boundary signs and mayoral speeches as sources for population. another issue is how to deal with population projections. I'd favour excluding these, but I've seen numerous articles with such information. Mindmatrix00:01, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Mindmatrix is correct. The quintennial Canada Census is the only verifiable population figure we have access to that actually results from counting individuals; any figure not coming directly from that data is an estimate that results only from applying statistical calculcations to the data set. Non-official figures from valid alternative sources can be added to the "demographics" section of an article, as long as they're properly labelled as estimates, but the infobox and the intro need to stick to the actual verifiable census figures as published by StatsCan following the 2001/2006/2011 censuses. Bearcat (talk) 14:29, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Well, I, for one, disagree. The icon is not mere decoration: It immediately identifies the scope of the navbox especially when it is collapsed and combined with with other navboxes. It follows MOS:ICON in that it aids in navigation for the reader, does not misrepresent or confuse the reader such as flag icons do with sportperson lists, and it does not violate any element of the icon guideline. It is aside from the issue but, nevertheless, I did some random checks of a few navboxes within Category:European_Union_templates and they did include icons. DoubleBlue (talk)23:52, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Added some reply to the GA review, regarding first nations, some images and maps at the time of the Council of Keewatin. Contacted the original editor about subsequent additions, edits. If anyone else can also take a look at the article under GAR to help out....SriMesh | talk02:36, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
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and shield 
aren't designed to be used this way. But they incorporate the leaf as a symbol, and it is recognizable throughout the world..svg){kind=small}
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I can create a leaf myself, but it will probably be a few days before I have time. —Michael Z. 2008-09-25 14:23 z
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for music boxes, and 
for law-related, and 
for monarchy boxes, etc etc etc. What do all of you think? I'm not 100% sure I like it, maybe placement is the issue. But on pages with multiple Canada boxes, it would be a quick visual differentiator.
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Resolved
Doing... Anomie⚔ 17:32, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
Done 297 articles were tagged. Anomie⚔ 00:23, 29 December 2008 (UTC)