Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 7

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikimedia Canada

Hello Canada! We're hoping to start a Canadian chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. We are just in the stage of recruiting and writing bylaws right now. We'd be grateful if anyone here could help (and if you have a legal background, even better for writing bylaws)! You can visit our page at m:Wikimedia Canada. Thanks! Greeves (talk • contribs) 18:50, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Saskatchewan in popular culture

Saskatchewan in popular culture was WP:PRODed by someone. 132.205.44.5 00:09, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

"X in popular culture" articles are generally unnecessary — they exist only because certain people believe that Wikipedia articles should contain exhaustive lists recounting every last time X happened to get mentioned in a line of throwaway dialogue on Heroes or a hometown shoutout by a two-second contestant on National Bingo Night. As a rule, they're stupid and pointless articles that aren't worth keeping. Bearcat 02:49, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Well it's been sent to WP:AFD now. 132.205.44.5 19:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm psychic, I tell you...

I just felt like tooting my own horn for a second and announcing that David Onley marks the second time that I started the Wikipedia article on somebody who was later appointed to a Canadian viceregal position. Michaëlle Jean, of course, was the first. Now if only I could get my psychic powers to work on Lotto 6/49... Bearcat 07:49, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

As the adage says: "Even a blind squirrel finds the occasional nut." BTW: If you are clairvoyant, shouldn't you know if you're going to win the lottery? Mindmatrix 15:45, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
By the way, when I wrote that, I meant that you start so many articles about Canadian personalities that you're bound to write one about a person who acquires such distinction. Come to think of it, I used the wrong analogy. Mindmatrix 16:44, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
  • laugh* Oh, don't worry about it, I wasn't offended or anything. Amused, actually. Bearcat 21:15, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
In Canada, television personalities seem to have a higher than average shot at a vice-regal position. Unfortunately, there's already an article on George Stroumboulopoulos or I'd have suggested you start one. Reginald Perrin 00:11, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I guess that since Bearcat started the Mitsou article, some day in the future we will be refering to the woman who sang Bye Bye Mon Cowboy as "Your Excellency". Skeezix1000 21:19, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I note, for those who are interested, the Bearcat was the second person to edit the Ed the Sock article. Be very afraid. 207.112.125.22 23:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Oh, dear gawd. Even I'm frightened by that. Though I'm not sure whether I'm more afraid of what that implies, or of the fact that I ever touched that article in the first place. Oy. Bearcat 07:41, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Lieutenant Governors

I've come across a problem with our articles on provincial lieutenant governors, which needs to be discussed.

For most provinces, there is an article "Lieutenant Governor of X", which is a discussion of the position, with a separate list that's usually at the title "List of Lieutenant Governors of X". However, in the cases of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, the position title exists only as a redirect to the list, and in the case of Nova Scotia, an individual user recently moved the list to the alternative title Viceroys of Nova Scotia. And for some of the other provinces, alternate spellings that should be a redirect to the article (e.g. "Lieutenant-Governor of Québec") have been incorrectly made into redirects to the list, and vice versa. And for some provinces, the list is at the title "Lieutenant Governors of X", which is a poor choice as it's very nearly indistinguishable from the titles of the primary articles. A single "s" should never be the only difference between the title of an article and the title of its associated list.

As a result, lists of LGs are now at three different title formats, depending on which province you look at, and articles about the position of LG may or may not exist at all. Needless to say, this is not acceptable — we need to have a consistent format across all of the provincial lieutenant governor articles, so we need to come to a consensus about how best to treat these.

So I offer the following proposals for discussion:

  • Option A: For every province, there should be an article on the position and a separate list of the people who've held it; the list is titled in the format "List of Lieutenant Governors of X".
  • Option B: For every province, there should be an article on the position and a separate list of the people who've held it; since the positions may have had different names in the past, the list is titled "(List of) Viceroys of X" instead of "List of Lieutenant Governors".
  • Option C: For every province, the article and the list should be merged into a single title.

Please indicate a preference, and hopefully we can come to a consensus on how to proceed. Thanks. Bearcat 02:23, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks to Bearcat for notifying me on this. I changed the name of the Nova Scotia article because it is not correct to call the list "Lieutenant Governors" as the list includes the 1710-1867 (British, full) Governors and then lists the Lieutenant Governors since confederation. So to be accurate we need to use the catchall name "Viceroys" for Ontario, Quebec, PEI, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and B.C, if we want the list to include pre-confederation governors. I strongly support Option B. WayeMason 11:00, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I support Option A, with Option C being second choice. With all due respect, I think Option B is a terrible idea. Viceroy might technically be a more encompassing term, but it makes me think of the Raj in India and E. M. Forster novels, not the Queen's representatives in British North America, and the term would leave the vast majority Canadians scratching their heads. Refer to articles as "List of Lieutenant Governors of X", then explain at the top that the pre-confederation governors went by different titles. Skeezix1000 11:35, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I support option A, with the following caveats: each List of article should indicate any nuance about the list, such as that for Nova Scotia. That is, the list can be broken up into several lists, each specifying its nature in a short preamble. I'd create redirects from List of Viceroys of X to List of Lieutenant Governors of X for the sake of completeness. I don't like option C, because lists have a habit of cluttering articles, and option B isn't attractive because most people today at least know about LGs, but I doubt many know about viceroys. The few that do would be redirected to the proper place. Mindmatrix 15:45, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Had I read Skeezix1000's comments fully before replying, I would have just said See above. Oh well. Mindmatrix 15:48, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Bearcat, what's your preference? If it's Option A, we probably have consensus. If it's Option B or C, we probably need some more input from other editors. Skeezix1000 18:55, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't have a personal preference — I'm willing to go along with whatever the consensus is. I just felt that the issue needed to be raised. Bearcat 23:29, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I vote for option A. The term "Lieutenant Governors" is by far going to be the most common one for which people look. We should, of course, mention the name difference in the opening text of the list article, and the viceroy name should be a redirect. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 00:07, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Bearcat, it seems like there is consensus for Option A. I believe that all that needs to be moved is Viceroys of Nova Scotia to List of Lieutenant Governors of Nova Scotia. The move requires an admin. There is also an edit history problem, as the move from Lieutenant Governors of Nova Scotia to Viceroys of Nova Scotia appears to have been a cut-and-paste. Skeezix1000 20:45, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I have revived this discussion, by placing a RM tag on the Viceroys of Nova Scotia talk page, which directs the discussion here. Skeezix1000 (talk) 15:41, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I looked at the article entitled Viceroys of Nova Scotia and it is a simple list of names, essentially a mass redirect to individual articles. These list type articles predate the relatively new method of placing names in succession boxes at the bottom of the article. For example, at the bottom of each Governor article is placed Template:LieutenantGovernorsNovaScotia. I feel that this is an improved method of seeing the entire list and more interactive as you can page through the list in the succession rather than having to refer back to a separate list article. In essence the template has replaced the list, and IMO, for the better. Therefore I think the "List of Lieutenant Governor of X" articles should be removed and ensure that templates are placed at the bottom of each individual governor article. The ""Lieutenant Governor of X" can still remain as the office is still notable. I guess this is a vote for a modified version of Option C - get rid of the list articles altogether. Atrian (talk) 18:55, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I am against rename this article, as that would be factually incorrect as the list includes pre-confederation Governors. Further, I am against making "every province the same" as every province is not the same. The article for Lieutenant Governors of Alberta can be different from Viceroys of Nova Scotia, as Nova Scotia has over three centuries of Governors and LGs, and Alberta was created by the Federal government after confederation and has a bare hundred years. I think that the focus here is to have the best articles possible for the subject, not to "make everything the same" at the risk of making things both less clear, and incorrect.WayeMason (talk) 12:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Genie Award photo

I noticed that the photo for the Genie Award has been removed. I believe it lacked a rationale for its fair use. I would like to encourage Canadian Wikipedians to re-upload the image including a fair use rationale. I think that should solve the problem of it being deleted. NorthernThunder 00:35, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

People by province

Just a reminder that occupation-by-province categories should only be created in cases where dividing by province (a) actually gives a valuable piece of information, and/or (b) divides an overlarge category into more manageable subunits.

Regarding point a, for example, what province a lawyer or a judge is from obviously makes a difference in their careers, since each province has its own bar association and its own distinct laws. In music, art and literature, an artist or writer's province or region actually has some bearing on the styles and themes that they work with and on the wider cultural representation of that province or region.

In fashion modelling, on the other hand, there isn't a single solitary discernible difference in what it means to be a model from British Columbia versus what it means to be a model from Quebec. So provincial subcategories for models are pointless.

And regarding point b, if a category has 900 entries in it, then we do need to subdivide it somehow, and doing so by province is probably a reasonable way to do that. However, a category with only 23 entries in it almost certainly doesn't need to be subdivided that way.

For an example of a tricky case, dividing actors up by province certainly fails point a, but it passes point b since the category would be outrageously large if undivided. So it's fine to group those by province. Whereas subdividing dentists by province would fail both rationales. Bearcat 03:34, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Canadian Airports

All the Canadian airports have been updated to the newer infobox. This allows for two lines dealing with the airports location. There is "city-served" and "location", for an example see Sudbury Airport. It would probably be a good idea if people could go through, especially in major urban areas, and check that the two lines have the correct information. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 00:16, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Zoé Laurier

Why does Zoé Laurier have a notability tag on the article? Surely a first lady of a country IS notable. It seems as if nobody has questioned this since the notability tag was added back in March, but, I wanted to know if anyone would object to me removing it. NorthernThunder 21:31, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Polytechnique

Just a tipoff to anybody who doesn't know yet: École Polytechnique massacre will be the featured article on July 31. Probably should be kept watchlisted in case of vandalism, as always for FAs, but let's also congratulate everybody involved for their great work on such an important topic. Bearcat 01:52, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Added to my watchlist, though User:Chaser protected the article. Mindmatrix 16:44, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Canadian activists

The category Category:Canadian activists is becoming crowded. I'm not sure how to exactly fix it, so I'll explain what has happened. It now basically includes every left of centre politician in the country. For example, it includes a category called: Category:New Democratic Party activists, which itself includes Category:New Democratic Party of Canada MPs (every NDP member in the country). It also includes extreme right and left groups: Category:Canadian Trotskyists, Category:Canadian communists, and Category:Canadian fascists.

Here is the key question: Should politicians be considered activists based on them pushing their political ideology (in which case we should add Reform and why not Liberals and Conservatives while we're at it), or is it better if we left them out of the activist category as they are easily identifiable by political categories?

Comments? Deet 03:07, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I actually think that the term "activist" is so broad as to be meaningless, and that this category ought to be renamed. Looking at the activist article, it strikes me that just about anyone, including politicians of all stripes, could be called activists. I think the solution is to either reinvent or delete the category, rather than artificially deeming politicians to not be activists. Skeezix1000 11:48, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd suggest that where appropriate, people should be subcategorized by the particular type of activism they're known for (feminists, LGBTs, environmentalists, etc.), rather than directly in the parent category. As a lot of people are notable specifically for their activism, however, I don't think outright deletion would be appropriate — though reviewing and adjusting the purpose of the category is probably a good idea. Bearcat 23:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm a bit of a totalitarian where categories are concerned, so in line with my general opinion of categories, I think someone should only be in the CA category if someone (themselves or another) has called them an activist. Anchoress 22:23, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
That logic is pretty weak. Are we going to include every supreme court judge as 'judicial activists' because someone called them that at some point? Deet (talk) 23:20, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Help please figuring out where to place a request

I've been keeping my eye on the article Bountiful, British Columbia, the location of the Canadian branch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints polygamist sect based in Utah, Arizona, Texas, etc. As some may know, there has been recent controversy over a) the apprehension in the US of US branch leader Warren Jeffs, and b) the Canadian justice investigation of the BC branch over the possibility of criminal charges arising from their marriage practices.

I've long felt that the Bountiful article is too heavy on information about the FLDS (especially with the weak representation of general information on the town), and I have just noticed that the article on the FLDS has very little on the BC branch. I feel a bit timid tackling it all alone, but I think this would be a perfect time to a) flesh out the general civic, geographic, historic etc information about the town of Bountiful, b) condense and re-write the section on the FLDS (particularly making it more Canada-centric), and c) expand the FLDS article to include a dedicated section on the Church's BC activities. I don't know where to place this complex request on the request page, any suggestions? Please and Thank you. Anchoress 10:22, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Toronto Wikimania Bid 2008

Toronto Candidate City for Wikimania 2008

Support TORONTO in its bid to become the host city of WIKIMANIA 2008
Visit m:Wikimania 2008/Toronto for TORONTO's MetaWiki page and help build a strong bid.

Proposal to revive CCOW

I'd like to revive the Canadian Collaboration of the week. I know that it was tagged as historical due to inactivity, but as a comment said on it's talk page, quality is better than quantity. The few articles that did get through CCOW are quite good right now, and I believe that more collaboration could further improve articles. Using the WP:ACID method of requiring 4 votes within 7 days to stay in the list of nominations may be a good idea. GrooveDog (talk) (Review) 02:19, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

That link was actually WP:CCOTW, and at the end was a monthly event due to low interest. We'd need a rather strong show of support to bring the Canada Collaboration back. Meanwhile, speaking of WP:ACID: University of Saskatchewan and Manitoba are among current nominees there for improvement. Dl2000 03:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

City naming conventions

In line with the city naming conventions, I'm reviewing the situation for Canadian cities. I'm going to compile a list of all Canadian cities where "City" currently exists as a redirect to "City, Province", as those are the cities where we should discuss whether to move the article to just "City" or to change "City" to a dab page instead. The list will be at Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/Cities. Bearcat 02:32, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Jenn Hanna (curler)

I've done a bit of cleanup on this page; can someone who doesn't find curling as dull as dishwater give it a boo to see if it's been tightened enough to remove the 'inappropriate tone' tag? The article still needs work; feel free to add to the 'to do' list on the talkpage (or even improve the article!) But just a look would be cool. Anchoress 09:54, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Need help with cabmin info box

How do I update the infobox for Gerry Ritz? I've tried to add info about his appointment to Agriculture but I keep screwing it up. Thanks. Reginald Perrin 20:31, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Kwantlen University College

Hi folks,

I could use some help on Kwantlen University College and Kwantlen Student Association. The Uni College article, apparently, as been influenced by their marketing dept since as far back as 2005. I was going to revert it back to 2005, but looking at the changes, it would be more of a disservice than to do the bit I could on it. I could use a second pair of eyes on both articles to check for facts, neutrality, and perhaps a complete re-write. Thanks. GreenJoe 18:41, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Maritime radio

As some of you may already know, there's an ongoing problem emerging with the repeated creation of articles about non-existent radio stations in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. This began a few weeks ago with User:Nathan Williams, but that user has gone silent — instead, two users, User:CJ Ramsay and User:Jay Atkinson, are now both creating hoax radio stations. And what's even weirder is that both of those usernames have posted talk page warnings about the other one's hoaxes. My best theory at this point is that they're both the same person, and he's posting hoax warnings in a misguided attempt to give each username's own hoaxes more credibility by making them appear to be vigilant about the other one's hoaxes, although it could also be two friends playing a weird game with each other.

In addition, there have also been some related edits made by anonymous IP numbers. These resolve either to Rogers or to Bell Aliant in Saint John. I haven't yet figured out, however, whether the different providers mean home vs. work/school/friend's place, or "rethink the single user theory".

So I'm going to need some help here, if possible. The hallmarks of these hoaxes are as follows:

  • they have really amateurish logos that look like they were done in five minutes with CorelDraw; if you peruse the user's contribution history, there may be three or four logos for the same hoax station under different filenames.
  • the owner is often, although not always, "Alarm Broadcasting". It may also be Maritime Broadcasting System; if it is, the station's hoax status can be confirmed by its nonexistence on MBS's website. Brand names he tends to use repeatedly include "Julian FM", "Mix FM" and "Mist FM", although he may use others as well.
  • the station either launched a few weeks ago or is about to launch within the next few months.
  • the article is not filed in any categories, and does not have {{Canada-radio-station-stub}} on it.
  • the article was not created from an existing redlink on List of radio stations in New Brunswick or List of radio stations in Nova Scotia, but from a new link that he added himself shortly before or after creating the article. (I mention this because "Nathan" did also create one legitimate article among his hoaxes; an important clue here was that the redlink already existed.)

Additionally, the user has also added self-made hoax logos to a few real radio stations. In one case, the real logo was already present on the article.

If you see any edits that fit these patterns, please alert me on my talk page as soon as possible — especially if it's coming from a new username that I haven't already mentioned above. Thanks. Bearcat 03:44, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Postnomial letters

There's a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(biographies)#Postnominal_letters on changing the policy regarding postnomial letters. At present, for instance, the first line of Bob Rae's article reads "Robert Keith "Bob" Rae, PC, OC, OOnt, QC, BA, LLB, BPhi, LLD (honoris causa) (born August 2, 1948) is a Canadian politician."

I think the alphabet soup of letters in the first sentence impedes the articles readability and am proposing that, in bios where there is an infobox, the letters be removed from the body of the article and put in the infobox instead. Reginald Perrin 22:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Postnominal letters, BA, MA, QC, PC, QED

Why is it that articles on Tony Blair and Bill Clinton do NOT have a long string of initials signifying degrees and other honours following their name while articles on Canadian prime ministers and politicians have an unreadable alphabet soup of letters at the top of the article such as "Robert Keith "Bob" Rae, PC, OC, OOnt, QC, BA, LLB, BPhi, LLD (honoris causa) (born August 2, 1948) is a Canadian politician" compared to "William Jefferson Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III[1] on August 19, 1946) was the forty-second President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001." The long string of letters in the first sample is not only a bit pretentious but it interrupts the flow of the article. Could these postnominals not just be listed in the infobox instead? Reginald Perrin 13:13, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I think its alright if we keep them as they are. If the American article editors don't add them in, it's what they have decided or it's what they never thought to do. And plus, I've seen encyclopaedias like Britannica and the Canadian Encyclopaedia have them in their opening paragraphs for each biographical article. nattang 14:21, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
What strikes me are the degrees listed in the lead paragraph. It's one thing to mention Bob Rae's (to keep using the same example) PC, OC, etc. in the lead, but do we need his degrees? For example, the Margaret Atwood article mentions her OC, but does not list her BA or MA in the lead. I don't see a general need to shift the postnominals (I learned a new word) to the infobox, but there is perhaps an argument for removing degrees from the lead sentence. Skeezix1000 15:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
I would just like to add -- there is clearly huge inconsistency as to how this is done outside the U.S. (and I haven't examined the U.S. example much either, besides a few recent presidents and notable politicians). As noted above, there is no alphabet soup after Tony Blair's name in that lead sentence, but there is after Margaret Thatcher's name in the article on her. I note, however, that Thatcher's degree is not listed among the postnominals in that article. Skeezix1000 15:24, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies), degrees (including honorary degrees) aren't supposed to be listed as postnominal letters after someone's name. If you see them anywhere, please remove them. Reginald Perrin 16:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
No, don't remove them anywhere, only remove them from the opening sections. The MOS has nothing against them being used in infoboxes. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 23:21, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm still waiting for somebody to explain why it's even remotely important for postnominals to be listed anywhere in the article. Why would we need or want them to be included in the infoboxes? Bearcat (talk) 00:23, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
In WP:MOSBIO#Postnominal initials, it says "Postnominal letters should be included when they are issued by a country or organization the subject has been closely associated with. Honours issued by other entities may be mentioned in the article, but generally should be omitted from the lead." To me that says important honours like OC, OOnt, and even PC can be included in the lead but scholarly ones like PhD should be omitted or at least left to an appropriate discussion in the article. This makes a lot of sense to me since the lead should give a quick overview summarising the most important, interesting, and notable things about the subject. I would be hard-pressed to find a post-nominal BA of interest. And I wouldn't put any of them in infobox. But that's just my opinion. DoubleBlue (Talk) 00:42, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Bearcat, I like being able to find a person's full title with all honours and degrees listed, and there have been times where I needed to find out someone's full title and Wikipedia did not provide it, so I had to look elsewhere. As per the MOS, it would be a bit cluttered to include all postnominals in the opening, but I think it's fine to have them in the infobox. Afterall, that's what infoboxes are for: a quick summary of information. Having the postnominal letters there saves readers from having to read the whole artile looking for when each postnominal was awarded. In the infobox, they are especially non-intrusive when they are listed in a small font on a seperate line from the name, as many already are. --130.15.164.26 (talk) 01:19, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
And the reason you needed this information would be...? Bearcat (talk) 01:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
If the things need to be in the box then there should be a seperate line further down. My opinion is that the top line of the box should have only the name of the person. Nothing else, not even Sir or The Right Honourable. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 16:29, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Having a section in the infobox for titles and postnomials would be better than nothing, but I don't see what's wrong with adding them in small font to the name in the infobox. They are designed to be around the full formal name anyway. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:43, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
I look at Lester B. Pearson and it reminds me of the phrase Uncle Tom Cobley and all. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 01:34, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
That one is full of honorary degrees, and I'll agree that including those is a bit excessive. Maybe we can add a section in the infoboxes for degrees; that would clear up a lot of space around the names. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 01:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm still waiting for an answer as to why it's actually necessary to include them at all. It really doesn't add anything of genuine academic or educational value to the article. This is an encyclopedia, not Miss Manners' Guide to Unctuous Sycophancy. Bearcat (talk) 03:06, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
There may be some that do not meet notability standards. If we are going to take the least important ones out, we will need to set up a standard guideline listing which are important. For example: "the right honorable" is a notable title in all cases, whereas an honorary degree from the university of backwater is non-notable in all cases. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 20:43, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Category:Lists of people by university in Canada

I've started a discussion here because I've come across a great number of lists of people that aren't cited or verified. GreenJoe 15:53, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Polite racism

I reverted an edit by an anonymous user which added "polite racism" to the List of Canada-related topics. An internet search reveals that the term isn't too popular, but provides a few links to reasonable resources (for example, the course Sociology 211 at the University of Regina). Is anybody familiar with this? Is it "notable" enough to warrant inclusion in Wikipedia? (Note that some of the internet links use the term generically, instead of what appears to be a very specific type of racism directed toward First Nations here in Canada.) Mindmatrix 14:26, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Two points: firstly, it's a redlink, which means it shouldn't be added to topic lists, regardless of its applicability, until such time as somebody has actually written up a real article about it. Secondly, while I'm not going to sit here and claim that the phenomenon of polite racism doesn't exist within Canadian society, it isn't a uniquely Canadian phenomenon and neither is it an objective feature of Canadian society and culture. List of Canada-related topics is for things that are specific to Canada — adding "polite racism" to the list is essentially like saying that we should add polydactyly to the list on the grounds that somebody, somewhere in Canada was born with an extra toe or two. Bearcat 19:54, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

223 Unassessed Articles?

What the heck happened? How did we jump from 0 to 223 with no changes having been made on the pages or the template? Strangely enough, they also appear in other categories. Example: Ted Jolliffe is both unassessed and a GA for WPCANADA. Cheers, CP 02:27, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, figured it out - someone played with the PPAP template. Cheers, CP 13:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
There's a discussion going on the talk page for [[Template:PPAP]] for those who are interested. Cheers, CP 20:15, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Labour

Come all ye socialists and New Democrats and labour historians, and help me expand Timeline of labor issues and events in Canada... Bearcat 07:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

David Emerson image

I need someone who is more knowledgeable about uploading this type of image to fix the tag on the image page for image:DavidEmerson.jpg NorthernThunder 11:37, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Ontario election

For obvious reasons, Ontario general election, 2007 has been a heavy vandalism target today, and I don't expect the situation to get any better until at least midnight, if not more likely tomorrow. I've semi-protected the page for the time being so that anon IPs can't touch it. Any established user, however, can still edit it as the numbers roll in. Bearcat 00:32, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Electoral riding splits

Having just re-categorized many Ontario electoral riding articles, I've come across variations in how these articles are treated. In particular, there seems to be a trend to split the articles into two: one for the federal riding, one for the provincial riding. The reason for this is because an article containing both may become quite long due to election results that for some articles may date back a century.

However, these split articles have many common components. The geographical, demographical, and historical aspects remain the same for most ridings; in those ridings in which this is not true, the differences can be distinguished readily without too much elaboration. To me, it doesn't make sense to duplicate all this information. To reduce the size of such articles, instead of splitting them by provincial and federal riding, why not split off the election results for the provincial and federal ridings. We could also retain the last two election results for both provincial and federal ridings in the main article.

So, we could have something like this:

instead of this:

Note that I'm not necessarily opposed to splitting the articles; rather, I don't think it's the best way to proceed in dealing with this information. Thoughts? Mindmatrix 15:08, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I think they should be both in the same article. GreenJoe 16:58, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
For ridings that have been around for a while (some have been around since Confederation), having the riding profile info and federal results and provincial results all in the same article makes the articles huge. I understand Mind's point about the riding profile info being duplicated -- and then when someone changes it in federal riding article, they may not change it in the provincial riding article -- so I like his/her suggestion to split the election results out into separate articles. Ground Zero | t 17:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I like this idea, too. The current situation, with some articles split into provincial/federal and others merged into the same article, is confusing. The riding articles can easily maintain a brief list of their elected representatives while the actual results templates are split off. I would note, however, that for the most part the duplication applies only to Ontario; since Ontario is the only province that defines its Legislative Assembly seats by the federal boundaries, provincial and federal ridings rarely have the same names in any other province. Bearcat 19:06, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
We've already had this discussion, and the consensus was to split the articles. I'm opposed to creating articles with just results lists, that's going a bit far in my opinion. -- Earl Andrew - talk 04:41, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Here's a link to the discussion mentioned by Earl. Since that discussion, I've clearly changed my stance on the issue, and I've cited my reasons above. Additionally, we'd be able to create categories specifically for election results, and also reduce reader confusion by having only one article about each riding. I think we should judge the merits of the idea, not on the amount of work involved, and we should also be open to review any past decisions to see if we can improve the article set. If there are issues with having a single article for a riding, I'd like to know about them; maybe we can refine the model proposed above. Mindmatrix 15:35, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
I think we should use the same system across the country, and given that only Ontario has its provincial ridings match its federal ones, I think we should keep them separate. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:24, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Aside: if we were to implement my proposal, how do we deal with ridings that have existed for only a few elections? (eg Vaughan—King—Aurora) Would we forgo the separate results page? Mindmatrix 15:46, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Independently of this, I'd also like to note that there are quite a few consistency issues that need to be cleaned up among our electoral district articles. I haven't yet reviewed the situation for federal ridings, but for provincial ones, the situation is as follows:

  1. {{Infobox Canadian provincial riding}} is missing from many of them, and is missing substantial information even on many of the ones where it is present.
  2. some have incumbent lists and election results templates, while others don't; some don't even name the current incumbents.
  3. formatting is inconsistent where incumbent lists are present; some are organized into tables, while others are simply bulleted lists. Some of the latter kind are arranged in forward chronological order from first to most recent, while others are arranged in backward chronological order with the current incumbent at the top and prior incumbents listed backwards.
  4. election results templates are inconsistent. Some are listed oldest to newest, while others are listed newest to oldest. Some only include a partial election history. Some use the {{CanElec1}} template, while others are manually coded in the article.

They really would look much better if there were as consistent as possible a format across all Canadian electoral districts, with infoboxes and templates used consistently, so I'd like to suggest a cleanup project to get them up to scratch. Bearcat 21:46, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Template overload

I'd like to start a discussion about the use of templates on Canadian-related articles.

Some articles have as many as five or six different templates on them, many of which offer the same information as each other. For instance, the leader of a political party doesn't need a "Leaders of Party" template and a "Previous/Next Leaders of Political Party" succession box; a premier doesn't need a "Premiers of Province" template and a "Previous/Next Premiers of Province" succession box. A television station that broadcasts across the entire province of Ontario over 200 rebroadcast transmitters doesn't need ten different Ontario television market templates. A federal electoral district in Ontario doesn't need to have both {{Ridings in Northern Ontario}} and {{Ridings in Ontario}} on it. Saskatchewan Highway 1 doesn't need both {{SK Expressways}} and {{Saskatchewan Provincial Highways}} on it. And on, and so forth.

The issue here, of course, is that as Wikipedia's practices around template presentation have evolved, people have simply added more and more templates to each article without removing older templates whose function was replaced by the newer ones. As another example, {{Infobox Politician}} (which itself isn't used consistently enough) eliminates the need for many succession boxes, since it includes entry fields for a person's predecessor and successor in a political position.

Can I ask people to please take a more critical look at infoboxes and templates, and how to manage their use in articles more effectively? Thanks. Bearcat 06:24, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Hear, hear. Well said, Bearcat. Ground Zero | t 12:57, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Provincial abbreviations

If anybody's looking for something to do, List of Sea Cadet Corps in Canada currently contains a lot of redlinks which exist because the locations were wikified with their two-letter province abbreviation instead of the province's full name — so quite a few redirects need to be created. If you take some of them on, however, please ensure that we actually do have an article at the correct title before creating the redirect; do not redirect a redlink to another redlink. Bearcat 06:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I decided to just change all the two-letter abbreviations to full names. Readers should not have to figure out those often confusing two letter abbreviations. DoubleBlue (Talk) 06:13, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Beavers and forest fires

I once read a book set in the Chilquotin plateau in B.C., written by an early settler, who talked about the importance of leaving beaver dams in place to maintain the water supply in higher elevations and prevent run-off. Does anyone know the name of this book or the author?

60 Minutes just ran an episode about the huge increase in forest fires in the last decade or few, attributable to global warming. I have to wonder whether if we still had the enormous populations of beavers that once existed and allowed their dams to remain in place, a great deal more water would be retained in higher elevations throughout the year - lessening the spread of forest fires and reducing spring run-off and flooding. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AdvocateBC (talk • contribs) 03:02, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello from Yukon

I have been making small contributions on Wikipedia for a couple of months and have only just noticed that the Yukon article was in need of help. I wish I had looked before :( . I could probably get a lot done in a couple of days as I have time and resources on my hands. But I don't have any special software on my laptop so everything is done by hand, and I'm not yet too familiar with templates and such. I've had a brief look at most relevant discussions, and haven't figured out where to start! oh lordy! All your opinions will be greatly appreciated.--Tallard 12:38, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Rona Ambrose

Anonymous users keep removing the info box image repeatedly from Rona Ambrose claiming it casts her in a bad light, but have offered no alternative photos, anyone want to help revert or lock the page or something would be great --Cloveious 08:58, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Actually, this picture has no source or license associated with it. I have added a "nosource" tag to it. --YUL89YYZ 10:39, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes

In the interest of standardizing our articles on federal parliaments, I've adapted a sample infobox template not unlike the one in use on American congresses. I'm posting it at WP:CWNB/Parliament Infobox for discussion and fine-tuning. We really do need to have something like this on all the parliament articles, to summarize the most essential details right up front, but of course the actual design and structure can be refined before we actually add it to the articles. Any input would be appreciated. And something similar should also be hammered out for election articles, as well — I've tried playing with {{Infobox Election}}, but the "parliamentary type" parameters are designed for British elections and just don't quite land right on ours. Bearcat 07:04, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I like it, though I'm going to suggest some amendments on its talk page. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 14:08, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
I've left some notes on the talk page too. Mindmatrix 15:02, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Bearcat, would you mind if I move this into my userspace and play with it there? I think I can whip up something fairly quickly. Mindmatrix 02:45, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Sure, be my guest. Bearcat 02:55, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
OK. I'll see what I can do with it. Mindmatrix 03:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay. I'm now going to start futzing around with the same barebones template to get a Canadian elections infobox going. Bearcat 04:08, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I've got a basic design up, and I'd appreciate some feedback. Keep in mind that I've yet to work on the opposition party section. Thanks. Mindmatrix 20:31, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Canadian Provinces template

I'm new here so forgive me if this has already been dealt with or if I'm in the wrong place... I haven't found any tags for what American state infoboxes call demonym and what french infoboxes call gentillé. That means Manitobans and Yukonners and such are just scattered anywhere in the text. Am I missing something here? It seems to me like there should be a line in the infobox for that.--Tallard 12:42, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

You're right, a demonym is needed there. I think the template itself may need to be overhauled to take advantage of some of the more "advanced" formatting now available to us, but that'll require a lot of work. I'll look into adding the demonym for now. Mindmatrix 16:51, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Members of Parliament

After comparing Category:Canadian women Members of Parliament to the federal parliament website, I'd like to point out that we're close to a significant milestone in our coverage of Canadian politics — while we still have a crapload of MPs to write up, we're just six articles away from having at least a basic stub on every woman who has ever sat in the House of Commons. So let's pat ourselves on the back for something, anyway.

For the record, these are the six who are still missing: Margaret Rideout, Sybil Bennett, Eloise Jones, Margaret Konantz, Margaret Mary Macdonald and Albanie Morin. So if anybody feels the urge to help out with those last few stragglers, feel free... Bearcat 02:01, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Five down, one to go. Woohoo! Bearcat 07:04, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
I wrote the last one, though it's still a bit "stubby". Mindmatrix 16:41, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Image fair use rationales needed

In the past few days, it seems that Canadian fair-use images were especially tagged for possible deletion due to detected lack of fair use rationale (see WP:NONFREE). I added fair use rationale templates and info to Image:CTV 66.gif and Image:CreditUnionCentrelogo.gif, but currently have minimal time to do a full-scale review/rescue. Editors are encouraged to ensure such images have fair use statements as appropriate using the {{Non-free use rationale}} template. If possible, free images should be used instead, although those are not always a realistic option e.g. logos. Dl2000 01:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Montreal's international airport high-speed access

Montreal's international airport high-speed access has been WP:PRODed 132.205.99.122 —Preceding comment was added at 20:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Foreign relations

Hi all, I've just started a dicussion over at Wikiproject International Relations about how to properly name articles about Canada's bilateral realtions with other countries. Please have a look and comment if you have something to say about it. Kevlar67 08:21, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Copyvio in Vincent Massey

I've had to remove a large amount of material from Vincent Massey because it is lifted verbatim from http://www.gg.ca/gg/fgg/bios/01/massey_e.asp . The rationale is here. As this is rated an A-Class, high-importance article to Wikiproject Canada, I am posting this notice in the hope that another editor will rewrite these sections in short order to remove the gaping hole left in the article. --Rrburke(talk) 15:27, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

electoral districts

Can someone explain why several electorial districts are at Elgin—Middlesex—London and not at Elgin-Middlesex-London? It's odd having to enter "—" instead of "-" CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 23:24, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

On the Parliamentary Library site, it lists it first as ELGIN--MIDDLESEX--LONDON, so that could have been the reason. But later it's listed as ELGIN-MIDDLESEX-LONDON. I actually don't see any reason for it to have 2 "-" in the article title. In my opinion, we should move all of them to just one "-". -Royalguard11(T·R!) 03:11, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
There was also discussion about this on WikiProject Electoral districts some time ago. Mindmatrix 14:31, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

There is a valid reason for this: in French, compound place naems are hyphenated, as discussed at WikiProject Electoral districts. When these are strung together with other place names to form a riding name, the emdash is used to indicate the joining of component parts of the name. Using hyphens for both uses would be confusing. Let's stick with the Elections Canada convnetion, and forgive the Parliamentary website for its inconsistency. Ground Zero | t 15:03, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

That makes sense. Maybe I spoke too soon. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 22:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
As long as there’s a redirect for the benefit of people who don’t know how to type an em-dash, I don’t see a problem. David Arthur 15:29, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Ground Zero. I think most of them do have redirects. I was merely curious as to why that particluar form and wasn't bothered about moving them. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 21:25, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Just to clarify a bit, Ground Zero is correct that for federal electoral districts, the em-dash is actually the standard convention for federal electoral districts in Canada for the reasons he stated. Provincial electoral districts in Ontario, since most of them follow the same boundaries as the federal districts (and even the ones that don't still follow the same boundaries as an older group of federal districts), also use the em-dash. Provincial/territorial electoral districts in the other provinces and territories, however, only use a regular hyphen. Each convention is set by the federal or provincial elections agency. Bearcat 18:08, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Toronto Wikimania Bid 2008

Toronto Candidate City for Wikimania 2008

Support TORONTO in its bid to become the host city of WIKIMANIA 2008
Visit m:Wikimania 2008/Toronto for TORONTO's MetaWiki page and help build a strong bid.

--16:51, 7 August 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arctic.gnome (talk • contribs)

Infobox for electoral districts

I created a new infobox that can be applied to all electoral districts in Canada, federal and provincial (or territorial). It also handles districts that exist in both jurisdictions. I've temporarily named it Canada electoral district. I've created a sample page as well. I'd appreciate feedback, especially on how to deal with the additional features that I've yet to implement and copyediting the documentation.

My intention is to replace all other electoral district templates with this one. Mindmatrix 17:19, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I've added nearly all the features I'd planned for it, and will be moving it to the template namespace soon. Are there any lingering problems I need to address? Mindmatrix 02:42, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Looking at the test page, it looks like the current version is leaving a bit too much whitespace for the size of the map that's actually in use there. Is this a size-of-that-particular-map problem or a field-is-adjusting-too-widely-around-it problem? Bearcat 03:02, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
I can't seem to get rid of it, primarily because I can't figure out what's causing it. It was worse before, when the template added four spurious br tags. I shaved it down to two, so I guess I've solved the problem halfway... Anyway, I did open a discussion on the template page about these spacing issues, but didn't actually state it in any intelligible way - I've corrected that. I'll work on this issue tomorrow. I do know, however, that the image itself is not the problem; previous versions of the template, with the image, didn't have the gap. It's probably one of the image processing functions that's causing it. Mindmatrix 03:33, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
I resolved the issue by moving all the error notices to the bottom, but I couldn't find the cause of the spurious br tags in the rendered page. For some reason, they don't display at the bottom of the table. (Actually, they're not even rendered in the resultant page, so ParserFunctions is doing something quirky.)
I've moved it to the template page (at Template:Infobox Canada electoral district), so feel free to introduce it into relevant articles now. Mindmatrix 15:40, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Err, on second thought, hold off on that for a while. A different error has crept into the template (which I noticed while trying to add it to a defunct district). This didn't show up in my testing, and I'm now quite irritated. Grr. Mindmatrix 15:50, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Alright, the issues are resolved. There is still a warning message displayed for undefined population or area, but this shouldn't be a factor for active electoral districts, I've added the template to the articles used as examples in the documentation (Kugluktuk (electoral district), Neepawa (electoral district), and Oak Ridges—Markham) so that you can see how the various incarnations of the template display based on the parameters provided. Mindmatrix 17:35, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Municipalities

In my ongoing quest to identify areas where we need to improve our handling of Canadian topics, I've identified another yet practice that we should potentially discuss a bit.

Quite a few of our articles on communities and municipalities in Canada are still very barebones stubs. Most of our articles on larger cities have been quite legitimately divided into subtopics — but for an article as stubby as, say, Madoc, Ontario, we simply don't need separate one-line stubs for Allen, Bannockburn, Cooper, Eldorado, etc., on top of an underdeveloped stub on the township as a whole. McGarry, Ontario doesn't need separate one-line stubs for Virginiatown and Kearns on top of a three-line article about McGarry itself. And on, and so forth.

Accordingly, when I come across a really stubbish article on an incorporated municipality, I've begun redirecting any redlinks and/or really brief stubs about communities within that municipality to the parent article; I then add a "communities" subsection to the parent, in which we can write brief profiles of each smaller community within the municipality. This is not to suggest that we should never have separate articles on smaller unincorporated communities, of course, but in most cases we should really concentrate on bulking up the primary municipal articles first, and then think about spinning off separate articles for individual neighbourhoods once we actually have halfway decent articles about their parent municipalities.

If we already have a fairly substantial article about the child community (e.g. Wawa, Pointe au Baril, Fort McMurray), then we should certainly leave well enough alone. And this obviously doesn't apply to major cities for which we already have a long and detailed article about the primary municipality. But until about an hour ago, Verschoyle had a one-line stub while its incorporated parent, South-West Oxford, was still a redlink — and that's just silly. So in cases where the parent and child articles are both underdeveloped stubs, or where one of them is still a redlink, then I believe the articles should be merged for the time being.

Just a little food for thought. Bearcat 04:06, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to this, but one issue I have is that, by redirecting these stubs to the CSD (town, township etc.), we lose entries in the stub categories (eg Category:Western Ontario geography stubs), which is a rather useful thing to have. Then again, we can redirect and retain the category. (Aside: tens of thousands of such articles exist, not just for Canada, but for worldwide locations. Have a gander at France or Japan geo stubs, for example. A great percentage of these are nothing more than an infobox and a one-sentence article.) Is it worth the effort? Mindmatrix 21:18, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Categorizing the redirect is a good middle ground, I think. But for what it's worth, so far I've only done this for underdeveloped articles on municipalities in Ontario — I'm not familiar enough with the structure of municipal governments elsewhere to speak to whether it would be an appropriate solution for communities within Spiritwood No. 496, Saskatchewan or Willow Creek No. 26, Alberta. And it also wouldn't be so much of an issue if we didn't have so many Canadian geographic articles that are still redlinks. My solution here certainly isn't ideal, but it's better than having nothing at all about these topics. Bearcat 23:00, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Teiaiagon

I've been asked to review the Teiaiagon article for potential POV and edit warring issues, but I need to ask for some help as I'm not hugely familiar with the topic. Any input that anybody can provide would be helpful. -- Bearcat (talk) 20:20, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Elections infobox

I've played around with the existing {{Infobox Election}} some more. The result can be seen at User:Bearcat/Canadian elections templates, so I'd really like to get some feedback as to whether we should use this existing template or work on creating something different. Bearcat 05:22, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi Bearcat, it looks good to me. I like using existing templates if possible since it helps to keep the consistency of the encyclopedia. I don't see why Canada needs something different. --YUL89YYZ 09:15, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

For clarity's sake, the current usage status of this infobox is as follows: the US consistently uses it on every presidential election, but not on congressional or state ones. New Zealand has it on every election from 1984 on, but not yet on older ones. Mexico uses it on all of its presidentials which actually have articles; not all of them do yet. The UK uses it on its preview article for the next election, but not yet on any past election. And Australia uses a separate infobox, obviously adapted from this one but recoded for the fact that its structure needs to be a bit different ("2PP" and all of that.)
My only major concern about using the same template is the blank spaces after Layton — that's a lot of wasted whitespace. To the best of my knowledge, this is a uniquely Canadian issue: at least among the countries that are already using this template, Canada is the only one that actually has to contend with fourth and fifth parties getting elected to the legislature and therefore bumping down to a second row. And for reasons I haven't yet been able to identify, the template won't display Image:Canada2006.PNG even though the filename is listed in its map field.
ETA: You're right, however, that there's certainly no need to completely reinvent the wheel here — if a consensus emerges that we need to make adjustments before we can actually start adding this infobox to our elections articles, then either we could adapt a Canadian template directly from this one as the Australians have done, keeping the same general appearance but making the necessary Canuck-specific tweaks wherever necessary, or we could ask the template maintainers to add conditional functions to the main template which would activate only if the country field at the top of the box is flagged as Canada. I wouldn't even dream of suggesting that we design a whole new infobox from scratch. -- Bearcat (talk) 20:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Since I've had no further comments, I've placed the sample infobox on the 2006 election article. For other elections, we can either copy and paste from that article and make the necessary changes, or make the changes and test edits on the test page and then cut and paste from there. Bearcat (talk) 20:52, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Having all projects able to use {{WikiProject Canada}}

Just so you all know, I'm part way through a drive to make it so that all sub-projects of WP:CANADA can use the {{WikiProject Canada}} template to add articles to both this project and the subproject; using the same assessment parameters for both. I already have the WikiProjects Government of Canada, Parties and politicians, Canadian law, Education in Canada, Canadian TV shows, and Canadian Music included. My end goal is something like {{WP Australia}}, where you can add all subprojects to one template, and as a result the Australia master project has over 40,000 articles. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how the "sub"-projects feel about it but I think that is an excellent idea. It not only unites Canadian projects together but should also avoid the clutter of having more than one project template on the talk page and save the time and effort of repeated evaluations and to-do lists for different projects on same article. It should promote a more efficient co-operation. Thanks and perhaps I can assist in the drive. DoubleBlue (Talk) 02:39, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm hoping that they won't have too much of a problem with it, the ones that I've changed so far haven't complained. The biggest impact they will face is having to combine their importance-rating system with WP:CANADA's, meaning that they will only be able to have very few top- and high-importance articles. The big job involved will be changing all of the old templates to the new ones. If we are going to eventually change all of them, there are thousands of edits to make, as seen here, but there isn't really a need to get those done in a rush. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:57, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Excellent. I'll dig in and do a few now and then. You have a good point about fewer high-importance articles but they can still see which are the more important. DoubleBlue (Talk) 03:05, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
The Can. Music project was having a discussion about setting importance levels. Options are: (1) to be in sync with the overall Canadian importance rating or 2) add a parameter to assign a subproject's importance. (1) is low-maintenance; (2) would allow a more appropriate assessment within a subproject's scope. However, the class ratings are more important for project management purposes (stub/start/B/A/GA/FA), and class rank should be consistent within an article. Dl2000 (talk) 20:26, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that making importance rankings match up is too hard. The ranking on the table on their talk pages looks like it would be good for both projects. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 20:45, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Another milestone to share

As of this week, I'm pleased to announce that for the first time in the history of this Wikiproject, we have at least a stub on every person currently sitting in a provincial or territorial legislature in Canada. Former MLA/MNA/MHA/MPPs, of course, are another story still. Bearcat (talk) 00:20, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Claire Martin (meteorologist)

This article could use some extra attention. Recent edits by User:Pierre cb have questioned her meteorological credentials, opening a potential for controversy involving WP (also see Talk:Claire Martin (meteorologist)). Dl2000 (talk) 04:31, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Do we have a source to say she is a meteorologist? If we do, does he have one to say she isn't? On the website, I see (and quote) "Claire Martin is a qualified meteorologist with more than 20 years experience ranging from official weather observing to operational forecasting to television broadcasting." Unless he has an official source (not personal experience) to dispute that, then I say it stands. We don't take peoples opinions over sources (a la Essjay). -Royalguard11(T·R!) 22:16, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Parliament Hill - > Parliament Hill, Ottawa

There is a request to rename Parliament Hill because a place called Parliament Hill, London is named after a girls school Parliament Hill School, and the nominator says the London hill is quite famous. 132.205.99.122 (talk) 19:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Note: The discussion is on the Parliament Hill talk page. Mindmatrix 20:10, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Post-election edit war syndrome

As many of you know, every time there's a provincial or federal election in this country which results in a change of government, we end up with a two-week edit war sparked by editors who immediately replace the incumbent premier or PM with the incoming designate well in advance of the designate's actual swearing-in. Reading up on yesterday's Australian election, I've noted that the same thing is happening to them right now as well. And then I looked at Louisiana, where Bobby Jindal defeated Kathleen Blanco in last month's gubernatorial election but isn't actually going to be sworn in as governor until the middle of January — and it's been happening there, too. As relieved as I was to see that this misunderstanding of how things actually work isn't a uniquely Canadian problem, if it's happening this much then Wikipedia needs to think about how to reduce the edit warring.

As a consequence, I've written up a draft policy or guideline proposal at Wikipedia:Post-election edit war syndrome, regarding how to minimize this type of warring. I'd like to invite any interested editors to come offer some input. Bearcat (talk) 20:33, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Grey Cup

I just found some vandalism of a Saskatchewan player that survived for almost three weeks; requesting some eyes to check over/watchlist some of the game-day related articles to keep out vandalism. This is particularly important because most CFL-related articles aren't very high traffic, but the media will probably be coming to Wikipedia after the game to check facts. 207.6.232.215 (talk) 22:29, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

And for anyone who isn't a CFL fan, it's the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers playing today. 207.6.232.215 (talk) 22:30, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

William Winram

Sometimes I wonder why I bother here. Can someone tell me what's wrong with this article? What should have I done differently here? --YUL89YYZ (talk) 16:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the article. The subject meets WP:BIO, and the article is sourced. Perhaps the editor who tagged the article was looking for inline references - who knows. This sort of "drive-by tagging" drives me nuts. No effort was made to put a short note on the talk page explaining the reason for the tags. Skeezix1000 (talk) 17:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
When I have been commenting on Afd's for articles for older politicians, it crops up time and time again, that older (mainly local) politicians are not considered notable. I disagree with that entirely and didn't want to this article go the same way. Maybe the notabilty tag was harsh but I put them both on so it would explain why I tagged for primary sources. There is so much contradictory opinion on here that sometimes I can't win, feeling the exact same way as YUL89YYZ. Tags were left in good faith. I am not "drive-by tagging". Comments like that drive me nuts. Regards.Hammer1980·talk 17:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I have no doubt you left the tags in good faith. The reference to "drive-by tagging" has nothing to do with good faith, but rather to the fact that you tagged without explanation (or even an edit summary). If comments like that drive you nuts, perhaps you could have left a note on the talk page so that the rest of us are not left scratching our heads. I'm still quite puzzled as to why you tagged it for primary sources. Skeezix1000 (talk) 17:34, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:PPAP

Template:PPAP has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Vancouver and the 2010 Olympics

As Vancouver is hosting the 2010 Olympics (and the portal will get more visits) it would be nice if someone took a little time to update the Vancouver Portal. Perhaps a simple automatic rotation would eliminate the monthly redlinks in boxes. feydey 18:16, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Template:2002 Olympic Gold Medal Hockey Team

Template:2002 Olympic Gold Medal Hockey Team has been nominated for deletion at WP:TFD. 132.205.99.122 21:45, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Question

Would anybody here say that there's a specific, identifiable and encyclopedic thing called the 905 music scene, or is this just an original research attempt to conflate a bunch of separate local scenes into one on the flimsy basis of a shared area code? Bearcat (talk) 07:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Most likely, this was someone's attempt to extend the concept of "the 905" toward cultural matters, when in reality it only exists as a political and transportation reference (and sometimes as a general geographic tool). I don't think this is a valid article (I could have sworn I'd slapped an AFD tag on it early in the year), and neither does google. I think that regions of the 905 have music scenes more closely integrated with Toronto than they do with each other. Mindmatrix 14:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Image of Knowlton Nash

I just received a message stating that the current tag I applied to the image of image:Nash1.jpg is inappropriate. I would hate to see this image deleted so I hope someone could take a look at it and make any appropriate changes so it is kept. NorthernThunder (talk) 19:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I gave it a shot. Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:40, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Robert Pickton

He's been officially found guilty of 6 counts of second degree murder, so we'll need to keep a close eye on his page for probably the next week. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 20:20, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Robert Rabinovitch

I noticed that the article on Robert Rabinovitch is an exact copy of the bio on the CBC website. It doesn't appear to meet the copyvio restrictions because it is in public domain (?) but it doesn't seem right. Maybe someone with more experience can clarify this for me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by EncyclopediaUpdaticus (talk • contribs) 11:56, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I took a crack at a rewrite. The image used in the article also appears to a blatant copyright violation. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 16:00, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
The copyvio was introduced in this edit, which wiped the previous article and replaced it with the bio from the CBC. The same editor also uploaded the copyvio image from the CBC, which I've deleted. Mindmatrix 16:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm noticing that kind of thing seems to be increasingly common on Wikipedia — I can think of three other examples just within the past couple of months where I got personally involved in repairing copyvio problems in articles where an anon IP, or a named contributor with no other edit history, replaced a valid existing article with a copyvio cut and pasted from another website. Something weird is going on, clearly. Bearcat (talk) 20:38, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Good lesson that it's important to check the article history. I usually take the replacement of the article with a copyvio to be a judgement that our article is seriously lacking in comparison. In this case the article seemed to have the same relevant info but was a bit ugly with short sentences and a great deal of bullet points, while the CBC bio was a nicer read with well-sized paragraphs. The new re-write looks much better and unlikely to be overwritten again. DoubleBlue (Talk) 18:12, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
While that may well be true, it's also important to consider that sometimes it may be the article subject themselves, or an employee of theirs, replacing our article with their own preapproved puff bio so that they're in control of what's being said about them on the web. So we need to weigh the worthiness of such potential improvements against the fact that the edit in question may also be a violation of WP:COI. Bearcat (talk) 18:22, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
Good point on POV and COI problems. That could definitely be a motive as well. DoubleBlue (Talk) 21:40, 15 December 2007 (UTC)


Lotta Hitschmanova

I am updating this article on Lotta Hitschmanova and there is a notice about obtaining a picture for the article. I contacted USC Canada whom she worked for and obtained a picture of Lotta. I informed them that I would add it to Wikipedia as a public domain picture as long as they are cited as the owner. I went to the upload pictures page and chose "The copyright owner allows this work to be used for non-commercial and/or educational purposes". I figure this is close enough. But then it adds a notice that this is no good and the picture will be speedily deleted. WTF is going on here? Can someone tell me why they put this option here if you can't use it? Maybe someone can tell me how to proceed. Atrian (talk) 01:56, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The image-nazi bots would probably ignore it if you used both the "non-commercial" tag and a "fair use" tag. Don't forget to also mention the name of the article in which it is being used in the image description. —130.15.167.229 (talk) 02:26, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
It's a bit confusing, is the image PD or non-commercial. If it's PD as you say then upload it as such, using Template:CopyrightedFreeUseProvided and explain the terms. If on the other hand it's non-commercial then you should read Wikipedia:Non-free content. You may be better off asking at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. You might also want to look at Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission. Ignore the cheap shot about the bots that are only doing their job. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 03:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. The image is PD so this is the tag I was looking for. I have uploaded the picture and added it to the article. Atrian (talk) 04:27, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
It wasn't a cheap shot. Backing-up a tag with a fair-use tag and mentioning the name of the articles on which it is used really will make the bots happy! In fact, many of the tags tell you to pair it with a fair-use tag right on the template itself. --130.15.167.229 (talk) 03:45, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Sometimes, WP:OTRS is used to document permission status of photos on WP. An email response from USC filed as an OTRS ticket would help confirm the licence status. That arrangement apparently requires the help of a special OTRS admin. Dl2000 (talk) 03:43, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I believe they have that choice (and others) available to try and catch the images with licences that are inappropriate. Wikipedia has decided it cannot accept non-commercial licences since their content can be re-used on commercial sites. It sounds to me the licence you are looking for is {{Attribution}} or possibly {{cc-by-3.0}} but you would need to confirm that with USC. Check the list of tags at Image copyright tags/All. I hear 130.15.167.229's frustration about image licence bots (one in particular was very annoying several months ago) but putting wrong or conflicting tags will be found one day, whether by a bot or human. DoubleBlue (Talk) 16:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Seaton House

There's an emerging problem on this article with an anon IP repeatedly adding unsourced personal criticism of the quality of service at Seaton House, a homeless shelter in Toronto. Per WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV, etc., this is obviously unacceptable, but the anon is quite persistent about it and has even stated on the talk page that he's going to keep adding it back. So far it's been me and some recentchanges patrollers keeping things clean — could I conscript a few people from here to keep it watchlisted as well? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 06:32, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I've watched it. I guess blocking Toronto isn't an option then? How about a block-on-sight? Any IP making similar edits is immediately blocked a couple hours. It can hurt. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 19:27, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Canadian_Wikipedians%27_notice_board/Archive_7&oldid=1137404587"