Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/discussion/Archive 5

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[edit] Canadian roads

I've noticed an increasing trend of new articles about roads of no cultural or historical significance to their region. Most of them simply describe various stretches of the road, and perhaps a few attractions found along it. Some may mention transport hubs et al.

Some roads are meaningful - the 400-Series Highways in Ontario, Bloor Street in Toronto, Saint Catherine Street in Montreal, but most aren't. In particular, numerous roads in the GTA have articles about them now; some of these probably should go:

Heck, just look at Category:Toronto streets and Category:Canadian roads for a more comprehensive list. I'm not saying that all of these should be deleted, but certainly some of them should be stricken from Wikipedia. Mindmatrix 14:06, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

There seems to be a small but vocal minority who believe that any street that exists anywhere in the world should merit an article (even if it's just a one-block residential laneway with two houses on it.) I don't agree with that; I think a street needs to have some special thing about it that makes it encyclopedic. Yonge Street is fine, due to the "longest street in the world" claims. Degrassi Street is fine, due to the Degrassi shows. Allen Road is fine, because of the whole Spadina Expressway thing. Even Shades Of Death Road is fine, just because its name is so...weird. But generally, I don't think a street is notable just because it exists or even because it's a town or city's main street; it needs to have "special" historical or cultural significance. Bearcat 00:12, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
I'll try nominating one for VfD/AfD to see what happens. Mindmatrix 01:45, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Canadian Navy

Canada's rather rich naval history is given pretty abysmal coverage on Wikipedia at the moment, but the topic is a bit too broad (in terms of number of articles) and a bit too narrow (in terms of appeal to the editing population in general) in order to go through a formal collaboration-of-the-week/articles-for-improvement type process. Just thought I'd post a general appeal for interested persons to throw a bit of attention at this area—I don't know if we want to go the fullblown WikiProject route, but any redlink fighting prowess would be greatly appreciated. I've been plowing away at List of ships of the Canadian Navy and within Category:Canadian Navy for a few days now, and while it's a little cleaner than it used to be, there's still an appalling amount of red. Every other major nation has Wikipedia articles for all of its current warships big and small; we've got a pretty mild smattering of one-liners on the various frigates and not much else. Any thoughts? -The Tom 21:22, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

As a naval/military aficionado, I can assist in editing, maintaining, and enhancing these articles. Guidance? Thoughts? E Pluribus Anthony 02:24, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimania 2006

Despite the lack of enthusiasm to my previous posting on this issue, I have been working on bringing the 2006 Wikipedia conference to Toronto. I have spoken with the director of KMDI, an institute at the University of Toronto. KMDI specializes in the study of collaborative content generation, and they are willing to collaborate with us and can get us access to University of Toronto facilities for free. This is a pretty major advantage to the Toronto bid, and I now feel we have a good chance of bringing Wikimania 2006 to Toronto. The one element we don't yet have is many people willing to help out. I am willing to do a lot of the work, but the support of others is needed. I have already spammed a number of user pages, but anyone else who is willing to work on this project please sign up at Wikimania 2006/Toronto. - SimonP 18:16, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

  • I'd be willing to help out some, but I'm not sure I have it in me right now to be a key organizer. This has been a really bad year for me. Bearcat 17:31, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
    • I'm sorry to here about your year. According to the people who organized last year's conference there really wasn't all that much work to be done locally. Mainly we need a handful of people in the week before the conference to set things up and run errands. Any links to local media and sponsors would also be useful. For the moment I am most interested in getting an impressive enough list at Wikimania 2006/Toronto to try and convince the bid committee that Toronto should be the host city. - SimonP 17:58, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Renfrew Station in Vancouver

Can someone from Vancouver please look at this article and clean it up, list it for VfD, or whatever needs to be done with it. I assume this refers to a SkyTrain station, but I may be wrong. If it is a SkyTrain station, then it probably merits inclusion a la GO Train station articles. Mindmatrix 14:20, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I poked at it a bit, added templates and whatnot, but there's not much to day about it. If it wasn't part of {{SkyTrain Stations}} I'd say it was a good VfD, despite the fact I've been using that station a lot recently. Zhatt 17:21, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Clarkson Village, Ontario

Is this the same thing as Clarkson, Peel Regional Municipality, Ontario? I assume it is, but wanted to make sure. Mindmatrix 15:48, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Royal Canadian Air Farce

Hello...does anyone have any ideas about who was the label that put out all the Air Farce albums? Also, who produced them, and if anyone can get any reviews of them?

Oh, and will it offend people if an Australian wikipedian who's very interested in Canadian TV stations and networks and TV shows adds himself to the local list? Cheers! BigDan 10:18, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

The CBC for many years had its own internal label, CBC Enterprises, to distribute albums and videos connected to CBC broadcasting endeavours. I believe the Air Farce albums were on that label, though I can't say that with absolute certainty. (Oh, and AFAIK the members' list is open to anyone who's knowledgeable about and interested in Canadian topics, regardless of whether they actually live in Canada or not.) Bearcat 19:20, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks mate! Much obliged for the info :) BigDan 00:52, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New WikiProjects

An anonymous user has started two new WikiProjects for Ontario and Alberta. After creating them, s/he left the following message on the WikiProject Ontario talk page:

Okay, I started this page to help focus building the information on here about Ontario, I have modelled it after some
similar projects and hopefully some of you will pick it up from here!

Apparently, the user has no interest in participating in the project - that's my interpretation. I propose we delete them, unless someone wants to put the effort required to organize either or both of these. Mindmatrix 22:33, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I am the anonymous user and I think that these projects are good ideas but I have no idea how to proceed - is there any interest out there? (unsigned edits by User:68.148.212.220)
There's no doubt that they're good ideas. Unfortunately, you haven't specified what the projects entail, what the goals are, timelines (if any), and the scope is somewhat vague. You've simply copied a template and left it (mostly) blank. However, you are seeking input, and clearly have an interest in this, so I'll give it a bit of a kick-start. I've edited the Ontario project page with some potential targets: some may be too ambitious, and others may be missing from the list, but it's a start. I'll certainly consider participating. Mindmatrix 18:53, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

A user changed the meaning of SSM's original Ojibwe name, Bawating, from "rapid water" to "meeting place", and indicated on the talk page that he's sure that's the correct meaning even though he doesn't have a source for it. Quite apart from the fact that the vast majority of references I can find on the web cite Bawating as meaning "rapids", "water beaten to spray" (ie. rapids) or "where water flows over rocks", "meeting place" is commonly cited as a meaning for Toronto (and I think I've seen it incorrectly cited for other aboriginal place names as well). But, if you phrase the Google search just right, you can find a page or two which cites "meeting place", not "rapids", as the meaning of Bawating.

So, two questions:

  1. Can anybody shed some light on the question?
  2. Does it say something about the Canadian psyche that we have such a fascinating determination to believe every place name of First Nations origin means "meeting place"?

Thanks. Bearcat 17:22, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Only ever heard it used for Toronto myself Sherurcij 03:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Categorizing Canadian communities

Spurred by the nomination of Category:Villages in Canada for deletion, I wanted to discuss the categorization of Canadian locations (again, I know...)

Categories we agree on:

  • Cities in XXX
  • Towns in XXX

Categories I propose:

  • Townships in XXX
  • Parishes in XXX - not for all provinces
  • Villages in XXX - do any incorporated villages exist? I thought so, but I can't find any
  • Unincorporated villages in XXX - this includes hamlets et al (maybe Unincorporated communities in XXX?)

Categories to delete:

  • Communities in XXX (too generic)
  • Parishes of XXX (replaced by Parishes in XXX above, for consistency)
  • Townships of XXX (replaced by Townships in XXX above, for consistency)

This follows the model for US locations, so there would be consistency there too. They also use other categories (eg Category:Places in New York to contain the information above - something we might wish to pursue (we have a similar category in Category:Subdivisions of Canada, but no equivalent provincial categories).

Does anyone have objections? I'll do all the work, I just want to make sure everyone agrees to this before I proceed. Mindmatrix 00:00, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Speaking as a Yukoner, I would suggest keeping "Communities in X". Make towns, villages, etc.subcategories of it for the provinces where it makes sense. Plus how would you deal with MRC's in Quebec and their equivalent in Ontario. Communities is the term used in the North. Many are unincorporated, others are a combination of a village/town/unincorporated community and a reserve, but are considered one community. "Places" is too vague. "Census Subdivision" is a Stats Can term, but if one only uses "subdivision", it could be ambiguous as it also means a development/neighbourhood. Plus nothing says it has to be consistent among all provinces/territories. Luigizanasi 03:37, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
MRCs and counties and regional districts and such aren't an issue; they already have a separate categorization scheme under Category:Census divisions of Canada. They'd never be categorized under "communities" anyway. Bearcat 21:26, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
This link can help you with British Columbia. It is current as of 2002. However, it does not have Regional Districts or rural communities. --maclean25 01:37, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I found similar links for Ontario and Manitoba. These two links answer my question about incorporated villages in Canada. Mindmatrix 02:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Here's one for Saskatchewan, Alberta (in the drop-down lists), and Nova Scotia (and counties too). Mindmatrix 02:40, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I found one for PEI, and another for NWT. Those for N&L, NB and Nunavut are difficult to find - I've found listings of locations, but not their status. Mindmatrix 02:52, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
It may be wise to define what these terms mean first. There may be nomenclature differences. I saw what BC calls rural communities (ie. unincorporated farm towns which have no defined borders), Manitoba calls Rural Municipalities (which appear to have defined borders but are unincorporated). From what I saw it appears to be a people per area distinction that separates villages from towns and so forth. --maclean25 04:07, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I'd certainly want to define the terms first. There are far more terms in use than I expected, but so be it. I'll also make sure to customize sufficiently for each province/territory, while maintaining a more standard national perspective overall. I may make a separate page in my user namespace to track all this stuff... Mindmatrix 03:28, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

For Ontario, I was wondering how best to handle Municipalities. A few places are officially designated Municipality, and some of these are assigned a status, usually Town or Township. I propose that they all be placed in a category Municipalities in Ontario, and those that have an assigned status additionally be categorized into the appropriate category Towns in Ontario etc. Does this seem reasonable? The other option, of course, is to simply leave them in the single category Municipalities in Ontario. Mindmatrix 14:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'd consider a separate category for "municipalities" to be particularly necessary. Any incorporated community is a municipality; they just don't all use that designation in their official name. A community that uses "municipality of (name)" is still legally a town or a township; "municipality" is just an alternate designation that some communities happen to be designated with instead of "town" or "township". It's not actually a distinct legal status.Bearcat 22:03, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Determining whether some places are towns, townships or villages is downright impossible in some cases. But I agree, we don't need a separate category for this. Mindmatrix 20:47, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I've created a page devoted to this in my user space: see my Canada geography sub-page for information, and by all means, please update it with any useful info. It's still a work-in-progress right now, and I won't start any major re-categorization work until this is mapped out fully. Mindmatrix 20:47, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] British North America

A request has been made to merge this article into British colonization of the Americas. Is it a distinct enough idea to warrant its own article? I think that this is a primarily Canadian issue so I asked here. Rmhermen 15:01, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

These unquestionably should not be merged. BNA is essentially the name of modern Canada name from 1776 to 1867 and the British North America Act is still the core of Canada's constitution. - SimonP 21:44, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
I concur fully with SimonP; keep them separate. E Pluribus Anthony 02:21, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] and suddenly he took leave of his census...

Our beloved Ontario population vandal (the one who makes random unsourced changes to the population figures for Ontario cities) is back again. So far, the only changes I'm aware of have been to London and Peterborough, but it'd be best if as many people as possible keep an eye on the Ontario city articles. Known IP so far is User:24.92.224.54, but this has previously happened under other IPs as well. Bearcat 21:36, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I had a look earlier today, and found only those two edits; I haven't found any other anon IPs that may be causing problems (the Newmarket, Ontario article was once frequently pop-spammed, so I especially keep watch of that one). Mindmatrix 03:21, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
That has got to be the most pathetic vandalism ever...wow Sherurcij 03:06, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] VOTE!! - HDI in Infobox#Countries|country infobox/template?

My fellow Canadians ...

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a standard UN measure/rank of how developed a country is or is not. It is a composite index based on GDP per capita (PPP), literacy, life expectancy, and school enrollment. However, as it is a composite index/rank, some may challenge its usefulness or applicability as information.

Thus, the following question is put to a vote:

Should any, some, or all of the following be included in the Wikipedia country infobox/template:

(1) Human Development Index (HDI) for applicable countries, with year;
(2) Rank of country’s HDI;
(3) Category of country’s HDI (high, medium, or low)?

YES / NO / UNDECIDED/ABSTAIN - vote here

Thanks!

E Pluribus Anthony 03:45, 20 September 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Ballantynes Cove, Nova Scotia

Is this community named Ballantynes Cove, or Ballantyne's Cove (note the apostrophe)? Statcan is no help in this matter. Mindmatrix 20:18, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi! According to the Atlas of Canada, it's Ballantynes Cove (no apostrophe). E Pluribus Anthony 20:29, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Biggest Canadian Cities by Metropolitan Area

An anonymous user has created this article. Aside from the poor choice of title, it:

I think I'll slap an AfD on this one, unless someone can give me a reason not to. Mindmatrix 23:47, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd simply redirect it to List of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in Canada, mainly because that will be a lot faster than an AfD. - SimonP 00:19, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm with SimonP. Just redirect it; doesn't need a vote. Bearcat 21:18, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I concur with other users; redirect. E Pluribus Anthony 20:09, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

See also List of population of Canada by years, created by the same user, which at the very least needs to be retitled. Other strange edits by this user include adding British Columbia to a list of "possible future countries" appended to an article titled Former Countries. Bearcat 21:29, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Georgia Strait Bridge

This article that I just created deals with a very controversial idea here in Southwestern British Columbia, of whether or not there should be a fixed link connecting Vancouver Island to the B.C. Lower Mainland. I would like to see some in-depth, but hopefully not heated, discussion about this idea in that article.  Denelson83  20:13, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

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