Talk:McLaughlin Planetarium

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Good article McLaughlin Planetarium has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
  • I altered the reference to it being "generally accepted" that the planetarium was closed because the Harris government was looking for a high profile cut to the ROM's budget. That's a strong claim, and while I suspect it is probably true, it should be sourced. The reference only contains the allegations of planetarium proponents, so I edited the sentence accordingly. If other more substantive references could be found, then it would be great if we could reverse the edit.

    The article also says that Toronto is the only major city in Canada without a working planetarium. Does that mean that Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Montreal all have planetariums? Skeezix1000 12:32, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

    • I think your reasoning and re-wording to "generally accepted" is a good one, considering the possible bias of the source. Just about everything I've seen in my researches so far points very strongly in this direction, and this was the only source I could find that laid it out in black and white. If I find further corroborating evidence, will cite it here as well. As for the "major city" reference, I ran across it in one of the link article. I was meaning to find it again and flesh it out with references to each city and link to their respective planetaria, should they exist in Wikipedia. Left the statement in there as a placeholder to remind me to finish the work. Still very much a work in progress, but thanks for pointing out the things that need fixing. Ironically for a "dead" institution, the article for this already almost twice the length of that for its sibling institution, the ROM. Will have to address that in the future at some point as well. Captmondo 13:06, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested outline for future article development

An outline for future plans for expanding this article, comments welcome:

  • Add a detailed description of the Zeiss projector that was used, and possibly re-create an illustration of it, pointing out its various features.
  • Has the land in fact been sold to the condo developer, or was that contingent on the condo project going ahead; what I have read on this is so far unclear.
  • What were the technical features of the laser light show? So far all of the documentary evidence I have simply notes its existence, not its technical details.
  • The Zeiss projector was sold to York University. There were plans on refurbishing it, but did that ever happen? Is the projector still there somewhere? (this could well be original research if there is nothing already published, which puts it out of bounds for Wikipedia)
  • Talk about the temporary planetarium that the ROM established that took to the road and visited various southern Ontario schools.
  • Mention the small planetarium facility located in the Ontario Science Centre, reference seating capacity, etc
  • Take a look at the ventures for re-establishing a planetarium in Toronto in a NPOV way.

There are other interesting avenues for research that also come to mind, such as "what happened to the historical artifacts that were on display?", "where is the bronze bust of McLaughlin now?" "what, if anything is left of the old Planetarium facility in the current building?" are some obvious ones. However these would all likely constitute original research, which is verboten on Wikipedia itself. If anybody knows the answers to these questions, I would love to know, but would have to publish the material elsewhere for it to be a legit reference. Captmondo 13:59, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] GA nomination

The notability of this institution may never be high in terms of overall notability, I have been making minor improvements where possible in line with the previous Feature Article critiques and believe that this article is a solid Good Article candidate. Captmondo 16:47, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA hold

I agree that this is a solid article. I am only putting it on hold because it needs a few more citations. I have added some fact tags; some claims and facts need to be cited that currently are not.

  • Do footnotes seven and eight entirely cover their respective sections?

Suggestions beyond GA:

  • The lead seems dominated by discussion of the closed planetarium. It might be good to include more information on the planetarium's heyday.
  • Can you expand the descriptions of the shows in the planetarium? They are a bit vague right now and that would be interesting material to include.
  • I would suggest that you have a good copy editor look at the article. There are some small issues of wording and syntax that could be improved by someone who hasn't been working on the article.
  • EX: Proposals for building a planetarium in Toronto date back to 1944, but it took until 1962 when serious planning was started, thanks to a bequest made with this purpose in mind by a former member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC). - wordy and awkward
  • EX: these additions were deemed too costly and were never put into effect - additions are not usually put "into effect"
  • EX: The building was divided into four main floors - four floors or "four main floors" (implying there are more)?
  • EX: small space-themed library - "astrophysics library", perhaps?
  • EX: The Royal Ontario Museum also offers a traveling inflatable Starlab planetarium for school groups. - What's an inflatable Starlab?
  • Perhaps a pruning of the "External links"? That's a lot of links for an article this size.

Nice work. Drop me a line on my talk page when you want me to re-review the article or if you have any questions about this review. Awadewit | talk 17:47, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to have to fail this article today if that last citation isn't filled in (it's been nine days now). Also, please let me know if the citations at the end of sections cover the entire section. Thanks. Awadewit | talk 17:07, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Have not been able to track down a copy of the original press release, but have found a couple of pieces that reference what it said. That covers the first part. As for the second question, yes, the citations at the end of sections are designed to cover all that precede them (the exception being any internal citations for specific points that need to be backed up.) Cheers! Captmondo 02:18, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Excellent! I am passing the article. In the future, you might think about trying to integrate the information in the "Literary references" section into the article. That section seems like a straggler right now. Awadewit | talk 03:34, 12 August 2007 (UTC)