Template talk:Montreal landmarks

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[edit] Categories

Can I add more categories? "Buildings" is too all inclusive and I would recommend breaking it down further into something like "Museums/attractions," "Places of worship," "sports venues," etc. Shawn in Montreal 18:40, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

If a navigation box becomes overbloated, it looses its usefullness, not to mention any esthetics. Many of the buildings already included are not landmarks at all, and should not show up in the navbox. I could say the same about the whole "transportation" group, nothing remarcable or attractive there. --Qyd 20:44, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
I see your point. Would you like to take a crack at winnowing it down to what you think it should be?Shawn in Montreal 21:02, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Landmarks?

I see that I am not the only person to be struck by the title of this template. It seems to me that in now goes way beyond landmarks (especially with the Transportation and Events section) and needs to be

  • renamed, or
  • split into different templates, such as:
    • Churches in Montreal
    • Montreal Events
    • Montreal neighbourhoods
    • Montreal parks
    • Shopping in Montreal
    • Transportation in Montreal
    • Visitor attractions in Montreal
    • others

— Grstain | Talk 18:43, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer your suggestion of splitting. I checked out Toronto (those wretches!) and they seem to have a variety of templates, roughly along the lines you propose. Also, I'm not aware of any non-Christian places of worship in Montreal so Churches in Montreal would probably do for now. However, if and when and if we get an article on a noteworthy, synagogue, temple or mosque we could rename to Places of worship in Montreal. regards, Shawn in Montreal 18:54, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually I see there are articles on synagogues. But again, I think the point of a template differs from a list and only bona fide attractions need be included. I believe none of the synagogues have been listed as historic sites, for example. Shawn in Montreal 19:06, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clean up and update

Pursuant to the discussion above, I've done what I think is a common sense clean up and update. In particular, I've removed shopping malls. For Toronto, they have a template for mall in southern Ontario and I think that would be the best idea for shopping in the Greater Montreal Area, too. Shawn in Montreal 16:54, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I would support a split of each row into its own template (or change this template to accept a parameter to show only the given row). To have navigational value, the box shouldn't simply link to everything in Category:Landmarks in Montreal. Agree that it's more intuitive to browse across malls in the area rather than from malls to parks and events. –Pomte 05:19, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
First things first, I'll definitely split out the neighbourhoods; those already have a separate template which should be used in lieu of this one on the neighbourhoods that are contained here. From there, I wouldn't necessarily split every row into its own template right away — some should probably still be combined in some way: I'd start with a {{Culture of Montreal}} template that combined the primarily cultural rows from this one (events, museums) and added other notable stuff from Category:Culture of Montreal. (Events, in particular, really aren't "landmarks" in any sense of the word — a landmark is a physical thing, like a building or a statue or an imposing piece of geography, not a tourist event.)
Then I'd do an expanded {{Transportation in Montreal}} template, which took the transportation row from here, combined it with the airports, the autoroutes, major streets, etc. Then I'd pull out the squares and parks rows and do a combined {{Squares and parks in Montreal}} navbox. Then {{Buildings in Montreal}} for buildings that didn't make the "culture" cut, adding other significant buildings that aren't here right now. Then put the islands into a {{Geography of Montreal}} category, add things like Lachine Rapids and any other notable geographic topics. Then kill this one as it no longer serves an actual purpose once all that's done :-) Bearcat (talk) 02:48, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template clutter

Templates are a great thing. And I think it's a great idea that some sober second thought is being brought to the Montreal landmarks template, and that it may be split. But could I just say that some careful thought should be given to not creating too many new templates. Frankly, some articles are infected with templates, and every new template potentially contributes to the problem. In some cases, a category does just as good a job, if not better, than a template -- really, templates are of great benefit where they organize or display information in a way that a category can't. And I note that the Malls in Southern Ontario template, mentioned above, isn't all that great an example of something you'd want to emulate -- it's a mediocre template, doesn't contain most malls (since most malls are not sufficiently notable to have their own article), and consequently that doesn't really add anything to the articles that a category couldn't already do.

I'm not criticizing, nor am I suggesting that you shouldn't create new templates. I just ask that you keep my caution in mind as you undertake this much-needed task. Thanks. Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:01, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, most of the splits I suggested above would be mutually exclusive; that is, few articles would end up with more than one of the replacement templates on them (excepting a few that could be added to both "Buildings" and "Culture".) Certainly we wouldn't want to define replacement templates so narrowly that one article ended up with ten of them on it, but trying to make a single template do too many things at once isn't the most effective way to organize an encyclopedia either. Frex, until last week this one had some of downtown Montreal's neighbourhoods on it, which is really stretching the definition of "landmark". Bearcat (talk) 23:34, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
How about making groups optional, to be displayed only in relevant articles (ex: show transportation group only in articles related to transportation). It would work like {{Subdivisions of British Columbia}}. --Qyd (talk) 16:02, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template talk:MontrealNeighbourhoods

For anyone interested, there's a similar discussion ongoing at another Montreal template, Template talk:MontrealNeighbourhoods. thanks,Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:07, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] oldest shopping centre in Canada

I am adding Norgate shopping centre to the template, because it is the oldest shopping centre in Canada. 70.55.88.176 (talk) 07:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Montreal?

We should have a WikiProject Montreal... like other cities in Canada do... like Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa... 70.55.88.176 (talk) 07:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)