Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vancouver/Archive/November 2006

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.


Contents

Archive 1

The talk pages up until November 2, 2006 for WikiProject Vancouver have now been archived in Archive 1.
Mkdw 23:08, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Modified. AQu01rius (User • Talk) 01:51, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Arts and Culture

Assessment Department

Buildings and Structures

City Services

Events

Geography

GVRD

History

Neighbourhoods

NavBox

User:Buchanan-Hermit created a NavBox for Vancouver Neighbourhoods.
{{VancouverNeighbourhoods}}

People

Upgrade Nomination

  • Sam Sullivan requires its web references to be formatted using {{cite web}} before being moved to the A List.
  • John Turvey requires a picture before being moved to the A List.
    • I added some photos and spruced up the text and formatting for L. D. Taylor; I think it's ready for the A-list.Bobanny 23:39, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Upgraded, though it could use some more references and section specific citations. Mkdwtalk 08:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Schools

NavBox

  • WikiProject Education has some excellent school related templates (Navigational Templates, Info Templates, School Templates). Mkdw 23:24, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Canuck89 created a NavBox for Vancouver Schools on the main page.

Universities and Colleges

Elementary and Secondary

Stubs

King George Skytrain Station.

For me the current article fails to capture the true history of King George Station. When originally constructed, the station, like Gateway, was to be at the center of a large condominium project, including a number of residential towers connected by town homes. When the station was completed this project was underway. Today, just east of the station, off East Whalley Ring Rd., there is a single tower connected to a line of town homes. However, like Gateway, the project was suddenly terminated before the start of 1996. For years the tiny showcase structure remained on the gone-to-seed lot, displaying the weathered artists’ rendering of this forgone project. Only in 2005, with the commencement of the Infinity project, has the site’s potential been realized, now in conjuncture with the Central City Shopping Center. The project, however, remains contained to the square of block bordered by King George Highway, 100 AVE, East Whalley Ring Road, and Fraser Highway, whereas the original King George project extended east of the Ring Road. As to the line’s possible extension to Guilford to ease traffic, if the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge project goes ahead, a project which calls for Light Rail service over the new bridge from Coquitlam to Surrey, further extension of the Expo Line in this direction is questionable, unless Translink proposes a grandiose circular linkage between the two lines. Mchelada 21:47, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions

Active/Inactive List

Our participants list is becoming quite extensive. In some other city WikiProjects I have seen them do a week week roll call and then have two categories for their participants. Active and Inactive. We may want to consider doing this soon. Langara College 18:49, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Might be a good idea. Mkdwtalk 02:25, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Work has begun on this new system. Mkdwtalk 01:08, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Welcoming New Members

Template

I realized that we should probably have a welcome template for new WikiProject participants, to gain some sense of community, so I created {{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Vancouver/welcome}}. I wrote it up relatively quickly, so if you can think of ways to improve the template, go ahead by all means. I just want to find some way of welcoming the WikiProject's newcomers. :) Buchanan-Hermit™..CONTRIBS..SPEAK! 05:15, 6 April 2006 (UTC)


Help Request

Featured Article

  • Vancouver has been nominated several times to become a featured article but has never been approved for various reasons. This project seems to be winding down and I think it would be a good objective to try and get Vancouver to be a featured article. Mkdwtalk 12:43, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. We just recently made it through the Good Article hurdles, and I don't believe this article is far from Featured Article quality (see (Detroit and Seattle for examples of featured cities). It's mostly technical things that need to be done, IMO.Bobanny 15:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Vancouver has been nominated to become a featured article. Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Vancouver. Please go to the link and show your support. At this time users may oppose the article for various reasons. We can try and actively fix the article as users comment on what needs improving. Something that can be done immediately would be to track when all the citations were added and adding a 'date retreived' to the citation. Anyone up for the working man's barnstar? Mkdwtalk 05:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
The article mainly requires changes to its citation format. Many of the citations should be chaged to {{cite web}}. Langara College 18:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Vancouver seems to be facing a lot of trouble pertaining to the Flora section. Would anyone be able to improve this secton accurately? Lily Towerstalk 10:12, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
The biggest remaining weakness that I can see is not enough citations in certain sections, and as far as I can tell, that's all that's wrong with the flora section.Bobanny 17:41, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Vancouver has many citation formating problems in general that could be fixed. A date retreived and using {{cite web}} would be the final area needing improvement. 142.35.144.2 00:06, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
  • FA update for Vancouver: I did a whole bunch of work on this beast today, and we're definately down to the nitty-gritty. Here's what I've noted that still needs doing (as of Nov 11 pm):

#Someone will need to go through and make all the footnotes consistent. Alot have been done in the {{cite web}} format (thanks, Selmo and others), but some are still outstanding.

  1. There's still some stuff in the article that need references: 300 sushi restaurants in Vancouver, Vancouverites are more likely to dine out than similar creatures, the area (km2)of Vancouver and the 50 creeks and streams that no longer exist (both in the last paragraph of geography), the entire "Flora" section (except that it used to be a rainforest -- mwahahaha! >:), and the punk rock section. There's some other places where it looks like a citation is needed, but is covered by a nearby one, like housing prices i think, that should be repeated in the appropriate spot for clarification.

#The in-text footnote numbers should all be moved to the end of their respective sentences. No, this isn't a mandatory format rule as someone suggested, but it's a lot cleaner stylistically. It definately has to be consistent throughout the article, which it currently isn't.

These are all done now.Bobanny 09:56, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
  1. For bonus points, see if you can find the slightly-inappropriate-but-kind-of-funny wikilink I snuck into the article.
The citations are the most important thing. The quality generally, in my humble opinion, is very high in all the other areas, and I think this review process has done wonders for the article. Thanks everybody, Bobanny 06:37, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree. This project has been very beneficial to this project and the article itself, along with several other Vancouver related articles that have been improved. Thank you for your continued patience in regards to the reorganizational efforts ongoing to this project. Mkdwtalk 00:31, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Congratulations

Congratulations to all those who put forth their efforts on making the article Vancouver a featured article. On November 22, 2006 the article officially became a featured article. The success and attempt brought this project back together. We did it! Mkdwtalk 00:05, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Every who helped should get a barnstar some other WikiProject award. -- Selmo (talk) 00:12, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Yay! Congrats! Kla'quot 06:37, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Future for WikiProject Vancouver

Our attempt to become a Featured Article has been rewarding not only in our increased attention to the article and clean up, but also recognition and exposure to the rest of the Wikipedia community. I would like, with your help, to redefine what the intensions and plans for this WikiProject are in a Five Point Plan.

  1. Successfully complete Vancouver's FAC.
We are very close to completion, but I suggest we focus on this goal before attempting others.
On November 22, 2006 the article Vancouver became a featured article.
  1. Nominate Vancouver for Wikipedia Version 1.0.
Once Vancouver has become a featured article, this automatically makes it eligible on all criteria.
Vancouver now satisfies all criteria for Wikipedia Verson 1.0. Nomination reviews are not going up yet, but Vancouver will be ready. Mkdwtalk 09:28, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
  1. Reorganization of the WikiProject.
We have used WikiProject Ottawa as our template. However, our WikiProject has increased its mandate to areas such as Vancouver related articles, GVRD and its associated articles. WikiProject London is perhaps Wikipedia's most successful city WikiProject. They have spent a well rounded effort to improve their articles to which many are featured status. Their success has come from concentrating their efforts rather than distribution. I also feel that this project will become more of a community through all working together on a similar task. Hopefully with our collective colaborting, our work will not become tiresome and we will have the chance to make this project one of the best. This new direction will allow this project to move in its own direction as originally discussed when the starting template was establshed.
  1. Expansions of the Vancouver Portal.
This article should be easy to fill and would be nice to have on its way.
  1. Continued work on Vancouver related articles to Featured Status.
We have several well written articles that could be close, and would only require minor touch ups.

Thanks, Mkdwtalk 19:48, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment/Suggestion

  • As a part of the WikiProject reorganization the Collaboration concept was not able to motivate and organize people as its intension. I feel that this Five Point Plan should be the basis of decision for the future of the project. It will allow our participants to see the direction of the project, the tasks at hand, and allow for completion of one article before moving on. I noticed that the WikiProject London does not have a collaboration section, but a Showcase in replacement. Mkdwtalk 20:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I am merging redundant and repeaticious information on the WikiProject page. It is still under construction and will be completed in the next couple of days. As for the images, there are some current problematic formating issues that will be resolved with the creation of a banner on top. Mkdwtalk 21:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • For the talk page organization, posting under headings is certainly a great idea but it's tough for newcomers, as it's hard to find the news posts, and it's hard to archive. Are we going to organize the archive section also? AQu01rius (User • Talk) 02:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
The discussion page prior to this one I was finding to be highly ineffective for new-comers as questions and content was being asked and posted multiple times over. Some form of organization will be needed. New posts are indeed hard to find but posting them at the bottom goes back to the initial problem of having repeative content. Ideally I would like to stay away from having multiple discussion pages for individual topics as that is even worse than scanning a single page for new content. Unless we have a means to automatically highlight new content from the last 24 hours, we will need to have someone overlook the discussion page and organize and monitor new content on a daily basis. We could also reduce the amount of sections on this page to Admin, WikiProject, Assessment, Help Requests, and Misc. Mkdwtalk 09:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Vancouver Portal

Everyone deserves a well needed rest from our intense dealings with Vancouver's FAC. With Vancouver becoming a featured article we as a group can now look to the future of this WikiProject and our collaborative efforts as a closer community. We're up to a challenge and we have one a head of us that will not only be formative but creative and fun. As we all know the Vancouver Portal has barely been touched. It's improvement will benefit Vancouver related articles as being a directory and 'headquarters' for all the articles. Not to mention it will eleviate the need for this WikiProject to closely sort and list all articles pertaining to Vancouver, when really this WikiProject should do that, but not be the primary source for readers. Perhaps then this WikiProject will become more heavily focused on its tasks rather than a reader's research resource. The London Portal is a featured portal and should be our example for quality, integrity, and future planning of our own portal. Mkdwtalk 09:51, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Work on this project will be collaborated on its talk page Portal_talk:Vancouver.
If you like, join the Portal taskforce, an ongoing effort to improve the portal. -- Selmo (talk) 00:48, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Er, need a better way to organize this. AQu01rius (User • Talk) 00:51, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Eh? A taskforce is what all WikiProjects use to organize the collaberation of portals. -- Selmo (talk) 00:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Collaboration of a topic, not really portals. But I am okay with it, what I meant was how you did it does not look organized. I'll format it. Oh by the way, the "T" in task force shouldn't be capitalized. AQu01rius (User • Talk) 01:02, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm bad a formatting anything. Oh well. -- Selmo (talk)
Selmo, I understand you're upset that I replaced the Selected Page with the Showcase concept. All I wanted to do was get a head start on the Portal so people could start contributing to it. Much of the work I did mainly had to do with formatting and adjusting the open source code of the portal. Most of the content had just been copied from a template provided by the Portal WikiProject. I assumed since none of the template had been adjusted to make it unique to Vancouver that it was open for adjustment such as the colour scheme and how, if we did, use a Selected Article concept rather than a Showcase idea. I was wrong about that and I apologize. However, I feel out of my mistake you attacked my contributions. Rather than getting in an editing award, perhaps you along with the other editors can come to a concensus.
  • The merging of the Vancouver Assessment template and the Showcase Nomination template.
The Assessment template is expressly for inputing a rating and importance assessment to an article. Merging it with the Showcase template which is used to mark articles that are nominated for Showcase seems to have no logical reasonings. The templates both do completely opposite objectives and merging them together would only create problems and a lot more work rewriting the code. Not to mention you'd have one template doing two jobs which anyone would suggest should be broken into two.
  • Showcase Director. Your idea of nominating a Showcase director was a good idea, and I believe you misread my intensions. I was not trying to self appoint myself rather than just used my name for the time being until we got the show up and running. I did appoint Vancouver as the first showcase since it received its FA lately and was the obvious choice. Again, I was working under the assumption I was getting a head start since no one had really put detailed content on the portal. However, when you removed your suggestion and self appointed yourself the Picture Showcase director, I see it that you're frustrated.
  • I'm not entirely sure if the idea of having a 'task force' for the portal page is really the answer. Better communication and collaboration would have been my preference over creating a list of people in charge of the portal and its edits etc. Wikipedia was built on the foundations that anyone can edit and that all editors are on equal grounds.
I'll admit I'm rather confused and frustrated by this, and some with your unfriendly edit summaries to my content. The award I gave you, I meant all the things I said and I hope you won't fail this WikiProject in those respects. If my presence on the Portal is a disadvanatge then I will happily leave, because for me I'm more interested in doing what is best for the project than myself. Mkdwtalk 05:51, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. I apologize for the edit summeries, but I'm glad we're back on the same page. -- Selmo (talk) 19:19, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


Today's Featured Article

I'm trying to get Vancouver on Wikipedia's main page as one of their 'Today's Featured Articles. You can view its nomination and show your support if you wish at Wikipedia:Today's_featured_article/requests#Vancouver. Mkdwtalk 09:40, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Misc.

WikiCouncil Directory

Our entry in the WikiProject Council Directory is complete and up-to-date. Mkdw 23:26, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

HongCouver

The article HongCouver went through a deletion review. On October 30, 2006 the review ended and a final decision was made; delete. You can find the full details of the review here. Please do not edit or contribute further to the deletion review as it is closed and being kept for archival purposes only. Mkdw 23:29, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

New UserBox

I thought our WikiProject should have a userbox that had a picture of Vancouver like some of the other WikiProjects out there so I made:
{{User:Mkdw/Vancouver}}
Mkdw 23:47, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

New Vancouver Landmarks Infobox

I'm curious as to what exactly is a Vancouver Landmark, as this navbox applies? Tourist attractions, heritage buildings, common Vancouver perceptions, etc? I'm not really too sure here. Luke! 06:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Yup. I suppose it could be subjective, but it's generally those really obvious Vancouver things, that when you see them in a movie, you say, "hey, that's Vancouver!" But would something not-so-touristy, like the safe-injection site count? I dunno...Bobanny 07:19, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Use of Heritage photos in articles

Pls see Talk:Hotel Vancouver (Demolished) re my intent to use BC Archives pics, as per information from User:Bobanny that while BC Arch and VPL and others claim copyrights, copyright in fact expires 50 years after the photographer dies. Lots of articles, especially on vanished buildings and towns elsewhere in BC, and of notable individuals, could be seriously enhanced by the inclusion of such pictures, which turn out to be public-domain even though BC Arch pretends otherwise (the Nat'l Archives is honest and puts "copyright expired" on some of their collection).Skookum1 00:09, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entire sure what you're asking us here. If on the site or book of B.C. Hertiage Archives and VPL says its copyrighted, we cannot challenge those copyright claims and use their content in Wikipedia. Mkdwtalk 03:59, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Hmm. Asserting copyright and actually having it are two very different things (I know, I'm a photographer and musician). From what Bobanny said (I'll find the relevant talk page and section and link it here later) they don't have the right to assert copyright over material whose copyright has expired; which is why the Nat'l Archives apparently doesn't even try. "Owning the negative" apparently isn't even enough; the difference in the case of BC Archives (not the VPL) is that they may be under "Crown Copyright" (which is exempt from the 50-years rule), even though the bulk of works in question were not crown-commissioned; only purchased/inherited/donated; to me "Crown Copyright" means things like government publications, from maps to hansard to reports ad nauseam, not to archival documents donated from private estates and collections. I'll check with Bobanny, who researched this, comes back with. Many of the images so claimed were old postcards and news copy and family-owned prints that wound up becoming archived; I can't see them being "Crown Copyright". As a historical writer outside of Wikipedia, the issue has piqued my interest, as many writers and publishers in BC might be being charged copyright licensing fees by the government which the government (or the VPL) doesn't actually have the right to charge....maybe after any such decision, i.e. in court, over that, it might be that the collections, or the relevant parts of it, would be forced officially into the public domain. My understanding now is that under the Berne Convention, which governs copyright, a photographer or other artist can claim copyright simply by writing it on the back of the print, or retaining possession of the negatives; but no one else can do the same with the same materials, unless it was a commercial commission (in which case the photographer surrenders the copyright, if only partially i.e. specific use, or usually does).Skookum1 07:56, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
The law is pretty straight forward about what counts as a public domain image. This is what it says on the City of Vancouver Archives website:
The revisions to the Copyright Act (Bill C-32 An Act to Amend the Copyright Act) came into effect January 1, 1999. Under the old law, photographs were protected for 50 years from the time the photography was taken. The new law is the life of the creator plus 50 years. Photographs already in the public domain prior to January 1, 1999 will remain in the public domain (i.e. photographs taken up to December 31, 1948).[1]
A photograph is therefore in the public domain according to the date it was taken, and copyright over the image cannot be claimed by government or anyone else once something is public domain (American law looks to be more complicated because it has to do with date of publication as well as creation). Most archives with digitized image collections online are not forthcoming with this information, and some give the impression that they hold the copyright, presumably because they don't want to discourage people from obtaining permission and paying a fee to use the image. BC Archives is blatantly misleading because their online photos are contained within a border that claims copyright like this one, for example, which should be cropped off before being uploaded to Wikipedia. The federal Library and Archives Canada website is the only one that is upfront in labeling images whose copyright has expired. VPL has this disclaimer: In some cases the Vancouver Public Library, Special Collections, owns the physical print only and may not own copyright or other intellectual property rights to materials in its collection. Any possible copyright infringement is your responsibility.[2] (my emphasis) In other words, when they are claiming to hold the copyright for an old photograph, it is the physical photograph or negative they own, not the image itself. If you order an actual photo from them, you agree to not reproduce the image without permission and other conditions of usage and pay whatever permission fee they ask and are bound by that agreement, but this is not the case with online images. Therefore, there are a lot of historical photos available that we can use from these online databases:
According to the above information, absolutely I would challenge misleading copyright claims to public domain images in lieu of a legal reason that I'm overlooking (so if there's any lawyers out there...). Photos add a lot to articles, and historical photos in particular often contain information or illustrate the subject beyond what words alone can do, so I encourage people to take advantage of these sources. When uploading a photo to Wikipedia, you should note in the image description section the url of the online image and credit the source and their catalogue number, as a courtesy and to satisfy Wikipedia guidelines. The most suitable copyright tag is {{PD-old-50}}. This tag is not on the drop down list on the image upload page, but covers Canada and the US for images published before 1923 (English Wikipedia must satisfy US laws because that's where the server is located). {{PD-Canada}} can also be used (and covers any Crown Copyright issues, as far as I can tell) but you must still explain on the description the use rationale under US law. Hope this helps..Bobanny 12:39, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Bobanny; I may show this to a lawyer acquaintance in fact, although I don't think copyright is their area. My own position on this, in an ideal-world sense, is that the government has not right to copyright history, be it images of the past or the text of documents or anything else. The article on the Second Hotel Vancouver is totally missing something if there's no image of the building's architecture, or its lavish interior. And it's not like you can go down there and take a picture of it on your Minolta, is it?Skookum1 19:50, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

New look

Hi guys! I am a Wikipedian from Burnaby :) I just did some massive formatting work on the Project page. I added a sidebar, and organized informations into it.

For the talk page, I created a section for every month and moved appropriate talks into it. Then I setted up the automatic page archival bot. AQu01rius (User • Talk) 03:17, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I have repaired the last of the links on the sidebar that were leading to the China template and resized the box to match accordingly. Mkdwtalk 09:03, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Deletion review of Marsden-Donnelly harassment case

The article on the 1997 Rachel Marsen sexual harassment case at SFU was recently speedy deleted, and is now up for deletion review. You can add comments here: Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2006_November_17#Marsden-Donnelly_harassment_case. Kla'quot 08:33, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Now it's on AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marsden-Donnelly harassment case Kla'quot 06:36, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

AfD has closed as keep but... there's now discussion of speedy-deleting this article again. See Talk:Rachel Marsden. Kla'quot 09:04, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Project Banner

I think our project banner is too fat (can't think of other words :P). Can I trim it? AQu01rius (User • Talk) 00:52, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

ROLL CALL - All Read

Our list of participants and how long this WikiProject has been operating has become fairly lengthy. I will be making a list based upon the edit history of this discussion, the main project page, and various other significant articles in the past month of names of people still edting and on the participants list. Users in the inactive list are users who have not made a contribution to Wikipedia in general for several months. However, to save me some time, you can also just post your name on this roll call. The participants section on the main wikiproject page will list all the active Vancouver WikiProject Members. A new page of inactive, on leave, and former WikiProject members will be created and linked under the participants section. Mkdwtalk 08:50, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Please check to see if your name is already listed and in the right section.


Active

  1. User:Bobanny
  2. User:Luckyluke
  3. User:Lily Towers
  4. User:Selmo
  5. User:Langara College
  6. User:Ckatz
  7. User:Wikilo12
  8. User:Tony Fox
  9. User:Flytrap_canada
  10. User:Supercraft99
  11. User:RichMac
  12. User:Starbuck-2
  13. User:LegolasGreenleaf
  14. User:Thankyoubaby
  15. User:Buchanan-Hermit
  16. User:GeeCee
  17. User:Dogbreathcanada
  18. User:Bookandcoffee
  19. User:Skookum1
  20. User:Zhatt
  21. User:FlyingPenguins
  22. User:maclean25
  23. User:Arch26
  24. User:Stormscape
  25. User:smileydude66
  26. User:Carson Lam
  27. User:Spyco
  28. User:Sunray
  29. User:Theorb
  30. User:Colin_Keigher
  31. User:Sewing
  32. User:Canadianshoper
  33. User:PeregrineAY
  34. User:Clayoquot

Inactive

  1. User:wombatman
  2. User:Jeffsumm
  3. User:LeeLau
  4. User:Bnewbold
  5. User:pissedpat
  6. User:CaviaPorcellus
  7. User:Bormalagurski
  8. User:Canuck89
  9. User:Phillipe83
  10. User:Andrewjuren
  11. User:Ardenn
  12. User:shanebee
  13. User:Usgnus
  14. User:Corktin
  15. User:WikiMB
  16. User:Crazyjoeda
  17. User:PN123
  18. User:CanucksRule