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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by DoubleBlue (talk | contribs) at 22:09, 6 September 2008 (→Assistance Request: shouldn't it be Whalley, British Columbia actually). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Ryerson University

Just need some help cleaning up the Ryerson University page, thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hoice (talk • contribs) 06:03, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

An Invitation from the Philippine Wikipedia Community

Hello folks,

The Philippine Wikipedia Community will be holding its 1st Meet-up in Cebu City (the fourth one in the Philippines) on June 23-24, 2008. This coincides with the first Philippine Open Source Summit also to be held in Cebu, and which the Philippine Wikipedia Community is a Implementing Partner in. We invite you to join us in this event. If you are in the IT or IT-enabled services industry, this would be a great opportunity to network with leaders from the 4th best outsourcing city in the world. This is also a good excuse to visit our beautiful beaches :)

If you're interested in joining the Wikipedia meet-up, please join our discussion. To register for the Open Source Summit, please contact CEDF-IT. If you would like some assistance with local accomodations, you may email User:Bentong Isles.

The Philippine Wikipedia Community
WP:PINOY

Undeleted Commons:WikiProject Canada

Well after much controversy, the Commons:WikiProject Canada is back up again to see what can be made of it.

Isaac Brock nominated for FA review

Isaac Brock has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

Military history of Canada

Military history of Canada has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

Important update to television station articles

I've just noted that Nelson Media, a directory of Canadian television stations which was an extremely common reference for our articles on television stations a few years ago (and whose webmaster basically folded it up soon after becoming a Wikipedian himself), has now been cybersquatted by a netspam company that's using it to sell masturbation implements. So, needless to say, any remaining links to Nelson Media as a reference in Canadian TV station articles need to be removed as soon as possible — not that I'm a prude or anything, but sex toys just aren't that relevant to Canadian television broadcasting (KinK and Bleu nuit notwithstanding, maybe.) I think I've got most of them already, but I'd appreciate it if somebody could do a quick spin through Category:Television stations in Canada just to make sure I haven't missed any. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 21:13, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From the External links page it seems you got all the articles. It's just image sources that remain. I'm not sure how these image descriptions should be edited, as we need to specify a source. For a logo, I presume the station itself could be deemed the source. --Rob (talk) 21:29, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Lake Muskoka South Water Aerodrome

According to the source it is 4 nmi (7.4 km; 4.6 mi) southeast. But southeast of what. Anybody have any ideas? Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 05:18, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bala. Bearcat (talk) 12:00, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Google Earth was no help here. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 22:43, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Whoops, Bala is 8 NM out. Oddly enough it's 4 NM SSE of the coordinates given in the Lake Muskoka article. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 00:05, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ahhhhhh. Go for Port Carling, then. Bearcat (talk) 21:15, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image use and the website of the Prime Minister

Are images on the Prime Minister's website here allowed to be used on Wikipedia? NorthernThunder (talk) 08:41, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Only under the provisions of fair use (US) and fair dealing (Canada). Everything on that site is covered by Crown copyright, with use of material limited to instances of no commercial reproduction. Mindmatrix 13:04, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mindmatrix's response makes sense, but I'm not sure if current policy is quite that reasonable or logical. I know that there has been a crack down on the usage of fair use images for living persons, on the basis that if the subject is still alive then it is possible to get a free image (no matter how difficult it might be to get a free image). For example, the Knowlton Nash article contained a fair use image of Nash at the peak of his career as the CBC's main anchor -- even though Nash is long since retired, now suffers from Parkinson's and is out of the public eye (and it would be impossible to create a free image today of the man while he served at the CBC), the image was deleted on the basis that Nash is still alive and it is theoretically possible to obtain a free image of the man. Ironically, when Nash dies, then we could potentially use the deleted image of him.

Therefore, unless there is some sort of exception for political leaders, it is possible that images of living PMs would not qualify for fair use. Perhaps there are some Canadian Wikipedians with more knowledge of this issue who could shed more light on it. Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:19, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just out of curiosity I checked recent L-G of BC articles - Steven Point (current L-G) has no image, Iona Campagnolo has what looks like a phone-pic taken at a dinner, while Garde Gardom has this template on the image, which is an official portrait from the Office of the L-G - {{Non-free fair use in}} accompanied by:
This image is of a historical figure being used as identification of the subject in an article on the figure written for non-profit educational purpose. There is no known free alternative available that depicts the figure in context during the most notable portion of his life. As a government image, it is believed there is no commercial activity surrounding this image that would be affected.
Not sure if that will survive, but offering it here as a solution if it's viable.Skookum1 (talk) 14:09, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fair use/fair dealing is meant to include instances like Knowlton Nash where, though he may still be alive, it is unlikely to get a free-use image of him during the notable period of his life. I'm sorry that I missed the deletion discussion of the image. DoubleBlue (Talk) 16:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Canadian federal by-elections, 2008

A couple of quick questions about this article:

The Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada is running a candidate in the Guelph by-election, but attempting to add her to the results table by way of the CanElec4Row template isn't working — I've had to temporarily add her as a manually-coded row. To make this more clear, while it displays correctly to the user, the coding of the results table currently looks like this:

{{CanElec4-by|September 8, 2008|On Ms Chamberlain's resignation, [[7 April]] [[2008]]}}
{{CanElec4Row|Liberals|[[Frank Valeriote]]| | | }}
{{CanElec4Row|Conservative|[[Gloria Kovach]] | | | }}
{{CanElec4Row|NDP|[[Thomas King|Tom King]] | | | }}
{{CanElec4Row|Green|[[Mike Nagy]]| | | }}
{{CanElec4Row|Libertarian|[[Philip Bender]]| | | }}
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/AAEVP/row}}
|[[Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada|Animal Alliance]]
|Karen Levenson
|align=right|
|align=right|
|align=right|

However, the final five rows should be able to be replaced by a single {{CanElec4Row|AAEVP|Karen Levenson| | | }} row. Can somebody who knows more about the table row templates help sort this out?

I've also asked on the talk page whether there are people who are willing to help expand the subsections on each individual by-election with additional content and sources, so that they can be spun back out into their own separate articles. The only reason they were merged into a single one is that they were all short, unreferenced stubs which basically contained nothing but a one-line introduction and a results table — but they could certainly stand alone as individual articles if they were properly detailed and sourced. By comparison, British and Australian by-elections, as well as US special elections, consistently get written up as individual articles. The difference is that they typically get written up in much greater detail and depth than Canadian ones do — of the twelve by-elections covered to date in Canadian federal by-elections, 2006, Canadian federal by-elections, 2007 and Canadian federal by-elections, 2008, Outremont is the only one whose subsection is already of sufficient quality to stand alone as an independent article. But so far there's been no input at all, so any discussion or assistance would be appreciated. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 18:06, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed - AAEVP should now work properly with the CanElec#Row templates. This was solved by creating a new page for {{Canadian_elections/AAEVP}} - the supporting colour and row elements were already defined as listed in {{Canadian_politics/party_colours}}. Dl2000 (talk) 01:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arctic Portal and WikiProject?

Would anyone here be interested in helping me start Portal:Arctic and Wikipedia:WikiProject Arctic? Drop a note on my talk page if you are interested, or if there are any objections. Please also let me know if I've missed any existing projects. I'm notifying the WikiProjects listed at Talk:Arctic (and have also notified Wikipedia:WikiProject Antarctica). Please let me know if you know of any other WikiProjects centred on Arctic or polar areas. Carcharoth (talk) 22:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{Detroit Radio}}

Question for y'all: there's been a lot of back and forth over the years as to whether radio stations in Windsor, Ontario should be directly included in the Detroit, Michigan radio template. The state of things at this particular point is that three of the Windsor stations are listed in that template, while the other 10 aren't. I'd like to ask what criterion is being used to draw that distinction — it clearly isn't reception, because CBE and CBEF are known to get at least to Ann Arbor — and what should be done about it: should the Windsor stations come off the template, on the basis that the Detroit template already contains a text link to the {{Southwestern Ontario Radio}} template, or should the ten Windsor stations that aren't on the Detroit template be added to it? Either way, the current situation isn't acceptable. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 01:00, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. The same would apply with BC, particularly the Loewr Mainland/South Island, where Bellingham, Seattle and Tacoma stations are part of the daily fare, or Halifax with Boston's stations, likewise TV channels. Although I'm unaware that Seattleites listen to Canadian radio or watch Canadian TV stations much; could the reason be that only those three stations are watched in Detroit? Ratings maybe might determine inclusion?Skookum1 (talk) 05:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Bearcat, is Detroit-Windsor officially considered a media market for ratings purposes, the same way Ottawa-Gatineau is? If yes, then I would include all the Windsor stations. If not, then I would stick to the link. Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:15, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Trans-Canada Highway

I note that most interstate highways in the United States are divided into multiple subarticles, which give significantly more detail on the highway's route through each particular state than the primary highway article does. I'd like to know if there's any interest in reorganizing our Trans-Canada Highway article along a similar format, so that instead of its current and somewhat arbitrary breakdown into sections separated by somewhat randomly chosen cities, we would instead do a separate article on the route(s) through each province, which could then be more detailed than the current article is. Bearcat (talk) 23:31, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't that replicate Alberta Highway 1 , Manitoba Highway 1 , British Columbia Highway 1 , Saskatchewan Highway 1 ? For the TCH east of the Manitoba-Ontario border, that might be a good idea... west of the border... a bunch of redirects would work just as well. TCH 2 might need some articles, but not the main route. 70.55.86.69 (talk) 12:49, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The TCH article should be an overview article on this important and unique road and its national implications and the different sections articles should go into more local detail. If I understand your proposal correctly, then, the TCH article should be divided into headings/sections based on the official provincial highway sections/articles rather than by chosen city-to-city sections (like Victoria–Winnipeg) now. I could agree with that if it left the TCH article clear and rational but it is not necessarily needed to be done like that. It can just as easily be justified to break the article into sections based on the highway as a whole. The main and Yellowhead routes from Alberta through to Manitoba, for example, can be pretty easily discussed as an entire section rather than by (somewhat) artificial breaks at provincial borders. DoubleBlue (Talk) 16:53, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

paralympics

We don't have a Canada at the Paralympics article. It would go well with Category:Canada at the Paralympics at the Canada at the Olympics article. 70.55.86.69 (talk) 12:43, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online restructuring

A major restructuring of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography website has resulted in very different urls. A project should be launched (in co-operation with the WP:DCB workgroup if it is in operation) to update all our links for this site. DoubleBlue (Talk) 17:06, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dictionary of Canadian Biography

I wrote an e-mail to the DCB the minute I discovered they had moved from IIS/ASP to Apache/PHP and broken ALL THE LINKS. I told them I could not imagine that it could be a technical challenge for them to write a simple Apache rewrite rule so that all the old URL requests would redirect to the new URLs. I was replied:

Hello Mr. Gauthier-Pilote,

I have spoken with our Technical Services group, as well as our Web Services group, regarding your suggestions for redirect re-writes for bookmarked biographies (ASP to PhP) from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (DCB).

Your suggestions are taken under advisment, and could be implemented, however Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is currently engrossed in a site-wide conversion to Treasury Board (TB), Common Look and Feel 2 (CLF2) standards http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/clf2-nsi2/clfs-nnsi/clfs-nnsi-3-eng.asp

Our technical resources are maxed out at the moment, and unfortuanately, we are unable to estimate a timeline as to if or when we would be able to revisit this particular issue in the near future.

LAC appreciates your comments and suggestions, and apologizes any inconvenience that the DCB site updates may cause.

Regards,

______________________

Gordon Jung Project Manager / Gestionnaire de projets Web Content and Services Division / Division du contenu et des services Web Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada 395 Wellington Street/ rue Wellington Ottawa, Ontario K1N0N4 E-mail / Courriel : gordon.jung@lac-bac.gc.ca www.collectionscanada.gc.ca

Consequently, I invite you to e-mail them as well so they feel pressure from the public and actually do the job. Maybe we can even find a programmer among Wikipedia users who has real Apache experience and is able to write the rule off the top of his/her head? If we had the code, what excuse not to do it could they possibly come up with? -- Mathieugp (talk) 23:00, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bureaucracy always has an excuse, even if they won't tell it to you. In this case it's "lack of technical resources", which is a codeword for underfunded and/or being shortstaffed (pretty much the same thing); otherwise known as "cutbacks". The other aspect of this, which speaking from experience with writing a small applescript item for my government department boss once-upon-a-time, then getting a call from BC Systems dressing me down for not being in conformity with standards (my boss stood ground for me, as she'd asked me to do it); I was an amateur and got going at something that it would have taken them an afternoon to write, if that long (took me three weeks). Point is they don't like the public making them looki bad by doing their work; they only like to outsource if there's a political benefit (Digital Collections would have benefitted greatly from a Wiki-type interface where its many political agendas and eitehr amateurish or politiciaed historical writings could be amended;consensualized). I'm not sure, is wht I'm saying, that if someone came forward with an Apache script, or offered to do it for free, that they'd approve it. Do you have any idea how many committee meetings it would have to go through? And it would have to abide by the standards mentioned above; and it may be from those standards that no script acn be written by people without a security clearance, given the sensitivity of even being networks in these evil times....what seems like a freebie can easily be made, if not itself a liability, an accusation of one....so whoever's in charge, either this guy or the head of his system branc, ain't gonna like it. Just a guess/prognostication but again speaking from esxperience....Skookum1 (talk) 04:06, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Digital Collections links are also all toast, at least the ones that used to be; some Wiki links are from the new system; old ones will redirect, annoyingly, to the main DC page, with only "English" and "French" as buttons, not even "search" in either one. Another re-indexing script is needed, in other words.Skookum1 (talk) 04:08, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Essentially something provided for free, or done too fast, is unpopular with people on the government payroll, and also with contractors who get the outsourcing of various tasks; these factors have influence on teh aforesaid committee meetings and personal inertias....something shelved for later is still something that can keep you hired; if it gets done you may wind up not having something to be paid for...it's one of the reasons, since ancient times, that bureaucracies have their stonewalling ways.....Skookum1 (talk) 04:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Carol Huynh

We don't seem to have an article on Carol Huynh, the first medallist for Canada at the Beijing Olympics... According to the SRC commentator, she's from BC, studies at UofAlberta, and is guaranteed a silver in greco-roman wrestling by winning the semifinal. 70.51.11.210 (talk) 04:13, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Powerhouses cat on dam articles

Please see Category talk:Hydroelectric power plants in British Columbia.Skookum1 (talk) 03:57, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Charles Woodward - "Chunky"

Surprised no bio on him yet; I think it's Charles N. but can't remebnmer exactly, mabye it's not even Charles, but he's best known by "Chunky". Founder of Woodward's, or scion anyway, owned the Douglas Lake Ranch as well as the store-chain. I'm not good with bios, so leaving this here for someone who maybe is.Skookum1 (talk) 21:59, 23 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Toronto Paralympics

Canada at the 1976 Summer Paralympics does not exist. As the 1976 Summer Paralympics happened in Toronto that year, it might be a good idea to have such an article. 70.55.85.143 (talk) 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have added your request to Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/Requests. Please put future requests there. Deet (talk) 13:35, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regional District subcat names need changing

It's enough of a bother that the RD system has been used to "countify" British Columbia in Wikipedia, which overall I maintain is form of synthesis/original research. That being said, if they're going to exist at all they should conform to standard wordings of how they're used; to whit, when creating Nicomen Island just now, I had to make several edits to get he "communities in the RD" cat applied properly - the existing cat is Category:Communities in Fraser Valley Regional District, British Columbia which is on the one hand ungrammatical and on the other doesn't need to have "British Columbia" tagged onto it. As with the former use of "seat" in relation to the location of RD HQ offices in many articles (which I've removed and put in the British Columbian usage), not having "the" in cat titles such as the one cited is an application of usages and ideas associated with counties elsewhere; but as I've stated before, RDs are not counties and should not be spoken of or written of or used as if they were. The only rationale I've found here is that because StatsCan uses them for census divisions then, supposedly, it's enough of a rationale for Wikipedia to use them to classify everything with (parks, mountains, people, whatever). This tendency/assumption is seen in such as the absence of "the" in the created catnames, which is just plain incorrect. I put a request to move/rename the cats on Wikipedia:Requested Moves but they were taken off wichtout action, apparently because that's for articles, not categories. So where do I make application to have the necessary corrections made? All need ", British Columbia" dropped from them, and all, communities and people subcats, need "the" before the RD name.....Skookum1 (talk) 20:24, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could you clarify what you perceive the actual difference between a BC Regional District and an Ontario county to be? Because the article asserts that there's a difference, but from the description of what an RD actually does and is, I think there's less of a real identifiable difference and more of an abject misunderstanding of what counties actually are. Bearcat (talk) 16:55, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'll break down the administrative differences by commenting on the quoted sections below from Census divisions of Ontario, but for starters the primary difference in usage is that statements like "a lake in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District" is artificial, unless the affairs of the TNRD are specifically involved in the story. BCers do not use RDs as region-designators in the same way that someone from Ontario might say "I'm from Suffolk County" or "there's this place in Elgin County". In the same context in BC we'd say "I'm from the Bukley Valley" or "there's this place in the West Kootenay". Somebody from Telegraph Creek is not going to say they're from the Kitimat-Stikine Regional District, they'll say they're from "the Stikine" or "the Stikine Country/District"; someone from Atlin will only refer to the Stikine Region when speaking of it as such (i.e. re para-municipal services), otherwise they'd say they're from the Atlin District/Atlin Country. Confusions on this abound; because Liard River Corridor Provincial Park is in Northern Rockies Regional District, somebody put that park - which is in the Liard River floodplain and nowhere near the Rockies - in the {{Canadian Rockies}} template; the Cariboo Regional District boundaries, while taking in the Chilcotin and part of the Nechako Country, does not include about half of the South Cariboo (which is in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District); "Cariboo" makes a lot more sense to British Columbians, likewise West Kootenay vs "Central Kootenay", a term which is of immediately recent coingage because of the RD named that way but nobody that I know of would think of/refer to Nelson or Castlegar that way, except in the sense of being central within the West Kootenay. Somebody in Port McNeill or Woss might know that they're in Mount Waddington Regional District (or Strathcona Regional District, as may be the case, I'm not sure). but they would say they're from the "North Island" (in cats in Wiki that's been adjusted to Category:Northern Vancouver Island, which happens also to be the rebranding of late used by BC Tourism. I could go on about such usages and the confusions they create, but I'll try and compare/contrast RDs and ONCounties now:
Counties have fewer responsibilities than regions, as the lower-tier municipalities (cities, towns, villages, townships) within the counties typically provide the majority of municipal services to their residents. The responsibilities of county governments are generally limited to the following: maintenance and construction of arterial roads, health and social services, and county land use planning. Counties are only found in Southern Ontario.
In RDs, the "lower-tier municipalities" within them do not provide municipal services to residents of the RD; such services as exist for Electoral Areas are provided by the Regional District. Regional Districts also do not provide arterial roads, health and social services, or other services which are delivered by government agencies outside the jurisdiction of the regional districts and which have their own regional organizations/territories. Land use planning, even, the RDs are only partially involved in as stakeholders in planning process known as Regional Management Planning Units where the Ministry of Forests and other resource ministries, as well as the Ministry of Environment/BC Parks have greater weight at the table than the RD would.
I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding what this means. Each lower-tier municipality in an Ontario county only provides services (i.e. those which are designated as being municipal rather than county responsibilities) to its own residents — so unless you're telling me that the city of Kelowna doesn't even provide any municipal services to residents of Kelowna, there's no difference between what you're saying and what the statement you're responding to says. Bearcat (talk) 02:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Counties may be as large as regional municipalities in population, but their population density is generally lower (although not as low as in a district.) Counties may include major cities, such as London, Kingston and Windsor, but these cities have generally not evolved into urban agglomerations with other communities, as in regions and "megacities".
RDs are inherently larger than "regional municipalities" (closest ON equivalent to district municipality I think; the onlly other comparison woudl be RDs themslves), because they include those municipalities (see next).
You're definitely misunderstanding here. A regional municipality is not equivalent to a district municipality, because an RM still has lower-tier municipalities under it. A regional municipality is a county on growth hormones. An RM is not contained within another level of government; it is the county/RD level of government. Of the eight RMs in Ontario, six of them are larger than any RD in British Columbia save Metro Vancouver. And even the two puny little stragglers, Oxford and Muskoka, are still larger than some BC RDs. Bearcat (talk) 02:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Counties may also include separated municipalities, communities that are considered part of the county for census purposes but are not administratively connected to the county. Municipalities are separated when regional or single-tier status is not appropriate for the municipality's population patterns, but their population is still large enough that it may adversely affect the county's ability to provide services to its smaller communities.
This is a big difference; cities and other incorporated settlements inside RDs are not just counted for census purposes, they dominate the government of the regional district and contain the bulk of its population; RD boards vary in composition depending on the number of municipalities and electoral areas within them; but generally a city will have more weight than a village or electoral area - 2 or 3 votes instead of one.
Not all cities and towns in Ontario are administratively separated from their counties. Only ones that have an extreme population imbalance between the city and the rural part of the county get that treatment (e.g. the fact that over 80 per cent of the population of Middlesex County lives in London); most towns and cities remain part of the county's administration. And again, this doesn't make counties and RDs fundamentally different things — it's just a relatively minor difference in how each provincial government chooses to structure their day-to-day governance. Counties in New York aren't governed in exactly the same way as counties in Michigan either, but that doesn't make them fundamentally different. Bearcat (talk) 02:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Summing up/recapitulating, the reality is that Wikipedia's use of RDs to classify non-municipal "objects" just doesn't work, but it has become current on the internet because of Wikipedia's usage; it's and original usage and not part of the public reality of the place/politics. RD cats should only be used for member communities of the RDs and any agencies or bodies run by the RD; Indian Reserves in particular should not be stated as being "in thet so-and-so regional district" as they're not part of the communal/political organization of the RD and do not see themselves as being part of it. That's why their use as geographic-region indicators is just a no-go in terms of BC's political/geographic reality. BC has a multi-layered system of politically-defined regions of which the RD system is only one of many, and their boundaries, particularly in remote regions, are obscure to the public and not used by the public except when they're figuring out which RD they have to watch for a building inspector from, or in which town they have to apply for their septic field license. Or when they're having their heads counted by StatsCan.....RDs also, unlike counties, do not have a history prior to 1967 when they were invented by the Social Credit government as an end-run on municipal govenrment issues and a way to pre-empt the Lower Mainland Regional Planning Authority's report (which WAC commissioned and balked at, so castrated the Lower Mainland Regional Planning Board by creating hte GVRD, DARD (Dewdney-Alouette RD), CFVRD (Central Fraeser Valley) and FCRD (Fraser-Cheam); all of which has lately been rearranged - again for reasons of political expediency rather than any sense of "natural region" - into Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley Regional District. Boston Bar and Spuzzum may be inside the boundaries of the FVRD and their citizens (except IR residents) may vote in FVRD elections, but anyone from those towns would say they're in the Fraser Canhyon, not in the Fraser Valley.....the RD name is no more useful or relevant than Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon (the federal electoral district) or Yale-Lillooet (their provincial) or, for that matter, the local Timber Supply Area or the MoE region (in that case, I think it's Lower Mainland-Sunshine Coast but might be Thompson-Okanagan....."Fraser Canyon" is so much more relevant/real and much less of a political fictino/arbitrary designation. Just because Wikipedia needs to parcel things out by "discrete boundaries" doesn't mean it can randomly pick a particulary governmemtna lunit and impose it as a classification system for non-governmental objects. To do so - to invent a classification system - is clearly original reserach. The "region" system using the historical "Country" names (not all including "Country" in the usage) are on the other hand in long historical usage and remain current in speech; the BC Parks page for Columbia Lake Provincial Park, for exampel, says it's in the East Kootenay, not in the Regional District of East Kootenay.....Skookum1 (talk) 15:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some kind of municipal or municipal-esque division of categories is absolutely necessary, or else British Columbia categories would be unmaintainably large. How else would you propose to categorize people from a small town that isn't large enough to merit its own town-level category, or geographical features in or near that same town, or buildings in that town? You can't simply throw every topic related to such a location directly into Category:People from British Columbia or Category:Buildings and structures in British Columbia. You're also wrong if you think Ontario counties have that much more currency in day-to-day conversation as a cultural identifier than BC RDs do — with rare exceptions, Ontarians identify with their town or city first and foremost, and then with their broad geographic region (i.e. Western Ontario, Northeastern Ontario, etc.) far more than with their county or regional municipality.
The county level of government in fact has exceedingly little impact on day-to-day life except as a provider of a fairly limited range of government services and as a strictly geographic "this thing is in this part of the province, not that part" marker. You are never, in your entire life, going to have a conversation with anybody who identifies themselves as being first and foremost from an Ontario county rather than a particular town or city within that county.
Long story short, they're far less different from how you're describing RDs than you seem to think they are. The fact that the division of political responsibilities between the various levels of government isn't exactly the same in Ontario as it is in British Columbia doesn't change that fact — it speaks to different ideas about which level of government should fill which particular role, but it doesn't make them fundamentally different things.
You really sometimes seem determined to cast BC as some sui generis province so utterly unlike anywhere else in Canada that you vastly overstate minor differences into major ones, and you sometimes even invent differences that don't even exist in the first place. (You even claimed once that British Columbia speech constituted a completely unique dialect of the English language, citing as proof mainly words that are completely standard coast-to-coast-to-coast Canadian English.) From the evidence I've seen, frankly, I think you misunderstand the way things work in Ontario far more than any Wikipedian in Ontario misunderstands the way things work in BC. Bearcat (talk) 02:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And, to repeat, RDs do not have "seats", a term which I've excised from all the RD articles but which was clearly inserted/written by the authoring editor under teh misapprehension that RDs were like counties and used similar nomenclature. There is no "seat" of an RD, only a head office located in some town within its boundaries; that town is not a "seat".Skookum1 (talk) 15:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A "seat" is "a head office located in some town within its boundaries". What on earth else do you think it means? Bearcat (talk) 01:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's not how it was worded; in each case it was the town that was the seat; in any case, it's an "external term" for RD head offices, never ever heard in BC, it sounds downright from somewhere else; we say "the regional district office" (though "we" think that in caps); tellins us that's the same thing that Ontarians or Americans mean by "seat" and so that makes it OK to use for BC is like saying it's OK to refer to BC or Ontario as a state. It's just not the way regional district offices/headquarters are spoken of or written of; except in Wiki clones and sites which have used these wiki pages, apparently, for sources (as evinced by parallel wording). It's a wiki-invented usage that's only in currency on the net because of wiki, which is why it's important to get it right; the replication-factor of wiki articles is huge, and can create realities/terminologies where there were none, or were different, before the quasi-Heisenbergian result of the wikipedia cyclone of repeated "facts". Back to the unacceptable phrasing - it was "the seat is Burns Lake" or "the seat is Wililams Lake"; it was not "the seat is in Burns Lake" etc. which is what you're saying it means; but again that's just not teh way regional district offices are spoken of.......Skookum1 (talk) 02:00, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The legislation or order-in-council for each RD, that created it, probably has a specific legal term or mandate for the location of the RD's head office; I don't think it's that specific in the Act/OIC's but it may be; and i stand ready to be corrected if the legal/charter language uses "seat". Likewise any major or minor BC newspaper, but again perhaps I'm wrong and you may know better; but if so it's a rare usage....in the Washington usage the meaning is the town, usually laid out in the charter/act establishing the county; the seat is the location of the head office, not the head office itself; i.e. "the county seat" means a town in the same "the provincial capital" means a city/town....and not just an office in that town. RDs also have a relatively minor bureaucratic existence, relative to the municipalities themseelves; their offices are often less important locally than the town/district hall....Skookum1 (talk) 02:02, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Listed on Wikipedia:Categories for discussion

James Naismith, GAC

James Naismith, the Canadian inventor of basketball, is a good article candidate. Help and constructive criticism are appreciated. Onomatopoeia (talk) 22:12, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Audrey McLaughlin

I was looking for an image of Audrey McLaughlin, to improve this article, and I found this one. I'm not sure about the legality of using it. Can it be used in the article about her? NorthernThunder (talk) 02:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly doubt that it's in the public domain. If it were, it would be usable, but the proscription against fair use images of living people doesn't disappear just because you're taking a copyrighted image of a living person from Collections Canada instead of from the parliamentary website. Bearcat (talk) 02:52, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Silly question

Am I crazy for thinking that the flurry of attention on Kwame Kilpatrick right now means we should whip our article on Eddie Francis into better shape, if only because the fact that he has a minor role in the Kilpatrick mess (i.e. the tunnel meeting) means he'll probably also get more Wikihits than usual in the next few days? Bearcat (talk) 01:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Assistance Request

I am trying to get my communities wikipage retitled/moved to the correct name. Presently Whalley, British Columbia a towncentre/district of Surrey, British Columbia is being called its old 1990's name. Officialy the city now calls the town centre Whalley/City Centre[1]. I had requested a move to Whalley/City Centre (that page already exists as a redirect to the article with the outdated name) but it failed with a suggestion that it should need the province to identify. Would Whalley/City Centre, British Columbia be the correct one to try and move it to? Knowledgeum :  Talk  19:21, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The actual convention is that if the name is unique, then the province isn't necessary. Anybody who told you otherwise is either lying or misunderstands our naming conventions. Bearcat (talk) 20:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Here is the request for move which was denied[2]. The last bit pointed me here and here I am. I did email the city requesting supporting doccuments, they didnt have any to link me but they put me in touch a city staff member to clarify the name change. Here is an except from my corispondance:

You are correct that it was sometime after 1991. In 1991 the Spaxman Plan was completed and adopted by Council. At that time, the area was still referred to as the Whalley Town Centre. It is my understanding that the terminology changed in 1993, when Surrey formally became the City of Surrey. There was evidently a corporate report to Council at that time, setting out this new terminology in keeping with the City's new status. The City is broken up into six "communities" for the purpose of data collection (population, employment, etc.) The larger Whalley area is one of these six. The City Centre is further identified as a centre within the Whalley area, in much the same way as we identify Town Centre boundaries in our other community areas. The formal City Centre boundaries were adopted in the mid '90s in conjunction with zoning by-law amendments to set city Centre standards to implement the 1991 plan, and to implement things such as reduced parking standards in the area of transit stations. We do find it useful to keep data for our larger community areas, in addition to information on the City Centre.

I did a search for documents from the city, there arent any that outright say "We changed Whalley to Whalley/City Centre" but all the documents past 1993 call it Whalley/City Centre and before as Whalley.

I am uncertain on how to proceed in getting this changed as they say I need concensus to make the change. Knowledgeum :  Talk  21:10, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm an administrator, and consensus isn't required for a straightforward move that's consistent with WP:NC. The deed's been done already. Bearcat (talk) 21:14, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That was really fast, I see there are some links that are still pointing to the old title, and the template used for the city page Template:SurreyBCNeighbourhoods has yet another name (directing to the old name. Is it propper to point pages to the new title or leave them to go to the page for the redirect, and to update the template for the current name? Knowledgeum :  Talk  21:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Templates should be changed (I've done that now), mainly so that the template's link to the article you're reading turns into bold text instead of a link to what looks like a different topic — but as long as they still get you to the right topic, it's not considered urgent to update article links that are using a redirect instead of the primary title. In the long term, sure, make those changes as you come across them, but it's not considered an urgent task that needs to happen right away. Bearcat (talk) 21:34, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll freely admit that I'm unfamiliar with Surrey but I wonder if Whalley, British Columbia isn't the best name for the article. A cursory google search seems to indicate that it's more popularly referred to as such over Whalley/City Centre. Even some of the sections on the City of Surrey's website refer to it only as Whalley and the quote above from the City staff member says that the City Centre is a centre within Whalley area. Perhaps this discussion belongs at Talk:Whalley/City Centre though. I'll double-post there. DoubleBlue (Talk) 22:09, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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