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Old discussions which are no longer active have been moved to Misplaced Pages:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/Archived discussion.

Marc Emery

Someone has been removing information from the Marc Emery page, claiming that it is inaccurate and biased.

Could I have some people look over this page to ensure that (i) the current edit is appropriate, and (ii) no further arbitrary deletions are made. CJCurrie 23:37, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Category:Members of the Canadian House of Commons

A user created template boxes to group the current Parliamentary delegations by province. The problem User:SimonP and I discussed with them is that some of them are far too long compared to the US boxes they were modelled on (see e.g. Template:ON-FedRep), they're not easily made smaller (the Ontario box as it stands is already the result of my best effort to chop it down), and they actually go against stated Misplaced Pages policy that template boxes should be used to list sequential series and not groups of people or things related only by common occupation or circumstance (as per Misplaced Pages:Categories, lists, and series boxes).

So, long story short, to serve the purpose of the templates in a different manner, I've started to reorganize this category into subgroups, with each article being filed into one subcategory for members grouped by province and one for members grouped by political party. When it comes to the historical ones, though, I can think of several different ways to handle that, so I wanted to bounce them off you guys for input:

  1. Former MPs go into new "historical members by province" and "historical members by political party" subcategories. (My main concern with this one is that "Historical Members of the Canadian House of Commons from Newfoundland and Labrador" is entirely too long to be acceptable as a category name, so the wording for these would have to change.)
  2. The province and party subcategories I've already created become groups of present and former MPs; add just one further category to group members of the current Parliament (without removing those people from the province and party cats).
  3. Same as #2, but without a special category to list current members; just use the article Members of the Canadian House of Commons to serve that purpose. (This is arguably the easiest approach from a post-election category management standpoint, but some people do seem to like having a category for everything a category could possibly be implemented for.)

Any thoughts? Bearcat 16:31, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

On # 1, I would suggest calling them (e.g.) "Historical Newfoundland and Labrador MPs". Also, the territories should be one category. Not only are there few MPs, but territorial ridings have at times combined more than one territory. Plus, it will provide a category for pre-1905 MPs from what are now AB & SK (if there were any?). Luigizanasi 16:50, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
FWIW, the only riding that ever crossed territorial boundaries was Yukon—Mackenzie River for just a single election. Pre-1905, Alberta and Saskatchewan (and Assiniboia and so on) were just ridings within the Northwest Territories . So I wouldn't see an absolute need to merge them, but it's def. an option. -The Tom 15:30, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I think # 2 probably makes the most sense. -The Tom 15:32, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Update: I haven't gotten too much input on this, so I'd still like a few more people to weigh in. However, I am going to rule out option #1 as far too complicated. So the question is: do we want to add a third category for current members of the House, or skip it? Bearcat 1 July 2005 20:33 (UTC)

To any wikipedian living in Vancouver

If you have a digital camera, could you please provide a GFDL image to replace Image:Vancouver Waterfront.jpg, which I originally uploaded and which was recently put on Misplaced Pages:Possibly unfree images? I'd do it myself, except a) I don't have a digital camera, and b) I'm in the Comox Valley. Denelson83 19:36, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I can try, but I wont be able to get that angle. The Vancouver Waterfront image looks like it was taken from a boat or sea plane. There used to be docks near there where I could have gotten a similar angle, but those have been removed. There might also be a boat parked there when I go to take the picture. I'll upload it under a different name as "Vancouver Waterfront" is not very descriptive. "Canada Place" would be a much better title. Zhatt 5 July 2005 16:58 (UTC)
I did try, but I'm not able to get that angle. That picture was taken from a boat and, unfortunately, I do not have a boat. It may be possible from North Vancouver with a very powerful telescopic lens, but I don't have one of those either. Zhatt 17:24, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
I think you can take a similar picture from Stanley Park with a telephoto lens. I think I have a nice digital picture from that angle. I will see tonight if I can find it. -- Webgeer 17:54, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Category:Italian-Canadian politicians

Is there any convincing reason why Italian-Canadians should be the only cultural group within Canadian society who get their own special category to group politicians of Italian descent separately from the main category Category:Italian-Canadians? If there is, I fail to understand it... Bearcat 04:03, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cause we are the greatest? :-) Or maybe we wanna keep the notorious away from the notable with real achievements? :-) The whole thing started at Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Italian-Canadian. Luigizanasi 04:57, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Population figures Ontario towns and cities

Anonymous user 24.92.224.54 has changed quite a few Ontario population figures from 2001 to 2004. I have no idea where he got the Thunder Bay (Ontario) figures from. They are not at the Statistics Canada website which gives an estimate of 127,100 for the CMA in 2004 (24.92.224.54 changed this to 136,000). Maybe all the changes he made are suspect. Others may want to check into his/her changes to towns such as Tilsonburg and Peterborough. --BrentS 15:30, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I reverted him on London too, because I know it's not that big, but I don't know about the other places... Adam Bishop 17:14, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It may just be from the town's own estimates, or the district/region etc in which its located. I don't support the use of those estimates, except to complement Census data. However, for small communities, especially those in townships, census data may not be available (only township data is released).
Anyway, I've updated a few of the pages modified by the user; source used: Statistics Canada Mindmatrix 17:45, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I don't know if this is the same user or not, but this isn't the first time somebody has done exactly this to a subgroup of Ontario communities. Sometime last year, Greater Sudbury magically jumped from 155,000 to 221,000, which is absurd. None of that user's other edits were as outlandish as that one, but they were all entirely unsourced. Bearcat 21:09, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Category:Ontario geography et al

I've noticed that all the provincial geography categories are titled Province geography. Wouldn't it be more appropriate if they were titled Geography of Province instead? I notice that the articles Geography of Canada and Geography of Alberta have titles matching the latter form, and thought that would fit more readily with naming conventions. Would anyone support (or oppose) a move of those categories? Mindmatrix 14:27, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I would oppose the change, and would argue for the opposite:

1. Creates a problem with the Northwest Territories and especially the Yukon, while using the province/territory as an adjectival noun neatly circumvents the issue. See my User page. The "the" was only eliminated from the Yukon by petty-minded bureaucrats in 2002 with the passage of the Yukon Act. "Geography of Yukon" sounds really awkward to the ears of this Yukoner. But if we used "Geography of the Yukon", we would get into the usual silly discusssions, as in Talk:Yukon, Misplaced Pages:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 June 1, Misplaced Pages:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 May 25 2. It's a waste of time better spent on writing articles. Luigizanasi 16:43, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I generally prefer the Geography of xxx-style, but unless there's a mixture of the two styles in a single category I wouldn't worry about it. If you're feeling ambitious and don't mind championing the cause, then I think you should go for it. It simply makes sense for Category:Geography of Canada to lead to Geography of Alberta, etc. With regards to Luigizanasi's comments about the Yukon, Category:Islands of Canada uses "the Yukon" and "the NWT" and no one has complained about that, but maybe it's time that we had that discussion. ;-) --NormanEinstein 18:32, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
How about a compromise then - the categories for provinces will be changed, and those for territories left as is for now, until we can come up with a naming convention for them as well. Mindmatrix 19:07, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
A good Canadian solution, eh. My personal preference is for using "the Yukon" whenever possible but "Yukon" as an adjectival noun (e.g. "Yukon Geography") is also OK. I abhor & detest "Yukon" without the article and I am not the only one. On the other hand, there are weenies out there who want the Yukon to be just like everybody else and drop the "the". FWIW I have found two other Yukoners with talk pages and they use "the Yukon" in their articles. Luigizanasi 22:41, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've re-categorized all articles related to provincial geography into new categories. Mindmatrix 16:57, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Regarding the Territories, how's this:
For Nunavut, I don't think the 'the' article is needed (it sounds awkward). Mindmatrix 17:02, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I totally & unequivocally agree with Mindmatrix's names for all three territorial categories. Let's just hope no one tries to change them to "Geography of Yukon", etc., like they did for airports. Thank you. Luigizanasi 17:59, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
NormanEinstein actually mentioned it above; I had thought of the same thing, and formalized it a tad in my previous post. Anyway, everything should be working normally with the new cats, and the old cats have been deleted. Mindmatrix 21:13, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Comprehensive list of all past and present members of the Canadian House of Commons

Ok folks, here's my latest, I hope some of you find them useful. I have compiled a comprehensive list of all past and present members of the Canadian House of Commons. The list contains all 3498 members of the HOC from 1867–2005. If you use these lists, be aware that they were created by a semi-automated process relying on information dumped from the database of the Library of Parliament. In most cases, only the full and formal name of members is used, so help with disambiguation or creation of suitable redirects would be much appreciated. Names of the electoral districts in particular are often incorrect, since they tend to point to the name of the community, rather than to the electoral district. I will create a formal project page at some point for this as I have done in the past for individuals with entries in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, but in the meantime, I challenge you all to turn some of those red wikis into blue! Cheers, Fawcett5 06:34, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Lists of past and present members of the House of Commons of Canada
Parliament
Surname

Re-categorization

We've re-named a few categories, and since then I've been looking for other inconsistencies in naming. We have Category:Museums in Canada, but Category:Ontario museums; we have Category:Bridges in Canada, yet Category:Montreal buildings. I'd like to standardize this as much as possible. For the geography articles, we decided to use nouns exclusively, instead of adjectival nouns (ie - prefer the first form in each pairing I listed). Some of these categories are sparsely populated now, which makes re-naming them easier.

Succintly:

We should also consider the use of in versus of as a descriptor.

It appears that Misplaced Pages in general is moving toward this format too, so I propose we make these changes now, rather than making them later when they'll certainly require more work. Does anyone have objections or concerns? Mindmatrix 30 June 2005 20:29 (UTC)

I just want to stress that while I know some people genuinely prefer the "Nation subject" format, it's actually Misplaced Pages policy that categories should be named in the format "Subject of Nation", and eventually all categories will be changed to that format when people get around to them. So any objections need to address whether there are exceptional circumstances under which Canadian categories should be exempted from the rule; I don't personally think there are any. My only input is that not every province currently has its own distinct museums category, so either all the museums in Canada should be recatted by province, or the Ontario and Alberta categories should be merged back into Category:Museums in Canada. As for "of" vs. "in", I think it really depends on the individual category -- some just sound much more natural one way or the other. Bearcat 1 July 2005 18:29 (UTC)
I've re-named all Province communities categories to Communities in Province, with appropriate attention to the territory categories also. I chose in instead of of since we already had many sub-categories of the form Towns in Province etc, and I re-named any sub-categories that didn't match this naming scheme.
I'll start re-naming other categories soon, but I want input regarding a few changes. In Category:Geography of Canada, we see a standard for sub-categories of Foo of Canada, so I was going to re-name Canadian parks to Parks of Canada. But in Category:Canadian parks, we find its sub-categories using both in and of. I'll change everything to use of, unless someone cites a good reason to do otherwise.
I decided to use Parks in Canada etc instead, but left National parks of Canada. Mindmatrix 5 July 2005 18:13 (UTC)
I also used Category:Ski resorts in Canada, contrary to my previous statement that I'd use of; this was more natural. Mindmatrix 5 July 2005 20:03 (UTC)
Here's a list of other suggested changes (comments are invited):
Note that the above list includes material from Category:Canada or its descendents; I haven't looked at provincial categories yet. Mindmatrix 4 July 2005 17:16 (UTC)

Category:Quebec culture is still linked to several pages so I have not deleted it. Please excise the links so that it can be deleted safely. —Theo (Talk) 5 July 2005 18:22 (UTC)

Fixed; the category can be safely removed now. Mindmatrix 5 July 2005 18:57 (UTC)

Category:Communities in Ontario and other provinces

Oh, I also wanted to seek opinions about another issue. Category:Communities in Ontario contains almost all Ontario communities, but excludes those that may be categorized elsewhere (eg - Category:Greater Sudbury, Ontario). I think this would be a good example of allowing exceptions to the rule (see Misplaced Pages:Categorization#Creating subcategories for details, fourth paragraph). Most people won't find Capreol, Ontario, for example, if they don't know it's part of Greater Sudbury. I think we should list all communities in the provincial category, including those in sub-categories. Mindmatrix 4 July 2005 17:25 (UTC)

My first concern with this is that no other category for "Communities in X" exists on Misplaced Pages; we really need to find an entirely different way to structure and categorize these kinds of articles (eg. separating them into "Towns in Ontario", "Villages in Ontario", etc., but there may be other ways.) One example of why this is a problem is that the "Communities in Canada" category has been filed for months in a nonexistent (redlinked) "Communities by country" category (which is never going to exist.) Bearcat 21:23, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
Every country seems to have its own standards; for the US, there are Locations in X categories (for example: Category:Locations in Maine). I don't object to Villages in etc, since we already have the equivalent Cities in and Towns in categories, but how do you handle the distinction between incorporated and unincorporated communities? For example, Osgoode Township, Ontario consists of a number of communities (see this) - how do you classify them? Words like communities or locations are generic enough to capture all those places. Mindmatrix 22:59, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
Hmm, I should have inspected more categories for US states. They've created Category:Unincorporated communities in Alaska etc. for some states. For the larger states, they also have Villages in and Hamlets in categories (see Category:New York). I wouldn't object to using similar categories for Canadian locations. Mindmatrix 23:08, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

New Provincial geo-stubs names up for discussion

WP:WSS/C#Newfoundland-geo-stub, NovaScotia-geo-stub Should Newfoundland and Labrador be {{NewfoundlandandLabrador-geo-stub}} or just {{Newfoundland-geo-stub}} or something else? DoubleBlue (Talk) 10:07, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I'd go with {{Newfoundland-geo-stub}}. I'll add comments to the proposal page. Mindmatrix 12:50, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Created as {{Newfoundland-geo-stub}}, with redirect at {{Labrador-geo-stub}}. In the end, NovaScotia-geo-stub wasn't created - but {{Maritimes-geo-stub}} was in its place, to cover NS, NB and PEI. If that gets to be too big a category, it may be split further in the future. Grutness...wha? 09:59, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
Re-stubbing of the articles is complete. Mindmatrix 18:53, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
Wow, that was quick. I was going to help. :-) Good work all. DoubleBlue (Talk) 19:16, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Ever wondered why there are so many of us?

I'm sure that I am not the only one to have felt that there are an awful lot of Canadians on Misplaced Pages. Jimbo just released a table ranking countries by Misplaced Pages page views per capita. Among English speaking nations Canada was first with 0.26 page views per person during the period studied (believed to be one day). 4.10% of Misplaced Pages traffic came from Canada, placing us fourth in total traffic after the United States, Germany, and Japan. Most surprising is that Canada is ahead of the larger UK by a significant margin, and has almost double the per capita page view rate of Australia. Of course this jsut raises the question of why Misplaced Pages is so popular in Canada. - SimonP 14:20, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Canada has the highest internet penetration among anglophone nations. We also have a healthy distrust of experts, and a traditional citizen participation in public life. Put the two together, and voila. For example, see Progressive Bloggers.--Simon.Pole 19:08, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

New Article Notification

I'm a new user to Misplaced Pages and I think it's great. A suggestion would be to have a method whereby an individual can be advised when a new article is created concerning a topic of interest. I have a watchlist, it only advises me of changes. HJKeats 15:15, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

You could put a category page on your watchlist. Zhatt 17:18, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
You can watch articles that don't yet exist. For example, visit this non-existent article and click watch. When someone creates it, it'll pop up on your watchlist. You can also do this with templates, categories etc. You can do it even more quickly by adding an action to the URL, like so (note: clicking that link will add This_non-existent_article to your watchlist). You can simply paste that URL into your browser's location bar, and change the title to the article you want to watch. I hope that helps. Mindmatrix 18:55, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Category: