Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 27

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Archive 25

Lists of incumbent mayors

I wanted to raise a discussion around Wikipedia's various "List of mayors in [Canadian province or territory]" articles, which try to list every current incumbent mayor in that province or territory. (This is, for the record, not applicable to the "Lists of mayors of [Specific City]" articles, which compile all past and present mayors of that specific city — what I'm talking about is the dynamic lists which are trying to record only the current incumbent mayors across all cities and towns, so that a new mayor completely replaces their predecessor in that list instead of being added as the next name under their predecessor.)

The core problem with them is that there's very little effort being made to keep them comprehensively updated so that they remain accurate and current. Mayoral changes in the major cities obviously get updated quickly, since a lot of editors are aware of any news around those — in addition to their municipal elections already getting broad attention as it is, it would obviously be major national news if the likes of John Tory or Valérie Plante or Jim Watson or Kennedy Stewart or Naheed Nenshi or Bonnie Crombie were to resign or die tomorrow. But in smaller towns, where sometimes the only way of knowing that a mayoral change has taken place would be to check the town government's own website, the lists frequently remain out of date because there's nobody actually doing the depth of work required to update them comprehensively.

In other words, there's only a very small subset of cities where we're actually staying on top of keeping the lists accurate and current — in most places, the lists are effectively unmaintainable.

By comparison, the United States does not have any comparable lists of the current incumbent mayors across all cities and towns in any given state. What they do have, rather, is a single List of mayors of the 50 largest cities in the United States, which is much easier to maintain since there's a size cap on it. This means that the cities that have the broadest range of editor and reader interest are still available in a consultable reference list, while also having the benefit of not becoming unmanageable due to the sheer scope of the work that would be needed to update 50 comprehensive statewide lists in a timely fashion when new mayors take office.

The irony is duly noted that I'm often the first person to speak out when the idea that every US article should be matched with a comparable Canadian article, even if the topic makes no sense in a Canadian context, rears its ridiculous head — but in this case, I think it does make sense in a Canadian context to follow the USian practice. So what I'd like to propose is that we nominate the existing "List of mayors in Province" lists for deletion due to unmaintability problems, and replace them with a "List of mayors of the X largest cities in Canada" instead. That said, X doesn't necessarily have to be 50 just because the US list is 50 — we could saw off at 25 or 30 (or go to 100) if we wanted to, but it still makes sense to impose a manageable size on the list rather than trying to indiscriminately list every single incumbent mayor of everywhere in the entire country and failing to actually stay on top of that.

I wanted to solicit outside opinions before I try to act arbitrarily, so I'm starting this discussion instead of just immediately nominating the lists for deletion without input — but I just don't see that there's any value in trying to curate fully comprehensive lists of all of Canada's thousands of incumbent mayors. If we can't actually stay on top of keeping all of them consistently updated for accuracy, we should limit ourselves to a defined set that we can keep updated. Bearcat (talk) 18:39, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

A "List of mayors of the X largest cities in Canada" makes a lot of sense to me, not just for the practical maintenance reasons you've outlined, but also just from a perspective of useful information. I peeked at the current province-wide lists, and almost none of the mayors have Wikipedia pages; which makes sense, because small-town mayors don't reach the notability guidelines, but it also makes the list of dubious informational value— it could just be a list of random names for all I know. — Kawnhr (talk) 20:39, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Bearcat's proposal, although I would like to see the territorial capitals and smaller provincial capitals included in the list (perhaps as a footnote of some sort), as they might not be large enough to make the cutoff point. PK T(alk) 12:07, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

That actually sounds like a great idea. The fact is that the mayor's of small towns are simply not important or relevant and fail Wp:Politician. They're really of no interest unless someone desperately wants to know the list of all mayors in Canada, though I can't possibly fathom for what purpose. Canterbury Tail talk 12:32, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Once upon a time, I created list of mayors in Canada, and put the cut-off at 5000 people, so that it would include all the territorial capitals. I wouldn't mind going back to that again. After each municipal election, it would be pretty simple to keep it updated. We do have provincial municipal election articles over the last few years which include the mayoral races of every municipality over 5,000 people anyway.-- Earl Andrew - talk 13:23, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

I do like the idea of maintaining a list of the 13 provincial or territorial capitals as well — but rather than keeping the "X largest" list going into the hundreds or thousands just to make sure that all of the capitals are in it, I think it would make more sense to leave the "X largest" list at a round cutoff like 50 or 100, and do the provincial and territorial capitals as a separate set. Furthermore, none of this would affect the base List of mayors in Canada, which will still be useful as an index to the various "List of mayors of [Specific City]" lists that I'm also not suggesting we get rid of — so what I'd suggest is that we add the "mayors of the capitals" list as a section of List of mayors in Canada, and let X=X in the X list.

I also, for the record, think that the X list should ultimately be done as a separate list, linked to from the base list, rather than simply being done as a section in the base list — however, we should obviously decide what value we want X to be before we actually spin it off, so I'm not suggesting that we start it before we actually decide what value of X to use. I do note that Earl Andrew has started a section in the base list, which so far just includes the Top 11 but is obviously expandable — so that's definitely much appreciated, and obviously we can cut and paste it into a separate article once we decide what value of X we're using. But conversely, I think "mayors of the capitals" should just be a section in the base list rather than being spun off as a separate list.

Also, I've now initiated the AFD discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of mayors in Alberta. (It's a batch of all of them, not just the Alberta list alone — I just initiated the discussion at the Alberta list because alphabet.) Bearcat (talk) 14:52, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

This discussion seems to have died down, but I don't see any consensus having emerged about how many cities we want a "list of mayors of the X largest cities in Canada" to contain. I raised 30 as one of several options in the above discussion, but I ultimately don't think there's a very convincing case to install the cap there — I think the numbers that we should look at would be 25, 50 and/or 100.

Basically, 100 would mean that the list would contain all of the same cities as List of the 100 largest municipalities in Canada by population; sawing off at 50 would draw the line at Thunder Bay while leaving out places like Waterloo, Victoria BC, St. John's, Niagara Falls, Peterborough, Sault Ste. Marie, Fredericton and Moncton; sawing off at 25 would draw the line at Richmond BC while leaving out places like Burlington, Sudbury, Oshawa, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Barrie, St. Catharines, Guelph, Kingston and Kelowna. My own preference would be either to go with either 50 (to match the equivalent US list) or 100 (to correspond to the municipalities list), because I think 25 leaves out far too many cities that are still at least moderately significant, but all I've seen otherwise is one person imply that his preference would be 25 and one person imply that his preference would be to retain a list of every place whose population cracked 5K, so I don't think there's anything like a consensus on it yet — so I'd still like some input on that question so that we can eventually proceed with the X list. Bearcat (talk) 17:30, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

It was me who suggested 25 in the first place, so this comment is to expand on my thoughts and not agree with a proposal. But I think 25 is the best number for a list like this: it's long enough to include the major metros and then some, but small enough that it doesn't become cumbersome. 25 is a common number in lists, and in this context also roughly matches the cities that have populations of 200,000 or greater; both are arbitrary, but effective cut-off points. I would also say that the further one goes down the list, the less likely the city is to have any sort of "national importance" or even have pages for their mayors: Abbotsford (#35), Trois-Rivières (#37), St. Catharines (#38), Whitby (#41) and Ajax (#44) do not. A smaller list is also, of course, much easier to maintain and thus less likely to fall into the problem with the current province-wide lists, where small-town mayors continue to be listed after they've left office just because no one has caught it.

It's true that a few "notable" cities like Victoria and St. John's miss the cut-off, but that could be solved with a separate List of mayors of provincial and territorial capitals of Canada, I think… — Kawnhr (talk) 18:52, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

There are still cities (I already named several) that are notable enough to warrant inclusion in a list of Canada's major city mayors but still miss a 25 cutoff, and are not provincial or territorial capitals either, and thus just get left out entirely. And it's not necessarily just a question of whether we already have an article about the mayor in place, because we can get an article about a notable mayor in place anytime somebody deigns to take on the job — Trois-Rivières and St. Catharines especially strike me as places whose mayors would clear NPOL if somebody actually put in the effort (Ajax and Whitby, conversely, would be much less clear but still entirely possible if somebody actually did a really good job) — so the fact that they don't already have articles is not evidence of anything, because anybody can literally start any new article at any time. So I don't buy that the list needs to saw off at a 200K cutoff at all.

And as for a list of the capitals, since that can only ever be a fixed list of 13 places, I don't see the need for it to exist as a standalone list of its own, when it could simply be placed as a section within List of mayors in Canada. Bearcat (talk) 21:08, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

I am arriving very late here and I have only skimmed above due to TLDR, but agree with the 13 capitals being a section at List of mayors in Canada, just like it is at List of cities in Canada. As for cut off, forget going to 25 to coindentalły land at all municipalities exceeding 200K. Municipalities will grow and there will be more than 25 above 200K after the next census (or some other round-numbered quantity to arrive at what hopes to be a round population threshold by a coincidence). Simply make it all that currently exceed 100K, which is a much more distinct, celebrated, and well-covered milestone than 200K. Whether that lands us at 73 or 103 entries, we are only talking about adding a couple or few new entries every five years after each census. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 22:35, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

There were 54 above 100K in 2016, which is lower than I expected. There were 50 in 2011, 48 in 2006, and 41 in 2001, so we are talking four to five new entries every five years. Hwy43 (talk) 23:14, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer a longer list, so 100 is my preference. I have no problem maintaining the list; I've been writing articles on municipal elections for quite some time as it is.-- Earl Andrew - talk 23:53, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Article review/watch request for negativity at Fort Nelson, British Columbia

Also relating to the above thread, Fort Nelson, British Columbia has had an extended history of edits by one or more IP editors (perhaps the same person) carpet-bombing the article with negative facts drawn from statistics or other WP:NOTNEWS events. I just removed the non-enduring mentions of RCMP not recommending travel, locals feeling unsafe in the region, and disruption of the education system arising out of last summer's triple homicide and ensuing manhunt. All of these impacts of which were short-term. Could we get a few sets of eyes on the article for other WP:NOTNEWS infractions and other undue weight on the negative aspects of the community? If the problem is as extensive as I think it is, I wonder if page protection so that only registered users can edit is necessary to first scrub the article and then keep it stable for the short-term future. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 17:16, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Body Break- reinstate as standalone page

Hal and Joanne (Body Break) are completely unaffiliated with ParticipACTION and haven't been affiliated with them since apprx 1991^[1] Moreover, because Body Break (standalone, without ParticipACTION) commercials continue to air^[2] keeping the Body Break section within ParticipACTION will cause confusion for readers and misrepresents the current relationship between ParticipACTION and Body Break Miguelito83 (talk) 18:55, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

I suggest you discuss that on the talk page of the relevant article. Canterbury Tail talk 19:03, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Canterbury Tail:The ParticipACTION wikipedia talk page says it is part of WikiProject Canada and directs me here....Miguelito83 (talk) 19:47, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

It is ultimately part of this project yes, but in this case you're discussing something specific about just that article. Anything about splitting or altering the content of a single article should be discussed on that article's talk page. It's more specific. Canterbury Tail talk 19:49, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Also have you edited Wikipedia before? Canterbury Tail talk 19:49, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Canterbury Tail:I'm a newbie; thanks for your patience and help! Miguelito83 (talk) 21:06, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

I suspect you'd have a hard time finding enough sources to actually support a standalone article about Body Break — even as it is, that section in Participaction's article is referenced entirely to primary sources that do not constitute support for notability, with no evidence being shown of media coverage about it. Simply erasing that section from the article entirely would be easier to justify than a separate standalone article about Body Break — the question of whether it qualifies to have its own article or not is a question of the sources that can or can't be provided to support one, not a question of whether its relationship to another topic is being "misrepresented" or not. Bearcat (talk) 21:23, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bearcat: good point. Might indeed make more sense to simply modify the Participaction page and at best include a short spiel about how the commercials existed and that's it. (meaning removing the Body Break section). Miguelito83 (talk) 21:44, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Pandemic mentions in community articles

Screenplay categories at the Canadian Screen Awards

Trouble updating Template:Senate of Canada

Yesterday, Sen. Patricia Bovey left the ISG to join the PSG, and I've been trying to update Wikipedia accordingly. That was going well until I came to Template:Senate of Canada and came across a separate issue in need of updating: the colours. Last year, it was proposed, and decided, to update the colour scheme to that used elsewhere for Canadian politics— it's currently using uniquely pale colours from a Template:Party shading rather than the standard Template:Canadian party colour. So I was going to update it accordingly, but… well, it's not as simple as swapping the templates, because {{Party shading}} has some unique properties that {{Canadian party colour}} does not. I don't really understand wiki markup at the best of times so I'm at a complete loss here, if the latter template needs a new property, or if it's actually possible to make little colour blocks using it and it's just eluding me, or if the solution is to just stick with the old template but update the colour scheme. But I really don't know how to do it myself, so if someone more knowledgeable than me could figure out what to do here, that would be greatly appreciated. — Kawnhr (talk) 18:38, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm not highly knowledgeable about complex template coding — I can do straightforward stuff pretty easily, but complex stuff is beyond my ken. The main reason the colours are what they are is because those were the colours that were being used under an old deprecated template model under which instead of having a small colour block in front of each senator's name, the colour was being applied as a highlight sitting behind the senator's name. We had to use paler than normal colours in that context, because text on a vivid colour highlight is hard to read — for example, keep in mind that links which don't lead to articles are red, so a Liberal senator who didn't have an article yet would have their name be literally unreadable in the template if it was backgrounded by our normal dark Liberal red, and links which do lead to articles are blue, so Conservative senators who did have articles would have the exact same problem if their name was backgrounded by our normal Conservative blue. But when we switched from "highlighted text" to "colour block in front", the colours just stayed the same instead of being adjusted — so there's no specific reason why they have to stay as they are, and we certainly have the option of readjusting them for better correspondence with the party colours we use in most other contexts, but I'm not personally the guy with the skill to change them. Bearcat (talk) 16:04, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

I managed to figure something out with a small addition to the template's code, though it will need a template editor or admin to implement (I was working in sandbox). See here for details. — Kawnhr (talk) 20:25, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Canadian schools abroad and the scope of the WikiProject

Incorrect popular vote figures in articles on the 2019 federal election

Locator Navbox in Winnipeg article

Recently, myself and another editor have been trying to add a locator navbox to the Winnipeg article to illustrate the municipalities that surround the city. However, there's an editor who doesn't like the locator navbox and has indicated that they want to delete these navboxes from all the municipalities in Manitoba. I thought it was well-established that these types of navboxes were helpful to illustrate geographic locations in relation to neighbouring municipalities--after all, other cities such as Toronto and Vancouver have had them for a while. I could see more of an argument for not having one of these if all of the municipalities surrounding Winnipeg were in the same census division, or if there were some other type of map conveying this information, but I see it as unhelpful to completely leave this information out of the article. Obviously, no prejudice against this user or if there's a consensus to leave it out, but I'd like some more opinions on this.--Molandfreak (talk, contribs, email) 02:56, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't see any negatives in adding it. It's collapsed and at the bottom of the article. It seems like a good addition. Walter Görlitz (talk) 03:13, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

OP, I absolutely did not indicate that I "want to delete these navboxes from all the municipalities in Manitoba". You presented as a rationale that "every other municipality in Manitoba is getting one", and I simply asked where you'd established consensus to make that change en masse. Beyond that you presented no specific benefit for this addition on this particular article. It is almost certain that if someone knows any municipality in the province it'd be this one as the capital and largest city, and therefore locating it relative to smaller and less-known locations does not seem helpful to readers of this article. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:12, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

You need to stop with the flags though. The navbox is fine but the flags don't comply with WP:MOSFLAGS. Plus they don't add any information. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 14:52, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

The collapsed locator navbox that Nikkimaria reverted with this edit was acceptable, and should not have been removed, IMO. PK T(alk) 15:08, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Why? Nikkimaria (talk) 16:19, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Because it's acceptable, in my opinion. PK T(alk) 19:31, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

You've said that. What benefit do you feel it provides? Nikkimaria (talk) 19:37, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

It provides users with more information about the relative positions of Winnipeg and its neighbouring communities. As others have pointed out, "can be useful". PK T(alk) 19:45, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Molandfreak, I have noticed on my watchlist that you have been feverishly adding this navbox to community articles throughout Manitoba and across Canada. Approximately how many articles have you added it to, and of those additions how many have been controversial like this Winnipeg instance? Hwy43 (talk) 18:01, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

@Hwy43: As far as I know, nobody else seems to take issue with the locator navboxes and this is the first time someone has voiced concern about it. @CambridgeBayWeather: sorry about the flags, I was unaware they violated any policy and was simply copying a format I had seen in other articles. I have no issue reverting these edits.—Molandfreak (talk, contribs, email) 18:18, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I suspected that was the case. Hwy43 (talk) 19:29, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

As long as they default to collapsed, I don't see any issue. They're pretty much ubiquitous and can be useful. Canterbury Tail talk 18:22, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
No opposition. The template is useful to some readers and collapsed for those that are indifferent. I recall in my pre-editing days this template being very useful in understanding what municipalities surround major cities that presumably form part of the metropolitan areas and in some cases impede outward growth of the major cities. Hwy43 (talk) 19:29, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Multiple infoboxes on television stations

Within the past few weeks, an (American) editor started adding second and third infoboxes to certain Canadian television stations (e.g. CICI-TV, CHBX-TV) to cover off rebroadcast transmitters. This has never been normal practice for Canadian stations, however (as witness the fact that they were only just added for the first time a few weeks ago, even though the articles have existed for around 15 years) — so I removed the superfluous infoboxes, but was then reverted on the grounds that "the rebroadcasters provide substantial additional coverage; this is present in US station articles".

But firstly, the "substantial additional coverage" provided by rebroadcasters is adequately covered off just by listing them in the article, and doesn't need a separate full infobox for each individual rebroadcaster — the core purpose of the infobox is to cover off information about the station as an entity, not necessarily about each individual transmitter as a stick. And even more importantly, in the Canadian context it would be literally unsustainable to require a separate infobox for each rebroadcaster: the structure of Canadian television broadcasting relies much more heavily on rebroadcasters than the structure of American television broadcasting does. For comparable examples, CHCH-DT would have to have seven supplementary infoboxes on it to cover off rebroadcasters, and CKY-DT would have to have eight, and CBLFT-DT would have to have 27 — and CBLFT isn't even the worst case, because then we get to CHAN-DT, the ultimate example of why this is just not sustainable: it would literally have to have well over 100 infoboxes, queuing up long past the end of the article's actual text. So even if it's done in the United States sometimes as the user claims, there's no rule that Canada and the United States always have to follow identical principles of article structure — it simply doesn't work in Canada regardless of whether it's done in the US or not, because Canadian television stations would routinely have to include many more infoboxes than American stations normally would.

And even then, I'm not actually finding a lot of evidence of American television stations actually containing separate infoboxes for each relay transmitter as a matter of course — I obviously haven't comprehensively checked every television station in the entire United States, but after spotchecking a representative sample I've found a good dozen television stations that do have rebroadcast transmitters but still just have one infobox on them instead of two or five or ten, and exactly zero stations that actually have multiple infoboxes on them.

So I don't buy that it's a standard expectation, and I don't see that it's warranted on Canadian television stations at all — but I wanted to solicit outside opinions on this rather than letting it lapse into an edit war. Bearcat (talk) 13:32, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I removed the ones he added to articles I watch. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:33, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

US TV and Radio stations are ridiculous with the amount of superfluous information dumped on the pages in infoboxes and frequencies and other details. I really dislike multiple infoboxes. Lets not have them on the Canadian articles. Though this could conflict with some other overlapping Wikiprojects. Canterbury Tail talk 20:40, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Michel Rivard

Singer and songwriter Michel Rivard's article has existed for 15 years at the plain title, but was arbitrarily moved to the disambiguated Michel Rivard (musician) yesterday, without any discussion having taken place to establish a consensus for it, on the grounds that he's not more important than former MNA and senator Michel Rivard (politician). But of course, primary topic determinations for same-named people have a lot more to do with their respective fame in the real world than with subjective interpretations of their relative importance in principle — so it's obviously not a page move that should have happened without discussion.

I've reverted the move so that the page is back at Michel Rivard, and have initiated a strictly procedural WP:RM discussion at Talk:Michel Rivard about whether the page should properly be moved to the disambiguated title or not. I consider it to be a pretty obvious no-brainer that the singer is overwhelmingly more famous than the politician — as witness the fact that if you type "Michel Rivard" into Google without an occupation to filter the search results, you get hits relating overwhelmingly to the musician, and even if you go with "Michel Rivard politician" the very first page of results includes an article that exists entirely to point out that "the Michel Rivard who was just appointed to the Senate is not the one you've already heard of!". But for strictly procedural reasons I wanted to cover my ass so that I can't be accused of imposing a personal point of view, and obviously if consensus does land on moving the page, I'll abide by that. So I just wanted to solicit input one way or the other. Bearcat (talk) 17:29, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I moved it "arbitrarily" because in the past I've been criticised for starting too many page move discussions out of an apparent dearth of the WP:BB spirit. :P I thought that on the face of it it did not satisfy point one of WP:PTOPIC, but you're right that the google hits are quite convincing. - Astrophobe (talk) 17:38, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Nunavut land borders - article seems in error

Hello - just wondering who to address my question to - the article on Nunavut states that:

Through its small satellite territories in the southeast, it has short land borders with Newfoundland and Labrador on Killiniq Island, with Ontario in two locations in James Bay – the larger located west of Akimiski Island, and the smaller around the Albany River near Fafard Island – and with Quebec in many locations, such as near Eastmain and near Inukjuak."

This implies that there are land borders between Nunavut and Ontario and between Nunavut and Quebec. This does not seem correct to me. Nunavut includes all the islands in James Bay and Hudson Bay but those islands don't form a land border with Ontario or Quebec - the shoreline belongs to the provinces and the islands out in the water belong to Nunavut.

I don't want to make the changes to the article in case I am wrong about something. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.189.229.170 (talk) 04:03, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Good catch. I did a bit of digging and not only could I not find anything saying that Nunavut has land borders with Ontario or Quebec (which is the sort of thing that would be perfect bar trivia, so if it were true I'd expect it to be sourced somewhere) nor on a map itself, but I found this CBC article that says the exact opposite: the borders for Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba end at the shoreline (thus they cannot share a land border with Nunavut). I'm going to remove the claim from the page. — Kawnhr (talk) 18:19, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

This is correct. Probably came as a result of someone doing original research using Google maps. Google shows the borders crossing land, but taking a look at satellite view, it appears as though the real coastline doesn't line up to the map's coastline. -- Earl Andrew - talk 18:40, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

That's true; Google Maps is not perfect, but does feature places where its computer-generated map and the satellite view are not actually perfectly aligned (as well as some streets and places that are mislabelled.) This is exactly why we should not be sourcing article content to Google Maps at all. Bearcat (talk) 15:54, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

West Pen Island officially belong to Nunavut. Toporama shows it is fused to mainland Ontario. ibacanada says that West Pen Island is separated from the mainland at high tide. MNR docs refer to West Pen Island as a spit. So there you have it; Nunavut and Ontario share an undefined land border except possibly at high tide. The only NU/NL land border is the well defined border on Killiniq Island. And yes it is true that all islands in James Bay and Hudson Bay belong to Nunavut, but that does not include islands such as Fafard and Partridge which are located inside river mouths. MapGrid (talk) 04:41, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi, if I follow Le Québec, territoire incertain (2011) The border of Quebec and Nunavut is the « shoreline » as said in the 1912 act (p. 70-72). The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement added a little precision as the « low-water line ». (p. 75). There is also a problem of the post-glacial rebound, whic is near 1 m per century near the Pointe Louis-XIV, if a island is connected to the continent since 1912, wich territory own it? --Fralambert (talk) 16:17, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I think we're moving into WP:OR territory here. If there's a reliable source that definitively says Nunavut shares a land border in either of these locations, or at least there's a reliable source musing about the possibility (a geography journal, say) then it can be included— but it's not our duty to research and delineate the boundaries if no one else has. — Kawnhr (talk) 20:03, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Discussion, collaboration - See also, Navigation box

Add See also Canada portal North America portal Geography portal History portal Former colonies and territories in Canada List of cities in the Americas by year of foundation List of French forts in North America List of Hudson's Bay Company trading posts List of North American settlements by year of foundation Timeline of the European colonization of North America ===Country overviews=== Government of Canada History of Canada History of modern Canada Outline of Canada Politics of Canada Timeline of Canada history Years in Canada	Replace Navigation box template Insert this Nav.box instead, replacing one or two others with this one Above is from this wikicode `{{Navboxes \| title = <span style="vertical-align: 1px;">[[File:Maple Leaf (from roundel).svg\|20x20px\|link=\|alt=]]</span> <span style="color:#00006E;">Links related to List of years in Canada</span> \| titlestyle = color:black; background-color:white; \| list1 = {{Years in Canada}} {{History of Canada navbox}} {{Canadian colonies}} }}`

Kaúxuma Núpika

Infobox province or territory of Canada

Does anybody have an objection to adding |coordinates = {{{coordinates|}}} to {{Infobox province or territory of Canada}}? It would standardise it with {{Infobox settlement}} and allow the coordinates to appear in the infobox and the top of the page. I added it at my sandbox, here, and the result can be seen here. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 16:44, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

If no objections will implement it in a few days.--Moxy 🍁 19:27, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

What sort of poygon are you planning to supply? At least a settlement is small, what coordinates would provide for Ontario or Nunavut? Without knowing this, I strongly object. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:40, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

should easy to provide a polygon for Saskatchewan. 😁 Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 14:35, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

to Walter's question - probably the same way that it's being done now - pick a spot near the geographic centre. For example, the coordinates shown on the Canada article are 60°N 95°W. For Nunavut the coords are shown as 73°N 91°W, and 50°N 85°W for Ontario . PK T(alk) 14:54, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Walter Görlitz Every province and territory already has coordinates listed. I planned on using them. What is wrong with them? CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 16:04, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Just moving them into the infobox? OK, I never noticed the geo points in the articles. They are wildly inaccurate. That's not your problem though. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:33, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't see how a single point co-ordinate would be useful in an article about an extremely large geographic area. Canterbury Tail talk 18:20, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

They are already in them and have been for a long time. The Canada and the Russia articles have them. I assume most countries have them. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 20:32, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks you for explaining things to me like I'm an idiot. Just because an article has something doesn't mean it's correct.

I'm not opposed to moving the coordinates into the template, but the WP:OR issue related to the actual coordinates is an issue for a separate forum. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:42, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

This takes the WP:OR out of coordinates: CGNDB Query by Geographical Name. Ontario's coordinates, for example, are 49° 15′ 0″ N, 84° 30′ 0″ W or 49.25° N, 84.50° W. Since just found open data where we can download all Canadian Geographical Names by province/territory with coordinates. This is so timely for me as I am about to go through the tedious task of adding missing infoboxes and unifying existing infoboxes for consistency for Saskatchewan's 296 rural municipalities. Hwy43 (talk) 01:58, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I have updated the template and added to each province and territory using the source that Hwy43 provided. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 21:32, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Monarchy of Canada

Ungava Bay

Wikimedia Canada Newsletter

#WPWPCA (Wikipedia Pages Want Photos in Canada)

Any pre-existing consensus on embedding maps in tables?

Discontinued demographic tables?

What is Wikidata, anyway?

Climate Barbie

PKT is Editor of the Week

Nationality

I've noticed a few minor edit wars changing nationality back and forth from "Canadian" and either a first nation, Inuit or Quebecois. Given the nature of nationality in Canada perhaps "citizenship" is preferably to nationality unless there is clear source that talking about someones self identification with a given nation. Thoughts?Blindlynx (talk) 11:11, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

This is definitely a known problem that we run into from time to time. It has also sometimes taken the form of people editing articles to blow out any acknowledgement whatsoever of the "white/colonial" names of cities or provinces, so that instead of living in "Vancouver" or "Toronto" or "Saskatoon" or "Alberta", the article says only that the person lives in "the traditional territory of the [insert Specific First Nation(s) here]", and thus completely flunks its job of actually conveying any clearly identifiable geographic information to any reader who doesn't already have the background knowledge of what city or town or province is actually being referred to.

The thing is, the citizenship or nationality labels that we use on here cannot be based solely on self-identification: our role is to communicate to the world, not just to placate political points of view. So even if a Quebec sovereignist prefers to identify specifically as Québécois, that does not alter the fundamental fact that Quebec is still part of Canada and the Québécois are still Canadians — and even if a Haida or Cree or Anishinaabe or Mi'kmaq person prefers to self-identify exclusively with their First Nation and not with Canada as a whole, that does not alter the fundamental fact that they're still citizens of a political and geographic entity whose current name is still Canada.

But the problem is, the only place the words "citizenship" or "nationality" are actually visible in an article is the infobox in most cases — especially for a person who was born in Canada, those words are not likely to be naturally introduceable into body text without making it really weird and stilted. And even in the infobox, the box is hardcoded to universal international standards, and there's no way for us to impose a special "Canadian override" on standard infobox formatting so that we can switch which term the infobox uses for some Canadian people. So what you propose wouldn't actually solve anything.

In fact, it's usually most appropriate to mention both things, rather than privileging one label while burying the other. So what I normally do when I'm writing a new article or fixing fuckery of this type is, if the person is indigenous, then I write that they're a [Specific First Nation/Métis/Inuit] person from Canada instead of ignoring either part of that context, and if they're Québécois, then I normally write that they're a Canadian person from Quebec. Essentially, I try to find a way to ensure that both labels — Canadian and their status as First Nations, Métis, Inuit or Québécois — are getting mentioned. Bearcat (talk) 13:29, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I've defaulted to saying citizenship:Canadian nationality:something else, hoping that that's uncontroversial and that seems to line up with waht you're saying. Blindlynx (talk) 15:57, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Being an editor heavily involved in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, and all the controversy that surrounds the intersection of those subjects, I default to just saying someone is "from X" country rather than trying to ascribe and presume on them them a nationality, citizenship or ethnicity. Canterbury Tail talk 11:05, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Should the interim leader of the Wexit party be listed on its article

Beating of Dafonte Miller

Requesting Review

Call for participation: Wikimedia Canada grants

"O Canada" and "March of the Priests" again

An anon has been adding https://academic.oup.com/mq/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/musqtl/gdaa004/5864431 as a source to support the idea that the melody of "O Canada" was inspired by the "March of the Priests" from Mozart's The Magic Flute. There's no quote supplied. It has long been known that the first three notes of the two are common, but the rhythm is different ("O Canada" has a half note, into a dotted quarter and eighth note and a descending dotted half note while March of the Priests are all half notes with a quarter note rest). A copyright court today wouldn't even entertain that as sufficiently similar as there are only so many ways you can put notes together. Similar, yes. Inspired, probably not. Could someone please watch check the article to see if I'm making too much of this, and even watch it so I don't have to be the only one reverting this SPS. Walter Görlitz (talk) 03:35, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

You've badly misstated the substance of the dispute. The edit is not just about the first three notes of O Canada but about the whole melody. Here's the text of the edit, verbatim: "Lavalée constructed the melody for O Canada by adapting material by Mozart (March of the Priests, measures 1-8), Liszt (Festklänge, measures 17-20), Wagner (Wach auf, es nahet gen den Tag, measures 9-16), and Matthias Keller (The American Hymn, measures 21-28)." You seem fixated on the first three notes, which is preventing you from properly assessing what the editor is trying to do. Also, the issue is a musical one: to what extent did Lavalée make use of these other sources? It is not a question of copyright. The editor never once mentions Mozard, Liszt, Wagner, and Keller in a legal context. Finally, there is an issue of sources. Does your opinion trump a peer-reviewed academic source? That's not my understanding of how Wikipedia works. 67.71.48.250 (talk) 13:14, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

And you've been wikihounding me for over a year. Perhaps you could stop.

The only similarity is the first three notes even if the musicologist claims otherwise. That has been known for years. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:24, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Again, your fixation on Mozart's influence on the first three notes is preventing you from understanding the edit. The issue is the entire melody and the extent to which it was inspired by Mozart, and by Liszt, and by Wagner, and by Keller. 67.71.48.250 (talk) 16:39, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

No, it is not preventing me from doing anything of the sort. The problem is that we have no access to the source. It's odd that only one musicologist has mad such a claim and that it's not common knowledge. Feels like a paper of some sort, but has not gained support in the community. Walter Görlitz (talk) 03:30, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

It's not a "paper of some sort." It's an article from a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, which means that other musicologists have reviewed the scholarship and certified it as sound. Have you performed a systematic literature review on O Canada? How could you possibly know that only one musicologist has made this point and that it "has not gained support in the community"? At what point is it time to put down the stick? Is there any point continuing this debate after you have already grudgingly agreed to allow the material on the page and stop your edit war? 67.71.48.250 (talk) 13:08, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Sure. Whatever you say. It's still a single source. Yes, I have conducted a review, although not systematic, of sources on the anthem. No reason for you to keep wikihounding me, either. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:18, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

World War II... 75 Years After

Please add Castor River South to list of settlements in newfoundland

Need help at War of 1812

Noticeboard discussion on reliability of Canadaland

Officers of Parliament: terminology and consistency of Wikipedia articles

I notice that of the nine articles in Category:Officers of Parliament in Canada, the article title of Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages anomalously includes "Office of the". I would suggest changing the name of that article to Commissioner of Official Languages for consistency. Regarding the official titles of the nine Officers of Parliament, see the table of contents of this Library of Parliament Background Paper: LOP Publication No. 2009-21-E (revised 30 Sept 2019). Some further discussion of terminology (particularly usage of the term "agents of Parliament") is on page 5 of that PDF. Glancing at a couple of the relevant Wikipedia articles I noticed some language I found odd. The article Ethics Commissioner (Canada) begins:

The Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner of Canada is an entity of the Parliament of Canada.

A reference follows with a dead link; here is the page from the Wayback Machine: The term "entity" does not appear on that page. Further down in Ethics Commissioner (Canada), Wikipedia likens the Office of the Commissioner to other "entities" like the House of Commons, the Senate, and the Library of Parliament. And still further down, it is referred to as "a separate parliamentary entity". This usage strikes me as very unusual, and unreferenced.
The article Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada begins:

The Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada is an officer of Parliament of Canada who is responsible for achieving the objectives of the Lobbying Act that came into force in 2008.

This, too, is not quite right. I believe it's the Commissioner herself (not her office) who is an officer of Parliament. (The website describes her as an "Agent of Parliament", not "Officer".) It would be nice to look systematically at the nine articles linked from Template:Officers of Parliament in Canada, with a view to improving them and making them mutually consistent. Sources include a 2018 article from HillNotes , the Library of Parliament Background Paper I mentioned previously , and the Glossary of Parliamentary Procedure . Mathew5000 (talk) 03:02, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Rideau Hall

Howdy. Am I the only one, who finds it odd, that we have the monarch mentioned as an official resident of Rideau Hall. While the monarch is not mentioned as an official resident at the Australian, New Zealand, Jamaican etc etc, governors-general residences? TBH, I've never heard of RH being called the monarch's official residence, until seeing it at the Wikipedia article-in-question. Before that, in all my years, the governor general was called the (sole) official resident. Likely because, the governor general actually resides there, while the monarch doesn't. PS - Citadelle of Quebec, is another example. GoodDay (talk) 13:32, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Seems pretty straightforward to me. And this is not the first time you've brought this up. There are plenty of references within the article itself, for example, one published by the Government of Canada stating "Government House (“Rideau Hall”) is the official residence of Her Majesty The Queen (when in Ottawa) and her representative in the federal jurisdiction — the Governor General".

Further, Official Residence is defined here as: "An official residence is the residence at which a nation's head of state, head of government, governor...officially resides. It may or may not be the same location where the individual conducts work-related functions or lives".

I fail to see any issue here. There are ample sources, and by definition the location at which an individual lives has absolutely no bearing on the status of an official residence. trackratte (talk) 18:11, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

The monarch doesn't actually reside at Rideau Hall, anymore then she resides at the other Governor General residences, throughout the rest of the Commonwealth realms. Per WP:WEIGHT, secondary sources present the governor general as the sole official resident. GoodDay (talk) 20:33, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Arthur Bousfield; Garry Toffoli (September 2002). Fifty Years the Queen: A Tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on Her Golden Jubilee. Dundurn. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-55002-360-2..--Moxy 🍁 02:50, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

How often though, during coverage of prime ministers & cabinets being sworn in or during cabinet shuffling, do your hear news coverage describe the place as the monarch's residence? It's usually described as the governor general's residence. Just want to be careful, that we're not misleading readers into thinking she actually resides there. GoodDay (talk) 11:41, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

This is the problem ..they do say it all the time even in UK crap publications Inside the Queen’s official residence in Canada: How beloved hall feels like home - Daily Express.--Moxy 🍁 17:53, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

I'll consider an Rfc on the matter, someday, pointing out that at least note should be added there, that the monarch doesn't reside at Rideau Hall. GoodDay (talk) 19:20, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

There was an RfC on this point in 2017 (Talk:Rideau Hall#RfC about being called "the official residence of Canada's Monarch" in the first sentence); you might have mentioned that when raising the topic here so that any discussion now does not merely repeat what was said before. Mathew5000 (talk) 02:10, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, with not many participants. It was a weak 4-3 in favour have of listing the monarch. The Wki-wide community seemed to have very little interest in Canada. I'm considering (perhaps this year or 2021) on opening an Rfc on the matter there, myself. If we're gonna keep the monarch mentioned in the lead, we should at least add that she doesn't actually reside there. Best then to not give the false impression that she does. GoodDay (talk) 11:38, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Can someone point out where in the article it says that the monarch is a resident? I'm not seeing it anywhere. Rideau Hall is certainly an official residence of the monarch (note the terminology) but that doesn't imply that person themselves lives there on anything more than a sporadic and temporary basis, if at all. The article doesn't say otherwise. This is exactly the same way that other official residences are used, such as Holyrood in Scotland that is only used as the home base of the monarch for one week a year, but the building is always an official residence. Thinking that some place being an official, ceremonial residence associated with an office implies that the person who occupies that office actually lives there is not how it works. Similarly, the official residence of the UK Prime Minister is 10 Downing Street, but for many years (certainly during the Blair, Brown and Cameron eras) the man himself and his family actually lived in the accommodation portion of 11 Downing Street, although that building is the official residence of the Chancellor. Pyrop e 19:32, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

The intro says the monarch is an official resident of Rideau Hall. But anyways, it's something I may consider bringing up someday at that article. Thank goodness somebody successfully got the governor general mentioned as an official resident, too. GoodDay (talk) 00:17, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. Read it again. The only time the monarch is mentioned in the lead is the sentence "Rideau Hall ... is the official residence [of] the Canadian monarch." That's it. As I said above, the existence of an official residence does not imply that the person occupying that post is always a resident. An official residence is a ceremonial location and is not synonymous with a home, which is why the term is wikilinked in that sentence. Pyrop e 14:04, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Won't hurt to put a note next to that, explaining that the monarch doesn't actually reside at Rideau Hall. Again, it's something that I'll bring up in future, there. Since RH's counterparts in Australia, New Zealand etc, aren't describe as official residences of the monarch. GoodDay (talk) 14:12, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Don't blame the text; everything you need to know is already there. There is already effectively a note in that the technical term is wikilinked, and it is not an uncommon term. Pyrop e 14:57, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

In future (via RFC), I'll recommend a note clarifying in the lead, that the monarch doesn't reside at RH. If these Canadian residences are to be the only ones mentioning the monarch in the lead (where Australia, New Zealand, etc, don't for theirs). GoodDay (talk) 15:31, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

could use more eyes on John Horgan

Proposal to create two new bio-stubs: MPPs for Upper Canada and MPPs for Province of Canada

Bell branding article

The article Today Just Got Better was created in 2011 three years after the launch of the eponymous advertising campaign. Given that Frank and Gordon have an article, I didn't raise it as an issue at the time. But it's not clear to me what would make a branding slogan English Wikipedia-notable (that is, meeting English Wikipedia's standards for having an article). Remarkably, Bell Canada's front page currently still uses the slogan and it appears in BCE's 2019 annual report (and seemingly in 2020 quarterly SEC filings). So a 12-year old slogan is I suppose real-world notable. But should English Wikipedia have an article on it? Most of the article isn't really about the slogan or the campaign, though I'm not sure how much more it could be discussed without just becoming an echo of Bell's publicity. isaacl (talk) 19:36, 16 August 2020 (UTC) Notified WikiProject Marketing & Advertising and WikiProject Business.) isaacl (talk) 19:43, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

I’d just redirect it to the Bell article. As you say most of the article isn’t about it. Canterbury Tail talk 20:01, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Why re-direct? I think there's a real notability issue for it, and for the beavers. Why not propose both for deletion? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 22:30, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

I have no issues with a delete. Just thought a redirect would be the easiest solution, that's all. Canterbury Tail talk 23:36, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

My personal problem is that I'm not familiar with the standards at deletion discussions regarding branding slogans. Can anyone provide any guidance? Given that there are journalists covering Bell's every move, and advertising journalists that cover all things PR-related, I'm pretty sure I could find some sources. But I don't know what is considered routine coverage in this area during deletion discussions. isaacl (talk) 06:25, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

If you don't think it's significant, and it seems non-controversial, you could just Prod it. See if anyone complains. Canterbury Tail talk 12:04, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it's a clearly uncontroversial deletion, so I don't think it is a good candidate for proposed deletion. isaacl (talk) 03:05, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Why not? It fails the basic notability guideline: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list." The article is completely unreferenced, so it has no reliable sources. And it's been that way since 2011, when someone tagged it for both lack of sources and not meeting notability. If no-one has fixed it up in nine years, that's also an indication of lack of notablity, to my mind. --Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:54, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Because I'm not sure of the standards for having an article have been met, which makes it controversial to me, at least. In good faith, I have to be able to satisfy myself that the standards are not met, and I find it difficult in a topic area where I'm unfamiliar with the standards. isaacl (talk) 18:42, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Well, what "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" does the article have? Whoever put the article up provided absolutely none, and in the nine years since the tag was put on it, no-one else has provided any. It's not like there's a special standard of notablility for advertising campaigns. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 19:28, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Context makes a difference in evaluating sources, though. Take the Mountain Equipment Coop's "Good Times Outside" advertising campaign. It's covered in and , which I believe are trade magazines. Sometimes trade magazines aren't considered sufficiently independent from the subjects they cover; I don't know what's the case for these specific magazines. A graduate thesis examined the campaign, so there has been some academic analysis of it; does this qualify as appropriate coverage? The best guide to what is acceptable is what has actually gotten accepted at article for deletion discussions, and so if there is anyone who can provide some guidance, it would be appreciated. isaacl (talk) 06:43, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

So AfD it then. Canterbury Tail talk 19:36, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

RfC on CBC?

I was surprised to notice that Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources does not list CBC. I use it all the time, reflexively, and I am pretty confident it's an RS—but it would be great to have that confirmed (or not!) by the community. There are ~15,560 hits for "cbc.ca" on WP. Would there be any interest in setting up an RfC for the CBC at WP:RSN? Or is that superfluous? AleatoryPonderings (talk) 06:12, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

AleatoryPonderings, I have never participated in one. Let me go look up what it takes. But, I would agree that CBC should exist in an RS listing. Ktin (talk) 04:06, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

I would think that the CBC would fall under "stellar source" in WP:RSPMISSING. Note also that such Canadian sources as The Globe and Mail, the National Post, Maclean's, and The Canadian Encyclopedia also do not appear in WP:RSP. Meters (talk) 04:17, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense! I mostly thought it was odd that BBC (which I'd also consider a "stellar source") is listed as a generally reliable source at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources but CBC wasn't—and so I thought that, if we'd done one on BBC, it made sense to do it on CBC as well. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 04:26, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm not objecting to jumping through the hoops to add a few Canadian sources. I'll happily participate. Meters (talk) 04:28, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

A rough draft I pulled together from recent precedents at WP:RSN is here; anyone should feel free to edit. Seems like the actual text of the RfC is typically fairly short—probably more complex to get it listed as an RfC than to actually write the request itself. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 04:33, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, on further though, I don't know that the Canadian media examples I listed do come under "Stellar". I trust them to try hard to get things right, not to lie, and to make corrections to mistakes, but you still have to have caveats about editorials, opinion pieces, headlines, and such. I don't know that any media source wouldn't be subject to those. I recently had a discussion with an IP who attempted to claim that the Beothuks "are most noticeably known for being killed off for fun by European Colonists" based on the wording of a the title of a 60-year-old Maclean's article. Meters (talk) 04:53, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

The list you're talking about is not a universal list of all "standard acceptable sources" that we can use at all — it's a reference list for the consensus status of a particular subset of sources whose reliability comes up at the RS noticeboard for frequent debate. That is, the CBC not being listed there isn't an indication that the CBC isn't accepted as a reliable source — the CBC not being listed there is an indication that its status as a reliable source isn't controversial. Bearcat (talk) 03:38, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Pair of eyes for Charles Allard

Continual vandalism by Toadatwar

Joe Clark: C-Span link

"Acting premier"

On a recent wikibrowse, I noticed that several of the "List of premiers" pages include "acting premiers" in their list: British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island; Alberta also has one premier as having a brief stint as an "acting premier" before their normal term. The problem is that I can't find any basis for these people being "acting premiers". This list of BC premiers, from the Legislative Library, does not include any of these acting premiers in the list, nor does this Quebec list from the National Assembly (I couldn't find equivalent lists on the Ontario or PEI legislature's pages, unfortunately). A cursory look at some of the figures in question doesn't illuminate, either; William John Hanna is listed as an acting premier of Ontario, but his page on the Dictionary of Canadian Biography makes no such claim— surely this would be enough of a career highlight to mention? I'm left wondering where any of this information is coming from; I doubt it's vandalism, but maybe it's editors misreading a source, or placing too much weight on something, or even original research in determining who was running things after a premier passed away. Without any sources it's hard to know what's going on here.

Does anyone have any insight or information into this, or should all these "acting premiers" be removed from the pages? — Kawnhr (talk) 21:53, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Here's what the wiki article says for Premier Davie of BC: "When Smithe died in 1887, the lieutenant-governor asked Davie to become Premier but he fell ill within months and left for California to recuperate. In his absence, Provincial Secretary John Robson ran the government on a day-to-day basis, though Davie kept in touch through letters. He returned in May 1888, but his health was in a poor state, and he ultimately died in office." That provides support for Robson being listed as 'Acting Premier' but unfortunately it's not cited. Maybe something similar for the other examples of 'Acting Premier' that you've identified? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 01:24, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

I see this mentioned on both Davie and Robson's DCB pages, so this one— at least— can be reliably sourced. But even so, is running the day-to-day functions of the government enough to be included among the rest of the premiers? We have had plenty of acting prime ministers, but that's understood to be a temporary managerial role rather than interim head of government. Obviously there are different circumstances at play (Robson running the government when there is no premier vs Mitchell Sharp directing efforts while Trudeau is temporarily unavailable) but it still seems to be affording the job more importance than it really had. — Kawnhr (talk) 15:18, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Later today, I'll be omitting those acting premiers from the aforementioned lists. GoodDay (talk) 16:16, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Someone must've added those acting premiers in, just this year. This is the first time I've seen them. GoodDay (talk) 01:37, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

It was 102.186.92.73, who went on a spree October 5, 2019. IMHO, his additions should be reverted. GoodDay (talk) 01:45, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Update - @Kawnhr:, I've deleted the 'acting premiers' from the BC, Ont, Que, PEI lists. GoodDay (talk) 14:13, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, GoodDay! — Kawnhr (talk) 16:08, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Marc Garneau Vital Article

Template:Canadian federal election, 2008A

Page mover

Percentage of valid votes in election boxes

Hello, I think we need to develop a community consensus as to what percentage we should be using for valid votes in election result boxes. Do we want to use 100% (to show that the total % of valid votes adds up to 100%), or do we want it to show the percentage of total votes that are valid? I used to prefer the former, but I've recently changed my mindset, and whenever I update or correct an election box, I go with the latter. This is mainly because this is what Elections Quebec does (no other elections agency has a preference that I'm aware of). Recently, User:Omertop has begun changing election boxes in various provincial electoral district articles so that the valid vote percentage is "100.0", and I think we should come up with a consensus as to what we should be using going forward.-- Earl Andrew - talk 04:44, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for starting this discussion. I think a key difference between Elections Quebec's approach and Earl Andrew's proposed approach is in the presentation. Note that the Elections Quebec table at the link above lists total vote values in a single, visually-separate box; it does not list those *total* vote values in cells aligned with the cells of *valid* vote totals above, as is the case on the Wikipedia pages in question. Listing a "Totals" line in such a manner in table-cell format usually implies summation, and if the addition is inconsistent, it could lead to a perception that the data in these tables is unreliable. My reason for editing in this manner is that, outside of edits by Earl Andrew, it appears that Canadian elections pages already universally use the 100% approach, and not the percentage-of-total-votes-that-are-valid approach. I would put forward that this is a more-than-sufficient consensus to codify this approach here.-- Omertop - talk 05:11, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Every elections agency that I'm familiar with (e.g. PEI 2019) the percentages are of valid votes cast, not total votes nor eligible votes, and whether or not a total is displayed they add up to 100. If we're going to add a totals row below the results table, then it should follow the format of the lines it's summarizing: valid votes cast beside percentage of valid votes. Since it's a total, it's 100 by definition, but then it's also redundant: it's always 100 so there's no point writing it out. Nonetheless, writing a total of valid votes and then putting beside it a statistic based on a different calculation is not how tables should work. Actually I like Quebec's approach: list the results in table form without a totals row and then list the summary numbers below, not aligned with the table and with descriptions of what the numbers mean. Can we do that instead? I know it would be a huge overhaul. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:34, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm glad you brought up its redundancy, because that is another reason I don't like having it always say 100. I disagree that the "total valid votes" is a line summarizing the above information per se. But, I can see why it might be confusing. Anyway, I'd rather not change things too much with the presentation. -- Earl Andrew - talk 14:15, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I'd favour Ivanvector's approach if it were as easy as snapping our fingers and making it so, but the immensity of such a task seems out-of-proportion to the goal of only slightly tweaking something that hadn't really been an issue until a single user unilaterally adopted a new style based on personal preference. Surely we can agree that, whatever approach is settled on in the long-term, the inconsistencies in comparable data points within and between pages should be remedied in the short-term. If consensus ultimately coalesces around Ivanvector's approach in the long-term, that's fine, but given that the New Brunswick election is on Monday and full preliminary results will be available by midnight ADT, can we settle on an approach in the interim? It's obvious that I favour the status-quo "100% approach" for now, given that it's essentially the universal style on Canadian election results pages, and if consensus settles on something else in the future, we can make the changes then. I just don't want the New Brunswick electoral district pages to get messier or more inconsistent based on potential post-election editors basing their edits on two different styles / data points with two different meanings.-- Omertop - talk 20:33, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Excuse me, it was not my 'unilateral choice'. In fact, once upon a time I was doing what you were doing, and changing other people's edits to be "100.00". Then I had a change of heart. What we have is inconsistency, it is by no means 'universal' on Canadian election articles. I brought this here so we could come up with a consensus, one way or the other. No need for personal attacks. -- Earl Andrew - talk 20:55, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

In terms of being consistent, I agree with you both: with Omertop that we should be consistent, and with Earl Andrew that we currently are not. Short-term, I prefer 100%, for the reason that a totals row should total the same things in each column. Long-term, I think it should actually be somewhat trivial to code the templates so that they can support pages as currently coded as well as supporting code for a Quebec-style statistical summary. In fact maybe we already can do that with a caption field or something, I'm not really very familiar with how the templates work. Maybe I'll try to sandbox it, but definitely not before tomorrow. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 23:40, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

List of visual artists from Regina, Saskatchewan

Request for Comment: Should the term "viceroy" be used as a synonym for "Governor General" or "Lieutenant Governor" in articles on Canadian government?

Comments requested

Need help with historical Toronto elections

Nomination for merging of Template:Infobox province or territory of Canada

Eric Duncan

I have a question pertaining to Eric Duncan, specifically whether it's important for his article to state that he is "the first Conservative MP to be elected as openly gay."

The first and most immediate problem with this is that the Conservative Party is not a thing that just magically emerged out of nowhere — it's a party that resulted from the merger of two former political parties, one of which had the openly gay Scott Brison (and previously the not-out-at-the-time Heward Grafftey, and let's not forget the elephant in the room either) in it. But it seems like the Conservative Party likes to play both sides of the fence: they're a continuation of the old PCs when it serves their purposes to pose that way (e.g. past editwarring on Wikipedia over the Conservative election template colour), and a totally new thing that isn't a continuation of the old PCs when that's more convenient (e.g. when you want to hand Eric Duncan a special "historic first" badge.)

But even more importantly, "first LGBT X" is not a distinction where you get to keep slicing smaller and smaller pieces of pie so you can keep doling out historic first status to more and more people because the true historic breakthrough is long gone. Once Svend Robinson broke the pink ceiling in 1989, each individual party doesn't get to assign any special historic firstness to its own first LGBTQ caucus member to be elected after Svend — for instance, Réal Ménard's article doesn't ascribe him any special status for having been the first Bloc Québécois MP to come out, or for being the first openly gay MP from Quebec, but just gives him what he legitimately is: #2 overall behind Svend. And while Brison's article does currently ascribe him with having been the first Progressive Conservative MP to come out as gay, that was added today by the same person who's trying to give Eric Duncan a rainbow cookie. It was never stated in Brison's article at all before the last 24 hours, and is not citing any reliable sources to support the claim that it would be a historically noteworthy distinction in and of itself — his legitimate historicity is as the first LGBT cabinet minister, and he gets no special brownie points for having been the first gay member of any particular party caucus per se. Every LGBT MP after Svend is just one more LGBT MP, not their own special party-specific reset of historic firstness.

The bottom line is, Eric Duncan being the first out LGBTQ MP with his particular political party, when numerous other LGBTQ people sat in the House of Commons before and/or alongside him and several of those sat with one of his own party's legal and ideological predecessors so Duncan is really just the first one to postdate the merger, is not of any special historic significance that warrants having special attention called to it. But I don't want to get sucked into an editwar, so I wanted to ask for outside opinion. For the record, I'd have no problem with saying that he's the only LGBTQ person currently serving in the Conservative caucus — but ascribing him with firstness hinges on a technicality more than an objective fact, and isn't historically significant regardless. Bearcat (talk) 15:44, 21 September 2020 (UTC

IMO, being the first "X within a party" is only notable if being X represents a notable shift or about-face for the party. So if a party has a history and reputation of being homophobic, their first openly gay member would indeed be noteworthy, even if there have been other gay members in other parties. I leave it up to other editors if the Conservative Party qualifies for that. — Kawnhr (talk) 16:46, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't think there's a need for that sort of judgement. For instance, first female Liberal MP or first female Liberal cabinet minister is notable even though their election/appointment doesn't signify a notable ideological shift or about face for the party. It just happens that thee first female MP overall belonged to another party (Agnes MacPhail of the Progressives) and the first female cabinet minister was a Tory; but being the first Liberal woman MP or cabinet minister is still notable. Sowny (talk) 17:14, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Who says "first X to be associated with this political party instead of that one" is notable per se? You, or real reliable sources that actually focus on imbuing it with any significance? Bearcat (talk) 18:06, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

I recall reading in a book or article sometime that Judy LaMarsh was the first woman Liberal cabinet minister and elsewhere that Alan Grossman was the first Jewish person in an Ontario Tory cabinet and Stuart Smith the first Jewish leader of the Ontario Liberal Party so whoever wrote those books or articles evidently thought it was notable. I don't know if any reliable source has made a similar comment about the first gay Tory MP. Sowny (talk) 21:30, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Being able to anecdotally report that some source somewhere has offhandedly mentioned a fact is not the same thing as showing that the fact has received enough analysis in enough sources to be deemed significant. Bearcat (talk) 22:01, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Sowny, when you wrote I don't know if any reliable source has made a similar comment about the first gay Tory MP, were you referring to Eric Duncan or to Scott Brison? As Bearcat noted above, Brison was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party, which became the Conservative Party of Canada. Under subsection 423(2) of the Canada Elections Act, a merged party is essentially a continuation ("successor") of each of the merging parties. I agree with Bearcat that "first LGBT X" is not a distinction that should be sliced smaller and smaller. In the case of Eric Duncan in particular, it's actually incorrect to call him the first out gay Conservative MP. Mathew5000 (talk) 04:23, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

@Mathew5000 I meant Duncan. Sowny (talk) 14:17, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Proposed move of List of reeves and mayors of the former municipalities in Toronto

Communications channels of Wikimedia Canada

Stanley Cup

Request for Jeffrey Skoll article

Is Fairmont, British Columbia the same as Fairmont Hot Springs, British Columbia? British Columbian or Albertan plz help

Symbols RfC

Abandoned race track north of Toronto

Is there a preference for which photos are used for politicians?

I've noticed that, from time to time, the photo used to illustrate a politician for elections or in lists of ministers is chronologically out-of-sync: the photo shows them as much older, or much younger, than they were at the time they held their position. As a quick example, on Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Jason Kenney is represented by a photo of him from 2019— when he actually held the post from 2008 to 2013. I understand that often our hands are tied by what photos are available in the public domain, but sometimes there actually are contemporaneous photos (or close to it) available on Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons for use— to go back to the Kenney example, there's several photos of him from 2008–2014 found on Wikimedia Commons. To me, when listing people who held certain posts (ministers, leaders, etc) it makes sense to use a photo of the person at the moment they held that post (or at least close to it) for proper context, and using more recent photos can obscure that or make it look like everyone was very old when they took a job. I've changed a few of these in the past, but as I keep running into it I wanted to know the community's opinion of this— so as not to be leading a one-man crusade. I apologize if this is covered by a policy or style guide somewhere; I looked but couldn't find anything to that effect. If there is one, and I just missed it, please point me in the right direction. — Kawnhr (talk) 17:02, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

It's never been considered important on Wikipedia that photos necessarily have to be specifically reflective of what the person looked like at one particular time — as long as it's depicting the correct person and isn't an erroneously labelled photo of somebody else entirely, it's never been a principle of Wikipedia that the photo had to age-match their holding of any particular role, such that a photo of Jason Kenney in 2019 couldn't be used in an article where Jason Kenney was technically 10 years younger than he is now. If you'd like to shoot for a consensus that we should move in that direction, you could always initiate an WP:RFC somewhere relevant to our photo policies, but as it stands there isn't and never has been any policy to that effect in force until now. Bearcat (talk) 18:46, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know, Bearcat. I don't understand the meta side of WP very well so I'll just drop it. — Kawnhr (talk) 19:49, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

I think Kawnhr raises a good point, though. In an article like List of prime ministers of Canada the three photographs of William Lyon Mackenzie King are from the three different periods he served as prime minister. It would improve that article, if the image of John Turner dated from the 1980s, rather than 2018, and if the pic of Kim Campbell were from the 1990s rather than 2012. Even though Wikipedia's policies don't require it, editors can change to a more contemporaneous photo without first initiating an RFC. Mathew5000 (talk) 04:49, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

That is true as well, but it isn't always possible to find a photo that both fits those parameters and is usable under Wikipedia's copyright rules. To be uploaded to Wikipedia, a photo has to fit into one of two specific copyright types: either its owner released it under Creative Commons, GFDL or public domain provisions, or it's justifiable under fair use rules if it has other preexisting copyrights on it — but "this is what the person looked like at one particular point in time" isn't a valid fair use rationale in and of itself, so if you tried to upload somebody else's photo of "John Turner in the 1980s" or "Kim Campbell in the 1990s" on fair use grounds it would get deleted. And even their official government portraits aren't usable, because those are under Crown copyright and can't be reconciled with any of our acceptable copyright rules because Crown copyright forbids commercial reuse.

For contemporary people, and topics like buildings or natural features whose appearance isn't as time-dependent, it's possible sometimes to get lucky and find existing photos whose owners have already released them under Wikipedia-compatible copyright provisions, so that we can take and upload them freely — but as a general rule, the only surefire way to guarantee that a Wikipedia-compatible image can be found is to pull out your own camera and take one yourself. And in the absence of time machines, it's impossible to do that in order to secure a photo of what John Turner or Kim Campbell looked like 30 or 40 years ago — your only chance of doing that depends on finding a photo that was already under CC, GFDL or PD release, and your chances of finding one like that from 30 or 40 years ago are nearly nonexistent. That said, after 50 years a Crown copyright photo does lapse into PD, so for older figures like Wilfrid Laurier we can just grab the official government portrait — but in the Turner/Campbell eras, we can't yet. Bearcat (talk) 13:25, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Assist with a rollback at Terence Young (politician)

Lack of documentation for Infobox province or territory of Canada

The lack of documentation for {{Infobox province or territory of Canada}} seems to be causing a problem on the British Columbia article. There is a parameter, Legislature = that has pointed to Legislative Assembly of British Columbia for as long as I've been editing the article. Recently someone pointed out at Talk:British Columbia#Parliament of British Columbia that "The Constitutional Act 1867, for the initial provinces, says that the respective Legislatures consist of the Lieutenant Governor (i.e. representative of the sovereign) and the Legislative Assembly" which is why the parameter should be pointing to Parliament of British Columbia instead. I checked the other provinces and unsurprisingly, they all point to the respective legislative assembly for the province, save the outlier: Quebec, which is obviously the National Assembly. Now I don't like the "well this is what they're doing over there" argument, but without lack of documentation, there really isn't much to go by. Any suggestions? Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:54, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

The comment by Trackratte at Talk:British Columbia is entirely correct . In the Westminster system, the term "legislature" includes both the sovereign's representative and the house (or houses) that deliberate on legislation. It is incorrect to use the terms "legislature" and "legislative assembly" interchangeably. The legislature for Canada is Parliament, consisting of the Crown, the House of Commons, and the Senate. The legislature for British Columbia is defined in law as "the Lieutenant Governor acting by and with the advice and consent of the Legislative Assembly" (Interpretation Act, RSBC 1996, c. 238, section 29 ). If you peruse B.C.'s Constitution Act () you can see that the terms "Legislature" and "Legislative Assembly" are both used, to mean different things. The terms are not interchangeable.

Further primary sources:

Reasons of Chief Justice Lamer in New Brunswick Broadcasting Co. v. Nova Scotia (Speaker of the House of Assembly), [1993] 1 SCR 319 :

As stated by Maingot, it is the Houses of Parliament and the provincial legislative assemblies, and their members, that hold and exercise parliamentary privileges. It is important here to distinguish the Houses of Parliament and the legislative assemblies from the broader legislatures of which they are a part. In the case of a province, for example, the legislature is made up of the legislative assembly and the Crown's representative in the person of the Lieutenant Governor. The legislature cannot hold and exercise parliamentary privileges, as such privileges include the rights of the members of the legislative assembly as against the Crown's representative.

Terminology for [Nova Scotia] House of Assembly, published by the Office of the Legislative Counsel, Nova Scotia House of Assembly see definitions of "Legislature", "House of Assembly", "Legislative Assembly", and "Legislative Council".
Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Parliament vs. Government :

Parliament is the legislative or law-making body, responsible for debating, amending and passing laws. At the federal level it is comprised of the Monarch, represented by the Governor General, the appointed Senate and the elected House of Commons. At the provincial level, parliament refers to the Monarch, represented by the Lieutenant-Governor, and the elected Legislative Assembly. Parliament has a responsibility to hold the government accountable.

Legislative Assembly of British Columbia :

The Legislature of British Columbia is composed of the Lieutenant Governor and 87 elected Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs).

Constitution Act, 1867: see sections 69 and 71 defining "Legislature for Ontario" and "Legislature for Quebec" respectively. Notice that those provisions track the language of section 17, defining "Parliament" .
Constitution Act, 1982: Part V (Procedure for Amending the Constitution of Canada) Read sections 38 to 46 and notice that the terms "legislative assembly" and "legislature" are used to mean different things. Specifically, a legislative assembly can make "resolutions" but a legislature makes "laws". The term "legislative assembly" is used analogously to "House of Commons" (in sections 38 and 43, for example), while the term "legislature" in section 45 is used analogously to the term "Parliament" in section 44. Just as the House of Commons is a component of Parliament, each province's legislative assembly is a component of the province's legislature.

Also it's worth noting that the term "legislative assembly" is generic; each province has a legislative assembly even if its formal name is something other than "Legislative Assembly". For example, the National Assembly of Quebec is a legislative assembly, as demonstrated by the provisions I referred to above in the Constitution Act, 1982.

Sorry to go on so long here, but Wikipedia ought to be correct on this point: a legislature is not the same as a legislative assembly. When Template:Infobox province or territory of Canada displays the word "legislature", the information should refer to the province's legislature, not its legislative assembly. Mathew5000 (talk) 22:36, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

While technically correct, it's not WP:COMMONNAME or common usage. I doubt many non-constitutional experts would equate the two. For now, the use is the sitting house. Walter Görlitz (talk) 03:07, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

So you concede that experts are aware of the distinction between "legislature" and "legislative assembly", but Wikipedia should adopt the usage of non-experts who incorrectly confuse the terms? That's not what the WP:COMMONNAME guideline you linked to says. (And in any event, that's referring to article titles, not information in an infobox.) Would you say, "technically there is a distinction between cement and concrete but most people aren't aware of that, so in infoboxes we should use those terms interchangeably." Mathew5000 (talk) 08:27, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

No, I concede that you have shown there is a technical distinction, and it's not one we use here. I would say that we should continue to link to the legislative assembly for each province and from that article, link to the more technical term for the simple reason that we should be following the principle of least astonishment. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:32, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "not one we use here". Wikipedia should use accurate terminology relating to provincial law-making bodies. That essay you linked to does not advise using inaccurate terminology. If you think the word legislature is too confusing or technical, then change the parameter name to "legislative assembly". But as long as the parameter name displays in the infobox as "Legislature", the information or link supplied should be about the legislature. Mathew5000 (talk) 21:03, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

In common usage, the legislature would be considered to the elected body sitting the in the legislative assembly or similar building. As long as we do not surprise the average reader, the link should be about that body, not the technical, constitutional one. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:36, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

If the reader is surprised (i.e. learns something new) that is not a big but a feature in that the whole purpose of an encyclopedia is to learn about the subject you wish to lookup/read about. You yourself have acknowledged the factual state of affairs, so to purposefully include false information or to present it in a factually misleading way is counter to WP. The fact of the matter is that a Legislature creates laws, a legislative assembly does not have the authority to create laws only to pass bills. A Legislature has two or more constituent bodies, where as a legislative assembly is one of those constituent bodies. Mathew5000 in this case is entirely correct. trackratte (talk) 12:30, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Did you read principle of least astonishment. No the common term should be used. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:17, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

"Communities"

Earlier today, I had to spend a considerable amount of time removing a very large number of incorporated towns and cities from List of communities in Ontario.

The traditional practice has always been that towns and cities get listed at the separate List of municipalities in Ontario, while the "communities" list is for unincorporated places, such as city neighbourhoods or settlements within townships — but obviously a lot of editors don't correctly recognize or understand that distinction, and think that "communities" is supposed to be a list of every populated place regardless of its municipal status. I don't see how an indiscriminate list would be useful or valuable for us to maintain, however: we need lists that distinguish places by type and status, not just one giant catch-all list of every named place in the entire province (which would literally run into the thousands). But after I removed the incorporated municipalities from the list, it took less than one hour for an anonymous IP to come along and start trying to add some of them back to the list.

Accordingly, I wanted to ask if there is (a) any support for moving the page to the clearer title List of unincorporated communities in Ontario or List of unincorporated settlements in Ontario, and/or (b) anybody who's willing to help watchlist the page for misplaced additions. If we go with the page move, we can then turn the more general "communities" title into a "list of lists" that directs readers to the lists of cities, towns, villages, municipalities, unincorporated communities and the like instead of directly listing any places itself. Bearcat (talk) 18:42, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

That might be a good idea. I'm not sure about including (urban) neighbourhoods, though (maybe if they are former municipalities or standalone communities).-- Earl Andrew - talk 18:47, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree that the current title is easy to misread and surely the source of the confusion here, and that moving the page to "unincorporated communities" would be a good idea. — Kawnhr (talk) 19:31, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Since there was clearly outside backup for moving the page to clarify its scope, I've done so, and converted the old title into the "list of lists" I suggested. However, willing watchlisters would still be welcome just in case this doesn't actually resolve the problem in the long term. Bearcat (talk) 19:43, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I've added it to my watchlist. — Kawnhr (talk) 19:50, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Complaint Handling Process

Adding a section for military-related articles which need improvement

Fan art as a substitute for photographs?

A user named "Jeangagnon" has recently been uploading computer-made fan art images of various Quebec celebrities for use in their infoboxes in lieu of actual photographs. The affected articles include Aliocha Schneider, Laurence Leboeuf, Céline Galipeau, Patrick Huard, Charlotte Laurier, Denise Filiatrault, Magalie Lépine-Blondeau, Sophie Lorain, Lucie Laurier, Marc Labrèche, Michel Courtemanche, Ron Fournier, Dédé Fortin, Jacques Galipeau, Maurice Boucher, Robert Piché and Éveline Gélinas — they also added similar images to Paul Bernardo, Karla Homolka and René Angélil, but were already reverted by other editors on those pages before I saw any of this, and to Lhasa de Sela, where I just reverted them now because their fan art replaced (and was clearly a direct derivative of) the existing photograph that we already had.

It seems absolutely inappropriate to me, but I wanted to solicit input on whether other people agree with me or not as Wikipedia does not actually have any explicit policy against this. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 16:11, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia at large might have issues with the fanart, but 'might' is the key word. I am making no judgements, because I find Wikipedia's rules about images to be highly complex and arcane. Jeangagnon is clearly using photographs to create the fanart, but those photographs may or may not be acceptable to Wikipedia, and using an image of an image might run afoul of legalities that I don't understand. I would recommend putting this issue up for consideration at the appropriate Administrator/Bureaucrat level. PK T(alk) 16:50, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

On the copyright question, if the artwork is obviously copied from a specific non-free image (haven't checked whether this is the case), it would be a derivative work and non-free. Whether this is appropriate stylistically would be a secondary question. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:54, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Stylistically, most of these are fine in my opinion, but if they're derivative works, they have to go. -- Earl Andrew - talk 19:40, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I think most if not all of these are derivative works. They look traced, and you can see the original image in the background of some of them, e.g. File:Aliocha_Schneider.jpg File:Laurence_Leboeuf.jpg. A derivative work of a copyrighted image is still copyrighted and these images should be nominated for deletion on Commons. (I think there are also BLP issues at play with using artwork to illustrate someone's biography, i.e. is the art an accurate representation of what they look like? Aliocha Schneider is a young guy, but from the drawing, I thought he was a middle aged woman...) Spicy (talk) 20:07, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong in principle with using high quality illustrations when free photographs aren't available. In this case in particular there may be some copyright issues though. – Anne drew 21:07, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

They're definitely either traced or instafiltered, and I've initiated the deletion discussions at Commons:Commons:Deletion requests/2020/10/17. I started out nominating them one by one, and then once I realized just how many there are I just bundled all the rest into a single mass batch nomination — so if you want to see all the discussions, just do a search for my username on that daylog. (I also caught a couple of otherwise unrelated (but also CC-noncompliant) screenshot images at the same time, and nominated those as well, but my name will mostly get you these cartoony fan-art images. And there were also a couple that had already been nominated for deletion by other people as well.) But for the absolute height of "hell to the no", feast thine eyes on File:Marc Lepine.jpg. I get why somebody would want to do that, but an WP:NPOV encyclopedia has absolutely no business whatsoever condoning it. Bearcat (talk) 21:10, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Yikes, I can applaud the effort, but these images do not look good, plus all the derivative copyright issues. // sikander { talk } 🦖 21:19, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Wow, that Marc Lepine image was actually being used on a couple of projects, thanks to autogenerated Wikidata infoboxes. I removed it. Spicy (talk) 21:50, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for that. Bearcat (talk) 22:01, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

List of mammals of Canada FLRC

Rebel News

Asbestos

Stephen Harper GAR Notice

R.M. Vaughan

Eyes on Leduc, Alberta please

Zoie Palmer: Canadian actor bio

True North Canada

Montreal geography question: Victoria Square

Cooperatives Secretariat

FAR notice

Thoughts on "Third parties (Canada)"

(I'm raising this here because the page in question does not seem heavily trafficked, and because it affects other pages, too.)

I'd like to bring the project's attention to Third party (Canada), and specifically how that term is defined. To wit: a federal or provincial political party that is not usually considered to have a realistic chance of forming a government but has seats in the federal House of Commons or a provincial or territorial legislature.

The problem I have is that (as the article admits), it seems to have be used in analogy to the American phrase— but the party systems are very different in the two countries, and "third party" is a poor fit for Canadian politics. In the US, parties other than the Big Two are lumped together as "third parties" because they're about as equally as relevant and viable (which is to say: they're not); but in Canada, parties other than our Big Two have varying levels of support and relevance. Relatedly, there are often more than three parties in Canadian politics: there are four provinces (Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick) that have or have had four parties represented in the legislatures recently, while the federal House of Commons currently has five— and has, at multiple times in the past, had up to six.

Moreover, I'm not sure this definition of "third parties" is actually in widespread use. Certainly, you don't hear much punditry about the NDP, the BQ and Greens as a collective group, since they have wildly different levels of support, relevance. In provinces with strong duopolies you can get these sorts of takes, but in the one example I could find, [the term used is "smaller parties".

The page isn't even consistent with its definition, actually; despite stating in the lead that it's a catch-all for any party below the Big Two, the page goes on to track and list the parties that literally have third place in their respective province. So is "third parties" an actual term, or is this page just a non-discriminate collection of information? It's unclear.

The main reason this bugs me is that this use has creeped in to Template:Infobox Canadian Parliament, meaning it gets used on pages like 43rd Canadian Parliament; the BQ and NDP are both "third parties" (not just in the infobox, but also in the prose!). Again this just seems like a poor way to describe them, and not in-line with how people actually talk about them (let alone Parliament itself).

IMO, we should dispense with this definition of "third party" and adjust the pages accordingly (such as replacing it in the infobox with "official party status", which both better describes the situation and is doubly relevant as specific Canadian terminology). But I welcome community input. — Kawnhr (talk) 00:52, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that's definitely junk. While the term "third party" does get used in Canadian politics, it is not a catchall term for every party but the "big two" — it simply refers to the party that happens to currently be in third place in House standings, as opposed to the Official Opposition. Federally, that's currently the Bloc Québécois; in the past it has been the NDP, Reform and/or the Liberals. In Ontario, it's currently the Liberals; in BC it's currently the Greens, and on and so forth. You're correct that as written, this article is importing an American sense of the term into Canadian politics, where it doesn't belong — and for added bonus, the article hasn't even really been fully updated, with the table at the bottom listing several incorrect party leaders (and in more than one case not even the correct party.) It's a mess, and it needs to be scrubbed clean for sure. Bearcat (talk) 15:28, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Like Bearcat said. We need an overhaul done on this matter. GoodDay (talk) 16:28, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Canadian Federal Election Results in X

Wonderbra FAR

Assistance required with Template:Canadian first minister list

The other day I noticed that on List of premiers of Saskatchewan, the link for the 2020 election is red— which confused me, because I knew that 2020 Saskatchewan general election definitely existed. A closer look revealed the issue: the link was heading to Saskatchewan general election, 2020— the old format for elections— which does not exist (even as a redirect). As the election links are not entered by users but generated by the template itself based on some inputs, I thought it would be a good idea to modify Template:Canadian first minister list/mandate to produce the correct link (rather than rely on a redirect). So I did exactly that.

Everything seemed fine— the Sask page was giving a blue link— until, a bit later, I was on List of prime ministers of Canada and noticed all the links had gone red. What had happened? Well, it turns out that the "mandate" code was making links for "XXXX Canadian general election" rather than federal election. By the looks of it, this page has always been pointing to "Canadian general election", but the reason it never returned broken links before is because there were redirects set-up for each in the old format (ie: someone had set up "Canadian general election, XXXX" to direct to "Canadian federal election, XXXX"); and consequently, the reason they're breaking now is that there are not redirects to the new format. Seeing that I had created more red links than I fixed, I reverted my change.

Now, obviously, there's a workaround for this: just make new redirects (a single one for Sask would be the easiest way forward). But it seems to me like it would be a good idea to modify the template's code that it doesn't require editors make these redirects, so the code generates the correct links for where it should lead. The "mandate" code tracks 'jurisdiction' (which is how it knows which name to put into the links), so in theory it should be able to do "if:Canada then:federal, else:general", but I have zero idea how to do actually code this.

In short: I think Template:Canadian first minister list/mandate should have its election link template changed from [JURISDICTION] general election, [YEAR] to [YEAR] [JURISDICTION] [FEDERAL/GENERAL] election, to 1) conform to the current format we use for election page titles and 2) not require editors to create redirects to point it where it needs to go when the generator can't account for something.

Does anybody know how to code this, or know anyone else who could, or at least point me in the direction of where I might find someone who could? — Kawnhr (talk) 22:13, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Mir, ISS and Gateway task force

Gillette's operations in Canada

Helen Rodd

Farming near Cochrane, Ontario

Queen Charlotte Islands query

Atlantic Bubble

Mining in Canada

A pair of relatively new editors may need some help with Canadian TV drafts

81282quebectelevision (talk · contribs) and 882antoine (talk · contribs) appear to be collaborating to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Canadian television.

However, most of their work is woefully under-referenced so for the most part I have no idea if the topics are notable or not.

I am asking any editors familiar with Canadian television, particularly in Quebec, to review the drafts and articles for notability and help these new editors focus on the topics that are notable rather than wasting time on those that are not.

Those topics that are notable and that are of interest to French-speakers in Quebec should probably also exist on the French Wikipedia. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 🎄 02:45, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm concerned about what appears to be meat-puppetry, on their part. GoodDay (talk) 02:48, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

According to , both of these usernames have already been blocked on the French Wikipedia for doing the exact same thing they were doing here (namely creating a large number of unsourced stub articles), and have already been directly linked to each other as faux-nez (i.e. sockpuppetry). I've accordingly already blocked both accounts, and have reviewed their contribution histories — it doesn't appear that there are any other draft-to-main page moves that haven't already been caught, though there are several other unsourced drafts besides the ones you listed for AFD. Bearcat (talk) 14:36, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

@Bearcat: I only AFD'd those which were moved back into article-space twice - I wasn't going to get into a move-revert war. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 🎄 15:50, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

I got that. I'm just saying that there are some drafts they never move-warred over, but no other problematic pages still in mainspace. Bearcat (talk) 15:56, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Everyone: Since these two are blocked, the drafts will die a WP:G13-death unless someone rescues them. If any of the drafts created by or edited by these two are on notable topics, please fix them up and {{subst:submit}} them or, if you are confident they are in good shape after improvement, move them directly. In particular, Marie-Claude Savard might be notable, but is currently at WP:BLPROD awaiting its first reference. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 🎄 15:50, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Personalities

I also wanted to raise a question about List of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation personalities. Namely, it was intended for people who've been actual employees of the CBC, such as journalists and radio hosts and CBC Kids program jockeys and other people who routinely appear on the CBC as themselves — but it also has a tendency to collect random isolated samples of actors or actresses who've had roles in scripted drama or comedy series that aired on the CBC. This is never comprehensive, of course — the most recent addition that I had an issue with was Debra McGrath, on the basis that she had a supporting role in Little Mosque on the Prairie. But that show had 13 other core cast members (and literally dozens of guest actors) who mostly weren't added to the list (the only other one who is in the list was added because he also hosted a daytime cooking show, not because he acted in Little Mosque), so it doesn't uniquely make Deb McGrath a "CBC personality" while somehow not doing the same of Zaib Shaikh and Sitara Hewitt and Sheila McCarthy and Neil Crone and Arlene Duncan and Boyd Banks.

And furthermore, since the CBC is the only Canadian TV network that produces a genuinely high volume of scripted Cancon comedy and drama programming, adding actors to the list just because they've had acting roles in shows broadcast by the CBC would effectively mean that the overwhelming majority of Canadian actors who exist at all would be "CBC personalities" on the basis of having been in Murdoch Mysteries or Diggstown or Street Legal or King of Kensington or Da Vinci's Inquest or The Beachcombers or the original Degrassi or an Anne of Green Gables movie at some point in their careers. Plus, being cast in a CBC drama or comedy series doesn't technically make you an employee of the CBC — it makes you an employee of the production studio that makes the series, not of the network that airs it.

So my questions are, firstly, do we really need the list at all if it's going to be this much trouble to maintain properly because people keep adding names that are technically out of scope to what the list is actually for? And secondly, if we do think it's warranted, then does somebody have an idea for how we can rename it to make its intended scope clearer than the current name does? Bearcat (talk) 16:31, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

May need name examples of those who belong on the list & those who don't. GoodDay (talk) 16:50, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

The scope of the list needs to be defined more accurately. "This is a list of past and present personalities associated with the television and radio arms of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" leaves the door open to actors who have played roles in CBC programming, because it doesn't mention a requirement that a person be a CBC employee. As to whether or not the list is really needed, I would say "not in its current condition". Perhaps it should be broken into categories, such as (perhaps) News and Current Affairs reporters, Sportscasters, Management, ..... and so forth? PK T(alk) 19:03, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Edit warring going on at Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, NPOV contested, page not protected

Usurping a plain title

Aaaaarrrrrgggghhhh

Nothing needs to be done at this point, since I've fixed everything, but I just need to rant for a second.

Our article about the 4th Gemini Awards has contained, literally since the very day it was first created in 2009 by a user named "Riverfan", the assertion that Karol Ike received a nomination for Best Actress in a Drama Series for Malarek. In the process of looking for sources to improve the articles with, however, I discovered that not only was this not correct, there were actually three even more profound problems with the statement: (a) Karol Ike is male (that's Karol as in the Polish spelling of Charles), (b) he was a cinematographer, not an actor, and (c) Malarek was a theatrical film, not a television series.

It gets worse.

Malarek the film still existed only as a redirect to Victor Malarek, rather than an actual article about the film adaptation of his autobiography. So in the process of trying to find sources to create an article about the film, I discovered that it actually received not just the two Genie Award nominations that had been included in 10th Genie Awards, but three: the two that had been listed properly, and one that had never appeared in the article before: all the way back to its creation in 2005 by SimonP, the third nomination had never, ever, ever been listed at all.

Wanna take a wild guess where this is going?

The missing nomination was...yessirree, Best Cinematography for Karol Ike.

So two different people, four years apart, made completely different errors involving the same person, which never got caught because it took me until now to find the screwup, and thus left Wikipedia erroneously claiming for ten years that a cinematographer was nominated for an opposite-gender acting award. Fusterclucks like this are exactly why I really dislike being the only person who's actually putting any sustained effort into upgrading and improving our Gemini/Genie/Canadian Screen award articles at all — it's a massive project, and I can only do so much at a time, so shit like this lingers for years if I haven't personally found it yet because nobody else is actually helping out.

I've asked before and gotten no takers, but it makes me really angry and frustrated when I come across a massive multi-user screwup like this. Is anybody willing to actually help me with these? Bearcat (talk) 17:18, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi Bearcat. Your efforts to improve WP are much appreciated. But most of the 6.2 million articles are probably in need of similar attention. Speaking for myself, I am working mostly on geography articles, and that can keep me busy for the rest of my life... So, thanks for taking on such an arduous task. Regards, -- P 1 9 9 ✉ 22:02, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Bearcat, your efforts are appreciated. Perhaps when the tech gets good/cheap enough, the Foundation can buy us an AI that will flag things like this by comparing what we say against what the listed sources say or what major news outlets say. This would be very helpful on BLP pages. This is a few years off though. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 🎄 23:43, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Looking for a Canadian Wikipedian's opinion

Hello there, I just declined an AfC and I think I might have done so too hastily. The subject is a recipient of the Order of Canada. Can a Canadian Wikipedian help me understand how prestigious the OC CM is and whether I can take this as good evidence of notability? I see it is the second-highest national honour, but I also see that a large number of people have it. Grateful for your help. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 04:11, 21 November 2020 (UTC) Pardon me, the subject is a Member of the Order of Canada, so that's CM rather than OC. Edited comment at 04:13, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

In case it is useful, this was the AfC I declined. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 05:25, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Personally I don't think you need to get into the game of deciding what types of assumed notability might apply to him and whether or not the OoC qualifies for that; I would be stunned if the sources on that page don't satisfy WP:GNG. Just idly clicking on them, I see tons of in-depth, reliable, and independent-looking coverage. - Astrophobe (talk) 05:58, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm not persuaded that he's extremely notable – he indeed has many honours, but all at the second or third tier onwards, and he hasn't done any one thing that clearly crosses the threshold of notability. Even as a philanthropist, his reputation appears limited to Eastern Ontario, and his generosity is remarkable for an individual but not by charitable standards. He was a QC, but so are a great many lawyers, he had an LLD, but so have many others. The Military Cross is a second-level military decoration. He's been an alderman, but at the city council level. I'm conflicted because I think having achieved such a variety of things to such a standard can indicate notability, but I think it would be stretching WP:GNG for me to make that call. The coverage of him I see isn't as an all-rounder, but for individual things he's done. What I'm looking for, really, is any excuse to approve the article, and there is some coverage of him as an all-rounder with the OoC. If that's a significant enough national honour, then I'll take it. But if it's a kind of national honour that recognises public service, or general dedication to a cause that hundreds or thousands of people receive a year, then I fear I'm back at square one. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 06:48, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree with Astrophobe (talk), military service, successful businessperson, charitable work and Order of Canada (BTW, an average of 132 people a year have gotten it since inception 1967 per Order of Canada at the Governor-General website). The article needs a cleanup — it is a little WP:SOAPBOX and unencyclopedic — but the notability hurdle is reached. --papageno (talk) 07:21, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Hmm I'm still conflicted, for the reasons I've said. None of those things individually equal notability and I don't know of any method to "add up" disparate achievements to push a subject over the notability threshold unless the subject is generally recognised for the sum of their achievements. That said, I think 132 people a year is good enough (not as an award; that's still low-tier, unfortunately) but as an indication that he is generally recognised for being a war veteran plus successful businessperson plus philanthropist. I'll do some work on the draft and encourage the submitter to resubmit. Thank you Astrophobe and papageno for your thoughts. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 07:49, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

My concern is that, if I understand your reasoning correctly, you don't seem to be applying the standard test of notability. The point of having a standard notability criterion is exactly so that you don't need to get into a game of weighing up the different parts of a person's life and subjectively evaluating their various achievements. We only really care about specific awards in situations where the subject might have presumed notability like under WP:NACADEMIC criterion 2. In this case the only question that matters is whether or not there exists in-depth coverage in multiple independent reliable sources. - Astrophobe (talk) 18:47, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Unless, now that I think about it a bit further, your reasoning is that it fails GNG so you are looking for presumed notability on the basis of an award? In that case, though I do think it passes GNG, it would also be helpful to know what presumed notability threshold you're trying to apply. - Astrophobe (talk) 18:50, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

My two cents worth but the multitude of independent third-party sources clearly indicate IMO that the article easily passes GNG. Regards, Aloha27 talk 19:40, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

The article certainly looks to be well-sourced, and the Order of Canada certainly is a valid notability claim in and of itself as long as the article is well-sourced. Noteworthy awards are exactly the kind of thing that make a person notable under WP:ANYBIO. Bearcat (talk) 18:22, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure someone that has been awarded the Order of Canada is presumed notable, but I would think he would be notable based on the sourcing and the fact that he also has an Order of Ontario, Military Cross and Queens Counsel designation. He is a very highly decorated individual.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 18:57, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

An Order of Canada wouldn't be an automatic notability freebie that exempted a person from having to have any reliable sources just because primary sources or listicles technically verified the OC, no — but if an article can be properly sourced to some evidence that the person actually received coverage of their work, then it is a valid notability claim. Bearcat (talk) 16:14, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Note also that the Order has three grades: the Member level is quite often awarded to people of modest distinction, but the Companion level is a very high honour. There are about fifteen times as many of the former as of the latter.—Odysseus 1479 00:00, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

@Kohlrabi Pickle: I'm not a Canadian but I reviewed enough sources to agree with what others have said already - this person passes WP:GNG, and unlike someone with a similar resume who was in the middle of his public life, my "could this be motivated by a desire for self-promotion"-detector isn't going off. Unless you can think of any reason NOT to accept it, go ahead and accept it. If you prefer, I can do it for you, I have access to the AFC review tools. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 🎄 02:30, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

davidwr, no need – I did some copyediting and was waiting for the original submitter to resubmit. I see you've done that now, and I'll approve the page. Many thanks for the input (and to everyone else too!).Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 02:36, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Just to say that I've now approved the submission. Very much appreciate everyone's patient and helpful input. You can see it here: Arthur Britton Smith. Kohlrabi Pickle (talk) 02:43, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Teryl Rothery

Over much of 2020, a user named Fourthords appears to have asserted ownership rights over our article on actress Teryl Rothery, asserting that since the sources that routinely call her Canadian don't explicitly confirm that she was born in Canada, she can't be categorized or described as "Canadian" at all. Of course, that isn't how nationality-categorization works; a person who grew up in Canada, and has lived and worked entirely in Canada, is very clearly Canadian regardless of whether you're personally convinced that she was born in Canada or not — which is not to mention that there are ways in which a person could be born outside of Canada and still be a Canadian citizen by birth anyway, meaning that even if you did have a genuine issue with the sourceability of her birthpace that still doesn't inherently cast doubt on her Canadianness itself. They haven't shown or stated any evidence that she was born outside of Canada, at any rate — they're just dissatisfied for no apparent reason with the state of sourcing that exists for any statement that she is Canadian.

But several times over the course of the year this editor has reverted anybody who tried to reinsert the demonym "Canadian" into the introduction or any of the actress categories — Category:20th-century actresses, Category:21st-century actresses, Category:Film actresses, Category:Television actresses and Category:Stage actresses all being categories where diffusion is mandatory, meaning they're supposed to only contain subcategories with zero individual articles filed directly in any of them because all actresses are subcategorized by nationality — and they also insist on scare-quoting the word "native" in her own fully-sourced self-description of herself as a native of Vancouver.

It's incredibly unclear to me what they would accept as sufficient sourcing for describing or categorizing her as Canadian, because I added a source which explicitly says that she's Canadian yet that somehow still isn't good enough. But since they clearly aren't listening to anything I have to say, I wanted to ask if anybody else has any input. Bearcat (talk) 05:58, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

That's a disappointing case. I often see kinda the reverse of that, where Americans just LOVE to immediately claim a Canadian actor is "Canadian-American" as soon as they take out US citizenship, even if that person was born and/or raised in Canada and began their career in Canada, and became notable IN CANADA. *coughSandra Ohcough* I expect it'll start happening with Tatiana Maslany too and it's already snuck in a few times with Gregg Sulkin once he took out US citizenship. I don't think they really get how Wikipedia applies the concept of nationality to people. Similarly, even though she's lived in Canada for a number of years and has been a key part of a number of very Canadians shows, I myself would never seek to "claim" Amy Jo Johnson as Canadian. To me she's clearly an American actress who happens to have done a lot of work in Canada.

But I've never seen anyone try to prevent someone from being described as having a nationality like you've outlined above. That seems very, very weird. As are the square-quotes around "native" when she describes herself as a Vancouverite and makes it clear she was raised there. If that's a statement from the subject herself, than absent reliable sourcing contradicting that... well... you have my vote, unfortunately not worth very much LOL, for her clearly being properly described as a Canadian. —Joeyconnick (talk) 03:03, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Maps

Canadian cheese and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of cheese factories in Quebec

How to request a title/name change for an article?

FAR for royal assent

Seeking Canadian for proofreading/copyediting

Thoughts on "List of Canadian political parties by time in office"

(Again, raising this here because the page in question is not heavily trafficked and it's more likely to get notice here)

A few days ago, I stumbled upon List of Canadian political parties by time in office: a page that lists the length of time that each party formed the government in a given jurisdiction (well, it's incomplete, but that's the idea). So it tells us that the Liberal Party of Canada has had a culminative 88 years in government, and while the various conservative parties have had a culminative 65. To me, this doesn't seem very encyclopedic. While there are some instances where people (and sources) will talk about a party's time in office, that tends to be in rare and specific circumstances; people point out that the LPC held office for "nearly 70 years in the 20th century" to underscore their dominance. But nobody notes that the OLP has formed the government for 62 years since Confederation, because that's just trivial.

I was considering putting it up for deletion, but it seems to me that there could be a valid topic here: the length of a party's unbroken time in office. Think the Alberta PCs' unbroken four decades in office, or the Ontario PCs, or the Nova Scotia Liberals in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, and so on. These long-lived governments get dubbed "dynasties" and get remembered, receive coverage and remain invoked years later— the Ontario PCs and Nova Scotia Liberals certainly were, as the Alberta PCs exceeded their time in office. Since there's no clear definition of how long a party takes to become exceptionally long lived, we'd probably have to set our own minimum… 20 or 25 years would be a good spot IMO.

To sum it up, I'm wondering a) if others believe the current page is a topic worth keeping; b) if not, if it should be remade into a list that counts only instances of long-lived, continuous governments. Or if it should just be junked entirely with no replacement. — Kawnhr (talk) 20:03, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't believe it should stand as a self-contained list. It's possible that the various sections (that is, if it ever became a completed work/list) might make sense if they were added to the lists they were pertinent to - ie if the "Federal" list was added to List of prime ministers of Canada and the "Ontario Provincial" list was added to List of premiers of Ontario then.....maybe. But I don't believe it should stand as a separate list of lists. PK T(alk) 21:02, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

What we need is one list with an assortment of sortable headers..by age, party, time in office etc.--Moxy 🍁 22:49, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

IMO, this list fails WP:LISTN and WP:INDISCRIMINATE, and should be deleted. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 22:55, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

We seem to have a few of this unsourced lists {{Canadian politics by time in office}}. Never noticed them before.--Moxy 🍁 23:07, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback all. I take it there's no appetite for a "List of unbroken party governments in Canadian politics" (albeit with a better title), either, which is fine by me. — Kawnhr (talk) 21:09, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Klicks

Wanted to ask a quick question about a piece of content in Canadian English that seems not quite right to me, before going ahead to rewrite it. Specifically, I'm concerned about the "Units of measurement" section, specifically where it says "this has spawned some colloquial usages such as klick for kilometre (as also heard in the US military)."

Now, I realize that Canada has almost 40 million people who may not always use words in exactly the same way — hence why I'm looking for outside input — but at least to me, a klick isn't a kilometre as a unit of distance per se, but a kilometre-per-hour as a unit of speed. For instance, I would never, ever say that Hamilton is "70 klicks" away from Toronto, but I might very well say that I was doing 100 klicks to describe how fast I was driving on the QEW between the two cities.

So that's what I wanted to ask. Do the rest of y'all understand "klicks" the way I do, as speed rather than distance, or are there some of you who can attest to using "klicks" to connote distance? Bearcat (talk) 18:21, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

(restoring my elegant prose which was inadvertently deleted :) ): Hi Bearcat - I've heard "klicks" used for both distance and speed, but it's slang of course, so it's used haphazardly. The text in the article mentions that it's colloquial, so perhaps it wouldn't hurt to mention that the word is used for both. PK T(alk) 18:53, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely. Although I can't recall ever using the colloquialism myself, I have encountered others using the term quite regularly. Regards Aloha27 talk 18:34, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely which? I asked a "this or that?" question, not a "yes or no" question. Bearcat (talk) 18:36, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

There was an edit conflict during my initial attempt to post. Agreed with PKT. Have heard it used for both. Aloha27 talk 18:41, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

I did a quick search and couldn't find RS saying anything one way or the other. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 18:39, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nationalisms in Canada

Nella Cotrupi

RFC on how to cite the Journal of Canadian Studies

The waters of Hudson Bay

July 2 Intruder Incident at Rideau Hall

Spouse of prime ministers of Canada

Linda West article

Mark Pathy

Consistent naming for Canadian ecozones

Can we get consistent naming for Canadian ecozones (listed here)? Arctic Cordillera is listed without an suffix, but Northern Arctic Ecozone (CEC) has the CEC suffix even though Northern Arctic Ecozone doesn't exist. I thought these suffix were only there when multiple topics had the same name? On the other hand should we put these as suffices for all ecozone articles to make everything consistent? VR _talk 21:04, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

For the record, I created many of the 'CEC' articles under a plain title (see, for example, the links in the table at this version of Ecozones of Canada). They were moved to include the 'CEC' disambiguator by User:Skookum1 in early 2009, for example, this move of "Pacific Maritime" to "Pacific Maritime Ecozone (CEC)". Discussions about these moves occurred in various places, including my talk page. One example is User talk:Mindmatrix/2009#Ecozones (CEC) and Level II Ecoregions (EPA) (I should warn you that although Skookum1 generally wanted to do the right thing, he was exhaustingly verbose and rarely concise). I honestly no longer have the energy to revisit these discussions, but I agree with you that these disambiguations are likely unnecessary. Maybe you can also take this up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ecoregions. Mind matrix 02:10, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

We have 2 over lapping naming systems at play here.--Moxy 🍁 03:53, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

I'd agree that the disambiguations are largely unnecessary; the main problem is that nobody's actually tackled fixing the inconsistency. We can only fix problems that we actually notice, obviously, and I don't recall that this has ever been brought to the WikiProject's attention before — we've got lots of problematic content that didn't get fixed for a long time because it was flying under the radar not getting noticed by the people who had the knowledge to fix it. So if you notice something like that, you're free to fix it at any time, though obviously I see the value in asking if there was a genuine reason for it before acting arbitrarily. Bearcat (talk) 16:57, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

These disambiguations are not just unnecessary, they're against the guideline. First off, disambiguation is only to be used when the natural title of two topics is the same (for example Apple and Apple) and something is required to distinguish them. Then, WP:NCDAB instructs to use a generic disambiguator describing the class of the topic. None of these topics require disambiguation (there isn't another subject that could be titled Northern Arctic Ecozone, as Vice regent pointed out), and if there was, then the disambiguator should be something generic and descriptive, like (ecozone) or even (geography), not the formal name of the classifying organization. Furthermore this is an issue for navigation, as users looking for that article by typing "northern arctic ecozone" in a search form won't find the article, or only with difficulty. These should all be moved back to generic titles, unless there's a good reason they should be moved to a properly disambiguated title. Ivanvector's squirrel (^trees/_nuts) 19:30, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Great, it seems like we have consensus to not disambiguate unless necessary and I'll go ahead and fix them.VR _talk 02:23, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

museums of Lacombe, Alberta

Map of participants in World War II

Dany Fortin

Julie Payette

It appears we have disagreement at Julie Payette (which would effect related articles) on her resignation date. Did it take effect on January 21, 2021 or January 23, 2021. GoodDay (talk) 20:26, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Do we still have the disagreement or have you agreed with the sources? : https://www.gg.ca/en/governor-general/former-governors-general says January 21. Walter Görlitz (talk) 02:08, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Talk:Governor General of Canada#Payette's resignation date Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board#Julie Payette and in Talk:Julie_Payette#Resignation_date. You make the claim than an editor is an WP:SPA, and from the implication, a CoI editor. Walter Görlitz (talk) 02:11, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm content, if we use the same resignation date through out all related articles, to this topic. GoodDay (talk) 02:12, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Just to be clear, Blank lines must not be placed between colon-indented lines of text is what MOS:INDENTGAP states. Read it as many times as necessary. Thank you. Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:39, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

They're required, if one indents properly. GoodDay (talk) 07:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

No blank lines. Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:41, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Required, if editor fails to indent properly. GoodDay (talk) 07:42, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Did you add blank lines or not? What does the guideline say about blank lines? Do you understand that this is a MOS:ACCESS issue? Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:44, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

This isn't the place for this discussion. But, spacing was required, as your posts at 2:08 & 2:11 should've been the same 'indent', as you were responding to me. GoodDay (talk) 07:46, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Again, what does the guideline say about blank lines? Blank lines must not be placed between colon-indented lines of text. Ever. Even when you think you need to, do not. Should I send an admin from the accessibility project your way to show you why? Just do not do it ever.

It is time for you to stop arguing about this, Payette, CoI editors and anything else you know nothing about. Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:50, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Getting a little annoyed with your attitude towards me, these last few days. Ending my part in this discussion here. GoodDay (talk) 07:58, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) And just to be clear, there is no exception of the type you have stated when editing on talk pages. What happens when do leave a blank line is that the default formatting throws a lot of unnecessary code on the page. This code is invisible to sighted readers but screen readers explain it all to their users and it is quite annoying (or so I'm told). I know that experienced editors to it all the time, whether or not they are replying to a previous thread as you stated here or simply replying. It's quite frustrating for the handful of editors who rely on screen readers and it is only fair to them to learn and observe this guideline.

You're getting a little annoyed with my attitude? You were wilfully ignoring an editing guideline and saying that you have an exception when there was none. You forum shopped your concern to multiple locations and then claimed you hadn't. I think the project should be greatly annoyed with you. Walter Görlitz (talk) 08:04, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Really sounds like you folks would fit right in working for Julie Payette. An attempt at humour... CaffeinAddict (talk) 18:46, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Hee hee. GoodDay (talk) 18:49, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Coordinates

An editor just added a new column to List of the 100 largest municipalities in Canada by population listing each place's latitute and longitude coordinates. No, not offsite links to a mapping service like Google Maps or GeoHack, just the raw coordinates as unlinked text.

I don't see how this is necessary or valuable: since each place has a Wikipedia article already linked in the list, a person who doesn't know where the place is can find out by clicking on its wikilink to get to its article — and since the point of the list is population, the geocoordinates aren't useful data on their own (especially if they're just given in text format and not linked to an actual map) since they have nothing to do with what the list is about.

But I wanted to ask for other opinions before reverting it arbitrarily, so that it doesn't turn into an edit war. Does anybody else see some actual value in having a coordinates column in that table that I'm missing? Bearcat (talk) 16:45, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

I see no value in this whatsoever. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 16:56, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

While I could see merit in linking to geohack with a simple "{globe icon} [map]" link in some instances, that table is already pretty busy; and, as you pointed out, it is redundant to include them when there is a linked article for each item, with coordinates prominently displayed. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 17:05, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Just as an update, the column's been removed again by Moxy. Bearcat (talk) 17:51, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Just as a late note, there's a right way to do this. See the list at List of National Parks of Canada. I think it's useful information when it can be presented logically, but the 100 largest municipalities table is already information overload. Ivanvector's squirrel (^trees/_nuts) 13:23, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree that it can be useful information in certain contexts — it absolutely makes sense in the parks list — but in the municipalities list that occasioned the launch of this discussion, it's of much less value since the core point of the list is population demographics rather than locational indexing. Bearcat (talk) 18:30, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

VANDU

Doug Ford

A newish user named Fumarolo has added the phrase "hash dealer" to the introduction of Doug Ford's article, ahead of even identifying him as a politician or naming his political office. I reverted it as not critically important enough to merit mention right in the introduction, but they then reverted me "just so someone else can review", stating that "it should be stated in the intro since he is a current premier and hash dealer is unacceptable while in office". Except that there's no source on earth that has ever claimed he dealt drugs while in office; that claim is limited to stuff he did as a teenager. Which means that if there's a place for content about his hash dealing past in the article, it's in the "early life" section, not the intro. I've reverted a second time, but if they revert-war me again I won't be able to undo it without tripping WP:3RR — so is anybody else willing to help monitor this? Bearcat (talk) 19:16, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Will do. GoodDay (talk) 19:23, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

For added bonus, Fumarolo's edit history has so far consisted predominantly of adding the phrase "convicted drug dealer" to Jodie and Marc Emery, making unsourced claims that Justin Trudeau is "a potential bisexual" just because he did a meet-and-greet at the Fountainhead during Vancouver Pride (oh, noooooo! straight politicians never do that!), and trying to remove the words "Hazel" and "McCallion" from Hazel McCallion with the obviously false claim that she's known only by her maiden name Journeaux. And in just one week of being registered, they've already managed to accumulate one 31-hour temporary editblock for some of their stuff. In other words, not an editor who's adding a lot of valuable or worthwhile content to Wikipedia. Bearcat (talk) 19:26, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I suspect he's heading towards a block. GoodDay (talk) 20:44, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. There's no justification for adding this to the lead. Added to my list. Meters (talk) 20:52, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

The lad's been indef blocked. GoodDay (talk) 13:10, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

William Mahlon Davis nominated for deletion

Need some outside assistance/opinion on content dispute

Jeff Skoll honors

Proposed page move

RVYC (ENGLAND)

Regional municipality

Cabinet posts in politician infoboxes

Canadian-American label

MOS:BIRTHPLACE - MOS:ETHNICITY

This has come up many times in the past article by article. We have many Canadians that have "Canadian-American" in the lead because they hold America citizenship. This really only happens on pop stars...like singers, actors and sports figures. Most of our bios on historically significant people dont have this. I can appreciate that Americans have an different view on citizenship vs nationality but should we apply some sort of standard? I am reminded of the endless attempts of trying to add "American" to Albert Einstein and Alexander Graham Bell with no luck....but with (In my view) resulted in a great way to handle nationality with one saying "was a German-born" and the other saying "Scottish-born..". At Elon Musk they solved this problem by a small blurb in the second paragraph. At Kiefer Sutherland they also have a nice way of doing this that explains a bit. What do others think here? For example Michael J. Fox or Alanis Morissette both avid about being Canadian.. who became famous in the states and acquire American citizenship but long after becoming famous in both countries. What is best way forward here? Should we have everyone with American citizenship listed as Canadian-American? Was thinking " Canadian-born, American actor etc....." As I did here (note previous edit summary)- is it a pop culture problem that citizenship is in the lead like this? As seen above an at other FA and GA articles with historical Canadians like John A. Macdonald we are much more clear.--Moxy- 17:46, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Deciding what nationality goes in the lede is arbitrary and based on a case by case basis. I'm not sure if you could set a standard for all people from Canada with dual Canadian and American citizenship. There's no standard for Americans and other people who have dual or multiple citizenship either. Some get described as being both American (or whatever) and another country and others are only American or another nationality. The following subjects aren't Canadian, but have had extensive discussion on what the ledes should say about their nationality: Natalie Portman, Max von Sydow, Timothee Chalamet, Kirsten Dunst, Julianne Moore, Tina Turner, Liu Yifei and so on. Perhaps it's worth noting that many of the Canadian actors/singers/etc who also have "American" in their lede are also active in and or reside in America as well, and WP policies do state that other nationalities can be listed if it's relevant to the lede. Compared to many others who have dual citizenship, but were born/raised/reside in/most active in the country of their birthplace/original citizenship (like America or Canada, etc, if that makes sense). See the hidden note in the lede of Dunst's page. Clear Looking Glass (talk) 05:22, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

We also have a problem when they have 3 or more citizenships. Thinking best we do a fix of wording as much as we can MOS:BIOLEAD. Avril Lavigne is where the most current rfc is at about this current problem...long live Paul Anka!--Moxy-

05:33, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

An RfC at Talk:Anya Taylor-Joy#RfC: Nationality in lead sentence is asking a similar question. Magnolia677 (talk) 18:01, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Yup different in every case at Michael J. Fox editors still don't understand the difference between nationality and citizenship. We're probably just have to accept fly by editors making votes based on American National social constructs.--Moxy-

00:29, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

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