Talk:Bella Bella, British Columbia

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Untitled[edit]

I just edited out the reference to Bella Bella having the only hospital and pharmacy on the Central Coast, because Bella Coola has both. AshleyMorton 01:13, 7 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus, so by default the page is not moved. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:55, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bella Bella, British Columbia → Bella Bella – This is a unique town name and requires no comma-province per Canadian disambiguation standards. The old name of the Heiltsuk First Nation can be dealt with via a hat note. Bella Bella is a small bad page where most of the items derive from this name; the other two Bela-Bela and Orchestre Bella Bella, are nowhere near being a primary topic. Skookum1 (talk) 05:19, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support Bandy boy (talk) 02:41, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. No proof that there is a primary topic and Canadian disambiguation standards don't override the need to prove that there is a primary topic especially with a dab page at the main namespace. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:33, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • As elsewhere that's quite wrong as per Canadian primarytopic usages; especially given TITLE's admonition that the interests of the general reader should be put before those of specialists (who still haven't caught up the modern usage); also re the guideline that says when an official name changes then sources since that change should be given more weight than ones before it. Which is why this isn't Waglisla anymore, also. I tried to winnow the search here, it's hard because of books using "Bella! Bella! and names for cats and Bella Abzug and such; but on the first several pages of this search for ""Bella Bella" -wikipedia -"Bella Coola"" mentions of the Heiltsuk are far outweighed by those for the town or institutions/businesses name for the town or who mention it in their descriptions. I excluded Bella Coola because many searches for simply "Bella Bella" -wikipedia give Bella Coola results, I guess by way of mentioning Bella Bella, in either meaning (the old ethnological/linguistic one, now in disuse, and the community; which NB is not named "Heiltsuk". If you can figure out a way to winnow those searches and on the one hand exclude mentions of the "old" name for this people and on the other exclude mentions of the town, you're welcome to try; I got to page 11 or so of that search and more mentions of the people come up; there's 60,600 results including fiction et al about cats and little girls and people travelling in Italy..Skookum1 (talk) 09:46, 25 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment re Vegaswikian's claim about there being no proof provided the town is the primarytopic, and yes I should have included the dab page in this RM, see the searches at the similar RMs at Talk:Bella Coola#Requested move and Talk:Lillooet, British Columbia#Requested move which explore whether or not there are sufficient sources to suggest that the people or the language, whether under their obsolete Heiltsuk exonyms or not, are numerous enough to surpass the millions of hits for the town.Skookum1 (talk) 01:49, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - insufficient information is provided in the rationale to determine a position on this move. Although I would like to take the nominator's word for it, I simply can't without any quantifiable evidence. I'd like to see the results of a Google Books search (done exactly as WP:COMMONNAME outlines, ... a search that excludes Books, LLC) and simple page view stats similar to what Floydian did on behalf of the nominator at the similar Lillooet discussion. Hwy43 (talk) 22:43, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reply After compiling the google searches on the Lillooet and Bella Coola and Saanich items, I was suffering from "google prostratration". In all these cases, this and Bella Coola etc, it is very difficult to separate searches from the town/place from the people/language. Another fact of the matter is that the "competing primary topics" do not have the same name in their titles, other than Lillooet language which should be RMd due to sources anyway back to St'at'imcets where it was for five years before that stone was turned at the same time as the St'at'imc undiscusssed move, which consensus saw fit to return to its long-standing and modern, correct name. If Bella Bella's name had remained Waglisla, which it was for a while, this one would be exempt from CSG#Places, but it didn't and it's not. As observed on the other RMs, it becomes clear from googling that the MOSTCOMMON usages of these terms are necessarily in Canada, so unless Canadian media, Canadian government usage and Canadian sites referring to the town are all excluded from global usage, it is really quite improbable that there are more scholarly papers about the people or the language than there are references to this town. I haven't seen Floydian's pageview stats at Lillooet yet, I just got up.Skookum1 (talk) 00:11, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment In re comments made on other RMs, quantitative putdowns of the towns' importance based on population vs the supposedly equal or greater PRIMARYTOPIC of the people/language have been made; yesterday by AjaxSmack on Lillooet, and by someone else on one of the Squamish procedures, re their having only 3000 and 5000 people respectively. In Bella Bella's and Bella Coola's cases the numbers are even lower. But in Canadian terms, especially "hinterland" terms away from the masses of population in our cites, these are "major regional centres" for their regions; and like Lillooet Bella Bella and Bella Coola have significant roles in our history as such. In Bella Bella's case it's also very clear in BC Names that the tribal council chairman of the TC which includes the Heiltsuk is who requested the name change from Waglisla, originally only a post office name that had become local vernacular until the official-name reversion. It's also a given, in this case, that the whole community is on-reserve and 95% or more Heiltsuk. And since the people and language articles are not titled "Bella Bella", they are not really PRIMARYTOPIC candidates. Old Bella Bella which also has a different title is also not a PRIMARYTOPIC candiate for the same reason.Skookum1 (talk) 00:24, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • View Results
    • Bella Bella, British Columbia was viewed 1,478 times this month (March)
    • Bella Bella has been viewed 345 times
    • Heiltsuk people has been viewed 547 times
    • Heilsuk language has been viewed 106 times
      • Similar google results such as those posted on Talk:Bella Bella, British Columbia#Requested move and Talk:Lillooet, British Columbia#Requested move could be run and will obtain similar results. Unless you want to exclude all Canadian references or even non-academic made-in-BC references relating to the town (scientific and ministry reports and more) you won't even come close to the results that will turn up - and even if you did you may not, all to dispute primarytopic with titles that don't even contain "Bella Bella" in them. That over three times as many people looked for the town directly vs plain "Bella Bella" and two and a half times as much than for "Heiltsuk people" makes it pretty clear what the readership expects and what t hey are looking for. vs the interests of specialists per TITLE's admonition that the general readership and not the priorities of specialists should come first.Skookum1 (talk) 07:40, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm still not seeing the results from the previously requested Google Books search in accordance with the method outlined at COMMONNAME. Hwy43 (talk) 18:55, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, I'll look into it but I've been on Wikipedia too long already today....News results are going to be dominantly about the town, as media use "Heiltsuk" now for the people and language, and Googlebooks we'll see, but I submit that there's an explicit guideline about older sources before an official name change being discounted vs those after, so the Catholic Encyclopedia and other early/out-of-date publications should not be given anywhere near the value, if any at all, as more recent ones; that includes the Handbook of North American Indians, publ. 1978 which is ancient history in terms of modern native society/scholarship.Skookum1 (talk) 09:11, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • View stats
  • Google BooksNews results
  • Oppose – scanning the google books hits, it hard to find many that are clearly about the place as opposed to the people, among the chaff; one way to find them is with "the Bella Bella" versus "Bella Bella, B.C." but the fact that the latter disambiguated form is more common is not a great reason to skip the disambiguation here. A term with this many meanings, and only a small majority of views on proposed primarytopic, should stay as a disambig page. Dicklyon (talk) 16:34, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The above are Google News results, not Google Books results. Hwy43 (talk) 06:30, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Point noted, I've been doing GoogleBooks searches just now, following is post-edit conflict, starting in reply to your just-previous post:
  • Dicklyon, the above we're not Google Books results. They were Google News results. See the table of Google Books results now included below and my support. Wondering if your position is now reconsidered with the actual google books results no provided? Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 08:23, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Old Bella Bella and Bella Bella Airbase/Shearwater (leaving that as a redlink as the base 1941-44 may deserve its own article) are no longer officially "Bella Bella" and do not qualify as candidates for PRIMARYTOPIC by dint of official name changes as described in TITLE.
    • Heiltsuk and Heiltsuk language do not qualify by dint of not having the same title]] and in their archaic/obsolete forms are disambiguated anyway i.e. not PRIMARYTOPIC of stand-alone "Bella Bella".
    • "Greater Bella Bella" can be construed to be all three Bella Bellas, i.e. the 1941-44 base and the old location of the main community, but only the one currently officially named and in use as "Bella Bella", a name used for the town by the Heiltsuk Nation for their town, as governed and populated by them, falls in the non sequitur category as far as claims that the Heiltsuk are a potential PRIMARYTOPIC, and also though this is a geographic term is related to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes)#Self-identification.
  • Google Books results"Bella Bella" googlebooks results with various unrelated uses such as ""Bella Bella" -quilts -mack -abzug -vampire -italy -Nethery -broadhurst -Oreo -Baxter -"Bella the horse" -"gourmet" -wiki -eleanora -"the Bella Bella" -coola -psychotherapy -vint -swoosh -midnight -valdez -miami -pesch -cookson -hamm -harvey" removed is only 1,110 results; 32 word limits on googlebooks prevent culling that of further extraneous titles.
    • Taking out "language" (having to re-allow "Nethery", an author's name for an unrelated title), there are only 52 less results,
    • removing "Indians" from that search brings it down to 875 results,
    • removing "Bella Bella people" but having to re-add an author's name "Hamm", that goes back up to 891 results and NB still includes the previously-excluded authors and some like "hip hop" the limitations of Google Books did not allow me to add to the exclusions and still includes many uses such as "Bella! Bella!" and the like, i.e. repetitions of the term "Bella" which are not related to either of the uses under dispute (the whole of page 2 of those results is for some of those; on page 4, 8 of the 10 are of that kind, one is for the people, the other is for the town; on page 5, uses for the people are given as "Heiltsuk (Bella Bella)" or citing an older citation, i.e. Boas's "Bella Bella texts"; other uses for the town, including by highly notable Haida artist Bill Reid, are to the town/place.
    • How to separate all the reduplicative uses of "Bella" I don't know how to do; the clutter in the results, if removed, would make what is for a Canadian and a BCer very obvious clear to those who can only see the world through the filter of the internet and who anti-AGF local expertise by apparent force of habit.
    • Disambiguation rules/guidelines and TITLE are very clear about different titles not being in the running for PRIMARYTOPIC and for modern/official names being prioritized over older sources.Skookum1 (talk) 06:54, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment the Google Books searches you executed were not done in accordance the method outlined at WP:COMMONNAME and the complexity in the manner you did the above has significantly muddied everything. The following is a table of how it should have been done (with the -inauthor:"Books, LLC" exclusion per COMMONNAME). Hwy43 (talk) 07:20, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Google Books search string Link Results
"Bella Bella" British Columbia -"Bella Coola" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" [1] 8,320 (drops to 30 if you restrict via -"the bella bella")
"Bella Bella" British Columbia community -"Bella Coola" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" [2] 1,080
"Old Bella Bella" -"Bella Coola" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" [3] 160
"Orchestre Bella Bella" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" [4] 115
"Bella Bella language" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" [5] 43
"Denny Island Airport" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" [6] 3
"Bella Bella Airport" -"Bella Coola" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" [7] 2
"Bella Bella (Denny Island) Airport" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" [8] 2
"Bella Bella/Shearwater Water Aerodrome" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" [9] 1
"Bella Bella/Waglisla Water Aerodrome" -inauthor:"Books, LLC" [10] 1
The inadequacy of Google Books' search limitations remains an issue; though still the results point to the town, not to the Heiltsuk or their language; if Googlebooks could restrict punctuations such as "Bella!", "... to Bella. Bella felt that..." and "Bella, Bella" it would help; my exclusions were an attempt to deal with such search results; another issue is how to cull googlebooks by date, I can't see how it could be done; but suffice to say that 19th C and pre-1970 (pre-native revival) titles and even ones prior to the mid-90s are not the same weight as those after; and even then, the town will be very high in the results.Skookum1 (talk) 07:27, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree with "The inadequacy of Google Books' search limitations remains an issue". Perhaps you can't see the forest for the trees. By including British Columbia and British Columbia community in the searches I executed, it appears all that punctuation garbage is gone. Hwy43 (talk) 07:38, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I meant the 32-word limit, what you did there never occurred to me as a simplification. No more need to exclude Bella Abzug or horsies or little girls named Bella.Skookum1 (talk) 07:42, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
How to limit them, if at all possible, by date of publication, would be of great benefit if do-able.Skookum1 (talk) 07:43, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per the Google Books search results presented in the table above and the page view statistics provided by Skookum1, both which provide sufficient proof that there is a primary topic. The community of "Bella Bella" in British Columbia is by far the primary topic among all "Bella Bella..." titles, with Google Books search results between approx. 1,000 and 8,000, compared with the others that range from 1 to 160. "Bela-Bela" and anything "Heiltsuk..." are not dab candidates, and one could argue "Orchestre Bella Bella" and "Old Bella Bella" would not qualify as dab candidates either. Let's do the right thing here. Hwy43 (talk) 07:48, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Still Oppose because those results as presented neglect that fact that many of those 8320 hits are for "the Bella Bella" (people) "Bella Bella prehistory", "Bella Bella canoe", "Bella Bella–Prince Rupert area", "Bella Bella Tales", "Bella Bella Islands", and other things. And as often happens, the 8320 estimate is wildly wrong; as you can see here, the hits stop after about 250 total. Furthermore, a large proportion of the uses of "Bella Bella" for the municipality are accompanied by "B. C." or "British Columbia", because they would be unclear otherwise. Given the ambiguity, this makes sense, as it does in WP. Dicklyon (talk) 15:15, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Vegaswikian, see my comment/position immediately above. Do the Google Books search results presented in the table above and the page view statistics provided by Skookum1, in your opinion, now provide sufficient proof that there is a primary topic? Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 08:23, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think the searches are informative, but the estimated counts are not. Did you click through and look at the 8320? By my count, the first page of hits shows a minority referring to the municipality. Dicklyon (talk) 15:19, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Per Old Bella Bella, and also the use of "Bella Bella" to refer to the airbase at the location since renamed Shearwater, this passage from TITLE is very relevant:
      • "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This includes usage in the sources used as references for the article. If the name of a person, group, object, or other article topic changes, then more weight should be given to the name used in reliable sources published after the name change than in those before the change."
    • All three locations have been known as Bella Bella; as a grouping, from outside the area, they probably still are; someone might say the Shearwater Resort is "at Bella Bella" for example; Old Bella Bella strikes me as an across-the-water "suburb" of Bella Bella proper.Skookum1 (talk) 08:27, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • BC Govt search results
    • "Bella Bella people" gets 4 results
    • "Bella Bella" excluding "Bella Bella people" gets 1,340 results (same number, actually if "Bella Bella people" is allowed
    • "Heiltsuk" gets 1030 hits, with mentions like "Bella Bella band See Heiltsuk Nation Bella Bella, BC:" and "the Heiltsuk Nation of Bella Bella".
    • "Heiltsuk language" gets 13 results
    • The BC Ministry of Forests Library, which is a large repository of scientific consulting and academic papers and commissioned research and other records, I cannot connect to at the moment, after several tries (link is to their search engine for "Bella Bella", from there removing "Bella Bella people" could be tried, and "Bella Bella Indians" and the like, and Heiltsuk can be searched for too; the pattern will be clear, "Bella Bella" is the common use for the town, "Heiltsuk" is the common name for the people; because of the tendency of the mention of one to include mention of the other, the Canadian English usage, if not the alleged global English PRIMARYTOPIC, is very precise and concise......and is used by the people of the community themselves, i.e. the Heiltsuk.
  • Government of Canada website search
  • Some might claim that Canadian govt and media results skew the findings in favour of Canadian usage; which is only natural, because our government and media use these terms more than any other. What the AMNH or UCal or Oxford use is not relevant to {{Canadian English}}. If they're still using "Bella Bella" instead of "Heiltsuk" (though I'll bet that's changing fast...), the reality is the general readership of this article will be Canadian, and it's their expectations and usages that count, not citations from only one or two academic disciplines as still used elsewhere; and not in the numbers to drown out in-Canada usage. Skookum1 (talk) 15:45, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

local businesses[edit]

"Wikipedia is not a directory" but in the case of small towns like this, describing services does have a point; but this list was added to the Heiltsuk Nation article, where it does not belong -unless all of these were band-owned businesses. For now I'm must putting hte list here; by rights they should not be put in this article in directory format, and each one needs notability citations to ever have their own article; the airport may qualify, among others:

  • 1. Bella Bella Airport Authority Ltd
  • 2. Bella Bella Liquor Agency
  • 3. First Nations Business Advisory Services Ltd
  • 4. Heiltsuk Coastal Forest Products Ltd
  • 5. Heiltsuk Fisheries Management Ltd
  • 6. Lama Pass Fuel Co. Ltd
  • 7. Waglisla Band Store Ltd
  • 8. Waglisla Cablevision Ltd
  • 9. Waglisla Hardware Ltd.
  • 10. Waglisla Post Office,
  • 11. Waglisla Shellfish Ltd
  • 12. Waglisla Freight Ltd.

Integration/interaction of this article's content with that at Old Bella Bella and Shearwater is going to a ongoing, I hope as with someone who has emerged re Bella Coola that more local input can help sort a lot of things out and improve all three articles, plus both the Heiltsuk Nation and Heiltsuk "ethno" articles, and more layperson-friendly content at Heiltsuk language and Heiltsuk-Oowekyala language pages also, which are now dry technical reading.Skookum1 (talk) 05:40, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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