User talk:KenWalker/Archive 2009

BC coastline length v. Canada's
Hi Ken, welcome back. I've been puttering around making myself useless, avoiding the heavy lifting of historical/political articles and making a bunch of geographic stubs, these last few days the sounds of the British Columbia Coast (see greatly-expanded contents of Category:Sounds of Canada). I had a look at the main British Columbia Coast article, thinking to revise it, and it seems somebody's done an awful lot of revising, some of which doesn't make sense; Dustin (OldManRivers) hasn't been around or I was going to ask him for his opinion as to whether the Queen Charlotte Strait region is South Coast or Central Coast; I think in terms of the latter....anyway one of the intro paragraphs of the main coast article now has this:
 * ''the total length of the British Columbia Coast is over 27,000 km, making up about 13% of the Canadian coastline at 202,080 km.

Which is news to me; the nostrum has always been that the BC coast is technically longer than the rest of the country's....unless the coastlines of the Arctic Islands were excluded in the old calculation. still, 202,080 is an awful lot of coastline (ten times around the planet?). Any ideas on this, or where to look for the cite/correction?Skookum1 (talk) 15:38, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, glad to be home. I can't imagine that the little bit of the west coast of this continent's ocean shore that is ours could amount to that many kilometers and wonder how it could even be calculated.  No idea how to chase it down though.  So are you doing wikipedia and facebook on an iphone now? -- KenWalker | Talk 06:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Category:Clayoquot Sound region or ??
Hi Ken; your input requested; it's come time to break up Category:West Coast of Vancouver Island by the "sounds" - Quatsino (N Island also of course), Kyuquot, Nootka, Barkley; with Juan de Fuca as the last region southwards; but here's the question, what do you think is best? - by extension ditto for the other sounds &tc, kbd problems will continue tomorrowSkookum1 (talk) 03:13, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Category:Clayoquot Sound region
 * Category:Clayoquot Sound Region
 * Category:Clayoquot Sound
 * ack - found this while looking for their map of the sounds-as-regions;

Skookum1 (talk) 03:27, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * http://www.ecotrust.ca/ocean/putting-kwakwaka%E2%80%99wakw-sea-back-map
 * http://www.ecotrust.ca/clayoquot/governance/ - note "wikipedia" section....`
 * Keyboard seems to be working now; connection gets non-working from certain "pulls" on the cord; thought it was gone forever last night was scrambling to think where I'd find the dough to buy a new one (even $20 is a lot for me...). Anyway, the point with these proposed categories relates to a long-ago discussoin either on Talk:Puget Sound or Category talk:Puget Sound where Pfly and myself, and maybe you or others, were discussing hte meaning and merits of water-body categories as region categories.  That's certainly how Category:Puget Sound gets used, though inconsistently....I think I'd been venturing that Category:Strait of Juan de Fuca would need US/WA and Canadian/BC subcats; that couldbe Category:Juan de Fuca region, which is certainly how se say it in BC, not sure about in Washington, but that's only if we use teh Category:Clayoquot Sound region, Category:Barkley Sound region etc format, though I don't like that lower-case look; there are formal usages with capital-R region but they're assocaited with certain bodies/organizations....it's just I'd like to start these categories but hesitate to pick a name format because of the potential need to change them later; i.e. via a CFD.  Needless to say this applies also to Category:Queen Charlotte Strait or Category:Queen Charlotte Strait region and Category:Gulf of Georgia vs Category:Gulf of Georgia region (noting again the "Gulf of Georgia Region" is common enough in some contexts).  What touched this off was a recent edit by Bearcat stripping the WCofVI cat and leaving only Alberni-Clayoquot RD cat on a BC parks article; I'd like to create Category:Parks in the Clayoquot Sound region or Category:Parks in Clayoquot Sound....I guess the problem is that "Clayoquot Sound" can mean both a precisely-defined body of water or a region.  But to me these are more workable regions than ever using the RD cats; people don't say they're going to go to the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District, they say they're going to the Category:Alberni Valley or to Category:Clayoquot Sound....I guess I should take this up on WPCanGeog it's just most participants there aren't that familiar with BC-ese "as she is spoke" and want to stylize such names according to national standards that were developed without reference to BC's unique "regional geography".....In that ecotrust site there's a great map showing each of the regions; Category:Quatsino Sound or Category:Quatsino Sound region would have both the Northern Vancouver Island and West Coast of Vancouver Island parent categories of course; not sure where Kyuquot Sound would fit into that; you're the Islander, that's why I'm asking you....I just think it's pointless to describe something in Kyuquot or Quatsino regions as being part of the Regional District of Mount Waddington; especially if that whatever is not rationally part of regional district powers/jurisdiction; Indian Reserves especially but also provincial parks and landform/lake articles have nothing to do with regional districts; only (modern, post 1967) settlements do....Skookum1 (talk) 01:52, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I suppose the with-region form is clearest, even though it's clunky looking; it woudl also allow for Category:Juan de Fuca region (Washington) and Category:Juan de Fuca region (British Columbia)....Skookum1 (talk) 01:53, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * And Puget Sound did eventually get Puget Sound region split off, although a look just now shows a need for more to be done. Puget Sound (the waterbody) is still shown in the region's of Washington template at the bottom, for example. As for categories, I don't have an opinion really. I've never been too concerned with categories. Pfly (talk) 03:58, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Ghost towns/New articles‎
Why did you add List of ghost towns in British Columbia to WikiProject Ghost towns/New articles‎? It's over two years old. Ntsimp (talk) 18:48, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Because it had not been listed on its talk page as part of the Ghost towns project until today. -- KenWalker | Talk 19:23, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Ghost towns/New articles‎ is for announcing new articles, not ones that have existed for some time but have just add the template added to their talk page. Ntsimp (talk) 19:34, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, it seemed reasonable to use it to let those involved in the project know of content that might be new to them. If it causes a problem, feel free to remove it.  -- KenWalker | Talk 19:41, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Consider, Nsimp, that it provides a list of redlinked towns in need of article-creation...unless there's an /articlerequests section/page?Skookum1 (talk) 02:08, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Qualicum River
surprised you hadn't made it, figured I might as well at least start it. Will leave it to you to fill in all the unnamed blanks.....is there a waterfall, or rather there is a waterfall on it no? Not sure where to look for sources on teh Qualicum people, other than Horne's account. The current Qualicum band is a Comox group, no? or is that the same thing as the former Qualicum people before the Haida massacre?Skookum1 (talk) 02:06, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * My understanding, and I don't remember where I heard if from, that at least some of the Qualicum Band are descendents of the originals. I believe that there were a few survivors of the massacre Horne witnessed and that they lived for a time with the Sliammons (sp?) across the straits.  "Qualicum Tom" is supposed to be descended from that group.  A search of Qualicum Tom on google turned up several articles (1, 2,, 3, 4,) that refer to him but provide little information about ancestry and seem to be mostly legends. -- KenWalker | Talk 03:07, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm I doubt we'll find all that much on the Pentlatch people either, though there's quite a bit on their language, which didnt' die out until the early 20th Century; I rmember an article by Stephen Hume in The Sun many years ago, probably one of his debut articles.....Skookum1 (talk) 03:36, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Red Gap, British Columbia
--Dravecky (talk) 15:32, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

D'Or
You had given suggestions for improving the article David D'Or. Might I trouble you to take a look now, and see if it deserves a higher rating? Thanks.--68.173.101.114 (talk) 21:25, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks!--68.173.101.114 (talk) 04:33, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Wood Mountain Ski Park?
This is near your turf, figure you might know what's up with it; it's in BCGNIS but not in BC parks; please see Talk:Wood_Mountain_Regional_Park.Skookum1 (talk) 16:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

2001 Leader of the Opposition issue
Hi Ken; I know that you're not a constitutional lawyer (?) but thought I'd give you a heads-up on this.Skookum1 (talk) 18:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

"the Island", "the Valley", "the Interior", "the North" etc....
Hi Ken; would you mind dropping by Canadian_Wikipedians%27_notice_board and in the moves, mergers, splits section Bearcat and I are "going at it" over British Columbia capitalized usages (again). Coming to you for corroboration on "the Island", when it's used as a region/political/cultural entity it's capitalized, he just doesn't get that, or rather chose to bring it up to inveigle against my insistence on 'the Interior". yet he avoids discussions of "Metro" as short for "Metro Vancouver", instead of "metro" which it would be if his insistence that short forms of proper nouns are not proper nouns ("the Valley" for "the Fraser Valley").  Not sure if you want to weigh in or not, just bringing it up for your amusmement and maybe-input....al because I think "Indian reserve" is an inappropriate usage, v s. "Indian Reserve" and that "rules of standard English" do not inculcate against the latter, though he insists they do.  Wikipedia should not override how English is locally used; if that's the case we'd be using the American -or spelling and teh British -ise spelling....Skookum1 (talk) 19:45, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It is an interesting discussion although it seems to have gone on longer than it should. I commend you for staying on topic and keeping it civilized even though the other party seem to be edging towards incivility in his last post having run out of other things to say.  I would not say his arguments have no merit but as between the two, for what it is worth, I agree that your extensive real world examples convince me that your position ought to prevail.  I want to look around a bit and see just what  source there is to back up Bearcat's claims that his version is "official".  Last time I asked him for a source for his "offical" position all I got back from him was some crap about lobbing things over the rockies so I won't bother expecting him to back up his claims.  Not sure if I will weigh in as I don't think there is much to add and just saying I agree isn't of value.  I will have a closer look and, if I see anything I can usefully add, I will chime in.  But in the meantime the way you have been suppressing anything edgy certainly enhances the effect of the points you are making.  -- KenWalker | Talk 23:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * As you know my sentiments in general, that sometimes in WPCanada we're dealing with Imperial Toronto, I'm doing the best I can to keep a calm tongue, though I got mildly spicey in my latest re "the Straits", "the Porte" etc, in that if I were an Oxford or Cambridge etc history student and submitted a paper with those in the lower case, I would be marked down for it, even failed....so he can take it up with them and give them his lecture on "standard English". I asked him for citations that these were incorrect usages....and named a number of big-name historians who use them, and wouldn't ever think to do otherwise (Toynbee, Taylor, McEvedy, Ostrogorsky, Runciman.....).  yes, as he says, the argument can't be won....but it can't be won by him; English is not a fixed set of rules, like French with the academie, and as with the British constitution "convention" is a very real part of it...."the Delta" we know what that means when we see it, no?  Likewise "the Channel"?  "the Horn"??....he says that these aren't valid comparisons, but doesn't way why they're not; the subtext is that BC usages are not as important or something and these are provincial affectations....the parochial nature of his response is truly grating, though....I think I'd like a Wiki cookie for playing nice.....I think you'd agree with me that the usages for Indian r/Resever vary, but with specific contexts....."he lived on an Indian reserve" vs "the land in qustion is Indian Reserve", meaning under certain legal strictures....and he's wrong, too, in thinking that Indian Reserves are indistinguishable content-wise from the First Nations occupying them (partly because they quite often don't occupy them at all); never mind the land histories, check out Peckquaylis, which is the old St. Mary's grounds at Mission.....under the jurisdiction of 21 different bands....or the array of reserves, mahy far afiield from each other and with specific land histories of their own...I also don't think he's aware of the NorthAmnative guidelines for separate reserve/community/government/ethno/language articles......Skookum1 (talk) 01:52, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * BTW all of this is because I wanted Indian Reserve vs Indian reserve resolved so that I could launch a CFD to change Category:First Nations reserves in British Columbia to Category:Indian Reserves in British Columbia (or, if need be, Category:Indian reserves in British Columbia, since "First Nations reserve" is clearly both a neologism and POV and not a proper geographic definition. Of course, there are nowhere near the number of IRs in Ontario that there are in BC, and their legal status/nature is quite different isn't it? (he'd say they weren't, but he's not as familiar with land claims, or with the history of the reallocations/reductions as you and I are....).Skookum1 (talk) 02:04, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Glancing at this while replying below, and it occurred to me that "Indian reserve", in the general sense, is indeed a general sense, and gets used for agglomerations of reserves vs "Indian Reserve", which specifies a listign of the land-title properties. I think I'm just going to launch the CFD with the both-caps version, incdluding that justification.  e.g. Chopaka 7 and Chopaka 8 are two different reserves, but "Chopaka reserve" would be both of them; odd exceptions abound, e.g. Westbank Indian Reserve is a common enough name but Tsepentkum 11 and Tsepentkum 12, or something close to that, are the actual two Indian Reserves, although even in the "English" usage "Indian Reserve' is capitalized and not "Westbank Indian reserve".  The small-case convention in Wikipedia drives me nuts sometimes; Komagata Maru Incident is always capitalized in print media, or has been until people started reading Wikipedia too much, likewise Wah Mee massacre and Rock Springs massacre are proper names for events and should be fully capitalized despite the silly guideline-interpretations which result in the awkward-looking lower-case forms I've just linked.Skookum1 (talk) 02:04, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

"Outline of British Columbia" topic
I suspect you may have been asked to take part, too, but if not please see WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Drafts/Outline of British Columbia. I've made some basic fixes (see the article history) but it seems a useful, if laborious and vast, exercise....Skookum1 (talk) 22:24, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Didn't know this or the index it refers to existed. I had never heard of "Outlines" at all but they are a terrific way, along with the index, of bringing things together. -- KenWalker | Talk 01:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you believe it? User:Roux has launched an AFD for it.  Please drop by and vote; seems rather petty to me....Skookum1 (talk) 01:57, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Emily Hagins
Article listed in AfD. Cheers Rotovia (talk) 00:10, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Regional district mandate....
Hi ken; that AFD tweaked me on some topics on the Outline so in created the plural regional districts redirect, as I'd redlinked the plural form, the opening lede of Regional districts of British Columbia irked me one too many times and I revised it. Would you please check it over and see if I've made any errors; I was surprised to see emergency management powers listed in the old version; RDs do do emergency planning, but it's not under their aegis normally (it's actually Ministry of Environment]] at the top tier, no?). As mentioned in my comment on the AFD, there's too much emphasis on regional districts in Wikiepdia and so to undo WP:undue weight I'm going to get busy on Administrative regions of British Columbia, which is a better title than my previous wordliness List of political geographic subdivisions of British Columbia. I think the anti-Outline folks at that AFD, by the way, need to WP:Take a pill.Skookum1 (talk) 03:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Bulleting on Government section in BC Outline
Hi Ken; would you please mind having a look at WikiProject_Outline_of_knowledge/Drafts/Outline_of_British_Columbia and my most-recent edit comment. My understanding is that "Parliament" is constituted by the Queen/Viceroy and the Legislative Assembly; the Viceroy is subordinate to HMTQ but the Ledge isn't subordinate to her/him; rather the two of them as the Crown are part of Parliament, not above or outside of it. If you have any ideas how to tweak the bulleting accordingly please do so. Note the redlink for Civil service of British Columbia - an example of the utility of the Outline in demonstrating which articles are needed, though I have no idea at all how to start that....or how or where to incorporate the BCGEU and other public-sector unions; an Organized labour in British Columbia article may already exist, let's see if that's a bluelink...that would go in a different section....also note my changes in the External Relations of BC (formerly "Foreign relations of British Columbia")....what's the name of the organization that's the quasi-Cascadia alliance of the Northwest states, BC, AB and YT called? the Pacific Fisheries Commission strikes me as another cross-border org that could be listed; I could only think of TILMA.Skookum1 (talk) 04:06, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Category:Strathcona Regional District, British Columbia update
Hi Ken; I just "cleaned" the SRD category of all the stuff that's none of the RD's business, so to speak; please have a look at the "rider" and amend it if you see fit. I'm still wondering about how/when to get at Bearcat's demand that we make region-articles to go with West Coast of Vancouver Island, South Island, Mid Island, North Island and have been pondering the making of Juan de Fuca region, Clayoquot Sound region, etc as subcats of the WEst Coast one; asking us to cite "West Coast of Vancouver Island" is IMO something like asking us to cite that the sky is made out of blue or that rivers are made out of water; for someone so picayune he has no problem, however, freely interpreting census areas/RDs as if they were meaningful geographic units for things that have nothing to do with censuses or municipal governance....anyway it's a long slog but I'm slowly purging all the RD cats...I think I'll wikibreak soon though, gotta get my act together profssionally speaking and that means when I'm on the computer I should be doing other things than this ;-) but as always trying to finish everything before I go....I may well hit the road by fall, too, or would like to - another Maritimes winter is not on the menu, if I can find a way to get out....gonna work on the Outline of BC a bit, and with Pfly and others am hoping to get some British POV in the Alaska and Oregon boundary dispute articles....also will be fielding various CfDs before I go, including Indian Reserves and adding "the" to regional district based cats ("people from Strathcona Regional District" which of course hsould ahve "the" in it, even if I don't think people are classifiable by which regional district they come from - it's actually very original research to label them that way isn't it?Skookum1 (talk) 15:03, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * In all cases, I'm leaving the airports for now, not sure how they should be categorized; maybe simply in the regions cats like everything else; AFAIK they're not under RD jurisdiction other than for building permits and sewage treatment; they're federal in nature no?Skookum1 (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * With all due respect to Bearcat, when challenged for some authority for his proposition that there had to be an article to support a geographic category, he just got catty so I would ignore it. Seems to me that it is just his own opinion. I prefer my own, which is that articles that define a category are useful but not required.  The real question shouldn't be whether there is an article but whether there is a way to define the boundaries of the cat.  If all cats with uncertain boundaries were eliminated, the project would be the worse for it.  There is little disadvantage to an uncertain boundary, the article can just go in both cats.  I don't see cats as something as definitive as Bearcat's position implies.  They are simply a way to help us find stuff.  A little extra clutter doesn't bother me.  Articles that are not found when looking at a topic does bother me which is another reason for outlines, but that is a different topic.  Creating articles to support a cat is a good thing to do, but that does not mean you can't have a cat without an article to define it.  I say all this recognizing that it is just like Bearcat's approach, it is only my own idea of how it should go. His guesses may be better than mine, given his interest and experience in the subject, but unless there is some consensus somewhere on the issue, I am sticking with my spin on the topic. I have had the impression that you like Halifax.  Have you spent any time in Newfoundland?  Is there a music scene that would suit you there? You are right about airports.  They are under fed jurisdiction only like railways and Indian Reserves.-- KenWalker | Talk 19:52, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, Bearcat may be experienced with Wikipedia, he's not experienced with BC geography or history...imagine supposing that such a place as "Mid Island" didn't exist, given its very common usage in BC...I've realized that we don't have to do CfDs on the mis-named categories; we just create the new ones and redirect the others, e.g. Category:Mid Vancouver Island can be redirected to Category:Mid Island region and Category:Northern Vancouver Island can be redirected to Category:North Island region...if I'm not mistaken there's been a split of the Puget Sound article, with Puget Sound region have been split off though I don't know if there's a category split, and I'm thinking that in all cases maybe capital-R region is the in-use norm....e.g. Category:Clayquot Sound Region vs Category:Clayoquot Sound region (the former actually occurs in official and academic usage).."Region/region" is not needed in all cases, just where ther'es some ambiguity...and in unpopulated areas like the heart of mountain regions I'm thinking the mountain range categories more than suffice for regions, e.g. Category:Cassiar Mountains, Category:Omineca Mountains; though in some cases there are region names like Category:Atlin Country (article Atlin District); I used "Country" in some cases not just because it's a traditional usage but for disambiguation purposes, e.g. "Chilcotin" by itself could refer to the people, as could "Okanagan" and "Kootenay"....as you note the tricky part is where different regions begin and end, and in many cases there's a decided overlap, partly because some towns location are "cusp points", e.g. Hope for the Fraser Canyon and Lower Mainland/Fraser Valley, Chase for the Shuswap Country and Thompson Country...and lots of overlap with Cariboo of course (Ashcroft-Cache Creek and Lilllooet both consider themseslves part of it, most of the Cariboo don't consider them to be in it though......and Central/Northern Interior is an "interesting" problem but I've gone with the usage that PGers and folks in the Omineca Country use, which is that they are the Central Interior, and what's north of them is Northern Interior, although to folks in the Lower Mainland it seems anything north of the Cariboo is Northern Interior....Hazelton is both Skeena Country and Bulkley Country, Dease Lale is both Stikine Country and Cassiar Country; and there's isolated micro-areas like Bella Coola Valley and Stewart Country/Stewart-Bear River Country.....but I don't think the obsession with discreet boundaries that the classification-by-RD thing is about is valid at all; there are no regional categories for Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba and I'd defy someone to come up with a meaningful one in any such case, except maybe Category:Red River Valley (Canada) and Category:The Interlake. There's nothing anywhere saying that categories have to have precise boundaries; and there's necessary overlap, with Port McNeill and Poprt Hardy in the Queen Charlotte Sound region as well as the North Island region....I was invited by the BCGNIS folks, and CGNDB folks in a less precise fashion, to submit items and corrections to them ,and my response was it would be nice if I could do that for pay, because there's so much yet to be accounted for in their system ;-)...of course there's no money in the govt budget for that, and what government money there is does seem to go towards coining/marketing new names/regions like "Kootenay Rockies"...the inertia attached to RDs within Wikipedia is pretty great, what with the current location map based on them and so on; I rewrote the intro to "Regional districts of British Columbia" btw, can't remember if I sent you a note on it....it had claimed they were reponsible for fire control, which is nuts given the MoF's role in that in non-municipal regions and the volunteer nature of most unincorporated-community, and even unincorpoarted community, fire services....and in their cats, hospitals, schools, airports are all included which of course they shouldn't be....I've wondered with the hospitals and schools if the health regions and school board cats aren't hte way to go (some school board cats exist already).....I really grate with the "people from regional district" categories too; the premise is because that's how StatsCan cuts up population statistics it should apply to biographies is utterly synthesis/OR and somewhat ludicrous...sorry for the ramble, there's just os many tangential issues coming out of this, and so many special cases; all the more reasons why lumping things all under RD classification wasn't a good idea; one justification I heard was that because it was a BC Wikipedian who'd created it long ago that was sufficient reason to perpetuate it; even though it's clearly OR/synthesis in anture and gives a complete misapprehension of how the province is organized...Toba Inlet and Nuchatlitz Inlet in the same geographic unit is an absurdity only a politician could concoct; having Prince Ruopert and Terrace in two different "region" categories likewise....anyway maybe some clearer thinkign later....Skookum1 (talk) 23:41, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Questions re the Island though - Duncan is, on the web googles I've looked at, in Mid Island...but where to Cobble Hill and Shawnigan Lake fit in? South Island, or are they more connected to Mid Island; Bamberton and Mill Bay seem (to me) to be in Greater Victoria, or at lesat South Island; would t he division point be the height of hte Malahat or farther north?  Sooke is def Greater Victoria as well as Juan de Fuca region...but what about Jordan River?  Still in both?  And Campbell River seems (to me) to be Mid Island, or would you consider it Norht Island?  If the former, how far north of it does North Island begin?  Would the Comox Valley region include stuff not actually int eh valley of the Comox River, e.g. Kye Bay?Skookum1 (talk) 23:54, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * My guess is that the RD as geo boundary folks are mostly from areas where they have counties of long standing that have come to be adopted as geographic regions. RDs are new enough that they are not thought of that way.  The property tax assessment areas are another way to look at it.  They call Duncan central VI.  Besides RDs. there are School Districts, Health Areas, Development Regions and College Regions all courtesy of the BC Govt.  I would say RDs are not the ones that have the most impact on people's lives. -- KenWalker | Talk 07:27, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, definitely out here in NS and it seems in NB as well, counties are also used as cultural/social identifiers, and I gather the same is true of Ontario to some degree as well; not only have economics aligned according to the county system, but also interpersonal relationships and cultural identities, be it the South Shore, East Shore, the Valley (Annapolis County, maybe another too, not sure), "the Cape" (Breton). School districts, health regions, and so on are all aligned to them; this is clearly not the case in BC; nice list you've provided, I already knew about the development regions one and had seen a more macro-level one of health regions, and somewhere out there is the map of Forests Regions/Districts and the MoT and MoE ones are easy to find....I've been looking for one of the Mining Divisions aka Mines Districts - the Mines Act as you know pre-empts the Land Act, the Municipal Act, underlying title (save aboriginal title?) and the Will of God alike - and I have yet to find maps of the modern Land Districts.  Somewhere I read or concluded that the reason for the fragmentation of the administrative geography was to prevent the growth of strong regional governments that might challenge the distant authority of Victoria or the economic will of Vancouver; this was explicit in WAC Bennett's dismantling of the Lower Mainland Regional Planning Board and its replacement by the regional district system; the LMRPB had defied him on the subject of suburbanization in the Valley and until that point had been touted as a model for similar boards for other regions of the province; maybe there was one for Victoria or the South Island; certainly the Islands Trust is a cousin of the concept, though it was an NDP creation no?  And it is one reason why classifying Saturna or Mayne as "Electoral Area Z, Capital Regional District" is an absurdity, as the CRD has almost no power anywhere the Islands Trust does; although lately it's lost a lot of its teeth and has a lot of toy-soldier appointees to it; but for a long time it was virtually a regional government....their own subdivisions of hte Gulf Islands we should probably have a look at...I've been wondering (and maybe Category:Islands of Howe Sound) for a while now about making Category:Northern Gulf Islands and Category:Southern Gulf Islands, but they've got things like "Executive Islands Group" and others....had their map linked somewhere, a PDF I think....INAC has FN-government/funding regions, too, although federal-tier ministries/agencies tend to have only a few subdivisions within British Columbia, e.g. Fisheries.  All of this is one of the complexities that have me taking a breather from the Outline project/concept...how to tackle it all?  I'm thinking that the use of external links in Outlines should be permitted, or putting them as footnotes to sections should be a regular standard, e.g. for linking to maps/lists of school districts/health regions/forests regions rather than replicating them within Wikipedia....I'm pretty sure that, if we "averaged" all these different regions, we'd come up with rough boundaries for the "traditional regions" that underly their names - the Shuswap, the Boundary, the Similkameen, the Thompson, the South Island, Mid Island, the Omineca and so on; though all those terms pretty well apply only to settled areas or corridors (e.g. Sea to Sky, which is really only the corridor flanking 99 as far as Pemberton and wouldn't include the upper Elaho) and the only way to label somewhere like Thutade Lake or Frog Lakes Pass is by what mountain range/plateau it's in....I've been hunting for a terrain-based map in the right projection to substitute for the RD-based location map, for geographic use, and a roadway-based map suitable for use as a town-locator; the RD maps look ridiculous to me...anyway more rambling thoughts later.....need more coffee just got up; will write email about music etc later....Skookum1 (talk) 13:28, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Law firm articles
Hi. I first noticed your law firm work because Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer was on my watchlist. I first encountered it when I declined a speedy-deletion request for that article. As I first saw it, the article was an advert, but based on the article content I judged that it did not qualify for speedy deletion under CSD A7, and I thought it might be a notable topic. Subsequently, I edited the article fairly extensively, including addition of third-party sources. I think the firm's notability is established, but I accept your judgment that more is needed there.

You're doing a valuable service in flagging law firm articles that look to be self-serving. I share your suspicion that many of those law firm articles were originally submitted by a marketing department, but we need to evaluate the topic and the article content, not the motive. Also, note that not every article about a commercial entity is an advertisement -- Wikipedia has many articles about commercial entities.

Saying that a firm is "the third largest in the state" (or similar) and identifying a source is not peacock language nor a pure advert -- that's factual information that can be verified from third-party sources. Articles like Connell Foley are purely factual, not adverts. Also, if the business received outside recognition for a particular superlative (for example, an award that "recognized Womble Carlyle as one of the most progressive law firms in the country due to its commitment to technology"), that's not necessarily peacockery (but that type of statement needs to be fully sourced and verified). On the other hand, language like "has a solid reputation" or "continues its long tradition of excellence" (the latter is a type of peacockery that I've often seen in articles about educational institutions) is peacock language that should be expunged. --Orlady (talk) 15:39, 30 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with you that language like "7th largest firm in the tort field" is puffery/peacockery, but "sixteenth largest law firm in the State of New Jersey" is based on somebody's objective data analysis. The latter types of rankings also could be factors in assessing notability, although I don't think that "sixteenth largest law firm in the State of New Jersey" suggests much importance.
 * It occurs to me that some statements in Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer that I added specifically to help establish notability might have looked like puffery to you. This includes (1) the names of notables associated with the firm's history and (2) the statement that the firm "has gained a reputation for its representation of plaintiffs in mass tort and product liability cases, including a lawsuit against a large tobacco company that led in 1988 to a jury awarding $400,000 in damages to the heirs of Rose Cipollone, a heavy smoker who had died of lung cancer..." It seems to me that famous founders/partners and involvement with famous/notorious court cases are elements that help to indicate the organization's "notable and demonstrable effects" on society, as called for by Notability (organizations and companies). This is the kind of information that I want to see in an article. --Orlady (talk) 19:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Just to interlope and note that I spent part of a bleary-eyed morning, before a much-needed nap, adding WP:Companies and WP:Law to the firms in "A" and "B" in Category:Law firms in the United States, if they didn't already have them; there might be a way to botomate that - I didn't have the stomach/patience to go on with the mechanical/manual placement. And also to comment that "17th largest law firm in Poughkeepsie/wherever" is only citable from third-party sources, not from their own literature.  Reflexive links are not normally WP:RS; the kind of cite needed for such a claim would be a stastical bureau or a ranking by Forbes or its legal-industry equivalent.  There's also guidelines against trivia-type information, which that qualifies as (citable or not).Skookum1 (talk) 19:55, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Wiki-Conference New York Update: 3 weeks to go
For those of you who signed up early, Wiki-Conference New York has been confirmed for the weekend of July 25-26 at New York University, and we have Jimmy Wales signed on as a keynote speaker.

There's still plenty of time to join a panel, or to propose a lightning talk or an open space session. Register for the Wiki-Conference here. And sign up here for on-wiki notification. All are invited! This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 03:18, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition
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Talkback
FYI as you've recently edited the article Goldstream, British Columbia, and an IP keeps adding an unsourced story. Rosiestep (talk) 00:12, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

FYI List of mines in British Columbia
It had been on my mind for a while, and as someone had started List of mines in the Northwest Territories I figured it was time; see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mining. Wondering if you'd care to take the time to transfer the mine info from the list of mines in the Nanaimo area page over.....and on further consideration of that while looking it over, I'd venture that it's really two lists, the mines and the landmarks, though of course some of the latter are related to the mines (in a way all are, including the Bastion itself). See the WP:Mining talkpage for a digression on the subject of mines in BC which really belongs there instead of here.....Skookum1 (talk) 01:04, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Brevoort Park School
It has been fun driving around finding photos of our schools in the various neighbourhoods. It would have been a nice neighbourhood to grow up in it looks like. It was a bit south and east of my old public school area. SriMesh | talk  20:09, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

High school
I'm not generally a supporter of high school alumni categories in the first place, so my own personal tendency would be to say no — but a lot of other people do favour them. You might get more useful input from WikiProject Education than I could really offer. Bearcat (talk) 18:59, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Talkback
Admrboltz (talk) 18:45, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

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Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
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SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. Your contributions make Wikipedia better -- thanks for helping.

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Well spotted - that shows the problem with reverting vandals with Huggle. Smartse (talk) 19:51, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

ILOVEINDIA.COM
Iloveindia.com was used by me because it was a great source. There is no other intentions. It is a great link that is why I used it. These is no reason that it should be deleted. It took me a great deal of work to fix these sites. I did a great amount of clean up work as well and I don't want them to get undone. Please keep them as it is! Thank you (159.91.151.97 (talk) 20:48, 26 October 2009 (UTC))

Doug Hepburn
I saw that link last night too, and didn't get around to removing it before I went to bed....it had subpages containing some of Doug's writings and those about him contesting his claim to be the strongest drug-free lifter; but no individual pages were linkable. What was most suspect when I saw the link was it claiming to be "Doug Hepburn's site"....it contains his old site, but Doug is dead (I knew him, marginally) as of this last few years, so presenting a site, asking for money, claming to be his, was especially suspect; whenever I see a link palced at the head of the external links section on any page my alarm bells go off....Skookum1 (talk) 16:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Politics of Gatineau Park
An article that you have expressed an interet in, Politics of Gatineau Park, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Articles for deletion/. Thank you.Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. - Ahunt (talk) 19:30, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Status of First Nations treaties in British Columbia
I've added the POV tag to this, and various fixes of errors created by User:Esemono - including confusion of treaty councils and tribal councils, and wrongly placing some bands in tribal councils they're not part of, and his annoying habit of placing importance on INAC numbers, which like status card numbers are somewhat offensive in nature and have no relevance to encyclopedic content even if they weren't. The POV tag is because the language of the article mirrors the account in the BC Cabinet's aboriginal pages and does not reflect First Nations criticism/opposition properly - I amended the mention of the UBCIC because it did not state, as it does now, that the UBCIC and its membership reject the treaty process entirely; Esemono's wording, taken from the BC government site is "not in the treaty process currently" as if they one day might be. This is just a heads-up, I know you're generally not working on FN articles, myself I'm aghast at the way this user has used BC government sources often only for bands as if other sources didn't exist; I smell Public Affairs Bureau, partly because of his earlier trolling behaviour towards me, which was too much like in tone and content stuff I've seen in the political blogs.....Skookum1 (talk) 17:14, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Gatineau Park invitation
You are receiving this invitation to join other editors working on the Gatineau Park article, because you participated in the AfD debates at Articles for deletion/Politics of Gatineau Park, Articles for deletion/New Woodlands Preservation League and/or Articles for deletion/Gatineau Park Protection Committee and have thus shown an interest in this subject. The greater the number of editors who participate in articles, the better the articles become. - Ahunt (talk) 18:27, 26 November 2009 (UTC)