Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Proposal for links
In the Britannica portion of the Missing encyclopedic articles wikiproject, links have been created to search pages on Google, the Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia. See, for example, Page 11 of that project. I understand these links have been generated using a script. I believe we could do something similar for the DoCB initiative. I would take it upon myself to do it, but I have no clue how &mdash; my programming abilities date back to the FORTRAN days (most of which I have forgotten).

If someone wants to take this on, I would like to make a few observations:
 * the links to the Wikipedia searches should include a "+" (plus sign), to limit the search to avoid getting a gazillion articles with, e.g., "Smith" in the title.
 * The script should strip out parantheses, dates (used by DoCB to disambiguate), and common French and English words in title such as "the", "of", "and", "la", "le", "l'", "de", "du", "et", etc.
 * Also, to avoid duplication of effort, when a project participant has searched a particular name, they should indicate it by signing the entry for that name with four tildes "~".

Luigizanasi 20:48, 15 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I can help you out with the search if you would like, though I will not be able to follow all the recommendations that you ask for. I've done a good bit of the work at the Catholic Encyclopedia page including setting up the pages and the search.  I set up a google search, google search of wikipedia and a google search of the the DoCB site.  Unfortunately I don't have the time to dedicate to specifically find and parse individual common names such as Smith or Jones with quotes ("John Smith") that would search only for the phrase 'John Smith' and not 'John+Smith'.  I can do it either way but not both.  The good news is that Google already automatically removes most of the common words that you have mentioned.  I think that keeping the paranthesis would be a good idea.  BTW, most of this can be done with the text functions in Excel and doesn't require extensive programming knowledge, though it can help. --Reflex Reaction 14:08, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for replying. I hadn't thought of using Excel. However, I see two purposes to the srearch links. One is to find other sources for the material. However, I spent a lot of time "curating" links, i.e. searching by hand within Wikipedia to make sure people on the DoCB list were not already covered in wikipedia. This was my main purpose for requesting the search. So the 'John Smith' link is not really needed. However, the dates in parantheses have to go, (or at least the parantheses because the dates should already be in the article if one exists). I had not thought of using excel, which is a great idea (and I am pretty proficient in its use.) Thanks again Luigizanasi 03:02, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Copyvio ?
The Dictionary of Canadian Biography and associated pages have been moved into User:Brian0918/Dictionary of Canadian Biography. I didn't think that this article & the list of names would be a copyvio. --Big_Iron 22:57, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Was this even discussed anywhere? Why was this done?  There isn't a copyvio anywhere that I can see.  -- JamesTeterenko 04:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Administrators%27_noticeboard/Archive24. Now will someone please do something about the copyvio rather than just shuffling it around and hoping no one cares.  Dragons flight 03:13, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The US Supreme Court decided, in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, that simple lists of "facts" weren't copyrightable. Alphabetic lists aren't copyrightable, at least in the USA.  --  Geo Swan 04:43, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Eckes v. Card Prices Update: Lists whose selection is based on opinion are subject to copyright. Feist v. Rural fails because there is no creativity involved in the selection of phone numbers and addresses from a predetermined geographic area.  Dragons flight 05:32, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The copyright holders have released this list for non-commercial use. Since this list is in WP space and not the main article space and is used to identify missing articles in wikipedia, our use fits with the terms set by the copyright holder. In short, this list is not a copyvio. Matt 00:52, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière
Can't find him in our lists...help! Could he have been missed? I tried a # of combos...no luck. Thanks...Stormbay 20:35, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Instructions and template need updated
Howdy folks.

The instructions and the template that produces the external links entry for the Dictionary of Canadian Biography no longer meets Wikipedia standards, which have changed since these instructions were written.

First of all, "External links" may not be the appropriate place to put the DoCB link. According to WP:EL, "Sites that have been used as references in the creation of an article should be linked to in a references section, not in external links." So, if someone used the online version of the DoCB as a reference, it should be under the "References" section, not "External links." If the editor did not used the DoCB as a reference, but wants to list it as additional reading, then using the current template and placing it under "External links" would be appropriate.

And secondly, the current template does not display the necessary publication information for a reference. DoCB articles were written by scholars, and their names need to appear when their work is used as a reference. Other publication information, especially the year, should also be shown. The template Cite encyclopedia is a useful guide for what information should be shown when referencing the DoCB.

So, for example, the link for Simon Girty currently appears like this:


 * Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online

When, if used as a reference rather than additional reading, to meet current Wikipedia standards it should look like this:



Finding the date the article was first published is a little tricky on the DoCB site, but it can be done. —Kevin 16:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Catholic Encyclopedia
I'm categorising missing Catholic Encyclopedia articles and I've put a number of articles about Canadians on this page, with the CE article. JASpencer 21:15, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online restructured
The Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online has been restructured. The old style URLs no longer work. An example of the new format is http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=5660 instead of http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=39782. --Big_iron (talk) 16:25, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

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

Hello Mr. Gauthier-Pilote,

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

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

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

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

Regards, 

______________________

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

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

Help with citation formats
Given: reflist:
 * 1) long:
 * 2) subst:
 * 3) DictCanbio:

The long form works. The second, which I copied from the project page, I could not make work. The third form is easy and works, but it copies the wiki page name down to the reflist, which I don't want because I am refering to Robson in another article. Any help? Thanks Benjamin Trovato (talk) 21:53, 26 September 2012 (UTC)