Wikipedia talk:WikiProject British Columbia/Archive/Archive 2008

Proposed standardization of importance rankings
Hello, WikiProject British Columbia. The other Canada-related wikiprojects have been merging their talk-page templates so that articles can be added to WikiProject Canada and to other Canada-related projects at once. This should help all of the Canadian wikiprojects spread awareness about each other and co-ordinate improvements and assessments. We would like this objective to include WikiProject British Columbia. Under this system, an article about a British Columbian musician (for example) would look like this:

This template uses the same assessment criteria for all listed projects; so if WikiProject British Columbia were to integrate with the other Canada-related projects, you would have to change your importance-ratings scale to standardize with that of WikiProject Canada. This would mean that your only top-importance article would be British Columbia and your only high-importance articles would be major topics like Vancouver and History of British Columbia. Would you, the regulars in this project, be open to thus changing your importance ratings? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:21, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I have no objection to this. I've never cared for the importance ratings. --maclean 01:33, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * In general I think this makes sense. The changes outlined to the importance scale would improve our use of them. Is it possible to create a bot that would make the necessary changes?  -- KenWalker | Talk 19:40, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * We have bots working to change other provinces, so we could set one up that would replace all uses of "{{BCproject" with "{{WikiProject Canada |bc=yes" and if the Canada template already exists, just add "|bc=yes" to it. That should leave the assessments alone and this project would hardly notice.  However, before doing that we would have to go through the existing high-importance BC articles and change most of them to mid-importance, leaving only stuff like History of British Columbia and Kim Campbell in high.  There are about 200 to do, and I've already started.  With a bit of help we should be able to re-rank their importance before too long.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:54, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I made it to be about 270, but it is down to a few now. -- KenWalker | Talk 07:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose. So when we merge with the WikiProject World, will Canada be the only top-importance article? Not to sound like a crank, but this homogenizing is what Western Alienation is all about: the project should be setting importance based on what is important relative to BC, not relative to the RoC. Shifting the importances down loses information, so this is only logical if we add a C-class rank. Vagary (talk) 08:10, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Your WikiProject World analogy is a bit of a straw man argument, but nevertheless I sympathies with your point. There will be some information loss in importance-assessment as some high-importance articles are demoted to mid-importance and some mid to low.  However, I believe that the coordination and cooperation that this drive will allow between all of the Canada projects will outweigh the costs of loosing a level of importance.  This should, in the long run, help the overall quality of the articles themselves.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 06:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I see no crucial use of the importance ratings. Note that I'm a westerner too, and don't feel at all alienated by this kind of integration. The merging of the banners also helps to avoid WP:TCREEP. PS: Did the QC wikiproject agree to do this move ;-)? Cheers. --Qyd (talk) 16:41, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The QC project wasn't rating articles before, so the move could happen without affecting them. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Available auto location map
Location map British Columbia will add a map of British Columbia with a dot placed automatically using geo coordinates.

It can also be used with, such as in Fraser Lake, British Columbia.

The preceding code will produce the map at right.--Qyd (talk) 19:56, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

British Columbia Treaty Process
Obviously needs lots of work. And I've only started it so there is a lot of referencing and citations needed, but it's a pretty strong issue for BC, and important once considering BC is illegal. (lol). Anyways, I'm asking for help from anyone willing to dive into something that is utterly complex (I'm a good salesman eh.) OldManRivers (talk) 10:46, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Pavilion Lake
No article yet, thought I'd started a stub but I guess not. I'm not sure but I think this karst-formation lake is a UNESCO World Heritage Site or something like that; it's a NASA exobiology research site, I do know that; because of its microbialites (freshwater coral); it's also adjancet to Hat Creek (British Columbia) and would be affected by the proposed coal project there, which maybe should also be an article (nb Hat Creek, British Columbia would be about the communities/locations by that name, not the creek per se; Hat Creek coal-thermal proposal would be more specific for the industrial thing. This is just a note for myself, but maybe someone else might want to investigate the article; either CBC or CTV science shows had a piece on it quite a while back, relating to the NASA research; CBC I think; when written there's some aboriginal content needed as well (the lake is overlooked by Chimney Rock aka Coyote's Penis).Skookum1 (talk) 17:19, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Canadian Cascade volcanoes
Obviously needs lots of work (e.x. Mount Garibaldi, Mount Cayley, Mount Meager, Mount Silverthrone). I have worked on geology and a lot of referening of these articles for quite a while but still need more info and detail other than geology (e.x. history, climbing, discovery, etc). Canadian Cascade volcanoes have produced major explosive eruptions and large landslides in the recent geological past, including The Barrier landslide in 1855-56, the major eruption of Mount Meager 2350 years ago, sending ash as far as Alberta. These observations are indications that Canada's major Cascade volcanoes are potentially active, and that their associated hazards may be significant. For this reason the Geological Survey of Canada are planning for developing hazard maps and emergency plains for Mount Cayley and Mount Meager volcanic complexes. They are closely related to the other Cascade volcanoes in the United States (i.e. Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, etc).

In addition, volcanic disasters have occurred in Canada. During the 18th century, the Tseax River Cone eruption killed 2000 people. I'm asking for help from anyone willing to expend these articles into a GA and eventually an FA. Thanks. Black Tusk 23:23, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Category:Tribal councils in British Columbia
Please see Category talk:First Nations governments in British Columbia, although simple enough I think there should be a t.c. cat as a subcat of the FNgov one; OK to proceed?Skookum1 (talk) 20:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * OK so now there's Category:First Nations Tribal Councils, but methinks, mebbe, it should be broken down by province; or is that too colonialist? by region?  (British Columbia Coast, British Columbia Interior, Northern British Columbia?).Skookum1 (talk) 07:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Category:Valleys of British Columbia
I guess there might be a metacategory Category:Valleys but I just noticed this on the relatively new article Slocan Valley, which I placed templates on and, if I'd gotten around to creating it, would probably have simply chosen "Slocan" as the title, like Kootenays, a stand-alone (obviously there's an eventual need for Slocan (disambiguation); "the Slocan" and "the Slocan Country" are just as common as "the Slocan Valley", or at least "the Slocan" is like all other BC valley/region names.  I'm just uncertain as to the utility of this category, on the one hand, as it winds up being about regions but in a different way than in Category:Interior of British Columbia's subcategories.  There's also instances where, as placed by Bearcat (in TO) Nemaia Valley, British Columbia is alongside Fraser Valley; the Nemaia Valley article is a community article, not a geographic one in the same way as Fraser Valley or Slocan Valley; Comox Valley may be in there, one supposes, but there's one hell of a lot of valleys in BC, with river articles already for each one, i.e. "a river is its watershed", quite literally; still Chilcotin District and Chilcotin River are different articles; but the Chilcotin District, y'see, is the Chilcotin Valley, or more properly put/spelled the valley of the Chilcotin. "Fraser Valley" gets used in eastern Canadian media/writing as well as in offshore accounts of BC as applying to the Fraser Canyon and Prince George area, with "the valley" as the whole watershed, but that's of course not how the usage works, does it? Anyway, I think the Valleys category is superfluous and creates a misappreciation of BC....all we are is valleys, ultimately, at least the settled parts. Thompson Valley? Shuswap Valley? Theoretically Okanagan should be in this category, maybe it should be; but then so should Fraser Canyon, Marble Canyon, Capilano Canyon, they're all valleys. Bulkley Valley yes is a region name; but its neighbours are simply the Omineca and "the Skeena" (aka Skeena Country, sometimes the Skeena Valley, but generally, like the Cariboo, just "the Skeena". Is there really a need for Bella Coola Valley, for example, if there's already Bella Coola River and Bella Coola, British Columbia?  The existence of the category suggests its incompleteness unless all valley articles possible are created; but many will be indistinguishabler from region article "Kootenays" is really the basin/valley of the Kootenay River, afterr all...) BC nomenclature is tricky; it's why I held off creating the Slocan article myself; still not sure what to do about "the Shuswap" (Shuswap Country I guess, which doesn't include the valley of the Shuswap River, which is in the Monashees (Monashees as a region rather than a range...not sure what to call it, never heard "Monashee Country" except real old-fashioned; any ideas? Cherryville etc - not the whole range, Monashee Mountains, just the sort-of-inhabited area southwardes from hwy 1 to the border; another regiona article in need of creation, gbut a set of valleys, rather than a single one....). Input on this appreciated, I'm not in the mood to cross swords with Bearcat about it (he created the category), but I wish I'd gotten around to creating Slocan before I left on my wikibreak, and I think this category came out of nowhere without much relevance to existing BC cats, or because of the way it's already been applied, to BC........Skookum1 (talk) 07:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I looked in the category again; Loss Creek is in there, a watercourse; I note that there's a parent category Category:Valleys of Canada but I don't see the point in BC; Nicola Country is the Nicola River valley, the Nicola Valley; but if it's created under either name it's in the regions category by necessity; it's a valley, but also a "country" as we call 'em in BC, a regional community that people identify with as being from; Category:Nicola Country I believe exists; but if Nicola Country gets written or as Nicola Valley; should it also be in the valleys category, despite its really being a social/historical/cultural region here; and it's not as simple as valley-country, the Bridge River, Lillooet and Monasheee Countries aren't like that, likewise the Omineca Country and the Boundary Country (again more than one valley...).....the valleys category, if it survives, needs some rules or something; Nemaia Valley currently is a community article, not a valley article; should Nemaia Valley then exist to describe it geographically/geologically/climatologically/ecologically? Perhaps so, also with Slocan Valley and Slocan Country, aka the Silvery Slocan, which is as much a cultural/historical region concept, including towns not in the Slocan proper (Well, Retallack anyway; Sandon's in a Slocan tributary no?); a valley article should be about the geographic object, a community article about the community; and creeks and rivers shouldn't be in the category, like Loss Creek; Walbran River, Walbran Valley....so much redundancy, from the 49th parallel to the 60th, from the Rockies to the sea......Squamish River, Squamish Valley, Similkameen River, Similkameen Country, Similkameen Valley, Stave River and Stave Valley (I'm from there, as well as elsewhere), Bridge River Valley, Bridge River Country (which includes more than the Bridge River Valley per se) and three different communities/places over time that have gone by Bridge River, British Columbia, and there's no Bridge Valley, there is a Chilliwack River Valley that's a sort of suburb of Chilliwack, but there's also a Chilliwack River article, and maybe a Chilliwack River Road article even, so need there be a Chilliwack Valley article, or should the Valleys cat be put on the river article...or on the communty article, if there is or is to be one....Cowichan Valley and so on...Comox Valley, Sunshine Valley, British Columbia (which is rainy as hell), Paradise Valley (there's a few of those, one is up the Cheakamus above Brackendale), Whistler Valley (definitely a concept but indisstinguishable from teh Resort Municipality of Whistler and/or Whistler, British Columbia.....which calls itself "the valley" and definitely is a valley, just like Nemaia Valley.....where does it end?  Robson Valley, Columbia Country/Columbia Valley (there's a difference...).  Everything here has/is a valley; it's all rivers and mountains, and valleys where people live already have town/region articles/categories....Skookum1 (talk) 07:17, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Another example - Cowichan Valley. This term includes areas outside the Cowichan drainage basin, and as a region-name doesn't really mean Cowichan Lake or Youbou, which would be described as being at Cowichan Lake; both are in, however, "the Cowichan".  So here's a case, like others, where capital-V Valley doesnn't mean the drainage basin or a valley in the orthodox sense (see below about Columbia Country/Valley).  Cowichan Valley is a sort of neighbourhood, more than it is a valley...and it doesn't iunclude the whole Cowichan Valley in the geographic sense.....16:39, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

The Chasm (geologic feature)
Please see [this and also [[Talk:Chasm]] re prov park articles as geographic feature articles; Chasm Provincial Park is just a stub but ther'es a locality/BCR/CNR siding Chasm, British Columbia and also the geologic feature itself; I won't repeat what I've said elsewhere, input desired.Skookum1 (talk) 07:24, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The correct name for The Chasm appears to be Chasm Formation. There's also another formation called the Deadman River Formation, see here. Black Tusk 20:07, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Columbia Valley vs. Columbia Country
OK, this is a perfect example of why the Category:Valleys of British Columbia has its problems relative to the way BC actually is. The Columbia Valley when used to mean a region refers to Golden through Canal Flats; in absolute geographic terms it includes the Big Bend, the Arrow Lakes and the Trail area, as well as what's south of the line. The Columbia Country as a term includes Revelstoke, the Big Bend, maybe Nakusp/Arrow Lakes, as well as the Columbia Valley in its Golden-Canal Flats sense; the Columbia Country is more or less the northern third or so of the Kootenay Land District, plus maybe the Arrow Lakes. The Invermere-Canal Flats area, though, is also part of the East Kootenay.....Category:Columbia Country exists and I was going to make Columbia Country as its main article; I hesitated thinking that maybe "Columbia Valley" could be extended to be the main article for the whole Columbia Country region, but it's the wrong title because it refers only to a portion of the Columbia Country, its uppermost part only. If it's not to be used in that limited sense, then it has to be used in its fully-broader sense, and should include Walla Walla, Portland and Astoria....which is just a no-go, no? Skookum1 (talk) 16:10, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

templates for defunct BC provincial ridings
Come to think of it the templates may not be on the defunct BC federal ridings either; I've just added it to those in "A" of Category:Defunct British Columbia provincial electoral districts but I don't have the stomach tonight, or anytime soon, to go through them all and add this to the talkpage:

If someone else is looking for something mechanical to do, or can bot or parse that, please do; i created all those ridings, didn't occur to me to templatize them at the time....Skookum1 (talk) 05:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Please don't put articles in both cangov=yes and riding=yes. The riding wikiproject is there to stop the government project from being clogged with the hundreds of electoral districts.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Category:Parks with aboriginal significance?
Or List of parks with aboriginal significance or something of that kind....crossed my mind when adding to Marble Canyon Provincial Park, and recently editing Tsy?los Provincial Park and knowing of the Stein etc.....I'm sure OMR would agree that all parks are potentially aboriginally-signficant, but ones that have special significance or were created in response to native cultural importance issues, like the Stein and Ts?ylos, or contain important features like Marble Canyon.....should these maybe be a subcategory or parallel category to the BC parks cat?Skookum1 (talk) 18:15, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
 * How would you measure 'aboriginal significance'? And what is the breaking point for inclusion into the category? It seems like a judgement call, rather than a yes/no criteria for inclusion. Was Stein made a park because of 'native cultural importance' or intense media scutiny? --maclean 23:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Funny you should mention the Stein, as it's one of the big cases in point. Adn yes, it DID become a park because of native cutlural importance; native cultural importance that had the clout (and made enough phone calls) to get the intense media scrutiny - exposure is a better word - and it was because of that the park got preserved; ditto with Ts'ylos Provincial Park and certain others; not all others except in the most general way; but I think User:OldManRivers, who's Skwxwu7mesh, would agree that Stanley Park falls into the category (Siwash Rock, Chay-thoos, Qwhy-qwhy, Deadman's Island, and more...); Marble Canyon definitely qualifies, and while Mount Garibaldi does, Garibaldi Park doesn't (except, well, certain areas...).  I think maybe "parks and protected areas" would be better, also, and part of what I was thinking of was some label could include native-designated areas/campaigns, as in the Skwxwu7mesh "Wild Spirit Places" (among which are the areas around the "homes of the thunderbird", Mounts Garibaldi and Cayley, the two volcanoes near Squamish); similarly the Tseax Lava Flow Park up in teh Nass, or whatever Ninstints is called now; other First Nations have similar designated preservationist/consecrative locations, either on a small scale as with Lost Valley Creek near Seton Portage or Siska Creek near Siska, which the local bands have designated as having "spiritual significance", or on the large scale as was the case with Clayoquot, Stein, Ts?ylos or the Great Bear Rainforest (so called, hate that name).  Anyway, so it's not just whiteman-government parks/protected areas I'm meaning, but also those designated by the original, and some say still current, landowners (guess I should get around to writing the Xeni Decision...ref that on http://thetyee.ca).  Anyway, about the Stein, although I didn't formalize the guest list I had a few things to do with getting the ball rolling on that, festival/concert-wise...it may have even been my foolish idea, long before it took place, to have the first festival up in the wild (didn't think they'd put it up that high....) and invite some movie stars and musicians and Suzuki or whomever (we had a short list), and I was at the 3rd Stein Festival, the big one held in Mount Currie (almost worth an article in fact.....the Stein Festival as a series certainly does....).  And I can guarantee you that wihtout native cultural singificance, and so native political support, the Stein would have the same charming man-made landscape as the Cayoosh or Nahatlatch "with all the trees gone so you can see the mountains".Skookum1 (talk) 03:56, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, you can source it. For instance, Kosapsom Park here has sources for it's significance and cultural importance. --Haemo (talk) 00:24, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah....hmmm...I see my title might be problematic because nearly any site in BC or Canada can, if necessary, be deemed to have some kind of significance/importance; I was more meaning "sacred" spaces, but wasn't sure how to word that. Because ultimately, the whole province (BC) has significance/importance aboriginally (not the least because it's the longest running symbol of illegal appropriation of resources by governments....) but it's the "special" ones; how to word that, I don't know; otherwise everything would be in the category/list or whatever it is.  There's lots of sites in Wells Gray or Manning or Strathcona that have such significance, and like I said Garibaldi Park includes the sacred areas around Garibaldi and teh Tusk, and also over on the In-SHUCK-ch side of the Garibaldi Ranges, Gunsight Peak, Nes'kato, which is the Lil'wat Ararat; but Garibaldi Park wasn't created to enshrine native cultural/spiritual values; the Stein was; sure Marble Canyon wasn't created for said reason, but it coincices with major spiritual/cultural significance, so there's a grey area; the title needs to be tweaked to exclude less important or not-particularly-spiritual sites; wherever politics has played a part assertion of native cultural heritage will be on the agenda, as with Pacific Spirit Park or teh Great Bear Rainforest.  Craigflower/Kosapsom or Pacific Rim National Park; but this even applies to nearly any land-use agenda in BC......so while I welcome the support, it (the cat title/definition) needs to be qualified/refined.....Skookum1 (talk) 04:13, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Is there a way to "bot-omate" template placement?
I just discovered in Category:British Columbia school stubs that most entries in the category have no template at all; I just worked my way through the 'A' section, but it's pretty laborious; does anyone know enough bot programming to maybe automate/bot the placement of templates globally across certain categories (excluding, in this case, 'A', and any others that have the same template already, as some will). It would take a couple of days to work my way through just this one category; template being placed is .Skookum1 (talk) 18:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I got an answer and there's a bot admin who can run template-placements in whole directories, including switches like bc=yes, schools=yes etc; i.e. we have to custom-design the templates for each category; I'm starting a list somewhere in my sandboxes, or maybe on a project page here I guess is a better place, of which categories need which templates; if anyone else runs across whole bunches of stubs/articles in need of templating, like the schools stubs cat mentioned above, please add it to that list or comment here.Skookum1 (talk) 19:09, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Need direction on name for Jumbo ski area proposal article and others
I did a google search on the Jumbo ski area proposal, and Jumbo Pass and Jumbo Glacier showed up as well, and Jumbo Resort I think is the working DBA name; as with Cayoosh ski area proposal/Cayoosh Resort (see Cayoosh, a disambig page I just made), the contrast is between an abstract descriptive name and the DBA; the further alternative is the most common in the media; Jumbo Pass I hadn't heard before, Jumbo Glacier I've heard on Global; haven't browed the google results yet. The proposal's not yet listed on Jumbo (disambiguation), I wanted to wait to settle on a title for it first. What's the paradigm here? These are not completed resorts, although there are extant companies. Rail line articles tend towards being about the company, rather than the geography and issues surrounding the line (they also get "washed" by corporate non-entities, as also goes on with political party articles and bios...); considering this I'm leaning towards the "ski area proposal" format because it can be about the debate, rather than the cold hard corporate facts. Maybe. I don't know if there's a Wiki guideline about this, or if it's just "first come first served". Jumbo Glacier is the location of the resort, but would be a glacier article like Spearhead Glacier; Jumbo Glacier Resort may be in fact the official name, or the in-proposal one anyway if not the holding company (Whistler-Blackcomb for years was Intrawest, or rather Blackcomb was until Intrawest bought Whistler, then sold to the guys holding the bag now). It would help to come up wit h a paradigm for this now, as there's also Brohm Ridge ski area proposal, Powder Mountain ski area proposal/Powder Mountain Resort (Inc.), and others; likewise things like the Klappan River coal-bed methane proposal/Klappan Valley coal-bed methane proposal another decision I'd like some input on, or will do a google comparison of the more common term. I doubt if there's a WikiProject Skiing but let's try that link to see ;-=) There's a host of hydro and other energy proposals, and Brittany Triangle and other logging proposal articles to yet get written; I'm big on the Wikipedians for Local History which I see integrating well with community and FN articles, and see the potential for enlisting developoment of these articles simply by starting their stubs, such that when someone from one of the orgs or the interested public (or corporate world) googles the item in question, say the Jumbo resort, there's an extant wiki page which encourages input of information. Is this an agenda?  I suppose so, but it's also the full extension of the principle of encyclopedism to the organizations of public information/debate and history and public affairs and environment et al ad nauseam; for now all I'm asking is a title format, but also for other proposals and such in need of articles (Quinsam Coal for instance) - and the stubbing up of anything that comes to mind; many articles such as Tahltan, where teh Klappan project is currently written up, could currently be split. Skookum1 (talk) 19:09, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Geohazard
It really surprised me that this doesn't have an article yet, nor is there a category; I've added some things to Category:Natural disasters in British Columbia (again including some things that could be split, eventually), but geohazards are Category:Natural hazards in British Columbia that haven't happened yet. See discussion on natural dams at Talk:List of reservoirs and dams in Canada (in need of table formatting btw, see List of dams and reservoirs in California, in the bottom of the discussion, where I list off various potential entries; forgot to add the potential/eventual liquefaction of Richmond but again need to find a title for the subject ;-). Geohazards in British Columbia is a grey area; Mount Baker's one of our geohazards, but it's in the States.....Anyway, again, if anyone knows of something that should be listed/articled/tagged with a category please list it here or stub it up; I gather Category:Geohazards can't just be launched. I put a request for Geohazard in at the Geography of Canada WikiProject's todo list but that's a pretty arcane looking list, I doubt it gets looked at much....Skookum1 (talk) 19:09, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Speaking of historical disasters, somewhere there's a List of Great Floods and Great Flood of 1894 (Fraser River) and Great Flood of 1948 (Fraser River) are both worthy topics, not sure what the titles could be. Also the M Creek Disaster comes to mind, whatever ya want to call it; 1982, not just limited to the fatalities at M Creek though.  Anyway, gotta run....Skookum1 (talk) 22:52, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Notability
Is it possible to find some more sources of information on this topic Seton Portage Historic Provincial Park, John Linn (Royal Engineer)? It is tagged with a notability tag, and there are currently 31 articles in the scope of wikiproject Canada which are tagged with notability concerns, so I am contacting anyone to see if the quantity of notability concern articles can be reduced, and quality increased. For more help see this note or the article talk page for a current discussion. Kind Regards SriMesh | talk  19:25, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, SriMesh. Qyd and myself have added sources to these two stubs. --maclean 00:57, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Haida Gwaii/Queen Charlotte Islands unilateral merge by SPA

 * Haida Gwaii/Queen Charlottes have been merged to Haida Gwaii by SPA-type user [|IanKeir]. Please see full comments on WP:Canada Discussion BoardSkookum1 (talk) 04:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Main page
Dawson Creek, British Columbia will be featured on the Main Page on April 17. It is one of the older Featured Articles (circa 2006) so I expect a few complaints on its quality. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. --maclean 05:32, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

"Black slate" - Haida argillite
After working up the Argillite article and consdidering redirects to an eventual specific article on Haida black argillite, it turns out, black slate as an article is for a British reggae band (if searched for that way; despite the redlink); but it's also an old name for a specific type of carving stone - not a slate, but a specific type of argillite from the Queen Charlotte Islands, used in Haida artwork. See Talk:Argillite and Talk:Slate pls.Skookum1 (talk) 05:05, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Haida Argillite Carvings now exists (not my creation) nut it has issues, including the caps and plural in the title.Skookum1 (talk) 19:29, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Vancouver meetup in May
Hi everyone, FYI, plans for a Vancouver meetup are in the works here: WikiProject Vancouver/Meetup 2008. Please watch it for details if you're interested. The more the merrier. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:56, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

MV Island Sky
The MV Island Sky stub article is up for deletion. Island Sky is a ferry currently under construction. Comments are welcome at the article's entry at the Articles for deletion page. — Bellhalla (talk) 21:07, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

PNW and Spanish PNW History Categories
I have just come across these categories:History of the Pacific Northwest and Spanish history in the Pacific Northwest. They have some interesting and useful articles that relate to BC. I think they should be added as sub categories in a suitable way so they show up in the category tree at the bottom of the WikiProject_British_Columbia page. I thought a note here might bring them to the attention of the group. -- KenWalker | Talk 06:35, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Online resources
Hi; just found http://www.archive.org's BC History collection; they also have a BC Biography section, which is how I first found them (looking for works by Howay); it's amazing what's here, and it's more searchable than historica.ca or other PDF-based sites (DJvu and other systems are used), though still not linkable by-page.Skookum1 (talk) 14:37, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Bear Mountain, Uplands and Ten Mile Point
A number of Victoria-area articles have been written for promotional reasons and were/are heavy on promotinoal content. This is not so much of a problem in Vancouver-area articles becuase of the activity there of the Vancouver WikiProject and a greater overall level of Wiki inputting/editing from Vancouverites. Some of the Victoria articles ahve been around for a while but never got dealt with; in the course of investigating links off related articles I happened to find them and take a chainsaw to the advertising content, with Sunnymead-Broadmead being so bad it was speedily deleted. James Island (British Columbia) survived, and I think i was kind to Ten Mile Point, British Columbia. But on the talkpages at Talk:Bear Mountain (resort) and Talk:Uplands, Greater Victoria, I've been criticized for being too heavy-handed in chopping out the sales pitches and house-buyer brochure info..... I disagree although there are maybe elements from what I deleted that could be reworked into the article in a less sales-pitchy tone; and in Bear Mountain's case there's a "controversy" section which needs a neutral eye to de-NPOV it (and there's POV from both sides in it)); I don't ahve the stomach so that's one reason I'm asking for comment/input/edits from outside.  I did my best to refer the complaint to WP:MOS etc but maybe others could be more diplomatic....here's athought; could we add a switch to the project template for "kind of attention needed", taht would disaply/rank like the class/importance/tpye stuff?  So we could "flag" articles like this that need attention, though not a change of importance/rating.Skookum1 (talk) 03:37, 27 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Please see also Talk:Cadboro_Bay%2C_British_Columbia.Skookum1 (talk) 03:48, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

POV title Fast Ferry Scandal
Please see Talk:Fast_Ferry_Scandal.Skookum1 (talk) 13:45, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

AFD: Vancouver, Coast & Mountains
This Ministry of Tourism region showed up in Category:Regions of Canada and is inappropriate as a title, except as a redirect to existing geographic articles; see reasons on the �AFd template/talkpage..Skookum1 (talk) 16:18, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Unless a Category:British Columbia Ministry of Tourism marketing regions is a worthwhile undertaking ;-| Skookum1 (talk) 16:22, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

List of DYKs for project
FYI. You might want to consider using a list of DYK's related to British Columbia as an attraction. One that was in February of this year was the Whistler Sliding Centre (disclosure: I wrote the article) where the bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton competitions will take place for the 2010 Winter Olympics in neighboring Vancouver. Chris (talk) 01:25, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.
 * The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
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Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot  ( Disable )  22:13, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Canadian Pacific Airlines Flight 21
I started this after finding a local pilot had never heard of it. Finding sources is tough, even though 52 people died, as it was more than 40 years ago, Some say it was an insurance scheme but I have not come across anything that says what the investigation found or what the actual location is of the wreck. Can anyone here help? It would be nice to get it into DYK before it gets 5 days old. -- KenWalker | Talk 01:09, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have emailed you a copy of a news article (1995 Vancouver Sun) that re-caps the incident and what has happened since. --maclean 01:49, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, very useful. -- KenWalker | Talk 02:36, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Use of RDs as geographic locators
I don't want to piss on the industrious User:Backspace, who's been busy robo-adding RDs to tons of BC articles this last week, but I continue to question the validity of using these as geographic-region categories. I did manage to get him/her to back off from placing them on First Nations pages (First Nations are not part of the municipal system and themselves consider themselves to be outside the governmental system of British Columbia and/or Canada). RDs are not equivalents to the US or EAstern Canadian county systems and, as Iv'e said elsewhere, the only time a BCer thinks about them is if he needs a building permit or a footbridge or trail built or septic field licensed. There are other subdivisions of BC used by the BC government and others used by the feds....what prompted me to comment about this again was seeing a number of BC Parks having the RD category added; this is not appropriate - the Parks are not within the jurisdiction of the assembled mayors and electoral district reps that constitute RDs, and parks are part of the BC Ministry of Environment and have their own regionalization system, which are distinct/different even from the Tourism zones/region] (oddly enough) and also distinct from Ministry of Forests regions (also odd, when you stop to think about it) and so on; the only other region-map I found so far is for the Ministry of Health, which ain't that relevant but MoE and MoF are. As far as geography goes, the MoEnvironment zones are far more relevant, and also recognizable as coinciding with major historical geographic regions, which the RDs don't. As elsewhere, cats like Category:People from the Thompson-Nicola Regional District are not relevant, especially for bios/histories prior to the creation of RDs (c.1967), unlike, say, Category:People from the Thompson Country or Category:People from the Nicola Country, which are a-temporal. Category:People from the Central Kootenay Regional District, aside from being a mouthful, begs the question - where's "Central Kootenay"? Apparently the West Kootenay, by how that RD is defined/boundaried, so Category:People from the West Kootenay(s) is much more like it. Also things like rivers and lakes are likewise not under the governance of the RDs (they're federal - Ministry of Fisheries for starters); they are in geographic regions, but not "in" a regional district any more than they're in a MoE or MoF region. There's too many organizational ways to break down BC, if government divisions are to be used as the parameters; I'd like a solution to this - i.e. parameters on the use of Regional District categories. There's hosts of types of articles they're being applied to which they shouldn't be. I also think the RD maps used for locator-maps are inappropriate for anything but towns that are part of the RD's board; geographic-terrain maps should be used instead, especially for geographic articles (rivers, lakes, mountains/ranges etc.). Not that anybody is giong to pay attention, and somebody's going to trot out a "guideilne" to be used as gospel about how it's been decided that RDs will suffice for a county-surrogate in BC; I dispute that, entirely, for the reasons/examples just gone through but also for others (including vanished RDs like Central Fraser Valley Regional District and Dewdney-Alouette Regional District - if there were an article on me (ahem) I couldn't be in Category:People from the Fraser Valley Regional District because I moved out of Ruskin long before the FVRD was created; it was in DARD then! Even moreso for historical figures like Richard McBride or anyone else; they may have been from the Lower Mainland or Fraser Valley or Nicola or Okanagan or Central Coast - but they weren't and couldnt' have been "from a regional district".  The same logic applies to mountains, lakes and First Nations, which have been extant long before the Social Credit regime created RDs in the 1960s as a way of extending the influence of town councils/mayors over adjacent unincorporated regions/towns (an influence that's been used to inhibit devleopment in some areas, please note). RDs are not even used by other government departments, as described above; if the BC Parks site doesn't say a park is in a certain regional district, why should wikipedia????Skookum1 (talk) 15:47, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I am not quite understanding your reasoning in the immediately above. Am I to infer that you mean to say that the Fraser River, for instance, is not located in Canada because it was formed thousands/millions of years ago, while Canada is only 141 years old?
 * I use the Regional Districts according to Statistics Canada's definition of the entity, which does not indicate that there are any locations (rivers, lakes, Indian Reserves, etc.) omitted from them. See this link for their definition of Fraser Valley Regional District and then click on "Geographical hierarchy" under "Fraser Valley (CD)" to see more detail.
 * My primary purpose in using the categories of Regional Districts was to answer the question of simply "Where the heck is this place?" and not a question of which governmental entity has jurisdiction over which geographic feature. Backspace (talk) 18:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * What I'm saying is that they're not useful geographic-classification categories, especially when historical people and communities are involved. The source you're quoting is a census division used by stats can, not by the govenrment's geographic bodies; it's useful/relevant to population and population only, which includes modules of governance.  But for individuals, as explained above, it's entirely unsuitable; and while Census Canada uses them as geographic zones that's also because they're governmental units; the Canadian GeoNames database, for example, classifies them by Land Districts, as does also the BC Government Name Information System (BCGNIS).  Mountains are part of mountain ranges, which are part of true geographic zones - and even there, there are conflicting systems/definitions between different levels of government.  The Royal BC Museum, as noted, uses a different system to classify "historical objects".  People, also, are from regions, not regional districts.  Census Canada does not bother with the distinctions because it's only sorting population and civic data/stats.  Just because one federal body uses the RD system for its references doesn't mean much when not even the BC government operates that way.  RD categories are suitable for communities, incorporated or otherwise (but extant, not ghost towns e.g.) but they're not suitable for geographic articles; interesting you should quote the Fraser River - are you going to add all the RDs along its length?  Quite a list.  Misconceptions abound because of using RD cats; Ts?los Provincial Park may be in the Cariboo Regional District, but it's NOT in the Cariboo; and if you ask the self-governing Nisga'a govenrment whether or not the Tseax River lava beds park are in the Kitimat-Stikine Regional District, they'll tell you instead that it's in the Nisga'a Lisims.  And that's official (see its BCGNIS listing).  And peopel from Alert Bay or Blunden Harbour would certainly say they're from the Central Coast; they wouldn't say that they're from the "Regional District of Mount Waddington", and (especially because most are native) don't even bother thinking in terms of regional districts; except when the interests of RDs get in their way - RDs if you don't know are composed of mayors and elected members from huge underpopulated rural areas (but not IR populations).  Simply put, regional districts are govenrmental bodies that have jursidictional boundaries; they're not actual regions in any useful geographic sense (except census figures).Skookum1 (talk) 21:31, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * And further there is a more relevant geographic-area hierarchy that has historical/traditional roots in BC, and wasn't invented in 1967 as a political agenda (long story and I'm not being POV, just referring to politics or the time) and which only incidentally has become the main units used for censuses; again ,because somebody in Central Canada, where they have long-standing counties which are part of the cultural/historical landscape( needed to have a way to "cut BC up" for something vaguely like counties; but in BC the "countries" (though not always by that term) are the way people refer to where they are from, or where something is, or when referring to history. "Events in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District", for example, can only refer to events since 1967; talking about the Yale Convention or the Chilcotin War as having been in the Fraser Valley Regional District or the Cariboo Regional District, repsectively, is entirely irrelevant and without meaning; they happened in the Fraser Canyon/Lower Mainland (Yale's sort of in both) and the Chilcotin (Country or District, although "the Chilcotin" works just fine); and in the latter case as a native-relevant event which happened in Tsilhqot'in territory, it gets their cats too (FN cats are vaguely geographic; if an article has "indigenous content" like some do (Mount Garibaldi), or should have it, they get the Tsilhqot'in category.  Klatassine was from the Chilcotin, and was Tsilhqot'in (some FN people in the Chilcotin are Dakelh); he wasn't from the Cariboo Regional District; Category:People from the Cariboo Regional District can't include him, or shouldn't.  And there is no Chilcotin REgional District, but there is the Chilcotin.....similarly the parks cat should be suvdivied by MoE zones, not by Census Canada zones; parks aren't populations, likewise RDs.  Category:Mountains in the Cariboo Regional District likewise is "out there" in terms of relevance for Mount Tatlow or Mount Queen Bes.  They are in the Category:Pacific Ranges, which is where they are in mountain-speak terms.  And I can guarantee you that not a single Regional District official or functionary has been anywhere near either one.....Skookum1 (talk) 21:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I should also explain that when RD interests and those of a park converge, the language is "parks officials worked with regional district", because the regional district boundaries end at the park boundaries; likewise an RD has no governmental control over Timber Supply Areas or other activities within the area described by its boundaries; it has power only where it has power; beyond that RD reps may sit on Regional Management Planning Boards - which are yet another regional-classification system - but they are only one "stakeholder" in a given region, not the region itself or with any kind of regional oversight, as US counties have and, I believe, also Central and Maritime Canadian ones. Police also aren't cut up by regional districts as they are with counties, and not even the court system - Counties of British Columbia - is used as a way to organize policing.  School districts also are another regional bailiwick, a school is relevantly categorized as being in, say, British Columbia School District No. 42, but it's entirely irrelevant if it's classified as Category:Schools in the Central Fraesr Valley Regional District.  And give this some thought - classifying things by census divisions which aren't normally classified that way (mountains, parks) instead of by regions relevant to them (mountain range cats, ministry regions), is actually a kind of Original Research; it's creating an order, an idea, an extension of a concept, where it had not been used before.  it's creating a paradigm where there was one; similarly a place may have Category:Census-designated places in British Columbia but it may have no relevance to how things are constituted/referred to locally - a good example of this is Robson/Raspberry, British Columbia, which is two separate cmomunities independent of their being a "census-designated place".  Again, just because Census Canada uses RD boundaries as a way to classify popluation figures dcosn't mean it has any other relevance to other kinds of articles/content.....Skookum1 (talk) 22:02, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * People can break down British Columbia, or any other entity, by any classification method that they want, but one of the main reasons I prefer to use Regional Districts is that they have exact dividing lines. You can step up to the border and say that you are crossing from one District into another. Although many people say that they live in "Appalachia" or "Northern California" or "The Cariboo", they cannot stand at any particular spot and say "If I take another step, I'm leaving Xxxx and going into Yyyy." If they had exact boundaries, of course, I would have no hesitation in using more "historical" methods. However, I cannot accept vagueness within a category; it has to have an exact dividing line.
 * Everyone knows that the Rocky Mountains are in both British Columbia and Alberta. I don't see where the "original research" factor comes in. Can't they have both as categories? Backspace (talk) 22:24, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * By the way: Fraser River RD's, only six. It's not as bad as you might think (Thank God that B.C. has large divisions; in the eastern USA this list would go on forever!). From source to outlet:
 * Fraser-Fort George
 * Cariboo
 * Thompson-Nicola
 * Squamish-Lillooet
 * (Thompson-Nicola) re-entered a second time after leaving Squamish-Lillooet
 * Fraser Valley
 * Greater Vancouver
 * Backspace (talk) 23:02, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

[undent]I don't see the point in classifying rivers by what reginoal districts they flow through; they belong to basins, maybe mountain ranges (e.g. Category:Rivers of the Canadian Rockies would make sense) and other geogrpahic-designators, not to Regional Districts, It's when I start seeing Category:Rivers of the Thompson-Nicola Regional District and Category:lakes of the Cariboo Regional District that I'm going to start retching; especially since something like Category:Lakes of the Cariboo makes a lot more sense and won't include lakes in the Chilcotin and won't exclude lakes in the South Cariboo parts of the Thompson-Nicola Regional District. As for the "people" cats, already someone made Category:People from Okanagan-Similkameen, without "Regional District" attached and as if the Okanagan-Similkameen were a place rather than an administrative agglomeration. Also the "People from" cats all use (incorrectly) a proper-name variant of the RD names, as in Category:People from Cariboo Regional District as opposed to Category:People from the Cariboo Regional District, British Columbia (note the definite article). The issue is that the use of RDs is leaing people from outside BC to use them in ways used elsewhere for counties and also as if they were proper names, or identifiable with known, named regions which they are not. And I'll go back to the point that although I'm from Ruskin I'm not from the Fraser Valley Regional District; I left it before the FVRD was created; I'm "from" the Dewdney-Alouette Regional District, which no longer exists. I'll repeat - people in BC do not idneitify themselves according to hard-and-fixed boundaries apparently needed by classifying-type people from outisde the province; we're from 'places'', not adminstrative units. And those administrative units are NOT proper names and should not be used as if they wereSkookum1 (talk) 18:47, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

RD people cats rename issues
Please see Category_talk:People_by_regional_district_in_British_Columbia and talklpages linked from it.Skookum1 (talk) 18:30, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Koreatown, Vancouver AFD
Just a heads-up that this AFD has begun; I haven't commented on it yet and posted notices on the Vancouver and Canada proejcts also....Skookum1 (talk) 05:20, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for British Columbia
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

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Topics on British Columbia
Please add to, edit modify the new Topics on British Columbia to reflect content about British Columbia for the portal, wikiproject, the article etc. SriMesh | talk  20:04, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

British Columbia gold rushes
I just expanded this; it had had no lead on it and had only been a list and should always have been more; a "short" historical precis is so far completed, more or less, on the Queen Charlotte, Fraser and Cariboo Rushes; I don't have the energy to tie together all the minor gold rushes into a short narrative but intend to do so soon; many of them need much fuller writeups or new articles, particularly the Stikine and Cassiar rushes. More citations to come, sorry can't do inlines, working from memory not books on hand. I'm thinking that History of the British Columbia gold rushes, might work better and there hsould be a parallel History of mining in British Columbia (is there a History of mining in British Columbia article already? Not sure...) because coverage of gold mining is often impossible without discussion of silver, galena and also even coal; the mining industry is one industry; there's also a need for articles on teh "silver rushes" particularly the Silvery Slocan....anyway g'nite, it's 2:31 am; I never did get to the passage I had framed in mind when I started writing it, maybe it'll still be fresh tomorrow....see Talk:British Columbia gold rushes for further comments.Skookum1 (talk) 06:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

List of waterfalls in British Columbia
Not launched yet, but here it is in sandbox prep, sometime tonight or tomorrow will add a table with other info, heights, associated towns/features, latlong, type (waterfall, falls, cascade - distinctions made by the provincial gazette); maybe even with thumbs like the heritage buildings page for Vancouver...anyway it's a combination of the full BCGNIS/BC Basemap listing, plus things I know about, plus Waterfalls/Falls Creeks etc.....Skookum1 (talk) 05:20, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This table is new...List of waterfalls of Canada...if you want to add more BC waterfalls here to expande List of waterfalls of Canada or if you want to add the relative BC waterfalls from List of waterfalls of Canada to your upcoming article on BC waterfalls you may...Kind REgards SriMesh |  talk  03:24, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Klehini Falls
Do these waterfalls really exist? If they do they could be listed at List of waterfalls of Canada, but without a reference or any resemblance of them on google they may be spam. Kind Regards SriMesh | talk  01:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I've checked two sources, and they don't exist in either: (1) the BC Geographical Names Information System; and (2) BC TRIM Base Map KML layer for Google Maps (scanned from BC boarder to headwaters). I also checked USGS's Geographic Names Information System incase this happens to be in Alaska, but also nothing. This doesn't mean the falls don't exist, but they certainly are not officially recognized at this time. Perhaps the article should be merged into Klehini River. + m t  04:10, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Maps and more
Hey, I thought I'd spread the word about exploring decent maps and imagery for BC. This is often much better than anything Google Maps could provide (particularly for imagery), and comes out of the BC Gov't servers in Victoria. To use and explore maps of BC, you'll need one of these: Google Earth, or one of the dozen or so other GIS software with WMS capabilities (I've used these services through Quantum GIS and ArcGIS, but there are many other programs). The types of map themes available is found at http://www.ilmb.gov.bc.ca/dm/wms/ which shows links to KML files (for Google Earth) and WMS links (for all other products). The most useful—to me, at least—is "Base Mapping and Trim", which shows very detailed information from all corners of BC such as 20 m topographic contours, ephemeral streams, abandoned gravel pits, any road-like route, outlines of buildings, etc. Lastly, if you don't care to install any software and want to use a browser, there are other interfaces like iMapBC. + m t  04:55, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Fjords of Canada
Can someone add any images to Fjords of Canada. Some may be relevant from List of waterfalls in Canada if the waterfall cascades down into the valley of the fjord. Check out the talk page of more items to help out with to fill out the article Fjords of Canada if you are familiar with the fjords of BC, Nunavut, Newfoundland and Labrador or Quebec. SriMesh | talk  03:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Renaming of "Communities in such-and-so regional district" cats
Note bulk renaming proposal for subcats of Category:Settlements in British Columbia by regional district. Se Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_November_20. Similar nomination coming for "people from RD" cats...Skookum1 (talk) 17:44, 20 November 2008 (UTC)