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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Toronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 00:07, 28 July 2008 [1].

Toronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory edit

Nominator(s): Maury (talk)


This article meets all FAC requirements, has undergone GA and Peer (unofficial in the later case), is well referenced, etc. A somewhat obscure topic, perhaps, but one of relatively major historical significance in Canadian science. Maury (talk) 17:21, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Issues resolved. — Wackymacs (talk ~ edits) 21
21, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Comments

  • The paragraph starting with "The current building was designed in 1853 by local architect," has only 1 reference - is all of it from that one ref?
  • "There was some discussion of what to do with the Cooke telescope, as the Meteorological Office had little use for this purely astronomical instrument. No other use was immediately forthcoming, and the telescope moved along with the Meteorological Office to their new Bloor Street Observatory." - No reference?
  • "The observatory, officially Her Majesty's Magnetical and Meteorological Observatory at Toronto, was completed the next year."...Why have you used unnecessary bolding in this sentence?
  • "It had long been noticed that compasses tended to "wander" from north when measured from different locations, or even at a single location if measured over a period of time. This affected navigation to varying degrees, and was a topic of some interest for that reason. It was also believed that the same effects might be causing weather to change, so that studying the magnetic variance might lead to better weather prediction." - No references?
  • Web access dates should be linked.

— Wackymacs (talk ~ edits) 19:09, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Web access dates do not need to be linked if dates are not linked in the article. Gary King (talk) 19:45, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Its a matter of personal preference, I guess, but I'm allowed when I'm not opposing ;-). — Wackymacs (talk ~ edits) 19:50, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, Ref 17 inline, see discussion on Bolding on MoS talk, fixed, OK I guess (although personally I think access dates should be left 100% to robots). Maury (talk) 11:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

}}

Comments

Issues resolved, Ealdgyth - Talk 00:04, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you use a book/journal article/web site as a source, it shouldn't be listed in the further reading, it should be listed in a "Bibliography" or "Sources" section. Thus Thiessen and Beattie need to be in the bibliography/sources section, not the further reading section.
  • Current ref 3 (Astronomy in Canada) redirects to the front page of Discovery.com
Otherwise sources look good, links all checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 02:40, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed, freakin EXN, this happened sometime in the last two weeks - should I simply remove that half of the sentence? Or leave it? Seems unlikely to be challenged. Maury (talk) 11:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm, can [2] this be used as a ref? It's just the archive of the same ref. I assume they stick around a bit longer? Maury (talk) 11:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, webarchives of pages are fine, go ahead and use it. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:19, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Maury (talk) 12:48, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anything else? I think I have addressed every issue above. Is there anything else to do? Maury (talk) 20:44, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • "located on the grounds of what is now the University of Toronto." - written in present tense... so why what is now known as the Toronto Uni, as opposed to what is the Toronto Uni? —Giggy 09:33, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed. Maury (talk) 22:08, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The photo was taken between 1855 and 1907 and does not appear to be subject to CC. What information is missing from the tags? Maury (talk) 22:08, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Can you add proof of it not being CC? --NE2 16:09, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's generally difficult to prove a negative, and more so in this case when the image is over 100 years old. It is found in the UofT archives, for what that's worth. Maury (talk) 18:49, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Calls are going right to answering machine, great! Maury (talk) 20:26, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Progress on image issue? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:27, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Only that I am 100% sure it comes from the UofT archives. I'm not sure what more we need here? Maury (talk) 14:54, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I just wrote to the university archivist about this image, as well as the flipped one discussed below. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:05, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments. Overall I found this to be a comprehensive article. I did some copyediting and changed two of the section headings to comply with the MOS. Small comments:
    • "Although moved and modified over the years, it remains the oldest building on the university's campus." - from the lead, this made me question whether the observatory's current building is the oldest on campus or whether the original building was moved and modified.
    • "British Association for the Advancement of science" - should science be capitalized or is this correct?
    • I think this needs a citation: "University College was not completed until 1857, making the new Observatory the oldest remaining building on campus."

Karanacs (talk) 15:04, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The answer to the first issue is "both". As the image captions note, and one of the main refs covers in detail, the building is slightly re-arranged compared to how it was at the original location. The building itself, and its materials, are the same as they were in the original state. So, then, the question comes down to your definition: if I move a door, is that a different building? how about moving the location of the building? It's a grey area.
I have fixed the second issue. The third appears to be the same as the first? Maury (talk) 22:08, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For the first, perhaps you could just remove "Although moved and modified over the years," so that it just says that the building is the oldest. As for the third, I may have missed it, but I don't recall seeing anywhere a citation that the building is actually considered the oldest on campus. Karanacs (talk) 19:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well I'll just remove it then. Maury (talk) 20:25, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose --> Support. until properly massaged. MOS, sentence structure, redundant wording. Please find someone new to look through it carefully: the whole article, please. Here, I've looked at a section towards the bottom, which is interesting in content, but disappointing in terms of 1a.

  • Ah, I like your avoidance of an Easter-egg link—let's all take note: "Coincidentally, the Canadian government (having [[Canadian Confederation|''formed in'' 1867]](my italics) was interested in ...". Readers will almost certainly ignore single-year links (piped), expecting them to be the irritant they've seen so much of on WP.
  • Do we need a metric conversion for "6-inch"? Maybe.
  • MOSNUM breach: AM and PM don't need dots, but they do need to be in lower case.
  • Caption: this sentence is not grammatical—"The rotation of the tower is more obvious here, compare the location of the windows with the images above."
  • "After a length debate"—they were debating the length of what? This is a bad glitch.
  • "a single building, built of stone,"—remove the comma and two words.
  • "The new building was completed in 1855, located directly opposite the entrance of today's Convocation Hall." Awkward; try "1855, and stands directly".
  • "were distributed locally in Toronto"—is "locally" necessary?
  • Um ... "which was a major service among fruit vendors, who used the reports to plan shipping." Monty Pythonesque, unless you give a little more in explanation.
  • Never comfortable without the agent I think: "many believed that there was a direct connection between sunspots and weather". Many scientists? authorities, even?
  • "that raised it high enough up the tower to have a reasonable field of view"—so why was "a reasonable field of view" (of the heavens, I presume), necessary to observe the Transit of Venus? That's the implication. What is "reasonable"?
  • Please remove dictionary-type links: "tramways", etc.

Ping me when it's ready? Tony (talk) 05:16, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding of Australian idioms is rather limited, so I'm having a difficult time parsing some of these comments.
The first comment is particularly difficult to understand. Are you saying the link is inappropriate? Clever? I can't figure it out.
What does the term "Monty Pythonesque" mean? Comedic? The text doesn't seem amusing to me, but I'm not a comedian and have never seen the show.
And I'm at a complete loss as to what you are talking about when you say "without the agent". I'm looking at that statement now, and if my guess as to what "the agent" is referring to is correct, then it's clearly mentioned,
It appears Julian has already addressed many of the issues above, at least the obvious ones (thank you Julian!). If there are any remaining ones, please let us know!
Maury (talk) 14:06, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I just finished some more copyedit, and I think that after having the prose fine-tuned, it meets the criteria. Having another copyeditor take a look wouldn't hurt, but for the most part, the writing is up to par. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 00:37, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Awesome, thanks. I'd still like to hear back from Tony before we try to move on to the final stages though. I think he has more examples he'd like to inject, and I'm more than happy to take one more pass through it if it's going to tighten everything up. Maury (talk) 12:22, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I write in standard English. "Monty Python" is a famous British comedy team, although I've never seen more than odd snatches of it (not my thing). I assumed it was known the world over. The first comment, unusually, was an entreaty to others to use this type of construction instead of piping just a year alone. Agent: "the girl kicked the ball"—"the girl" is the agent.
  • We probably need "theodolite" to be linked, but I'm unsure about common words such as "brass" or "copper"—no big deal, though. Can you check MOSNUM about "PM". I'm sure they say lower case. "This led to the purchase of a 6 inches (150 mm) refracting telescope"—"inch" singular when art of a compound adjective. "The dome, now unused, receives a yearly multi-color paint job by the engineering students."—we haven't heard about these engineering students before, so remove "the"? "longer term variations"—See MOS on hyphens. Tony (talk) 12:50, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, AM->am, leaving piping of link alone now that I understand the comment, someone linked theodolite already, removed conversion on 6-inch (actually "6-inch Cooke" appears to be a sort of proper name, these were common instruments at the time), removed "the", added hyphen (and in short-term too), changed comment so "the agent" isn't even needed (direct quotes are always better anyway). Still mystified by the Monty Python thing though, can you be specific as to what change you would like to see in the statement?
Keep 'em coming Tony, I'm ready, willing and able (to edit :-) Maury (talk) 15:59, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever the sources say, the images are in the public domain. They're both over 100 years old. I can slap copyright notices on the Mona Lisa, but that doesn't make it mine. Maury (talk) 11:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
With all due respect, we can't take your word for it. Images are only in the public domain if no one renews the copyright that once existed. If institutions are claiming copyright on the images, you cannot use them unless you provide a reliable source stating their age and that they are in the public domain. --Laser brain (talk) 14:14, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ummm, I'm sorry, but none of this is correct.
To start with, the entire US renewal system was ditched in the late 1970s for a single fixed-period time span, currently set at 75 years (with some exceptions). You don't have to take my work for it, take the US Copyright Office's, as found here. This has been further developed as part of GATT, and is pretty much universal among IOC. As if that were not enough, Canadian copyright law, as far as I can tell, never included the concept of renewal at all. Moreover, the Canadian term limit is 50 years, not 75.
Furthermore, PD applies in spite of anyone's statements to the contrary -- that's the whole point, if the copyright holder dies or ceases to exist in corporate terms, the works will return to PD anyway. William Shakespeare's works are in the public domain... do you recall him issuing a statement to that effect? Neither do I.
William Armstrong died in 1914, and the painting is his, so that means it pre-dates 1914. The page where I found it states it was painted in 1852, and I have no reason to doubt that. Under any possible interpretation of the copyright law, this image fell into PD long, long ago. The second image in question is a photograph of the building prior to it being moved in 1907. The fact that Convocation Hall and the Stanford Fleming Building are not in the image (they would both be visible here) means the image is from some time before that. Once again, this image has fallen into PD some time ago. There was a question about whether the second image was CC, which is different, but that does not appear to be the case. Maury (talk) 20:33, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I understand your points. I was simply going by what's listed on the web sites given as sources. I beg your pardon. --Laser brain (talk) 20:46, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(undent) No offense taken! Maury (talk) 20:48, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. I found the prose pretty sloppy, and with a surprising number of typos. There are still some apparent typos in one of the quotations, which will need to be checked against the original. (I've left an note inline to indicate where, but the whole quotation needs to be checked.) In general I think that the article, though close, could do with a final polish. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 09:49, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Can you be more specific on the quote? I don't see any cite tags inside quotes except the clip from the meteorological description, and I think I put that there. Maury (talk) 11:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's this one: 'At the seventh meeting of the Royal Society in Liverpool in 1837, Sabine declared that "the magnetism of the earth cannot be counted less than one of the most important branches of the physical history of the planet we inhabit" and that a worldwide effort would be "regarded by our contemporaries and by posterity as a fitting enterprise of a maritime people; and a worth achievement of a nation which has ever sought to tank foremost in every arduous undertaking".' Here I have italicized what would seem to be the obvious typos. But the first part of the quotation is odd, too; again, it should be checked. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:52, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well caught! The typos are from scanning errors from the original source. The original can be seen here. Both fixed. Maury (talk) 19:50, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for pointing to the original. There are two other errors of transcription there. (Again, I urged you to check the original again): a comma transposed as a semi-colon; and two words omitted. I'll fix these myself, but again, beware! --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:55, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed. Also fixed a misleading paraphrase. But I'm also confused: is the original source the NYT obituary (per your link here), or "Thiessen, pg. 308, from Report of the Seventh Meeting of the British Association of the Advancement of Science, 1838" as is claimed in the article itself? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:59, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It is from Thiessen, but if you follow the link below you'll see the problem: the scan is barely legible in places. I used the NYT version here as a more legible second source. Should we switch the ref? Maury (talk) 20:33, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, OK. Stick with Thiessen, I'd say: a scholarly journal is better than a journalistic account. (And personally, I don't find it particularly illegible.) NB that there are discrepancies between the two sources: the NYT says "arduous and honorable"; Thiessen simply says "arduous," for instance. I'll reverse a couple of my edits accordingly. Ideally, you'd check the original 1838 publication.
Indeed. I wonder, does anyone know of a wikipedian that might be in a position to have these publications at-hand? They're literally filled with precisely the stuff I like to write about, old science experiments and theories, and not having local access makes my life somewhat difficult. On the upside, a new copy of "Jet" just arrived, so as soon as this process ends I'll be off to patch up the Frank Whittle article next. Maury (talk) 20:51, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
My university library doesn't seem to have it (at least, it's not in the online catalogue); but then the university wasn't founded until the twentieth century. I'd have thought that for an older British or Commonwealth university, these would be standard parts of their collection. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:04, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • maybe this?
  • Morrell, Jack and Thackray, Arnold (1984). Gentlemen of science : early correspondence of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. London : Royal Historical Society.
  • Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 03:57, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh bummer, it's not available through Google Books. Maury (talk) 12:08, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, but this is! Maury (talk) 12:09, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you need help obtaining sources, I might be able to help out. I have access to a large research university. Awadewit (talk) 17:36, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support This seems like a thorough treatment of this interesting observatory. Thanks! Here are my suggestions for improvement:

  • I'm not really sure what the infobox adds to the article and it is crowding out the images.
  • The images are all right-aligned. WP:MOS#Images recommends that images be staggered for the best visual effect. For comparison, I see that they are lined up, but everything still seems smooshed.
  • It had long been noticed that compasses tend to "wander" from north when measurements were taken at different locations, or even at a single location over a period of time. This phenomenon affected navigation, and so was a topic of some interest. It was further believed that whatever was causing this effect might also be causing changes in the weather, and so that studying magnetic variance might lead to better weather prediction. - This is an extremely vague beginning - how long? who had noticed? when did it affect navigation? The passive voice removes so much information that we don't know our orientation in time or space at all - give us a sense of history here. Suddenly, we jump to 1833 in the next paragraph - help anchor the reader earlier!
  • The Association continued to press for the construction of similar observatories around the world, and in 1838 their suggestions were accepted - accepted by whom?
  • The team assigned to Canada originally planned to build their observatory on Saint Helen's Island off Montreal, but the local rocks proved to have a high "magnetic influence", and the decision was made to move to Toronto instead - The quotation marks here are slightly confusing - I read them as meaning there was no magnetic influence but they could also be a direct quotation - do we need to make this clearer?
  • Using the measurements from the Toronto and Hobart sites, Sabine noticed both short-term fluctuations over a period of hours, and longer-term variations over months. - Perhaps we should say fluctuations in what exactly?
  • This led to the purchase of a 6-inch (150 mm) refracting telescope from T. Cooke & Sons, which was mounted on a large stone pillar to raise it into the tower and improve its field of view. - Slightly awkward - I would fix it, but I'm unsure of the intended meaning.
  • However, Louis Beaufort Stewart campaigned for it to be saved for the Department of Surveying and Geodesy, eventually arranging for the building to be re-constructed on a more suitable site. - Since Stewart is a redlink, could you ID him in the article a bit? Describe him in a phrase?
  • The references are not all listed the same way - for some the years appear in the middle of the listing and for some, they appear after the author name. I don't use templates, so I can't really fix this problem. The preferred form appears to be AUTHOR, DATE, TITLE, PUBLISHER, ACCESS DATE, but there are some variations from that.

I did some light copyediting and removed unnecessary external links. Awadewit (talk) 17:36, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I actually aligned the images as they were specifically so the reader could easily compare them. But in retrospect, the arrangement I've put in now is even better. Now the images are closely associates with the historical narrative, which seems to make a lot of sense. See what you think!
I still prefer staggered, but this is a big improvement over the previous smooshing. Awadewit (talk) 19:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've also been thinking of moving the last image into the infobox, but as you note, I too have doubts about the need for the infobox at all -- but it seems to be part of most observatory articles, so perhaps that's an argument for leaving it there? Or not, I don't have strong feelings either way.
I always like there to be reason for infoboxes. If there is no reason, no infobox. "Everyone else is doing it" is not exactly a reason, is it? :) Awadewit (talk) 19:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As to the dates on the wandering, I'm not sure what we could add here. I'm guessing it was noticed as soon as compasses became widespread - I noticed it myself as a kid when I left a compass lying open for a few days on a shelf. Something like "since the beginning of time..." doesn't seem terribly compelling!
The navigation part of the story narrows the dates considerably to the "Age of Exploration". I could probably dig up a reference somewhere to this, if you want me to. Awadewit (talk) 19:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would greatly appreciate this. It's not one of my fields of expertise. Maury (talk) 12:34, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Will do, though it might take me a day or two. Awadewit (talk) 13:32, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Added. Awadewit (talk) 11:52, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Finally, the date formatting issue is a technical problem in the CITE templates. I don't know how they managed to make the template worse, but they did manage it. I guess I could pull them all out and just use REF tags (I do that in all my new articles now). I find the REFs leave the body text in a much more editable format anyway.
I use REF tags, too - I find the templates too restrictive and plagued with problems. I would probably make the change, just so all of the notes are neat and orderly. Awadewit (talk) 19:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I will do this. I have found, however, that people "helpfully" edit them to CITEs. I wish someone would just FIX IT ALREADY! We had a great discussion on the whole REF/CITE issue on wiki-tech, but nothing came of it. Maury (talk) 12:34, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've incorporated all of the other changes. Maury (talk) 19:07, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have contacted SimonP about updating the tag, and he seems to frequent the Wiki fairly often. If this isn't corrected in a couple of days, is it OK for us to change it? It seems that the deprecated tags are "simply replaceable" with the -no-disclaimers version. IE, the second of these tags is identical in purpose to the original, changing it would be akin to fixing a spelling mistake? Maury (talk) 12:34, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good analogy. Yes, anyone can fix it; it's not an actual license change, just changing to a more precise tag. If you can tell me what the original en.wiki page said, I can even do it for you. ЭLСОВВОLД talk 12:38, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well I don't think there's any super-hurry on this, so I'll give SimonP some time to do it himself. Given all the tips and suggestions I've been getting here, I'm totally happy to keep getting more in the meantime.
Sandy, is there some sort of time limit here we might be approaching? Maury (talk) 14:06, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If I understand your question, you're asking about keeping a FAC open, that has already been running for three weeks and is at the bottom of the page, while we wait for one person to resolve one image? It would seem easier to comment the image out until it's resolved. If Elcobbola is able to fix it, why not let him do it? FACs can run a long time, but when most everything is resolved, it's nice to move over and share the space with other nominators :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:57, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I've been cleaning up the references on this article. As I poke around, I'm a little surprised that the article doesn't follow up on this site's recommendation to seek out 1) Dalton, I. R. and Garland G. D. (1980). "The Old Observatory's Noble History," The Cannon, vol. 3, no. 3, October 31. (The Cannon is apparently the journal of the University of Toronto's Engineering Society) and 2) the "reading files on the "old observatory" at the University of Toronto Archives." I've been looking around the Archives site myself, and have found its various search tools basically impossible (though see here, accession number B1980-0005). But I understand the nominator here is located in downtown Toronto: how about dropping by the U of T's library?
Oh, if you think their search tools are bad, try the actual library some time! I did see a bit from The Cannon, and it's definitely not as useful as the "6-inch Cooke" or "Founding Of". It's a lightweight article not much different than the one on the page. It's also not up on the 'net, and I greatly prefer those. BTW, does Fraught deserve to be in Refs and not notes? It's only used for one ref. Ditto for Thomas? I always though you used direct links to the notes if the source was only used once? Maury (talk) 11:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"It's also not up on the 'net, and I greatly prefer those." Why on earth would you say that? This article rather suffers from being based on web-only sources. I do think that should be changed. Indeed, you said as much before, but nothing has been done. I'm surprised that, if you have actually gone to the University Archives as you suggest, none of that work is reflected in the article itself. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and this book has some info. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:18, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is interesting in a general sense, and definitely useful for The David Dunlop Observatory article (I'll be abusing everyone on FAC with that shortly) but I can't find a lot of info on this one. Nice picture though.
  • Comment. There's a strange problem with this image, and I don't mean regarding copyright (about which I know next to nothing, though the version in the archives does say it's "Copyright: Atmospheric Environment Service"): if we compare it to the version found in the U of T archives, much poorer quality I know (though perhaps someone has been at it with photoshop), we see that one of the two has been flipped. My guess is that the version in the archives is correct, and the one we have is wrong. But it would seem important to find out. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:23, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, good catch. Fixing. Maury (talk) 11:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I realize I didn't answer the question: the archives version appears to be the flipped one. If you look at Plate XIV in Thiessen, you'll see a layout diagram that shows the observatory was aligned north-south with the "dome" on the north, Next to it is an image that shows the arrangement of the buildings, with the barracks to the east of the observatory (note that the direction of north changes between the two diagrams!). That means that the original image shows the view looking south-south-east with the barracks in their proper location to the east, whereas the new one from the archives shows them on the west!
I'm not sure I understand this. It would be good to have this confirmed from the Archives. (In any case, if it is indeed their image that is wrong, they should be told.) What, incidentally, about the copyright claim? That also seems echoed by the version of the image currently in the article, when you have a look at the relevant page. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The claim is bogus; Canadian copyright is death+50 years, which expired decades ago. As to the flipping issue, as I said, compare the layout of the buildings in the two copies of the painting with the layout in the major reference. Maury (talk) 17:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. I do think that both issues should be cleared up. And I've been starting at the Thiessen plate, the two versions of the image, and your explanation for the past ten minutes, and can't really make them correspond. I take it you're saying that the building on the left (in the current version of the image) is the barracks? But it seems to bear very little correlation to the barracks as outlined in Thiessen's plan. NB I'm not sure why you are calling the roof housing the theodolite a "dome." It doesn't seem to be one, as far as I can tell. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:01, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the copyright claim, there are two works of authorship within the single image: 1) the painting and 2) the photograph thereof. The Atmospheric Environment Service is, no doubt, claiming copyright on its image of the painting, not the painting itself. Per Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., however, such claims are non-starters (a person or entity can claim copyright all the live long day, but that doesn't necessarily make the claim valid - i.e. it's "bogus", per Maury). If the thought occurs to you that Bridgeman is U.S. law and the image is Canadian, kudos on your astuteness, but it's a long story for another place (the image is fine). ЭLСОВВОLД talk 18:43, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Grand. I did figure as much. It is a little depressing when those who should know better (such as university archivists) get such things wrong. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:54, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
NB, so this means that the claim at the bottom of this page is nonsense? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:56, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The disclaimer says they host both public domain images and images for which they hold copyright. They are well within their rights to require attribution, etc. for the latter. In the case of the former, however, they would not be expected to have a legal basis for enforcement of the "requirement". ЭLСОВВОLД talk 19:33, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(undent)Dome, cone, peaked roof, etc. I had "scary quotes" on them, but someone removed them. Please, feel free to suggest a better name! And yes, the building on the left is the barracks. Do you see how that means that the other image is reversed? If not, consider the placement of the fences instead. Maury (talk) 18:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My problem is (in part) that the plan suggests that the barracks is square, whereas the building in the painting clearly isn't. Again, I can't really get the painting to correspond to the plan. But...

Better yet: the painting is in the library of the Downsview Met office, I just got off the phone. The version on the page is the correct one. Maury (talk) 18:18, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

...this is better still. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:54, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I just wrote to the university archivist about this image and the one discussed above. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:05, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
BTW I've been thinking of replacing the last image with a new one, but the day job has interfered so far. The University has place a number of "ground markers" showing the original location of the observatory, and they might might a nice addition.Maury (talk) 12:13, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That would be magnificent. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:54, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Off topic: if you ever want to see just how broken the CITE template is, look at the Schools reference. Notice that its put the link on the wrong portion of the ref -- you link to the section, and italicize the work. Perhaps a new essay is in order, "CITE template considered harmful"? Maury (talk) 12:36, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the problem here is that the web version of this source is very unreliable: it even has got wrong the name of the book it is supposedly reproducing. Rather than worrying about templates, worry about that. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Windup: With the exception of replacing the second image, which is post-FA, is there anything else I've missed? The list is pretty long, I'm getting disorganized. But we've fixed all the refs, dealt with the images, and SimonP fixed the tag on the one image (interesting, I though I had fixed it, but I think I did so on the stub page, SimonP did so on the commons). Is anything dangling or is it go time? Maury (talk) 12:57, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I noticed jbmurray has removed a ref at the bottom on a statement that the building is currently the SAC HQ. I'm not sure why that statement needs a ref personally, but after two have been removed for not being good enough, I wonder if this one satisfies? Maury (talk) 13:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That claim (that as of 2008, the building was the head office of the students union) previously had a reference; but that reference didn't actually support the claim. I therefore removed it, and added the [citation needed] tag. You added another reference, which again didn't explicitly support the claim, which I therefore removed again, adding back in the tag. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 21:04, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I added the citation, easily located by googling on Stewart Obervatory rather than Toronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:17, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, back to the windup then. The image discussions appear closed, the refs are in, the infobox is gone. Is there anything else we've missed? Maury (talk) 12:49, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, sorry Awadewit, I just noted the FACT Added. I'd like one with more detail, but this will serve for now I suppose. And thanks for the history insert! Maury (talk) 13:08, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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