Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Education in Canada/Archive3

Exemplars?

hi guys, just wondering....are there any articles out there that can serve as exemplars for articles in this project? or...like this article has an exemplar history section and that article has an exemplar sports section...i don't know about others...but i personally am at a loss of what to strive for in editing these articles...and if you guys have any exemplars...can you guys suggest school board exemplars too?.....any feedback would be great :) thanks zeChinaman 01:50, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

For school boards, I'm somewhat proud of Toronto District School Board, though how -- or even if -- we're going to handle listing the high number of schools remains to be seen. (BTW, I was thinking of a 2nd page, perhaps called Schools of the Toronto District School Board.) --Stephane Charette 04:27, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Other school boards which have all recently been finished or redone include the BC ones listed at List of school districts in British Columbia. Most (or all?) of the BC ones use a table of schools, as opposed to the bullet list that I see you used on Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board. Both formats work fine, but it'll give you something to compare with. --Stephane Charette 04:33, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

What I would like is for school board articles to truly be enyclopedic articles on the board, not mere lists. Toronto District School Board is better than most, but still doesn't go into depth as much as it should, nor does is cite enough third-party (particularly non-government) sources (but it has been improved a fair bit). We have a number of excellent high school articles, but oddly lack really great full length board articles, despite the fact, there's theoretically more third-party of information available on them. As an analogy, a school article that lists staff, classes/subjects, facilities, sport teams, etc... but lacks prose isn't fantastic. I'm not wholely opposed to school lists (I put one in the CBE), but see them as secondary to content about the board/district. At a minimum, ever article, should be like Toronto District School Board in stating what the board is (and isn't) responsible for, and how/when it was formed. Toronto District School Board is a nice story of improvement, if you look at the first version.[1] --Rob 05:01, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

School board logos

The topic of "which licensing and/or copyright upload template to choose" for school boards was previously asked here, with no reply other than my own. There is no template with 100% accurate description for school boards, but when used in an infobox to represent the school board discussed in the article, at the very least we have the generic fair-use {{logo}}. However, I believe there are several options to discuss:

• {{PreK12-logo}} (read loosely into this to also include school boards)
• {{logo|Commercial logos}} (school boards are run as businesses funded by local government, thus commercial in nature)
• {{logo}} (generic fair-use logos)
• {{logo|Academic institution logos}} (same as previous, but sub-categorized)

(When I first joined Wikipedia, I was using {{logo}} for school logos; then someone eventually asked me to use {{logo|Academic institution logos}}, and eventually I stumbled on {{PreK12-logo}}. But for school boards it doesn't look like we have much precedent.)

Opinions? Suggestions? --Stephane Charette 01:24, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

How about {{Schoolboard-logo}}? OK, you caught me, I just created it now. I think there are a sufficient number of boards in Ontario/Canada to make this useful, though if anyone objects, it can always be deleted. Mindmatrix 01:57, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I've already started using it. I'll mention it on the project page. --Stephane Charette 08:30, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Why I removed the message about the combined BC school AFD

I suggest this project not be used to "warn" about AFDs. Or, if deletions are to be mentioned, they be listed in a neutral manner. Canadian AFDs are already listed at WP:CWNB, and school AFDs are listed at Wikipedia:Schoolwatch. So mentioning any here is redundant. More significantly, any mention of an AFD, should be done in a neutral manner. Some legitimate examples of mentioning deletion discussions, may be for project-specific things, like some categories and templates (so, we can be sure we're following some consistant standards). But deletion discussions not truly specific to this project, needn't be mentioned, IMO. --Rob 08:57, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

The 35 BC school articles on AfD were created by members of this project, as part of this project. I would say that makes them relevant to the project, and didn't see anything wrong with the project page stating the obvious -- that 35 of our articles were listed on AfD. The wording of the message I put on the project page was relatively neutral. Specifically, it said:

There are currently 35 BC school articles at risk of being deleted. Please read through and vote or comment on the discussion here and here.

I wont put it back myself in case I'm alone in feeling the way I do, but I thought a project has a responsability to the articles that we create. That responsability covers the obvious things like how we're going to go about organizing and creating the articles we need to cover schooling and education in Canada -- and as part of that responsability, I included noticing and responding when either individual articles or blocks of articles are incorrectly tagged as AfD.

(See several comments above: Props to Stephane for getting the banner on the project page. I really don't think the banner message was out-of-line, and I'm sorry to see it go down.)

--Stephane Charette 23:26, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with listing the AFD discussions on the main project page because in my opinion we, collectively but perhaps not individually, are not neutral and don't need to pretend to be. That said, I don't mind Rob's actions and can understand the rationale behind them. -- Usgnus 01:20, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I archived our talk page today, so the AfD discussion is now split between this section and the archive #2. The last most-relevant comment was that the AfD closed today for both sets of schools with Keep as the final decision. --Stephane Charette 18:37, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

BC lower mainland school pictures without articles

I looked through Buchanan-Hermit's pictures tonight to see which photos he had that don't match up to an existing article.

• User:Buchanan-Hermit/photographs/richmond, except for the first, all are part of School District 38 Richmond:
  • Richmond Christian Elementary School
  • Spul'u'kwuks Elementary School
  • Thompson Elementary School
  • McKay Elementary School
  • Kilgour Elementary School
  • Ferris Elementary School
  • Garden City Elementary School
  • Palmer Secondary School
  • Lee Elementary School
  • Kidd Elementary School
  • Whiteside Elementary School

...in case one of you guys from the lower mainland wants to start an article about an elementary school. With a picture.  :)

--Stephane Charette 08:20, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Wow, people DO look at my work! hehe. I'm having one hell of a time making stubs for the Richmond schools. It's been smooth sailing so far, except for Kilgour Elementary School. Being raised here, I know for a fact that this school exists (duh, I have a photo), but for some reason the Richmond School District doesn't have it listed, nor can I find an official site for it. And I know for sure that this is a public school under that school district. Hope it didn't close down (thus making my photo useless ;) ). -→Buchanan-Hermit™/?! 08:19, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Update: Apparently, Kilgour was closed sometime within the past two years. Bummer. Oh well... I'll leave the photo up, in case someone wants to write an article about education budget cuts in BC or something. -→Buchanan-Hermit™/?! 08:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Just another note: I'm really focused on Richmond articles (with it being my hometown) but also look for photos for other Vancouver area schools. I tend to hop through multiple cities in Greater Vancouver in any given week. -→Buchanan-Hermit™/?! 08:21, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I notice you uploaded the images to Commons. This brings up a point, that we may wish to discuss: picture organizaiton in Commons. It should be a fairly simple matter for anybody who knows the name of a school to find it in Commons, without knowing the file name, or knowing what it looks like. I've been using Commons:Category:Schools in Canada, but almost nobody else has, and there are no sub-cats yet. We might also want to specify a suggested naming convention for new picture uploads. Should we put school pics in categories, article/galleries, or both? Commons seems to be a bit of a "Wild West" in terms of how stuff is organized. So, I hope its somehow possible to get some order, at least for Canadian schools. Ideally, people can freely take a picture of a school, and be assured, that whenever an article is made for it, the image will be found; and also people know they're not re-doing what's been done. --Rob 09:02, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

What does that mean? I drove out to Lower Mission today for the sole purpose of taking a picture of the French school there, L’Anse-au-sable. Is the "Commons" different than the upload file link I see at the left of my browser? Someone familiar with pictures needs to propose something on how school pictures should be named and where to upload. I'll wait to upload my new image until then. --Stephane Charette 10:54, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

The Commons is a separate WikiMedia project. It's purpose is to store documents, images, video, and audio that can be shared between all projects (eg - Wikipedia and Wiktionary). The "upload file" link is specific to one project, in this case english Wikipedia, and the files are only accessible to that project. Visit the Commons and browse about to get an idea of what it is. You'll probably want to register an account there if you plan on uploading any images that'll be used by different language versions of Wikipedia.

Regarding naming, I'd prefer if images etc. had useful names like "University of Toronto campus.jpg" rather than "IMG0037.jpg" or "UoTcamp037.jpg". It makes it immediately clear to the visitor what they're dealing with. Mindmatrix 13:29, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

My normal naming convention, for 99% of my school pics, is this: ____-elem.jpg (for elementary schools) and ____-sec.jpg (for secondary schools). Of course, it may change depending on whether there are two schools in the area with the same name (such as "Quilchena," for Vancouver and Richmond). -→Buchanan-Hermit™/?! 18:43, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I've just spent some time at commons to see how it all works. I've started a new discussion at the bottom to discuss copyright issues with images. --Stephane Charette 20:15, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

More pics

I'm going to spider through the city of Vancouver for schools for the next while. I'm going to post the photos that need articles here in case some of you are bored and want to write something. (Alternatively, you can also keep an eye on the Vancouver page of my photos section, on my userpage.)

• Image:Weir-elem.jpg - Dr. George M. Weir Elementary School
• Image:Cavell-elem.jpg - Edith Cavell Elementary School
• Image:Wolfe-elem.jpg - General Wolfe Elementary School
• Image:Livingstone-elem.jpg - David Livingstone Elementary School
• Image:Selkirk-elem.jpg - Lord Selkirk Elementary School
• Image:Osler-elem.jpg - Sir William Osler Elementary School.
• Image:Vanhorne-elem.jpg - Sir William Van Horne Elementary School.
• Image:Mackenzie-elem.jpg - Sir Alexander MacKenzie Elementary School.
• Image:Tecumseh-elem.jpg - Tecumseh Elementary School.
• Image:Douglas-elem.jpg - Sir James Douglas Elementary School.
• Image:Moberly-elem.jpg - Walter Moberly Elementary School.
• Image:Trudeau-elem.jpg - Pierre Elliott Trudeau Elementary School.
• Image:Henderson-elem.jpg - Henderson Elementary School.
• Image:Fleming-elem.jpg - Sir Sanford Fleming Elementary School.
• Image:Mcbride-elem.jpg - Sir Richard McBride Elementary School.
• Image:Tyee-elem.jpg - Tyee Elementary School.
• Image:Dickens-elem.jpg - Charles Dickens Elementary School.
• Image:Grandview-elem.jpg - Grandview Elementary School.
• Image:Franklin-elem.jpg - Sir John Franklin Elementary School.
• Image:Lord-elem.jpg - Dr. A. R. Lord Elementary School.
• Image:Hastings-elem.jpg - Hastings Elementary School.
• Image:Macdonald-elem.jpg - Sir William MacDonald Elementary School.
• Image:Seymour-elem.jpg - Admiral Seymour Elementary School.
• Image:Strathcona-elem.jpg - Lord Strathcona Elementary School.

I'll update this list as things progress. -→Buchanan-Hermit™/?! 06:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Update: Took a bunch of pics today... This list is looking long. I should really start writing some stubs for them, lol... :) -→Buchanan-Hermit™/?! 02:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

In preperation to archive the talk page, I've added a pictures without articles section to WP:EiC. If you have more pictures, please add them there instead so they don't get lost. --Stephane Charette 18:14, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Colleges and Universities

I'm going to reintegrate them. This is still Education in Canada, not Elementary Schools in Canada. Ardenn 15:39, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

You make it sound like I've completely removed colleges and universities! Most of the topics of discussion are about school boards, high schools, and grade schools, but I never meant to completely remove anything from the project about colleges and universities. (I'm stuck on your use of reintegrate them.) Much the opposite, we've been discussing colleges in Quebec (called CEGEP), and on the main project page universities and colleges are mentionned at:

• logos (which I just added this weekend)
• templates (which was part of the proposed re-write of the project)
• briefly mentionned in the categories subpage
• lists

What I didn't do when I re-wrote the project was cut-and-paste entire big paragraphs that people were not following, not discussing, or that had simply been cut-and-paste from the other college and university wikiproject that mentions Canadian colleges, universities, templates, etc...

All I ask, which is the same thing I've done with several sections of the project now, is that if anyone wants to add a new section, a new template, a new guideline, etc..., is just put your proposal up on this talk page so it can be discussed first. I'm glad we have people who want to focus and colleges and universities, I'm not against it! It is just that from February when I joined up until early June when I re-wrote the project page proposal, all of the discussion were about school boards, and K-12. --Stephane Charette 18:24, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm happy to work with Colleges and Universities. Which reminds me, a discussion is going on over at Talk:University of Guelph-Humber that we could set some guidelines on. That is when is an institution it's own "University" or "College" outright, and when is it just an academic campus of a larger organization? Ardenn 18:40, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I added to the list section List of universities in Canada and affiliated provincial lists. Ardenn 19:00, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I've been adding Template:Infobox University to all the BC post-secondary institutions. -- Usgnus 19:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Categories

You don't want categories to get too large, that's why we have for example Category:High schools in Ottawa. You don't want to limit the natural growth either, so I promose we remove the prohabition on new categories, with the caveat that you need 3 articles to form a new cat. (I hate to see cats with only one article in them.) Ardenn 15:46, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

99% of towns across Canada have at least 3 schools. I think we need to prevent the creation of categories for every "hometown schools", especially since we seem to insist that schools must ONLY be in the most specific category. How do we prevent categories for every town or unincorporated juristriction that happens to have the bare minimum number of schools?

For what it's worth, for me this would be a non-issue if a school could at the same time be in (for example):

• Category:Welland schools
• Category:Niagara Region schools
• Category:Ontario schools

Then, if someone is looking through the Ontario category, they will find all the schools they would expect. But at the moment, if a school in Welland can only be in the Welland schools category, people looking through Ontario will not see it. --Stephane Charette 17:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Do it by county? Toronto/Ottawa for example have no county, because they're big enough. However, Mississauga is part of Peel. Ardenn 18:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The guideline for categorization is fairly explicit about placing articles in a category and its parent - don't do it. Yes, rules can be bent, but this case probably doesn't deserve it. Also, you want to ensure that categories are moderately populated. In the stub sorting project, the aim is a minimum of 50 stubs per category, and sometimes more. In this case, I would say that simply being judicious in the split is sufficient. So, instead of creating categories for schools in Woodbridge, Maple etc, use the most relevant jurisdiction, York Regional Municipality for this example (eg: Category:High schools in York Region, Ontario). As those fill up, you may consider further splits, but do so on the basis of necessity. Mindmatrix 18:14, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

BTW: Although I already went ahead with the York region category, I'll respect the final decision achieved by consensus here. Don't feel as if I'm imposing my own concept of how this should work. Mindmatrix 18:37, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I respect those who are bold and go ahead and implement ahead of time. I like what you've said, it feels sorta like what I wanted to say. I also like the regional cat, same thing as counties really. Ardenn 18:41, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with WP:BOLD, but no-one typically needs to hide behind it. Also note the similarity between WP:BOLD and WP:reckless.  :) --Stephane Charette 19:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The same thought crossed my mind! Mindmatrix 02:07, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Whatever the decision is, remember to update the relevant sections of the project page. --Stephane Charette 18:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

A lot of villages and towns in BC have one or no schools. Regions are the way to go, except for the smaller (by population) provinces and territories. -- Usgnus 18:46, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

In BC, we have regional districts, which may be the way to go, except of course for the GVRD and the Capital Regional District. I don't know if the school districts respect the regional district boundaries, however. -- Usgnus 18:53, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I think by and large, the provincial level makes the most sense. People aren't necessarily familiar with the exact location of local boundries. These boundries can change (unlike provincial ones). Also, the school district boundries are often different than the municipal boundries people are more familiar with. As well, in Alberta (and Ontario?) separate school districts have their own boundries which may, or may not, match the public district boundries. For instance Chestermere is outside Calgary's public school district, but inside the Calgary Catholic School District. So, it wouldn't be clear whether the Catholic school there goes in High schools in Calgary, but it would be easy to find in Category:High schools in Alberta. Outside of Ontario, I just don't see the need for local categories. --Rob 19:20, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

To clarify my previous rambling, I think that any jurisdiction should receive its own category, no matter at which governmental level it is (district, region, city, borough etc) so long as certain criteria are met. Specifically:

• if it can be populated with articles immediately, and
• how many articles can eventually populate it.

We should set a target minimum for a category (I'd say 30); that is, at least that many schools must exist in that area, for which articles can be written. Perusing the High schools in Ontario category, I notice that splitting off York Region, Durham Region and Peel Region, in addition to the existing Hamilton, Ottawa and Toronto splits, reduces all categories to manageable levels and meets the criteria I've defined. None of those require finer categorization, but have plenty of articles that could populate them. I don't think a category needs to be split until it hits about 150-200 articles. Does this seem reasonable? Mindmatrix 02:07, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm wondering if someone could create a subcategory for Schools in Newfoundland & Labrador? So far I only know of 3 articles that could go in there so I don't think there's a need to simplify it further than that right now. If there's a decided minimum amount of articles for this I'm sure I could dig up information on other schools in the area which I plan on doing in the future anyway. I'm still trying to write these articles so I'm in no rush. Any advice on this stuff is highly appreciated, I've only gotten into editing Wikipedia lately and I liked the sound of this project. HeartOfGold 01:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Created. Welcome to the project. If you'd like, add your name ~~~ to the project page under Participants. --Usgnus 03:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Project page changes

I have a problem with changes being made to the main project page. I think it is unprofessional. Specifically:

• The use of <s> and </s> to strike out entire sentences on the main project page is unwaranted. If a part of the project is wrong, then remove it or fix it. The use of <s> is normally reserved for talk pages when someone wants to take back their own comment. Use of strikeout on other people's comment is considered quite rude, as it leaves the author feeling like their own voice and opinion was taken away. In this case, on the main project page, I think striking out sentences leaves the project looking raw, unpolished, or in the middle of an editing conflict. Not what we want -- or not what I'd want anyway.
• Inserting several huge paragaphs which are cut-and-paste exact copies of paragraphs from a sister project (WikiProject for Colleges & Universities) is a waste of time and resource. (Not hardware resource, but soft resources -- editors like myself and you who track and regularly use the project.) Why have 2 projects that are exactly the same down to the last word, which was cut-and-paste from the other? We need to use WP:EiC to highlight what needs to be done to Canadian education articles. If what needs to be done is exactly the same as what another project is doing, then simply point to the other project for that subsection. This will make it easier to read through the project page. Instead, I would much rather we come up with our set of guidelines and recommendations. But to cut-and-paste entire sections which in itself is larger than high schools, elementary schools, and school boards combined, is not productive.
• Lastly, we need to ensure that large project changes are proposed on the talk page first. Many of us have been making incremental fixes and additions to the project page, and that is good, but large sections should be proposed. Leave it up for 1 week or so in the talk page to see if anyone has further modification, comments, or objections. Then add it to the project page. Adding huge new sections to the project without asking for anyone's opinon first is unprofessional.

Think of it like a project at work. A shared project. (Not a group project at school where 1 kid does all of the work and everyone gets credit!)  :)

--Stephane Charette 18:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

1. I used the strikeout to illustrate the differences. I'm happy to remove that section.
2. If we are to be our own WikiProject, we need guidelines, even if it's just a copy and paste. How else are we to edit it, to our own standards, if we want to deviate from that other project?
3. I'll be happy to propose future changes on the talk page.

Ardenn 18:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

1. There is no difference to illustrate. If you've decided you're going to handle the colleges and universities side of things, then make your proposal and fix the sentences that need to be fixed.
2. I disagree. If project B is a cut-and-paste copy of project A, then why have project B? Presumably there are things we want to do differently, or things that are specifically Canadian. That is what needs to be proposed, and what needs to go into the project. But for you to put the exact text of project A into project B is not productive.
3. I'd rather see the huge section of cut-and-paste reverted and discussed in the talk page, then saying future changes will be discussed on the talk page. Many editors -- myself and others -- have worked hard at making certain all big proposals were first discussed on the talk page -- I'm dissapointed to see you introduce these big changes and somehow think discussing changes on the talk page doesn't apply to you. --Stephane Charette 19:14, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I propose a middle ground solution. A compromise. We take out the copy and paste structure for Colleges and Universities, and link to the one over at WikiProject Universities, however, we put our own statement in. I'll illustrate what I mean.

We follow the format for colleges and universities as laid out at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Universities#Structure. However, we may deviate from this, or alter it to form our own structure. See the talk page for relevant discussion.

Ardenn 19:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree 100% that this would be a great solution, and is what I had in mind all along -- I'm sorry if this wasn't articulated correctly. Mention and link to the structure section of the other project, and then immediately start going through the Canadian modifications, alterations, or additions to what the generic U&C project page says. I don't think we'll even need to mention our own talk page -- we simply go right into what the Canadian modifications would be. --Stephane Charette 19:39, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll work on the Canada-related structure when I get a few free moments. I'll replace the text above in place of the copy and paste structure. Ardenn 19:41, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to tinker with it over at a new proposal page. Let's keep the discussion there, and tinker there. Ardenn 19:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Lists

All post-secondary lists should now be up. I really want to put some of them on afd, especially since they all have related categories. I'm talking about List of law schools in Canada for example. Thoughts? Ardenn 19:41, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I support this, as maintaining all of these lists is error-prone, and unmaintained lists quickly grow stale. As I previously mentionned (archive 2?), if we're having trouble getting some of these deleted, it may be easier for us to blank the content of the pages and then instead make it redirect to one of the appropriate categories.— Preceding unsigned comment added by S charette (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of business schools in Canada

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of law schools in Canada Ardenn 16:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Results

• List of business schools in Canada on afd resulted as no consensus.
• List of law schools in Canada on afd resulted as keep. Ardenn 06:27, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Archiving

I'm finding myself a little disoriented with the rapid archiving that's going on. Of course the discussions here are quick and extensive and I agree it's best to keep things tidy, -and- I like the archive page summaries that were made, but the college/university section I put up five days ago is off the main page already, before anyone had even commented. Maybe people just weren't very interested in that topic, but it seems to me that it was pretty relevant to what Ardenn is talking about now. Would it be possible to archive only those discussions that have come to their natural conclusion? Cpastern 01:07, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm extremely sorry about that, it was I who archived the talk page. The page was over 60kb in size -- mostly due to several large proposals I had posted -- so I kinda felt it was my responsability to clean it up. I tried to keep the recent discussion on the talk page, but you're right, I missed the topic you had started. The repost from archive2 is directly below. --Stephane Charette 09:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

College/university organization

Spreading my desire for organization beyond the bounds of Quebec, I propose that the categories, lists and nav boxes for Canadian colleges and universities be cleaned up. I don't yet have an opinion on how to do it, but here's the situation: we have a Category:Lists of universities and colleges in Canada and some provinces have separate college and university lists and some have combined. There's a list for universities in Canada but not for colleges. On List of universities in Canada there are a lot of links to "main articles" with redundant or slightly different lists, which are organized in different ways.

Some provinces and territories also have their own navigation boxes. And then, of course, are the various categories. The extent of the redundancy can be seen in, for example, Yukon College, which has a "See also" link to a list which has exactly the same contents as the nav box, and is in a category of the same name (which has only one additional entry, for a total of four). So there are three nearly identical and redundant navigation and organization systems going on in one small article. Besides which, having a nav box for "Colleges in Canada's Territories" (Template:Can-terr-colleges) doesn't make a lot of sense and seems a bit organizationally desperate. Why would someone reading about Yukon College need instant access to a link to a college in Nunavut, whose only similarity is how the region it's in is governed?

I've found Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes interesting reading for suggestions of which to use; maybe it can guide us? It's also worth considering other countries: List of colleges and universities by country. I'm interested in ideas and opinions about what's good and bad and what could happen. Would it be helpful to have a detailed description of the whole situation or can we work with a more general picture? Cpastern 23:01, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Anyone have an idea on the number of colleges in the country? How about in some of the large provinces, like BC, ON, QC?

Same question, but this time with universities.

Knowing the answer (ballpark) may give us an idea as to how best to deal with this. For example, does it make sense to think we have few enough universities to include them all in 1 navbox? I'm guessing colleges are more numerous than univs. --Stephane Charette 10:47, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm counting around 60 universities, and since there are about 50 CEGEPs alone, there must be a lot more colleges. And while Quebec has a whole slew of colleges, Yukon has one. Neither are good sizes for nav boxes. I tend to be opposed to nav boxes based on that sort of organization anyway, since they're redundant to a well constructed and populated category. The guideline I referred to above suggests that nav boxes include some kind of useful structure beyond alphabetical order or categorization. That makes sense to me, but of course the question is how that suggestion relates to our topic.

Here are some uni nav boxes we have now:

• Template:Can-terr-colleges
• Template:Qc Uni
• Template:Ont Uni
• Template:NS Uni
• Template:NB Uni
• Template:McGill
• Template:BC Uni
• Template:Ab Uni

Cpastern 22:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• Template:G10

-- Usgnus 23:37, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

We also have... Template:Ott UC, Template:Ont Coll, and Template:AthabascaU. --Ardenn 16:48, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I support Template:Can-terr-colleges, because I like, in general, the idea of nav boxes. I agree though with the person who said that many provinces have a lot of colleges, and/or Universities. I don't necessarily think that is the best way. Look at Template:Ott UC for example, where it is done by city. Perhaps we can find an alternative? Ardenn 16:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I like nav boxes too, I just think they're being used in excess. Compare List of colleges and universities in New Brunswick and Template:NB Uni. They give exactly the same information. Putting "See also: List of colleges and universities in New Brunswick" at the bottom of the article gives the reader the exact same info as the nav box. (Actually, the list gives an additional 1 item- a lone college.) In comparison, Category:Universities and colleges in New Brunswick doesn't distinguish between public and private the way that the list and the nav box do. So in this case the category doesn't completely replace the list/nav box. But why do we need both the list and the nav box? Especially since we know that this organization can't be applied consistantly to the other provinces and territories because of their different sizes. It doesn't make sense to me to make nav boxes just because we can when the set is the right size. I think they need to complement the categories and lists and be able to be consistantly applied based on some criteria other than size. In this case, the category is obviously needed as a place to put the articles, and the list gives good overview information in an easy to read format. The nav box is extraneous, though pretty. This doesn't mean I'm opposed to all the other nav boxes, too, I'm just taking one example.

I'm more in favor of using nav boxes for cities, though, because I think it's too hard to categorize universities and colleges by city. I'm not sure that Category:Universities and colleges in Ottawa and other city categories should exist, because then some colleges and universities are further down in the category hierarchy than others, whose cities don't have categories. In this case, if the set is small enough, I think it makes sense to get rid of the city categories and use nav boxes. Cpastern 21:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree, the nav boxes and lists do overlap. I wouldn't object to getting rid of the lists. I like Category:Universities and colleges in Ottawa and Category:Universities and colleges in Toronto because they have enough institutions to fill them up, and it takes the burden off the higher category. Again, Ontario is population rich when it comes to Colles and Universities. I however, would probably not support one based on city for Halifax. Ardenn 21:14, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

C&U structure proposal

I had initially missed the reference in a comment above as to where exactly the discussion on the new C&U structure proposal is taking place. For anyone else who missed this:

• the proposal is Wikipedia:WikiProject Education in Canada/U&C Structure Proposal
• discussion on the proposal is Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Education in Canada/U&C Structure Proposal

--Stephane Charette 09:48, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Possible copyright problem with images of buildings

I took a good look at Commons today, and read up on the copyright issues, licenses to use, and many other things. Here is one possible issue I've uncovered:

• Definitely OK:
  • Own photos of:
    • Objects that are PD by age both in the United States and your jurisdiction:
      • Buildings built by an architect who died 70+ (preferrably 100+) years ago
• Questionable, may or may not be OK:
  • All kinds of copyrighted material:
    • Buildings built by an architect who died less than 70 years ago (or is still alive)

(Source: commons:Commons:Licensing#Checklist; I've quoted only a subsection of the actual text.)

Note that some countries specifically state if a picture of a building is free to use. For example, Finland (section 10.8), Germany (section 10.10), and Norway (section 10.23) have no restrictions on pictures of buildings. France on the other hand (section 10.9) states that the architect retains all rights. Unfortunately, Canada (section 10.5) does not state anything about buildings (commons:Commons:Licensing#Canada).

Where does this leave us in regards to images of schools, universities, colleges, etc? --Stephane Charette 20:15, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

From the Copyright Act:

32.2 (1) It is not an infringement of copyright

[...]

(b) for any person to reproduce, in a painting, drawing, engraving, photograph or cinematographic work

(i) an architectural work, provided the copy is not in the nature of an architectural drawing or plan, or

(ii) a sculpture or work of artistic craftsmanship or a cast or model of a sculpture or work of artistic craftsmanship, that is permanently situated in a public place or building;

We've got some reasonable laws here in Canada. -- Usgnus 20:34, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Great. I see that Copyright Act of Canada links to the full text of the act. (I'm thinking I might update the Commons page for the Canada section.) --Stephane Charette 21:09, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Restructuring of Peel District School Board

An editor is moving school articles into "Family" articles, against our naming convention and without discussion. --Usgnus 14:22, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Unless there's a reason I don't know, those moves should be undone. I undid the change at Meadowvale Secondary School. --Rob 17:18, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I've asked the user (Nicholas) to come discuss here. I've found the following moves:

• Erindale Secondary School (Reverted. --Stephane Charette 17:43, 7 July 2006 (UTC))
• Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School (See comment below; please vote.)
• Tomken Road Middle School (We didn't lose much with this one: [2]. --Stephane Charette 18:14, 7 July 2006 (UTC))

Some of this will be hard to undo -- for example, look at how Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School now redirects to Lincoln Alexander Family with the infobox for the Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School but with another 8 schools now "stubbed" into the article body. (Has now been reverted.) I understand what Nicholas may have been trying to do since the Peel School Board does have a page that lists schools by "family", but I don't think the current format works.

Note that Peel District School Board also needs to be cleaned up since it now contains link to "family" articles. (Has now been reverted, and Image:PDSB.gif was removed due to {{imagevio}}.) --Stephane Charette 18:48, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I support having a separate article for the high school. As for the elementary schools and middle schools, either have separate articles for each, put them in the "family" article, or include them in the school board article. --Usgnus 17:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. --Stephane Charette 18:05, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

The article for Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School cannot be fixed since the original page (now a redirect) has been edited since the move and now has an edit history. I've had to do a WP:RM for this one. Please vote at Talk:Lincoln Alexander Family. --Stephane Charette 18:05, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

New stubs and categories

There's been a discussion on WikiProject Stub sorting about splitting the school stub categories. See the section entitled Split of {{Canada-school-stub}}. Mindmatrix 14:43, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I've created the new stub templates, which are listed on the main project page, as well as individual stub categories for the two types (Ontario & British Columbia) which have reached the appropriate threshhold. However, I'm going on vacation tomorrow, so I won't be able to finish sorting the stubs. I finished 'J' before I stopped, so could someone pick up at 'K'? Aelfthrytha 07:41, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Anyone know why of the new stub templates, only the BC one ({{BritishColumbia-school-stub}}) has the cute little schoolhouse icon on the left? Are there rules or guidelines describing how or what can be done? Who put the BC flag on top of the school? And where would I get free flag pictures to use on the other provincial stubs? --Stephane Charette 22:27, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Partially answered at least 1 of my own questions...Buchanan-Hermit: would you be so kind as to reveal more details in regards to Image:Bc-educ.gif so I can do more of the provinces...unless you want to volunteer for the other 9?  :) --Stephane Charette 22:27, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's not hard. I just took the normal schoolhouse pic, and inserted a scaled-down provincial flag on the layer below it. It's easy to do in Photoshop, but you can also do it via Paint (paste the flag down first, then paste the schoolhouse over it). -→Buchanan-Hermit™/?! 22:33, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

As for free flag pics, it would depend on the license on the flags here on Wikipedia. The BC one is public domain, but I'm not sure about the other ones. -→Buchanan-Hermit™/?! 22:34, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I was bored, so I made icons for all the provinces. You win -- enjoy. :) -→Buchanan-Hermit™/?! 00:38, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Peel Board articles

The Peel Board has like two dozen high schools. Each high school has about eight or ten feeder schools. So, just between three cities, we've got a couple hundred articles that could be created, and thus a couple hundred articles to monitor. Most of the schools have little to no notability otherwise, and the existing high school articles are mostly a few sentences long.

Instead of having 200 stubs, we can group all of the high school with their feeder schools, in what the Peel Board calls "families". Thus, instead of having nothing, something that should be AfD'd, having a somewhat developed article like this. Each school name would redirect to the family that it is in. Once, and only once schools have enough content, like Turner Fenton Campus, then they'd be broken off into their own article. -- Zanimum 20:02, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

You've taken the Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School, removed the school's infobox template, renamed the article to Lincoln Alexander Family, and inserted 7 blank stub subsections with school names and no information. In my opinion, this is much worse than the pre-existing Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School article which you claimed was AfD material. This is the 2nd time I've reverted your change today. Instead, if you insist on having an article called Lincoln Alexander Family, why don't you have it in addition to the existing school article? For others who want to see the difference, see the following 2 versions of the same article:

• what we had and what I've reverted to
• what Zanimum has proposed

--Stephane Charette 20:44, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

In addition, possibly. But the fact of the matter is, these articles aren't worth keeping seperate. Unless they have tons of info, I still say redirecting is the best answer. -- Zanimum 17:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

My issue is this: there should not be any articles named XXX Family. For each school board/district, we list and link to the secondary schools, and in each of those articles, we can list feeder schools. The Peel Region School Board does not actually maintain an Applewood Family administrative system, but rather a logical construct with that name. If you'll note, from the board's own website, each family lists only one secondary school, and a number of elementary and junior schools. We lose nothing by eliminating the XXX Family articles, and creating a Feeder schools section for each high school in the system.

You agree that these articles aren't worth keeping seperate, so the only issue is then one of naming - why do we need XXX Family articles, instead of starting directly with the appropriate high school article for that family? In a nutshell, my proposal is this:

• Glenforest Secondary School (with Feeder schools section)
• Glenforest Family -> Glenforest Secondary School (I don't think this is needed, though)
• Forest Glen Public School -> Glenforest Secondary School (until it gets its own article)
• Glenhaven Senior Public School -> Glenforest Secondary School (until it gets its own article)
• Havenwood Public School -> Glenforest Secondary School (until it gets its own article)

Of course, the redirects aren't really necessary, but I've listed them in case somebody wants them. They'd also need to be disambiguated, since some names are common. Does anybody have issues with this? Mindmatrix 19:09, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Why do we need family articles at all? The public schools that kids go to have nothing to do with the high schools. -- Zanimum 12:38, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

(I'm confused by this statement. You are the one, Zanimum, who started creating these "family" articles: User talk:Zanimum#Moving school articles. --Stephane Charette 16:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC))

I assume he was re-iterating the question, then answering it. Mindmatrix 17:36, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Here is my own proposal, somewhat like Mindmatrix's proposal 3 comments higher: Some school boards contain a table which lists the schools and the location of these schools. BC is especially organized with this -- Ontario less so. But here is 1 Ontario example: Conseil scolaire de district du Centre-Sud-Ouest. So my proposal here would be that additional columns be used to provide whatever information the editor wants to provide. The tables themselves could even be arranged by Family Group for Peel if the editor wanted. And the schools themselves that don't have articles could be redirects back to the school board. I think that this would be less of a surprise to users doing a search on school -- between being redirected to a high school, or redirected to the school board, I'd prefer the school board since the link between the grade school and the school board is tighter than the grade school and a high school. --Stephane Charette 16:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

That's a better solution. (I'm not sure what I was thinking when I wrote my proposal - I may have been considering a switch from family articles to the high school article directly.) I support this proposal instead of my own. Mindmatrix 17:36, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Proposed article move for Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School

The article on Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School, was recently moved to Lincoln Alexander Family as part of the Peel School Board problem described above. To have it moved back, I had to file a Wikipedia:Requested moves. However, there are only 3 people so far who have voted on the talk page -- 2 in favour, 1 opposed. If you haven't voted yet, please do so as the administrators who make these moves usually make the decision about 1 week after the request was filed. Thanks. --Stephane Charette 01:15, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Requesting articles...

I'm not apart of this WikiProject, but if anybody has time can they work on these two articles?

• Resurrection Catholic Secondary School
• University Heights Secondary School

Thanks in advance. SilentRage 07:13, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Deletion log for the 2nd one shows it has been deleted twice already with no content. I've added the first one to our project's list of articles needing cleanup. --Stephane Charette 07:23, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Rewrite of Peel District School Board

I was home sick today, so I spent about...oh, 10 hours! ...re-writing Peel District School Board to hopefully solve the "family" articles issue. In the end, I don't exactly like how it turned out simply because of the sheer size of the wikitable I ended up building at the bottom of the article to try and address the "family" information. The school board has 221 schools, which you'd think would be easy to manage compared with others like TDSB's 558 schools. But as you'll see, the table is still huge compared to the article content.

Previous version of the article before my editing: [3]
My last version of the article as of tonight is here: [4]

By doing things this way, I felt it was now possible to clean up what I think was the last "family" article recently created for Peel. That article, which until tonight looked like this has now been converted to a redirect to the new school board article.

In addition, I've also fixed all of the new redirects that User:Zanimum had created from the various schools to the "family" article. For example, Erindale Family had 10 newly-created redirects (Erin Mills Middle School, Brookmede Public School, King's Masting Public School, Pheasant Run Public School, Homelands Sr. Public School, Homelands Senior Public School, Oakridge Public School, Sawmill Valley Public School, Sheridan Park Public School, Thorn Lodge Public School) which now have been fixed to point back to the school board. Hopefully, this will be an acceptable solution and the end to the Peel School Board "family" saga.

Please comment.  :) --Stephane Charette 06:46, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not bad, but I think it's way too long. Instead, how about doing this:

School family	School name
Applewood Family	Applewood Heights Secondary School
	Barondale Public School, Bristol Road Middle School, Burnhamthorpe Public School, Cooksville Creek Public School, Dixie Public School, Fairwind Senior Public School, Huntington Ridge Public School, Nahani Way Public School, Silverthorn Public School, Tomken Road Middle School
Bramalea Family	Bramalea Secondary School
	Aloma Crescent Public School, Balmoral Drive Sr. Public School, Birchbank Public School, Clark Boulevard Public School, Dorset Drive Public School, Earnscliffe Sr. Public School, Eastbourne Drive Public School, Fallingdale Public School, Folkstone Public School

That leaves the table a bit more compact, and the high schools are more visible. (Feel free to clean up my version, I just threw it together as a test.) Just a thought. Mindmatrix 14:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Aside: we should consider a List of schools of the Peel District School Board article, or something similarly named; this could get the full table, whereas the Board article would get a reduced version of it. Mindmatrix 15:17, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I think we should keep the full list/table in the school board article. It works okay for School District 36 Surrey. --Usgnus 16:39, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I cannot compact the table as prototyped above by Mindmatrix -- the whole intent of using the table was to provide information on every school without having to create a bunch of new "family" articles. But as shown above, if all the schools are merged together into 1 big cell, then how do the editors provide information on a per-school basis? The only "family" where I did this in the Peel article so far is for the Erindale Family. I leave it up to other editors such as Zanimum who started this family trend to fill in the missing cells. --Stephane Charette 19:48, 12 July 2006 (UTC)