Wikipedia:Featured article review/Canada/archive1

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

The article was kept by YellowAssessmentMonkey 23:52, 20 April 2010 [1].

Canada

Review commentary

Notified: Jeff3000, JimWae, Soulscanner, Ground Zero, Jkelly, SimonP, Thirty-seven, Ckatz, Sunray, WikiProject Countries, WikiProject Canada
Toolbox

This article was promoted in 2006, and it doesn't look like it has had a review since. I am nominating this featured article for review because I found there are many many sections are lacking in sources/citations. For the section of history; for example, its length is too long and going into unnecessary detail. In addition to these, notes/references are not in correct formats according to the standard of Wikipedia. Oei888 (talk) 17:04, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Also, images need alt text as per

WP:ALT. Eubulides (talk) 19:40, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply
]

I've started this but as I have little experience with alt text I would appreciate it if someone else would take a look. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:14, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! What I see so far looks excellent. Only two minor points: first, please omit "French" as per
WP:ALT#Phrases to avoid. Eubulides (talk) 01:32, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply
]
Okay, done. I wasn't quite sure what to do with the maps though; any suggestions? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:45, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The page takes a long time to download. Download times might improve with some pruning. Perhaps the number of external links, nav templates, and quotes from references could be reduced? There's one image I'm not sure about:

talk) 14:23, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply
]

Too long to down load?? well anyways not sure if this is still being talk about ..But if it is i would hope that a GA/FA review type process would be done first listing the problems. WITH much time given to update the article to new standers. IN other words give editors a chance to fix it before it is downgraded i see no rush in downgrading the article it was once just fine.
talk) 20:44, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply
]
This is supposed to be the encyclopedia for everyone. If it's slow for me (in a first-world country on a fast connection and computer) then anyone in the third-world or using an old computer will never see it. That defeats one of the key purposes of the project: to provide information for those that cannot otherwise afford it. The page needs trimming in size to meet criterion 4.
talk) 10:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply
]

Comment. To Buzzzsherman: this article is still open for comments, discussion and editing. Articles are generally listed at FAR for at least two weeks, and then move on to the FARC (the actual voting phase), where they remain for at least another two weeks. Here are my thoughts on the article:

  • Dead links fixed, not sure about the other stuff. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:13, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • References need significant work on formatting. Web references need publishers and access dates at the very least, which many of the current references are lacking.
  • This should now be fixed for all references, although I would appreciate it if someone would double-check. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:13, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • What makes current ref #26 (bloorstreet.com) a reliable reference?
  • Changed
  • What makes current ref #132 (railwaypeople.com) a reliable reference?
  • Changed
  • What makes current ref #167 (Global Recession...) a reliable reference?
  • Removed

Hope these suggestions help! Dana boomer (talk) 14:52, 18 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ok tks i will get a few people like
talk) 22:39, 19 October 2009 (UTC)[reply
]
Reducing size

Question... we need to trim down the article anyone got a problem with removing some content that is coverd in main article ..I was thinking the following bellow could be removed..but some pictures would have to go..any opinions? "The gulf is bounded by Newfoundland to the north and the Maritimes to the south. The Maritimes protrude eastward along the Appalachian Mountain range, from northern New England and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are divided by the Bay of Fundy, which experiences the world's largest tidal variations. Ontario and Hudson Bay dominate central Canada. West of Ontario, the broad, flat Canadian Prairies spread toward the Rocky Mountains, which separate them from British Columbia. A lake in the foreground reflects the image of the snowy mountain-tops in the background. There is an outcrop of forested land between the two Moraine Lake in Banff National Park, Alberta.

In northwestern Canada, the Mackenzie River flows from the Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean. A tributary of a tributary of the Mackenzie is the South Nahanni River, which is home to Virginia Falls, a waterfall about twice as high as Niagara Falls. A pier and some houses on the edge of a body of water. There are rolled pieces of fabric on the pier in the foreground, and more houses in the background A Maritime scene at Peggys Cove, Nova Scotia, which has long been sustained by the Atlantic fishery. Northern Canadian vegetation tapers from coniferous forests to tundra to the Arctic barrens in the far north. The northern Canadian mainland is ringed with a vast archipelago containing some of the world's largest islands."

talk) 21:37, 24 October 2009 (UTC)[reply
]

done since no one said anything i will go out on a limb and do it ... i went ahead and trimmed the articles size again. I have replaced above text with a reference and this statement "Canada is surrounded north, east, and west with coastline and since the last ice age has consisted of eight distinct forest regions. The vastness and variety of Canada's geography, ecology, vegetation and landforms have given rise to a wide variety of climates throughout the country. "
Getting there
Redlinks aren't important (they are placeholders to indicate the need of a subject-specific article). I'll check over all the alts a bit later, and add where needed. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 19:34, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I found the current version of the one remaining dead link and made the update in the article. PKT(alk) 22:11, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Although most of my comments from above were completed, I still stand by my statement about high quality sources. I still am not convinced that Encyclopedia Brittanica, the World Book Encyclopedia and multiple Canadian government websites should be considered high quality sources when there are so many books and journal articles to choose from. The list that is now the Further reading section looks like (from talk page dicussion) it was the original references section before in-line citations began to be required. Now, these books, which were presumably originally used to write the article, have been delegated to a bloated Further reading section, instead of just being used with in-line citations. Dana boomer (talk) 15:07, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

agree with World Book Encyclopedia and as for Encyclopedia Brittanica i think it is great and well written Encyclopedia (to be honest it has a much better good source reliability history then wikipedia does) but it is a wiki competitor and i can see why using it is discouraged ....''The government of Canada links are not the best but are very useful in furter understanding (reading on the spot) more about each subject line.

As for old original references i can only find 4 of the 19 books listed in the Ottawa university's library's... I will need some help in finding them if we plan to reuse them.....Still the article has come a long way since we started 2 weeks ago.. Good job guys.... love love love

talk) 19:07, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply
]

Update ok have used 7 of the old refs , 2 were links i could use ...need help with the rest only 6 to go!!
talk) 21:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply
]
Lead
The lead is a basic and condensed summary of the rest of the article. Citations in the lead are generally discouraged/not needed for the simply reason that they should be present sourcing the information in the main body of the article. If they are not being used in the body, then they need to be added from the lead ASAP. If they are, then there is no reason to have them in the lead anyways.
talk, contributions) 07:22, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply
]

If there is no listed author, it is left empty, we don't list the author as the publisher twice. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) (Invincibles Featured topic drive:one left) 04:18, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Move to FARC for further review. This article is cluttered by too many images, which seriously impacts the load time. Citations are inconsistently formatted and have many typos. I haven't looked at content yet; will once the article is cleaned up. The {{main}} template is used incorrectly, and some should be switched to a different template. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • A few images still need alt text [2]. Dabomb87 (talk) 17:47, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Citations still have inconsistencies (check my cleanups). Dabomb87 (talk) 18:03, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

FA criteria concerns are sourcing: consistency and quality of citations. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) (Invincibles finally at Featured topic candidates) 05:30, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I came here intending to help out, but I'm finding it very slow to load, and once I do get it open, I see the text is full of citation templates, which make it very hard, if not impossible to copy edit e.g.

From the early 17th century onwards, that part of [[New France]] that lay along the [[Saint Lawrence River]] and the northern shores of the [[Great Lakes]] was named ''Canada'', an area that was later split into two British colonies, [[Upper Canada]] and [[Lower Canada]], until their re-unification as the [[Province of Canada]] in 1841.<ref name=Rayburn>Rayburn, Alan (2001) (p.1-22).</ref> Upon [[Canadian Confederation|Confederation]] in 1867, the name ''Canada'' was adopted as the legal name for the new country,<ref name="Martin">{{cite journal| last=Martin| first=Robert| title=1993 Eugene Forsey Memorial Lecture: A Lament for British North America| journal=The Machray Review| publisher=Prayer Book Society of Canada| year=1993| url=http://www.prayerbook.ca/library/machray/issue5/machray5d.htm| accessdate=2008-11-05| quote=Strictly speaking, the official name of the new country was, simply, "Canada," but usage sanctioned "Dominion of Canada".}}</ref> and ''[[Dominion]]'' (a term from Psalm 72:8)<ref>{{cite book| last=Clarke| first=Michael| title=Canada: Portraits of the Faith| year=1998| page=60}}</ref> was conferred as the country's title;<ref>{{cite book| first=J. E.| last=Hodgetts| coauthors=Gerald Hallowell| year=2004| chapter=Dominion| title=Oxford Companion to Canadian History| location=Toronto| publisher=Oxford University Press| isbn=0195415590| quote=The title conferred on Canada by the preamble to the Constitution Act, 1867, whereby the provinces declare 'their desire to be federally united into one Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom.'| page=183}}</ref> combined, the term ''Dominion of Canada'' was in common usage until the 1950s. Thereafter, as Canada asserted its political autonomy from the [[United Kingdom]], the federal government increasingly used simply ''Canada'' on state documents and treaties, a change that was reflected in the renaming of the national holiday from [[Dominion Day]] to [[Canada Day]] in 1982.<ref>{{cite web| title=Government of Canada Events 2009 Canada Site| publisher=Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada|work=Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada|date= 2009-10-19| accessdate=2009-10-19| url=http://canada.gc.ca/whats-quoi/nel_fg-eng.html#July| quote=Canada Day was established in 1879 under the name "Dominion Day" and became known by its current name in 1982.}}</ref>

Sandy, you wrote above that the images were slowing it down. Might it not be the templates, and is there anything we can do to stop people from filling texts with templates like this? It has almost become an access issue, because the articles are left practically uneditable, except by people with the special template-filtering eyes, which doesn't include me. :) SlimVirgin 06:49, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Gimmetrow did an analysis once somewhere, and IIRC, images slow down load time more than cite templates. He might know where to find that info. He removed all the cite templates from an article and compared load times. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:48, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The page can be reduced in size without altering the templates by cutting out quotes which simply duplicate material. Also, it is unnecessary to use "ref name" when the reference is only used once. The paragraph above can be reduced in size by at least 20% (from 2374 to 1811 characters) without any loss or change to the article text:

From the early 17th century onwards, that part of [[New France]] that lay along the [[Saint Lawrence River]] and the northern shores of the [[Great Lakes]] was named ''Canada'', an area that was later split into two British colonies, [[Upper Canada]] and [[Lower Canada]], until their re-unification as the [[Province of Canada]] in 1841.<ref>Rayburn, Alan (2001) (p.1-22).</ref> Upon [[Canadian Confederation|Confederation]] in 1867, the name ''Canada'' was adopted as the legal name for the new country,<ref>{{cite journal|last=Martin|first=Robert|title=1993 Eugene Forsey Memorial Lecture|journal=The Machray Review|publisher=Prayer Book Society of Canada|year=1993| url=http://www.prayerbook.ca/library/machray/issue5/machray5d.htm|accessdate=2008-11-05}}</ref> and ''[[Dominion]]'' (a term from Psalm 72:8)<ref>{{cite book|last=Clarke| first=Michael|title=Canada: Portraits of the Faith|year=1998|page=60}}</ref> was conferred as the country's title;<ref>{{cite book|first=J. E.|last=Hodgetts|coauthors=Gerald Hallowell|year=2004|chapter=Dominion|title=Oxford Companion to Canadian History|location=Toronto|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0195415590| page=183}}</ref> combined, the term ''Dominion of Canada'' was in common usage until the 1950s. Thereafter, as Canada asserted its political autonomy from the [[United Kingdom]], the federal government increasingly used simply ''Canada'' on state documents and treaties, a change that was reflected in the renaming of the national holiday from [[Dominion Day]] to [[Canada Day]] in 1982.<ref>{{cite web|title=Government of Canada Events 2009|publisher=Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada|work=Minister of Public Works and Government Services|date=2009-10-19|accessdate=2009-10-19|url=http://canada.gc.ca/whats-quoi/nel_fg-eng.html#July}}</ref>

If the entire article is similar, which it apparently is, the article is 20–25% larger than it needs to be, even before making any cuts to the actual article prose.

talk) 10:23, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply
]

Yes, though it's hard to see where to make the cuts, because the templates made the text hard to edit. I was intending to go through it and do a copy edit for flow, which would have included tightening, but I can't do it with the templates in place. SlimVirgin 10:25, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Citation templates are mis-used. Obvious non-publishers are listed in publisher fields. Invented names for official organisations are used. Inappropriate sources used: A world elephant conference on geographic formation; a Prayer book society publication on history. Gross repeated citation of inappropriate tertiary sources including non signed, non specialist, and low grade (worldbook) tertiaries. Failure to cite law and government proceedings correctly. Typos in names in citations. Works in works (book chapters, encyclopedia articles) not cited correctly). Bias towards full-text online sources. Use of low quality sources, lack of high quality sources. Fifelfoo (talk) 21:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Could you clarify some of your comments? For example, what would you consider an invented name?
talk) 22:50, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply
]
Demographics

In the "Demographics" section, it is strange that one third (or 33.333...%) of the respondents are reported as giving "Canadian" as their ethnicity, but the "largest ethnic group" is said to be "English", at 21%.

I took a look at "Statistics Canada", reported as the source for this (mis)information (the link is broken, so I had to google it). Here is the relevant link: [3] What I saw is that Statistics Canada does not say that 21% of Canadians are ethnic English, but that 21% of Canadians (or rather an absolute figure that represents 21% of the total Canadian population) report an English "ethnic origin". So there seems to be a gross confusion: the article reports about "ethnic groups", while the source that should support this talks about something completely different: ethnic origins.

My own knowledge about Canada is too small to pretend that I can fix anything in the article. But evidently something is wrong there, and should be corrected, preferably by an editor who actually knows Canada (and, of course, the difference between "ethnic group" and "ethnic origin). Ninguém (talk) 16:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. I see some significant good improvements from the nom'd version. Cirt (talk) 03:34, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist. Many sentences were not being satisfactorily fixed with citation. The article do not meet the current FA standard.
    • e.g.: Using its spending powers, the federal government can initiate national policies in provincial areas, such as the Canada Health Act; the provinces can opt out of these, but rarely do so in practice. Really?
    • e.g.: In Quebec, British Columbia, Newfoundland & Labrador, New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, and Yukon, hydroelectricity is a cheap and clean source of renewable energy. Hydroelectricity in Ontario at least is not cheap. An average household in Renfrew Ontario at least needs to pay around 700 - 800 dollars per month. Any evidence that you can give me?? pls!
      • Hydroelectricity is widely used, renewable, and cheap compared with similar alternative energy sources. Power in Canada, generally speaking, is cheaper than in most of the rest of the world. Nikkimaria (talk)
    • e.g.: In the 1980s, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives abolished the NEP and changed the name of FIRA to "Investment Canada" in order to encourage foreign investment. The Canada – United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) of 1988 eliminated tariffs between the two countries, while the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) expanded the free-trade zone to include Mexico in the 1990s. Again, citiation is required.
    • e.g.: Newcomers settle mostly in the major urban areas of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. Any evidence? how do you define newcomers?
      • Newcomers meaning new immigrants to Canada, as stated earlier in that section. Cited. Nikkimaria (talk)
    • e.g.: Canadian culture has historically been influenced by British, French, and Aboriginal cultures and traditions. It has also been heavily influenced by American culture because of its proximity and the high rate of migration between the two countries. The great majority of English-speaking immigrants to Canada between 1755 and 1815 were Americans from the Thirteen Colonies. During the War of Independence, 46,000 Americans came to Canada, exiled because of their loyalty to Britain. Between 1785 and 1812, another 30,000 moved to Canada—the so-called Late Loyalists—in response to promises of land, provided that they agreed to swear allegiance to the Crown. Any book I can find out from library?? pls! Oei888 (talk) 03:28, 8 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Not a book, but I have added a reliable source. Please keep in mind that there is no requirement for sources to be print-only. Please let me know if you have further concerns. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:03, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. From what I understand this is an FAR not an FARC so there should be no reason for vote like terms such as "Keep" or "Remove". On another note it should be pointed out there is a tension between a well-sourced article and a compact article. Well-sourced articles will have great difficulty being compact. If every fact needs a citation then an article with lots of facts (presumably a good thing) is going to get bogged down by citations very quickly. Add to that the requirement for alt text and it gets silly. If this is the kind of discussion that is going to emerge I think a concept of a what a FA country article should look like be made very clear. I have noticed recently a number of previously GA articles being demoted and at least one FA, now I see some comments here trying to move this article to FARC. There are pitifully few country articles as it is that are GA much less FA and I must start to question the wisdom of the current implementation of the review process if more country articles are being demoted than promoted. It would seem to suggest editors are more enthusiastic in tearing things down than building things up. Lambanog (talk) 14:55, 8 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lambanog, this article has been moved from FAR to FARC, see the header of this section, "FARC commentary". That means that keep and delist declarations are appropriate at this point. At this point, one keep declaration and one delist declaration have been made, and so the article is far from being delisted at this point, especially as most of the concerns raised have been addressed. The article is simply waiting for a few reviewers to thoroughly go through the article, make final comments, and make their final declarations. Also, articles being promoted or demoted from GA/FA has nothing to do with their worthiness as a topic, and everything to do with their conformation to review process guidelines. These guidelines tend to change over time, and so articles must change with them if their editors want them to still maintain that status. It is not the reviewers' faults if main editors are no longer interested in maintaining their articles, or if there are few editors willing to work on a topic as large as an entire country. The numbers of overall GAs and FAs continue to increase, and so it may be that editors are just interested in other topics, rather than being interested in "tearing things down". Do you have comments on this article specifically that could be of help to the editors attempting to maintain its FA status? Dana boomer (talk) 15:24, 8 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • To those seeking to maintain the FA? Haven't looked at it too closely to make such recommendations. My impression though is that it is comparable with other country FAs. My comment would be this: For those who wish to have it demoted, point to the significantly better country articles and explain why. If these conflicting arguments based on its not having enough citations on one hand but also it's too big on the other are acceptable then I want to know what article successfully fulfills both concerns. With no explicit comparative standard, these arguments can simply be masking arbitrary nitpicking. Lambanog (talk) 15:42, 8 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Saying that other country FAs are worse won't work as they would have to be FARed too, not the other way round. Lots of articles stand still and the standards rise and they get removed if they don't get renovated YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 23:07, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One must remember that this is a country article and as such there are certain additional format requirements imposed upon them. Going by other country reviews I have seen, not following Wikipedia country template standards has been grounds for criticism. I would like to bring it to the attention of reviewers that these standards applied to country articles have the potential to conflict with FA criteria. In my view there needs to be an assessment of whether the new FA criteria prejudice country articles. FA comprehensiveness is in direct conflict with country article summary style. I also see some FA reviewers criticism of content emphasis. Inescapably the indirect inference is that the reviewer knows more about the subject than the writers of the article. Maybe that is appropriate if it can be backed up, but writing style and execution is where FA reviewers expertise I think would mainly lie. Lambanog (talk) 04:23, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I don't understand why the foreign relation of Canada and military should be closely related in this article. Any special reason??? Don't you think the foreign relation of Canada not only include the aspect of military, but also the commercial relation with other countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia as well? The UK is by far Canada's most important commercial partner in Europe and, from a global perspective, ranks second only to the United States. Such special commerical relation between the UK and Canada should be elaborated more in detail. Anyway, the section of foreign relation in this article is not acceptable and comprehensive enough for the FA standard. Oei888 (talk) 01:45, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Commercial relationships are largely covered under "Economy". Other foreign relations issues, as far as I can tell, are in the appropriate section. This is closely related to military because, besides economics, a good proportion of Canada's relationship with the rest of the world has been through the military - alliances, relief efforts, war, and even diplomacy to some extent. Can you specify what aspects of Canada's foreign relations you feel need to be more comprehensive, given that commercial relations are under Economy? Nikkimaria (talk) 21:03, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Commerical relationships are not largely covered under the section of Economy from my personal opinion (in case you don't think to put that specific information under the section of Foreign Relation). Again, the special commerical relationship between the United Kingdom and Canada didn't mention. As far as I know, the UK is by far Canada's most important commerical partner in Europe, ranks second only to the United States in global prespective. I am more interested in knowing the foreign relationship and/or commerical relationship between Canada and China or Japan (or even Australia). As long as you specify those aspects I would feel that at least this specific facet is more comprehensive. In addition to this, still quite a few sentences in this article having neither situable citations nor correct sources. I've carefully checked already and I don't think the online information/citation you provided last time for hydroelectrity are vaild, for example; not to mention other citations. Extremely few citations correctly provided from journals or books. To sum up, this is definitely not an FA article but for GA, I don't object it! Oei888 (talk) 06:17, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • I've added two sentences about Canada's largest foreign trading partners (US, UK, Japan). As this is a summary article, we can't discuss Canada's relations with every country; I suggest you find a daughter article to read about the relationship with Australia or other countries. I've also added a considerable number of book and journal citations; perhaps you'd care to look over the article again and detail any remaining concerns? Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 03:17, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delist. Underwhelming. A great pity for the flagship article on one of our main constituencies.

  • Goodness me, it's been here for a long time. Don't the Canadidan WPians care?
  • Why are items such as "country" linked (in the first line, too). Why are English and French (languages) linked? Why "United States", for heaven's sake?
    • English and French are linked because they don't go to the standard
      English (language), but instead Canadian English - a difference that we felt required a wikilink for interested readers. Country and United States have been delinked. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply
      ]
Ah, sorry, I thought I'd checked that link-target (English). But in Canadian confederation, they do go to the plain language targets. Also under "Language". Tony (talk) 11:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You're right, fixed. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:34, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"United States" as a link is entirely appropriate here... differences of opinion regarding "common terms" aside, in this specific case we are dealing with a geography article. Beyond that Canada and the US share many, many close ties; a link to the article about the nation's neighbour, biggest trading partner, closest ally etc. is certainly reasonable. --Ckatzchatspy 03:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tiny images: try 240px for many of them, please. The animated map is great, but who could ever read the text on it? Boost please.
    • Size increased - better? Nikkimaria (talk)
      • Not really. You've chosen 210px for some of the pics; but all default thumbnails will soon be 220. Why smaller than that? I'm enlarging some to 230 or 240 or more, since there's so much detail in them. Such beautiful paintings; why hide them if they're free? Also, can you cope with more on the right side? Tony (talk) 11:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • 240px is far too large, in my opinion. The history section is now cluttered with
          stacked-up images, and looks bloated. Putting them all on one side just exacerbates this even further. If a reader wants to see an image in more detail, he or she can simply click on it and view the full-size version. Hayden120 (talk) 12:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply
          ]
  • I find the section on Government and politics inadequate.
  • The big map of Canada is good, except (1) it doesn't explain what "clickable" really means, and (2) the key at the bottom is illegible.
    • Isn't it pretty damn obvious what 'clickable' means? How explicit does it need to be? "Left click on this image's text to view the corresponding page"? Also, it was suggested that the map was too big, hence I made it smaller (and consequently made the legend more difficult to read). I just can't win. Hayden120 (talk) 14:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • "Damn" is a little tough here. The issue is that you click on a province or territory to get a larger image. Tony (talk) 11:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • No, that's not correct, sorry. Clicking on the province or territory takes you to the corresponding article. For example, if you click on 'Ontario', you will be directed to the Ontario article. It's pretty straightforward. Unless there is something wrong with your browser, the only way to load a new page is by clicking on the image's text. To enlarge the map, you have to click the small blue 'i' circle in the corner. Hayden120 (talk) 11:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • For me, just clicking on the map does nothing, while clicking on the name of a place (like 'Ontario' or 'Toronto') takes you to the article about that place. Hayden is right, only the 'i' takes you to a larger image. Does something different happen for you, Tony?
    • Map size has been increased; can you suggest a clearer wording for "clickable"? Nikkimaria (talk)
      • "Click on a province or territory to access a larger map"?
  • Geography and climate: overlinked, like much of the article. The caption to the satellite pic is humungously big: that could mostlyl be transferred to the main text.
  • Economy section ... not thrilling. For example: "In Quebec, British Columbia, Newfoundland & Labrador, New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, and Yukon, hydroelectricity is an inexpensive source of renewable energy." What does "inexpensive mean in this context?
    • That specific instance has been clarified. Can you explain what you mean by "not thrilling"? Nikkimaria (talk)
  • "important suppliers ... important suppliers".
  • Demographics: the box is very untidy, and those tiny pics of city skylines are underwhelming. The histogram of religions is unsuitable for the data, isn't it? So there are exactly 345,345 native Spanish speakers? Too precise. Tony (talk) 12:06, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've made some adjustments to the box, including slightly increasing the sizes of the pictures. The data is from Statistics Canada, and they report 345,345 Spanish speakers as of the last census; we merely record what they report. As for the histogram, could you clarify we you believe it to be unsuitable? Thanks for your comments. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:03, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Was still WAY overlinked: gold, unemployment, wheat ... these dilute the high-value links and make it blue-spattered. Tony (talk) 11:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments I've only read the lead and ==History== section, but looks great so far. With 39 kB (6124 words) "readable prose size", this article is just fine size-wise for a country article and the sections I've read so far are tight, very readable and employ
    Summary Style
    well. There were a few long and/or awkward sentences that I fixed as I read but there a few more issues below that I'd like somebody else to address. Once addressed I'll continue my copyedit and review:
General
  • Images should not be placed left-aligned directly below headings per MOS.
  • Alt text still missing from images in infobox. I'll let others comment on the quality of the alt text since that is something I'm still learning myself.
  • Several dead external links need to be fixed (might have to go to archive.org) and several more are redirects that should be changed to direct links. Just check the external link tool above.
    • Fixed most of the dead links, except two that weren't available through archive.org - I'll see if I can find another source for those. Nikkimaria (talk)
Canadian Confederation

--

Urgent FACs/FARs) 16:46, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply
]

Further comments:

  • There are two dab links that still need to be dealt with.
  • The alt text in the table under the demographics section needs work. It gives information that is not discernible from the image itself, such as the name of the city and the population.
  • The Further reading section still needs a trim. Works that are used as references should not be duplicated in the further reading section, and other non-essential works should be removed.
  • Multiple issues with refs - inconsistent style of author (sometimes first name last name, other times reversed), full information not given until the fifth use on the Desmond Morton ref, incorrect ref templates used (i.e. the Jacques Cartier ref in the Etymology section should use a cite book, not a cite web), inconsistent use of ref templates (i.e. the Creighton, Donald. ref in the Etymology section, which produced inconsistent formatting), etc. A thorough check needs to be made to polish this up.
    • I've gone through and fixed a lot of inconsistencies; please let me know if there's further work to be done here. Nikkimaria (talk)
      • Still lots of work to be done. Books using page vs pages wrong (page= for one page, pages= for a range, i.e. the Creighton ref in the History section), many books missing ISBNs (OCLCs are acceptable if books don't have ISBNs), etc. Please check every ref
  • As SandyGeorgia mentioned in the FAR section, there is an overabundance of images. This is especially true in the Etymology and History sections, where text is being sandwiched between images and between an image and the infobox, going against
    MOS:IMAGES
    . The mass of images also scatter the reader's attention away from the images that truly convey the information the editors want to be shown.
    • Interesting - I get no sandwiching on my screen. What's your screen resolution? In any event, I've shortened the infobox slightly, so hopefully that will no longer be a problem there. IMO, all of the images in History convey useful information - are there a few in particular that you feel are extraneous? Nikkimaria (talk)
      • I'm at a 1280 x 800 resolution on a relatively small 15.6" screen, and there's crowding all over the place. The Cartier and fur trade images sandwich with the infobox and the Vimy image sandwiches with the animated map and the WWII image (the second one worse). There are other slight sandwich spots, but these are the worst. As for what images are extraneous - ask yourself which ones actually convey useful information through the image itself? For example, the WWII image IMO conveys nothing unique about WWII in Canada - although an evocative image, it doesn't show the reader anything about Canada specifically. Also, statistical information in the captions needs to be removed or sourced, and would be better placed in the body of the article, although this is optional.
  • The International rankings section needs to be sourced. Only two out of the fourteen rankings have sources, and these are statistics that need references. Also, the external links should be removed - preferably by turning them into references.
    • Rankings are now sourced, and external link section culled. I've left some external links which I feel are relevant, as well as the links to sister projects and the audio file. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:50, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Apologies, I meant that the external links in the International rankings section needed to be removed. The actual External links section does look better now, thought!

These are basic things that should have already been taken care of as we are standing two months into the FARC process, especially as many of them have been mentioned before by various reviewers. This article needs an overall MOS and sourcing cleanup before prose of a "professional standard" is even an issue. Dana boomer (talk) 23:08, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I get the feeling that the main editors are simply fixing the problems made explicit and making little effort to actually comb through the article and bring in copyeditors and sourcing experts to get the article back up to FA status. Citation formatting issues have been pointed out since the very beginning of this FAR, and yet they are still present. Also, many sections of the article feel like a deliberate attempt was made to pack the greatest number of sources into the article, regardless of relevance or scholarship, and that facts were simply thrown together with little connecting narrative. For example, the Government and politics section is five short paragraphs long. However, it contains fourteen different refs, including seven books, three journal articles and four websites. Are you telling me that there are none of these references that cover more than a couple of sentence in this paragraph? And instead you need to use tertiary, general refs such as "Politics: An Introduction to the Modern Democratic State"? Also, why are 160+ year old refs (Martin), 80+ year old refs (Wallace) and 50+ year old refs (Creighton) being used in the history section? I'm sure any of the basic, more recent Canadian history refs that are also being used in that section could be used to cover information. Recent refs are also more likely to contain the most recent information known about the subject. Sometimes even the most basic "facts" that someone knew 160 years ago have changed in the intervening time. Consolidating references can also help to satisfy editors/reviewers who complain that there are too many ref templates in the article or that the byte size is too large and the article loads slowly. At this point, I don't believe I will be revisiting this FAR to support either keeping or delisting. There are too many little things wrong with the article, so although I'm not going to list a firm delist, I'm not comfortable with supporting keeping until MOS, prose and sourcing experts (looking at not just reliability, but high quality) have been through the article and the issues they find addressed. Dana boomer (talk) 02:52, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is anything going to be done here holistically? This has been open a long time as it's a core article, but it is just dribbling along very slowly YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 04:24, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm travelling at the moment, but am still working on the article, including the issues raised by Dana above. Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 14:04, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ckatz, above, claims that linking "United States" is appropriate. Could someone explain exactly what it is about the article on the US that will be of particular relevance to the reader at this point? We need particular aspects or statements or facts in the US article that are relevant to understanding the topic of Canada, which are not dealt with explicitly in the article on Canada. Tony (talk) 12:55, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • For starters, the two nations share one of the longest national borders in the world and the U.S. is the number one trading partner of Canada. If United States is not appropriate to link in the Canada article, then I don't know where it would be appropriate. Really, all this fuss over a link. Don't we have better things to do? That this is an issue is beyond silly. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs/PRs) 21:31, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Further, the fact of the above (and other ties between the two nations) means that any reader of the Canada article just might be interested in the United States article; to learn about the same aspects covered by the standard country subsections. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs/PRs) 02:03, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • Language and material under "Science and technology" is not neutral. "Canada's high-quality scientific and technological development is renowned throughout the world"??? "Canada is the home of the largest producer of video games in the world" but no citation. etc etc
  • This section was added quite recently, so I didn't get a chance to go edit it thoroughly yet. I'm doing that now. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:24, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This has now been addrsesed. hamiltonstone (talk) 05:36, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Foreign relations section contains fairly recent info of limited interest, such as "Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) has participated in three major relief efforts in recent years; the two-hundred-member team has been deployed in relief operations after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake in South Asia, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the Kashmir earthquake in October 2005."

I would reluctantly recommend a delist, unless i can help add an art section, Bzzzsherman (?) could deal with the omissions on Aboriginal Canadians, and someone could tackle the awful science section. Even then, the culture material generally is not great. Cheers. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:36, 6 April 2010 (UTC) Strike that. With a bit more work (mainly just the addition of Canadian literature) I would say keep. hamiltonstone (talk) 23:04, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments. Please feel free to help add an art section. I've pinged Buzzz to take a look at Aboriginal coverage. Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 13:24, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Buzzz here ok will look over Aboriginal section soon today or tomorrow...PS i am back to using the name Moxy...Moxy (talk) 14:00, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As of April 06

As per above (Aboriginal omissions ) ....I think that i should get others to review what i have in mind to add being the high profile of this article...All of the new section i propose is a copy edit that comes from info on the

Aboriginal peoples in Canada article that we got to GA status not long ago. Keeping in mind the new text is a summery of the Aborigianl page, all-be-it a reasonable size for here.. Pls see copy of proposed changes here .... If no real objections i will add it in the next day or 2............Moxy (talk
) 23:38, 6 April 2010 (UTC) [reply]

Thanks Moxy. I have edited your initial version, including the integration of some facts and sources from the old text. I am proposing that it be integrated in three separate locations: a para replacing the old first para in the history section; a para to be added to the "Law" section; and a para probably for adding to the "Culture" section. The last one needs a bit of expansion, and i haven't yet thought about the exact location or a possible subheading. Cheers, hamiltonstone (talk) 00:13, 7 April 2010 (UTC) [reply]
ok i add a section bellow that we could add to culture.....Its a direct copy from the Aboriginal page that i have always thought said alot in just its 3 sentences or so.. Moxy (talk) 00:22, 7 April 2010 (UTC) [reply]
Excellent - i have further edited and integrated material. I have split off a sentence that belongs under Demographics, and consolidated the cultural stuff. I think this is looking much better. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:27, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Done and integrated into the article. hamiltonstone (talk) 05:38, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(Music concerns). I have added some music stuff...I dont think its all that good :( and needs a copy edit. Just trying to say as much as possible in only 3 to 4 sentences, as article is long ...Plus dont need to say much as most will just click on the Music of Canada link to read more ..So i think 3 -4 sentences is fine!!...Moxy (talk) 00:45, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]


  • Keep - I am not an expert on Canada but it seems to be pretty well balanced now. Prose is okay as is referencing. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:36, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Science and technology section - again
This section looks much improved. But when I went to check two references - the fact itself just looked wrong - the refs appear to have no resemblance to the text. Text: "Canada is one of the world’s biggest publishers, publishing the highest number of scientific publications in the fields of medical science, natural science and engineering in 2005." Two footnotes - i looked at both, and apart from not being that user friendly, they seemed to have no correlation with the claimed facts. Anyone got any thoughts? hamiltonstone (talk) 05:18, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Argh. As mentioned above, this section was added recently, so it wasn't covered by my earlier attempts to improve referencing. I'll take a look later today, to see if I can figure out what's going on. Nikkimaria (talk) 11:55, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Okay, I've cut that sentence, as it didn't seem to be supported by those refs, and I couldn't find any refs that did support it. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:10, 18 April 2010 (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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