Talk:Gaspé

Copyediting

I've tried to restrain myself as much as possible form copyediting this most excellent article, but they were a few things that I felt could be improved:

• "ensuite" really looks like a typo to me. "En suite" feels most natural, but a survey of various standard dictionaries (Oxford, Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, Collins) indicate that "en-suite" is also common. "Ensuite" means something different in French than "ensuite", so I think we should avoid it. See this commentary. Of course, this change can be reverted if there is a good reason to do so.
• I have removed a couple of instances of "conveniently located" (per wta) that did not seem to add anything to the sentence but extra words. I didn't address a bunch of other wta issues because, well, trying to exercise restraint.
• A five-minute drive is neither quick nor long - it's five minutes. If you need to pee, that five minutes could seem like an eternity.
• I've removed some other filler phrases like "keep in mind that", and "a total of", and left others alone.

A couple of changes for Canadian spelling:

• "License" is a verb. The noun is "licence".
• You'll find a "story" in a book, but a building has a "storey". Books and buildings both have "stories".
• I replaced on more instance of "jewelry" by "jewellery". (As an aside, I think most Canadians do pronounce the word "ju-le-ry", not "ju-el-ry", so the different spelling makes sense.

Ground Zero (talk) 16:06, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Buildings can have one storey but two stories in Canada, not two storeys? Strange. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:56, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Ikan, it turns out that I'm wrong on this and always have been. It's "storeys". I can't find any evidence to support the idea that it's "stories". If The Globe and Mail uses "storeys", that's good enough for me. Ground Zero (talk) 13:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for having a look at this, Ground Zero, and sorry for the delay in responding here (I was in Canada, coincidentally enough, and don't have international data roaming on my phone).

Being persnickety about one's own prose being copyedited is a bad Wikihabit that I'm trying to rid myself of. I know we've had our confrontations in the past about that, and I hope you've noticed my efforts in that vein, and I appreciate you trying to meet me halfway here. In the spirit of that, there's only one copyedit you made that I'm going to push back on (and not very hard).

From the phrase "Though technically located inside the city limits, Forillon seems a world away", you excised the words "technically located". Agreed about "located", of course, but I do think "technically" fulfills an important function in that sentence, because Forillon is indeed a part of Gaspé in only the most nitpickily technical of senses: the park is devoid of residences, businesses, services, and other normal features of an urban area, the Gaspé city government doesn't have jurisdiction over the park in any meaningful sense (that would be Parks Canada), and most importantly, Wikivoyage covers it in a separate article. I think the wording as it is now invites readers to wonder why, if Forillon is really Gaspé's "most prominent tourist attraction by far", there's nothing about it in Gaspé#See and we're only just now getting around to talking about it at the tail end of the article?

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:04, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Andre, and I'm in French America at the moment (New Orleans).

I understand that you are using "technically" to mean something specific, but will the reader? I think the point about the park being different is made clearly by putting "though" at the start of the sentence, and by the rest of the sentence: "Forillon seems a world away: 242 km² (94 square miles) of rugged forest...." I think that makes the point clearly, and "technically" doesn't add anything. The park is inside the the municipal boundaries, without modification or elaboration so I don't think it is necessary. But if you re-add it, my world will go on and I will move on to other articles. I probably will remove "technically" for those articles if it isn't adding anything, because I do think that articles read better if we try to write concisely and not use a bunch of extra words.

And by all means, I think we have both moved to a much better way of interacting on Wikivoyage (I hope that I have!) Best regards, Ground Zero (talk) 13:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

And I'd like to add that I appreciate the care and attention you pay to Canadian spelling. Ground Zero (talk) 13:55, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate the appreciation. :) Also, the presence of the word "technically" isn't of such dire necessity that I think any action needs to be taken about it, so I suppose things are good as is. Thank you again for looking this over! -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:25, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Gaspé

Swept in from the pub

It ended up taking way more time than I had anticipated, but I've finally finished work on Gaspé, the latest and longest chapter in my ongoing quest to improve our coverage of the Gaspé Peninsula.

As always: I'm an American who's not wholly accustomed to writing in Canadian English, so if any native speakers of that dialect (Ground Zero, perhaps, who's been following my progress) would like to double-check for any U-less "colours" and whatnot that may have slipped under the radar, it would be much appreciated.

Next up in the Gaspé project: Grande-Vallée and Petite-Vallée, a much lighter lift: being a less important destination than those whose articles I've improved thus far, it probably only needs to be elevated to Usable status.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 04:10, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Looks like you need to have a discussion with Paul Schmiedge on Canadian spelling. --Traveler100 (talk) 14:00, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Taxis as listing or not

The question about whether to listify taxis seems to boil down to "there is no point in listingifying these if the only sections that will ever be filled out are name and phone number" (AndreCarrotflower) and "I can click directly the phone number from my smart phone" (Traveler100).

The phone number can be clicked if it is a link. The template makes this automatically, but it is easy to do by hand: just prefix with "tel:" and remove spaces (and hyphens?) to get the url (+1 418-269-3348).

The question then is whether having listing templates is an advantage or a drawback. The CW version fits all taxis in one paragraph, so is more compact, but if we link the phone numbers and they change, there is a risk somebody changes just the url or just the visible number. Is the risk big enough to take in account? Are such bare links useful enough that they should be recommended somewhere? If they become common, it would be an easy task to have a bot check that the link and the visible number agree.

--LPfi (talk) 07:56, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

There are other ways to solve this but a single consisting listing method saves confusion to less knowledgeable contributors and makes automated checking easier. Shows the phone icon to be consistent with other listings' phone nubmers. Also hopefully encourage people to add additional information such as web url or typical places they can be found parked. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:06, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

I had no idea about the [tel:+ option. That's a new one on me. I don't see what's wrong with the listings template. Seems like the easiest option to me. Ground Zero (talk) 12:43, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, url:s are not just for web pages :-) And what can be done in a template can always be done by hand, although the template often is handier. I suppose listings often are the way to go, but there are situations where a phone number could be useful without the thing warranting a listing. --LPfi (talk) 13:21, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Chaleur train

It's sad that this train isn't running anymore. it looks like it would have been a lovely trip. But let's keep in mind the advice provided by Wikivoyage:Article skeleton templates/Sections/Get in:

"This section should contain information on how to get to the destination."

And for the Get around section:

"This is a spot to give general information about how to get around the destination once you are there."

Information about trains that no longer run, including schedules, doesn't fit these descriptions. It's enough to say that the train no longer runs. I've commented parts out so that they can be restored in the unlikely event that service us restored, but as there has been no movement on this for six years, so I think we can conclude that it probably won't happen. Ground Zero (talk) 19:08, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

The Quebec provincial government apparently got sick of waiting for CN to rehab the bridges and tracks and is now doing so itself, to the tune of $100M. According to an article in the International Railway Journal dated November 2018, the western portion of the line is now in use for freight service, and VIA went on record to reiterate its intention to restore passenger service if and when the tracks are made usable again. While far from certain, I'd say the chances of an eventual restoration of service are far more probable than you let on. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:53, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that research. I didn't find info about the Quebec government's investment in my googling. I didn't delete the information -- it's just commented out. Nonetheless, I think we can leave out the details until service is restored as it is still uncertain, and the information isn't useful to travellers now. Ground Zero (talk) 06:40, 16 November 2019 (UTC)