User talk:Country Wife
Hello, Country Wife! Welcome to Wikivoyage.
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Hi there! Thanks for your work on the Calgary page. It's good to see it getting some updates! Cheers. -Shaundd (talk) 05:58, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
Destination of the Month[edit]
Hi Country Wife -
Just wanted to let you know that I nominated Calgary for Destination of the Month. You've done such fabulous work on the article, and I thought it was high time your contributions were recognized. Here's a link to the nomination - we'd love to hear from you there if you have any comments or caveats you'd like to add.
All the best!
-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:44, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
External links[edit]
Hi!
I've noticed you've added a couple of links to Winter driving, that I unfortunately had to remove some of. Please have a look at Wikivoyage:External links. Links to WP aren't usually allowed, information should be included right here in the article rather than linked to etc. Also, footnote style links shouldn't be used.
Anyways, keep up your good work and sorry if the last paragraph sounded like nitpicking :) ϒpsilon (talk) 21:26, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for the heads-up, ϒpsilon. I'll have a look at the policy. There's still a ton of things I have to learn about WV, and I appreciate you taking the time to let me know about this. --Country Wife (talk) 01:32, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
- ϒpsilon, perhaps you can clear something up. I agree in general with the rationale for excluding most tertiary and secondary sources. However, sometimes the primary source is not very helpful. In other cases, such as with Travel Topics, secondary and even tertiary sources can be a way of backing up statements to show that they are factual, not just opinion. Is there some recognized way of dealing with that situation? And what about including references for further reading? Are they allowed in a separate section, or is there some other way of dealing with them?--Country Wife (talk) 20:26, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
- I must admit I've never been a big editor of Travel topics (which resemble WP articles closer than destination article's do and therefore may need more external links). The general recommendation is to have the information here so that the traveler will have all (or almost all of) the information s/he needs when printing out the guide page on paper. This means that the information itself should be included into the guide and not just a link to another web site. ϒpsilon (talk) 20:46, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
- Okay, thanks for the response. I'll have to mull this over for a while. Sometimes when you give information it is helpful to back up your statements with an authoritative source for that info, and that authority is not always a primary source. Maybe that falls under the "sometimes it makes sense to break the rules" rule. --Country Wife (talk) 03:12, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
- The thing to do if you think a non-primary link is necessary is to post your argument to the talk page of the article in question. If a consensus forms that this is an exceptional circumstance, that's all that's needed to make an exception to the rule. That doesn't happen too often, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:14, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
- Okay, thanks for the response. I'll have to mull this over for a while. Sometimes when you give information it is helpful to back up your statements with an authoritative source for that info, and that authority is not always a primary source. Maybe that falls under the "sometimes it makes sense to break the rules" rule. --Country Wife (talk) 03:12, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
- I must admit I've never been a big editor of Travel topics (which resemble WP articles closer than destination article's do and therefore may need more external links). The general recommendation is to have the information here so that the traveler will have all (or almost all of) the information s/he needs when printing out the guide page on paper. This means that the information itself should be included into the guide and not just a link to another web site. ϒpsilon (talk) 20:46, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
- ϒpsilon, perhaps you can clear something up. I agree in general with the rationale for excluding most tertiary and secondary sources. However, sometimes the primary source is not very helpful. In other cases, such as with Travel Topics, secondary and even tertiary sources can be a way of backing up statements to show that they are factual, not just opinion. Is there some recognized way of dealing with that situation? And what about including references for further reading? Are they allowed in a separate section, or is there some other way of dealing with them?--Country Wife (talk) 20:26, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
- The one obvious exception is {{warningbox}} on destinations to link to various governments warning their citizens to leave a war zone. Those warnings are usually linked right from the article. For a cited source that a venue or landmark is gone, remove the listing and leave the external link in the edit comment, ie: "This motel burned down, per http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/03/21/firefighters-battle-motel-blaze-in-point-pleasant-beach/ " where the edit removes the listing outright. It could take months for a dead venue's own "primary" site to actually go away and updates stop when the business closes its doors. The same link-in-edit-summary approach may make sense for attributing info summarised from an external source; the talk page is another possible alternative which may make sense if the links might be useful to subsequent editors maintaining the page, but the article itself needs to be usable without them. In general, we don't want links to resellers, other travel guides or anything which might encourage linkspam. K7L (talk) 04:40, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks again for your feedback, folks. I suppose I should be more concrete. Here's an example of something that popped up recently. The Cascades of Time Gardens in Banff is a lovely, small historic garden. It's not a huge attraction (especially compared to the Rockies) but it is charming. There is almost nothing about the gardens on the site of Parks Canada, which manages them. I found a newspaper article online that describes the gardens and their history in some detail. I've put the bare bones of that information into the listing for the gardens, but I don't feel that I can justify putting in all the information. I'd like to provide a link for further reading, for those people who are interested in learning more. --Country Wife (talk) 16:53, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
- In this kind of situation, feel free to put a link in the talk page for the article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:32, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
- I'm not sure how that helps the traveller interested in more info. Or are you suggesting it's better to discuss the link first before adding it to the main page?--Country Wife (talk) 20:55, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
- No, I'm saying it can't appear in the article, so you can put it in the talk page for anyone to refer to there. Or persuade a consensus to violate the rule in this case, but I don't see it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:43, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
- Okay. I appreciate your honest response, although I don't entirely agree with that approach. However, I still have lots to learn about WV and how it works. It's very helpful to know the ground rules, so thank you for your patience with a noob like me.--Country Wife (talk) 14:28, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
- You are no noob, and the problem you've addressed here has existed practically forever. To summarize the dilemma: It is very difficult and time-consuming to police non-primary external links for spam and touting, but sometimes, primary links actually are not that good and one or two secondary links (blog posts, what have you) are superior. What do we do in that situation? And the answer, usually, is to do what you did - paraphrase or summarize a bit of information from the copyrighted secondary source and link only the primary source. It is not an ideal solution, but it is at least somewhat of a workaround, given the nature of the dilemma. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:48, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
- Once again, thanks for the response. Those are very good points. To me, this illustrates how two different communities can come to completely different solutions to the same problem. I think I'm pretty good at choosing sources that are not spammy or touty, due to my years posting on TripAdvisor forums and working on the wikis there. (I'll never forget the primary source website, though, that expired and then was bought by a company selling sex toys!) Everyone wants their business to get free promotion on TA forums & in Traveler Articles (wikis) but the community does a pretty good job of policing it. Of course, not everyone likes to have their links labelled as spam/touting and then removed, so that can lead to conflict. A general rule against all secondary links avoids that, but I can't help but feel it's too broad. I'm prepared to live with it, but perhaps when I feel I know the ropes well enough, I may try to reopen the discussion within the broader WV community. (Probably not for many months!)Country Wife (talk) 02:46, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
- I encourage you to do so, at Wikivoyage talk:External links. It's always a worthy topic for discussion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:50, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
- Once again, thanks for the response. Those are very good points. To me, this illustrates how two different communities can come to completely different solutions to the same problem. I think I'm pretty good at choosing sources that are not spammy or touty, due to my years posting on TripAdvisor forums and working on the wikis there. (I'll never forget the primary source website, though, that expired and then was bought by a company selling sex toys!) Everyone wants their business to get free promotion on TA forums & in Traveler Articles (wikis) but the community does a pretty good job of policing it. Of course, not everyone likes to have their links labelled as spam/touting and then removed, so that can lead to conflict. A general rule against all secondary links avoids that, but I can't help but feel it's too broad. I'm prepared to live with it, but perhaps when I feel I know the ropes well enough, I may try to reopen the discussion within the broader WV community. (Probably not for many months!)Country Wife (talk) 02:46, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
- You are no noob, and the problem you've addressed here has existed practically forever. To summarize the dilemma: It is very difficult and time-consuming to police non-primary external links for spam and touting, but sometimes, primary links actually are not that good and one or two secondary links (blog posts, what have you) are superior. What do we do in that situation? And the answer, usually, is to do what you did - paraphrase or summarize a bit of information from the copyrighted secondary source and link only the primary source. It is not an ideal solution, but it is at least somewhat of a workaround, given the nature of the dilemma. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:48, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
- Okay. I appreciate your honest response, although I don't entirely agree with that approach. However, I still have lots to learn about WV and how it works. It's very helpful to know the ground rules, so thank you for your patience with a noob like me.--Country Wife (talk) 14:28, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
- No, I'm saying it can't appear in the article, so you can put it in the talk page for anyone to refer to there. Or persuade a consensus to violate the rule in this case, but I don't see it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:43, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
- I'm not sure how that helps the traveller interested in more info. Or are you suggesting it's better to discuss the link first before adding it to the main page?--Country Wife (talk) 20:55, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
I know I'm a few weeks late on this, but wow - you have done a great job beefing up that article. Keep up the good work. We need more contributors like you!
-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:55, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
C-Train map[edit]
Hi Country Wife - the map is all updated and good to go (I think!). Let me know if anything needs to be changed. Cheers. -Shaundd (talk) 18:45, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
- Wow, that's awesome, Shaundd-- thank you very, very much! Country Wife (talk) 01:52, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
Calgary quadrants[edit]
Hi Country Wife, I changed the description of what divides Calgary into north and south, based on how streets are named in Openstreetmap and Google Maps. According to those websites, it looks like the Bow River is the dividing line west of Deerfoot Trail, and Centre Ave and Memorial Dr mark the boundary east of Deerfoot Trail. Does this seem right? Openstreetmap gets most of their Canadian data from the government, so it should be right, but I thought I should check with someone who lives in the city to make sure! Thanks. -Shaundd (talk) 21:40, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
- Hi Shaun! I had a look at a City of Calgary map showing the dividing lines, which is linked on this page: https://data.calgary.ca/OpenData/Pages/DatasetListingAlphabetical.aspx The Bow River is the north-south dividing line west of Deerfoot until the Bow River starts heading north near Shouldice Park / Home Road. Then the boundary jogs south to Sarcee Trail for a bit before settling down onto 16 Ave NW (aka Trans-Canada Hwy, Hwy 1) until it hits the western city limits. In the east, the Bow River is the dividing line until it jogs north along Nose Creek (north of the Calgary Zoo) to connect with Centre Avenue, and then the divider runs along Centre Avenue from Deerfoot until it hits Memorial Drive at 36 St E, then it's Memorial Drive all the way until the city limits. In other words, for the average visitor, your text description is adequate; you could even simplify it further to say that Memorial Drive is the dividing line both east and west, since it runs very close to the river, and visitors probably won't be too concerned with the few discrepancies; also Memorial Drive is often easier to find on a map than the Bow River. If you want to map it the boundaries, though, consult the official City of Calgary map. And thank you again for your contributions! - Country Wife (talk) 22:08, 3 August 2014 (UTC)