Talk:Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan

Written like an essay

This article sounds more like an essay than it does an encyclopaedia artcile. It's full of subjective terms and what appears to be uncited original research. Take the lead section for example.

Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan, is a small locality located on Trans-Canada Highway 1 and the Canadian Pacific Railway mainline, some thirty miles east of Regina, Saskatchewan. With

• its for a time seemingly long-term terminus status for the Canadian Pacific Railway;
• its lush rolling parkland setting, intermittent "coulees" (gentle valleys with steady-flowing creeks) and "bluffs" (the local term for aspen groves) and generally picturesque locale both in summer and winter and
• its ready access to ample water

Qu'Appelle had at one stage been credibly anticipated to be a major metropole by both

• the federal government of Canada — it was under serious consideration by the federal government for district headquarters of the District of Assiniboia and territorial headquarters of the North-West Territories — and
• the Church of England (now the Anglican Church of Canada), which for a time designated Qu'Appelle the cathedral city for the Diocese of Qu'Appelle, geographically corresponding precisely to the District of Assiniboia in the North-West Territories.

Political events, however, passed Qu'Appelle entirely by and when Lieutenant-Governor Edgar Dewdney elected the locale of his own landholdings some 30 miles to the east of Qu'Appelle as his Territorial capital, Qu'Appelle's significance other than in historical terms largely lapsed.

It could be rewritten to something like this:

Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan, is a town located on Trans-Canada Highway and the Canadian Pacific Railway mainline, 55 km (34 mi) east of Regina, Saskatchewan. The Government of Canada and the Church of England at one time anticipated Qu'Appelle to be a major metropole because of its terminus status for the Canadian Pacific Railway, its "coulees" and aspen groves, and its ready access to ample water.

Several of the changes made include:

• the bulk of the historical content moved to the history section and a simple summary left in the lead
• subjective, uncited terms such as "lush", "picturesque", and "credibly" removed
•  Done verbosity (such as "a small locality") rewritten ("a town")

• -In this case Qu'Appelle became a town with the pre-requisite population of over 500 residents on February 20, 1903 well I guess on the 2001 and 2006 census this place still has over 500 residents!!!! so I guess it should be a town, it for some reason feels smaller when I was there.SriMesh | talk 07:07, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

•  Doneunfamiliar words linked and their definitions removed

• Added wikilinks for native terminology and removed deinition but left the geographical description of the countryside.SriMesh | talk 02:46, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

•  Done guess at distance replaced with actual distance in both metric and imperial

• Added distance templatesSriMesh | talk 07:07, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The entire article needs to receive a similar overhaul. And there needs to be more references considering the number of bold statements being made. --Kmsiever (talk) 02:39, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Note 1

Note: (a) the extraordinarily wide main street, in contemplation of the town's anticipated metropolitan importance; (b) the grain elevator (one of several) adjacent to the CPR tracks at the south end of Main Street; (c) the substantially brick rather than timber buildings, anticipating permanent importance for the town; (d) the signs and canvass awnings of the commercial establishments, indicating the considerable vitality of trade and commerce in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Qu'Appelle; (d) the fully occupied commercial lots along the street, since the 1950s incrementally vacated; (e) the horse-drawn vehicles drawn up along the street at the time of an obviously early-morning photo-shoot.

There are two (d)s. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be that way or not. But I noticed it when reverting the bad change to the section title and thought I'd mention it. Lara❤Love 14:39, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

 Done Thank you. Note 1 is now fixed so there are not two (d)s listed. SriMesh | talk 06:57, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Request for comment

I am requesting third-party advice on the content of this article. To me, it seems this article is written too much like an essay, with uncited, bold statements and what seems like original research. I posted a template at the top of the article saying as much, then posted a new section on this Talk page outlining in detail why I thought so. The editor Masalai has reverted the template on several occasions without addressing any of the issues I raised and without explaining why he does not think this article is written as an essay. I would like third-party opinion to try settling the matter one way or the other. --Kmsiever (talk) 12:07, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I am English and am unable to verify the accuracy of the content. However, this is in my view a reasonably satisfactory article. I too do not like the bulletted introduction. This can (and should) be converted to ordinary narrative. Otherwise, I see little wrong with it. It is in fact much better than many articles on villages that I have seen. Peterkingiron (talk) 22:36, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes it is better than a lot of village articles. But it could use some general cleanup and fixes. The person who did the following.... (a) to cite something need needs to be replaced with something better. For such a long article there is only 13 citations. More needs to be added. Mr. C.C. (talk) 06:01, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Which "(a)" are you referring to? And actually there are 35 notes. Could you be more specific as to your issues? Masalai (talk) 06:27, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

But many of those notes are duplicate sources and actual footnotes (rather than citations). Mr. C. C. wasn't referring to the number of Notes, but rather the number of sources used for this article. --Kmsiever (talk) 03:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• Put all duplicate sources into this footnote format using....Naming a ref tag so it can be used more than once

There was only 13 references and citations when I made my comment. If you look at the access date, the other citations were yesterday and today. Also the following should be of some insight as to what I mean by.... (a) The stuff I am referring to is in bold.

With (a) its for a time seemingly long-term terminus status for the Canadian Pacific Railway; (b) its lush rolling parkland setting, intermittent "coulees" (in Canadian prairie terminology gentle valleys with steady-flowing creeks) and "bluffs" (the local term for aspen groves, frequently surrounding sloughs) and generally picturesque locale both in summer and winter and (c) its ready access to ample water

Mr. C.C. (talk) 07:29, 19 September 2008 (UTC)  Done This section has been re-written without alphabetic points and converted into sentences with wikilinks.SriMesh | talk

I've put this article up for peer review and listed it as WP:CANADA and WP:CITIES. I agree with Kmsiever's general concerns. The article in present form does not read like a typical location article. Michellecrisp (talk) 06:51, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

This does not read like a typical location article at all. Take this passage "...makes it especially unfortunate that this turned out not to be so, given the relative lack of natural amenity of Regina, the site actually chosen, where there is no locally available water other than from the small spring runoff Wascana Creek, the local topography is devoid of features and the local plain is entirely lacking in any trees that have not been planted by civic authorities and settlers."

Why the senseless bashing of Regina? What does the lack of natural trees in Regina have to do with Qu'Appelle? Very bitter and unencyclopedic. dzhastin (talk) 19:16, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

The choice of making Pile o'Bones a capital city rather than chosing Qu'Appelle was one that was held to be a mite unscrupulous. Qu'Appelle, at this time was the leading distribution center for the North West Rebellion, and at the rail line end for freight, post and passenger travel. At this historical point in time Regina was a pile of buffalo bones awaiting being made into fertilizer, no civilization, or people at all, just really bones.Pile O Bones Creek The lack of water, and the huge excavation process of Wascana Creek was a very modern problem at the site of Regina The Big Dig -occurred in 2003 [The Forgotten Dig] -occurred in 1931-.. See these several sources ... Regina...

The fact that Dewdney himself owned land in Regina was likely a factor in the process.

— Encyclopaedia of Saskatchewan Capital City, Selection of

In his January 5, 1892 edition of the Regina Leader, Mr Davin explained what in his mind, and in the minds of most of the people in this area, was the real reason Qu'Appelle was not chosen, or rather why Pile of Bones was Dewdney's choice. According to Mr. Davin, Lieutenant-Governor Dewdney and fourteen other men formed a syndicate and bought Hudson BAy section along the C.P.R. Mainlin. "He [Dewdney] had no more scruples than a proligate Roman proconusl in the days of Verres had. With the Lieutenant-Governor o the Territories with them, the syndicate fought on velvet. Against all the caprice of fortune they were armed....,They had a full hand - a flush; for all he had to do was choose a town site for the capital on one of their sections and the profits would pay for all the lands and leave them a handsome fortune to boot. He chose the town site of Regina...about a mile west of te present station - that is, on their own section '26'." See Pages 2 and 11

Qu'Appelle : footprints to progress: a history of Qu'Appelle and district The Stage is Set

SriMesh | talk 06:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I came here from the community portal page, read the article and found it to be useful. It is a small town that I had not heard much of before. I think that it is an impressive and useful article and a lot of care has been put into it. Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 02:32, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Edits

Have tried to address the initial points brought forward at peer review, have as well put a note one which points no longer arise for the automatic peer review process at SAPR. Some still arise due to the titles of names given in references and citations, so they cannot be fixed as per article prose. Have added more sections as per UK settlement guidelines and US city guidelines, would like to follow these guidelines for the lead section as well. This hich would produce a lead which is a summary of the article as a stand alone, so that every section is introduced to entice the reader to read further if that section is to their liking. The manural of stle regarding images have come along in the article, but there is still some sandwiching of text between two images facing each other. According to these guidelines the section labeled "Progess" could be relabeled Media. AS well that guideline also suggests to have an Arts and culture section under which is a subsection named Annual cultural events' as well as Museums and other points of interest. The complete description has been added to the image about the capital monument so that info can be in or out of the article---that Qu'Appelle was capital for a day because of the Thrill of a Lifetime TV program. There have been no further comments at PR yet, nor a GA reviewer as of yet...for more pointers. SriMesh | talk 01:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Comments by Epicadam (talk · contribs):

•  Done Main image should be a current image
•  DoneImages should not be left-aligned under section headers, some captions are far too long, vertical images should use "upright" modifier (i.e. [[Image:Foo.jpg|left|thumb|upright|Image caption here]])
• Section headers are too long, and I'm not sure why so much information is dedicated to churches- the information is more about the churches themselves than about the town

• Fixed section header length. Added more information about the town, lenghtening other sections.

• Inadequate sourcing for much of the article, especially in the media, churches, cultural events, and economy.
•  DoneClimate and demographics sections need prose
•  Done I'm not sure the block quotes do anything to enhance the article, quotes should be used to illustrate a point. You may want to just cite them instead of providing them in the article text.
• Dates should not be linked unless they're especially important
•  Done Sections should be ordered roughly in style of US or UK city guidelines (History -> Geography -> Demographics -> Economy usually come first). The information about churches and points of interest could all go under a "Landmarks" section

• Will study style of either US or UK guidelines for more tweaking.

•  DoneGovernment section shouldn't have dates of the elections, since they're likely to change in the future and are unimportant to understanding the town
•  Done History section should be written in chronological order as opposed to having its own mini introduction.
•  Done There are areas of broken links because of the use of curly brackets {{ instead of square brackets [[. Just read through the article, you'll see where.

This article is off to a good start, but is not yet a GA candidate. There needs to be significant work on the content and prose; the comments I provided above are in no way comprehensive. I wouldn't rely on others providing comments before making changes. Even though its a larger city, take a look at the article on Calgary for ideas on how to format the article and what type of information should be included. The article will fail for now but I look forward to its renomination. Best, epicAdam^(talk) 17:39, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Large early farms, factory and observatory at Qu'Appelle

As the nearby large farms Bell Farm, Cannington Manor, Indian Head Experimental farm are of note in history....There were also large ventures near or at Qu'Appelle as well. Should note be made of the Wright farm...Memories Of Quappelle and also at Wright Farm or W. R. Sykes English Company farm with the first steam engines of Canada in operation... Memories Of Quappelle Brassey farm Church Colonisation Society - Christ Church Settlement observatory Qu'Appelle felt and boot factory SriMesh | talk 19:21, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

added SriMesh | talk 02:13, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Monetary Conversion

The $32,000 spent in 1883 was worth In 2007, $683,310.40 American using the Consumer Price Index from Measuring worth. And...from 1879 till the oubreak of the first world war American and Canadian currency were traded at par. [History of the Canadian Dollar] http://www.bank-banque-canada.ca/en/dollar_book/index.html] Added to main article space. SriMesh | talk 02:33, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Changed to inflation conversion template and used two websites to confirm that at this era the American and CA dollar was at par. The inflation template should keep changing for current year. SriMesh | talk 02:26, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

the decline section

is excessively long, probably due to Masalai's excessive cut and paste style. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.253.244.43 (talk) 15:37, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry

Sorry for all the edits I made today to this template, which amount to very minor things, after all is said and done. I started because there were 5 (!) broken references, and I couldn't find the reason. In the end it was because of vandalism in Template:Formatprice/digits. Who could have guessed? Debresser (talk) 16:05, 24 December 2009 (UTC)