Wikipedia:WikiProject Toronto

Title WikiProject Toronto

Scope This WikiProject aims primarily to provide information in consistent format for articles on places in Toronto, Canada. It is also a first test of the format established for Wikipedia:WikiProject_London, to allow for some feedback before the template is copied for use for other cities.

Parentage The parent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Cities. The Toronto project will probably generate a simpler template than the London project.

Descendant Wikiprojects No descendant WikiProjects have been defined.

Similar Wikiprojects The WikiProject_London is setting the template for the Toronto project, and the Toronto project will not proceed in detail until the London one is better established, and differences between the two are better understood.

Participants Zanimum[?]

None listed yet. Likely possible to recruit authors of Toronto, Ontario, Ontario, Canada, Province of Toronto, and related articles on the city and its surrounding regions.

Structure

Places are most neutrally defined by their ecological characteristics. This is particularly easy for cities as most of the ecology is man-made. A bioregional structure is suggested, with each river (Don, Humber, etc.) and its watershed providing the basis for articles on settlement and history. The modern place-names and political boundaries will be discussed in terms of how much they respect or disrespect boundaries which nature always, by definition, respects. Toronto is an interesting city on which to test this structure, as it has many rivers, a rich set of open ravine parks, and an extensive sewer system, all of which takes water from Lake Ontario (via pumps or rain) and sends it back to there. It is thus an extremely simple watershed.

Note: any other structure is likely to yield to definition conflicts. See bioregional democracy for a discussion of why watersheds tend to be the most neutral boundaries for definition of place.

Motivation

1. Toronto is probably the world's most diverse large city, as over 50% of its population of 2.4 million were born in some other country (than Canada). Like London, it is structured as a set of urban villages that have not quite lost their character or total control of street life, and each of these neighbourhoods needs an article in the Wikipedia, in the language that is spoken by its inhabitants, and which appears on its signs. Chinese, Italian, Polish, Greek, and other communities are each associated with specific districts, which require articles in at least English, and in those languages.
2. Toronto has sufficient cultural treasures to be worth visiting on any visit to North America. Some of these, including the Art Gallery of Ontario[?], Ontario Science Centre[?] and Royal Ontario Museum[?], are innovative and notable for their collections, and their public activity in education. Toronto is also a prominent centre for the study of library science and classification systems - the Robarts Library at the University of Toronto has some 1100 of these schemes in its collection. Articles on Toronto itself are most likely to motivate the participation of categorization scholars who work in these institutions.
3. Toronto retains electric streetcars, has an extensive system of urban light rail, monorails and subways, and is experimenting with dieselectric buses - probably the most technologically diverse transit system in North America, and so a testbed for transport technologies.

Naming conventions

• Places: as [[Queen Street West, Toronto]] with a redirect from [[Queen West, Toronto]], or a disambiguation page if there is more than one place or thing with this name.
  • Rationale for doing things this way round: many places have been named after places in London, including many places in Toronto, where this habit is simply out of control. There are lots of Queen and King streets in Canada and Australia, and figuring out how to disambiguate them all effectively is going to be very necessary. So let's do it early.
• All TTC stations: as [[Spadina TTC station]]
• Cities: as their former official full names but recognized as part of Toronto (their current status), i.e. [[City of East York, Toronto]], [[City of North York, Toronto]].

Framework

To do:

• Auto-generate articles to create a trellis of linked pre-stub articles about places in Toronto, probably based on the phone book or a tour guide available in electronic form.
• Hand-edit to merge with existing content, and to fill in the correct Toronto city[?] name for each of these place articles[?].
• The few places that actually are not in Toronto, but one of the surrounding counties, should be renamed, and the links to them fixed.
• All mention of the 'Greater Toronto Area' must be purged, as this term is ambiguous, has no official status, nor any historical role.
• There should be an article on each of the Toronto postal codes[?], cross-linked to the articles describing the places in that postal district, mean income, etc., Statistics Canada will have this.
• Articles on notable Toronto tourist attractions such as SkyDome[?] should be put in the same format as other Toronto place articles.

Substance

Done:

• Articles on Toronto and an index article for the Toronto neighbourhoods[?] and Toronto cities[?] partially exist. Is it right to call them "boroughs"? Only one (East York) was known by that name.

To do:

• There should be an article on all six Toronto historical cities, using the borough's official name (usually "City of X, Toronto") with no mention of Ontario (as these Cities are no longer legally recognized by Ontario, "East York, Ontario" simply doesn't exist). Each such city article should have a list of localities within that city at its end, using the naming conventions above.
• Every locality needs at least a 500-character stub article, built on top of its framework article.
• All areas of historic importance need substantial articles.
• Every Toronto Subway[?] line, and the light rail system, should have an article of the same level of quality of, say, the East London Line article, but the list of stations should be the same quality as the London Central Station[?]. Don't waste energy on this topic that should be saved for other issues, e.g. water and power systems, that are less visible but actually more interesting.

Good articles so far:

• Jane Jacobs
• Toronto, Ontario - note that this is the unified Metro Toronto combining all the (unofficial now) Cities, e.g. North York, Scarborough.
• Province of Toronto

Completed Lines in Detail: Bloor Line[?] Yonge Line[?] Sheppard Line[?] Scarborough RT Line[?] Spadina Streetcar Line[?] Queen's Quay Streetcar Line[?] (only raised/dedicated streetcar lines should have their own articles, the rest have to be covered on articles on streets)

Associated pages:

• List of places in Toronto, Canada[?]
• Toronto postal codes[?]
• Subterranean Toronto[?]
• Subterranean rivers of Toronto[?]
• Hidden Toronto[?]

External resources:

• city web site (http://city.toronto.on.ca)
• current city issues (http://www.provinceoftoronto.ca)
• London neighborhood statistics (http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/london.asp) - are similar statistics available for TO?
• Transport Statistics for London: 1999 (http://www.transtat.dft.gov.uk/tables/1999/tsl/tsl.htm) - same question
• London Health Observatory statistics for each area in London (http://www.lho.org.uk/meth/vs.htm) - same question - if not why not? The Toronto Medical Board of Health[?] should have them, and in the same format, so that large cities can actually be compared.
• Mortality, Population, etc.
• London population statistics by ethnic group (http://www.london.gov.uk/approot/gla/publications/without_prejudice/without_prejudice1.jsp) from the GLA - again, are similar statitics available for TO?</nowiki>