User talk:Hwy43

Please start new topics at the bottom of the page, even if they are related to a section above, to maintain a sequential order of topics.

I prefer to keep discussion threads together. If I left you a message, please answer on your talk page, as I am watching it.

Updating plan for 2021 census

Hey there, long time since we chatted. I'm wondering if you were planning an automated way to update the lists of municipalities when the census results are released in a few weeks. If not, I can start by manually moving the 2016 population figures to the second column and removing the 2016 population from the density calculation, and keep the template in the talk page until the data is released. I won't do this of course if you have a more efficient plan! Thanks! Mattximus (talk) 01:13, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I plan to use an automated approach that will be more efficient. It will generate all the necessary code from scratch. Prepping a template with blanks would therefore be throw away effort as I would just overwrite it. After I have the vast set of Alberta articles tackled within the first couple days (as described in the above thread), I will focus on the municipality lists of other provinces. If you grow impatient and don't mind a less efficient approach, I suggest you work backwards by jurisdiction with the least amount of municipalities. i.e. Yukon, NWT, Nunavut, NS, and then PEI. A sandbox would be a better place to do the work so that it doesn't permanently clutter up talk pages. Also be wary of transferring over 2016 results as many municipalities will have revised figures due to intercensal boundary adjustments (especially in PEI). Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 02:12, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks I was thinking you would be planning this. I can then help with updating the lead and other tidying efforts. Mattximus (talk) 15:18, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Just if you are interested: there is someone working on using python (pywikibot tool) and wikidata to add all population census figures in Costa Rica (about 500 districts) from every census in just a few minutes. Conversation here: Talk:Cantons of Costa Rica. As an experiment they tried linking it to Santa Bárbara (canton) infobox. Do you see any potential doing this for Canada? It would be nice to take a few seconds and have all thousands of municipalities infobox page updated instantly...! Mattximus (talk) 16:39, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. It won't take a few seconds because every municipality infobox will have to be edited anyway to call the data from Wikidata (once loaded to Wikidata). Thus, not interested right away for the 2021 census. Maybe during downtime in 2023 or beyond in preparation for the 2026 census. Hwy43 (talk) 09:24, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

@Mattximus: the tables for List of municipalities in Alberta are now updated. Could you update the prose accordingly, and also fix any precision errors within the tables arising from my semi-automated wikicode-building regex process? Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 19:21, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi, just a note that they done a big reform in IPE, replacing the Island Lots outside of the municipalities by the Fire Districts. As for Wikidata, the populations of municipalities of Alberta and Quebec of 2021 are now uploaded. Fralambert (talk) 20:46, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

@Fralambert: you bet. Heard in advance that StatCan would now be recognizing all of PEI's municipalities. These unincorporated fire districts for the balance of the island were a surprise to me. Surely much better than the previous lot system. If the population counts of municipalities get linked into Wikipedia articles from Wikidata please let me know and supply me with diffs on how such being done to gain a better understanding. Maybe I will learn a new trick. 04:27, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I used OpenRefine to download the data ([1] or [2] for exemple). The longest part is reconcile the municipalities with the correct one. For Quebec, Alberta and maybe Newfounland and Labrador, the instance (P31) are clean enough so downloading, but I don't think this is the case for the other provinces/territories. By clean I mean that each type of municipalities have their items (ex: [3] or [4]).

Finally, I discover that Statcan made a special sheet for the RCM in Quebec ^^. [5] Fralambert (talk) 02:13, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

So how do these efforts on Wikidata make life easier on its equivalent Wikipedia articles? Hwy43 (talk) 03:55, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

can do this weekend! Mattximus (talk) 03:24, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mattximus: BC and SK tables are updated, so same favour requested there as well. Note that I have yet to unhide the sortbottom rows for the three tables for SK. I will do that after I update them. I am just retiring for the night. Hwy43 (talk) 06:41, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

The text for Alberta is completely updated, and all significant digit errors have been corrected. The only issue is that the citations need updating. I was weary of removing the 2016 citations for fear of breaking the links. Other than that it's done and I will move on to BC and SK next! Mattximus (talk) 18:16, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mattximus: tables for SK, MB, YT, NT, and NU are each now fully complete awaiting the same pass through the prose from you. Hwy43 (talk) 23:19, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

NB and PE ready for you. Hwy43 (talk) 06:04, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Done AB, MB, BC, NU, YT, NT, NB, PE. Just missing updated citations and the areas of unincorporated areas in the footnote of Nunavut. Will work on the rest this week. Thanks for the updates! Mattximus (talk) 01:59, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mattximus: table for NL now done. Hwy43 (talk) 06:39, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

As is the table done for NS. Hwy43 (talk) 20:11, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Pages that are 100% complete: AB, BC, MB, NB, NL, NT, PE, YT. Partially complete: NU. Incomplete: ON, QE, NS, SK. Mattximus (talk) 01:13, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Mattximus: what remains with PE, NU, NS, and SK? I will likely tackle single and lower tiers in ON this weekend and end on QC hopefully before the end of the month. Roncanada is making valiant strides in a non-automated manner in the meantime. Hwy43 (talk) 07:02, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the acknowledgement@Hwy43 Roncanada (talk) 13:10, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Updating of the text, the citations and decimal corrections remain for the last 5. NU has a special citation issue I need to work on as well. Will try to work on it more soon. Mattximus (talk) 02:57, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

@Mattximus: thanks for the explanation. ON is now done. I will try to tackle the QC behemoth next. @Roncanada: not sure if you were the one that set up the merged cells for back-to-back repeating municipal statuses in the QC list a little with ago. My automated process to build the table with the new census results will not replicate that effort. Merging the cells is really a futile effort as, because it is a sortable table, the merging disappears when readers sort by any column within the table. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 22:58, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

@Mattximus and Roncanada: all rows at List of municipalities in Quebec are now updated with the 2021 census results. I will swing back later to update the sub-total and total sortbottom rows, which are temporarily hidden. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 21:21, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Cheers pal Roncanada (talk) 14:47, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

A washing machine for you

The Washing Machine of "That SPI was Pretty Good"

There's a lot of bad SPIs, and clerks and admins tend to complain about it. When I taught middle-schoolers I was always told that positive reënforcement is better than negative, so, in an attempt to apply the same principle here, I present you the second Washing Machine of "That SPI was Pretty Good", for an SPI that was, well, pretty good. Filings about "I know it when I see it" IP LTAs can often be some of the most frustrating to clerk, and instead here I was able to digest your evidence and reach a decision in under 15 minutes. Thank you! -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 08:00, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

(Not to say that I have encountered no good SPIs since the inaugural awarding, just that this is the second time I've thought to give it.) -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 08:00, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@Tamzin: you will never know just how impactful receiving the above was to me after two difficult days outside of the wiki. You made my day. I will cherish this and relish in the satisfaction I feel. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 19:12, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your hard work updating population data. Much appreciated. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:43, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

@Magnolia677: no problem. This time around I may just sweep across all Canadian municipalities and designated places to update population and dwelling counts. Good thing I have five years before the next set of results come out because it could take that long. Cheers, 05:32, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

2021 census updates wording

We should use 2021 Canadian census—it's the common name and the article title, and it's also more specific than "Census of Population".

But most importantly, you keep writing "[City X] recorded a population of N." No, it really didn't, since it's a city and can't record anything. The city isn't doing the census: Statistics Canada is. A population of N was maybe recorded for it (i.e. City X) but really a more appropriate way of stating it would be "City X's population was N" or "The population of City X was recorded as N", "was determined to be N", etc.

I wouldn't normally say anything and I appreciate your updates, but you are going through a large number of articles using this same format and it would be nice not to have to re-edit them all to address these issues. —Joeyconnick (talk) 08:05, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Sorry... also forgot to mention you are using {{nts}} which is for table sorting. A better template would be {{val}}, which has |fmt= which can be set to "commas". —Joeyconnick (talk) 08:08, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

@Joeyconnick: thanks for the {{val}} tip. The way I regex the code for these paragraphs it will be a pain in the ass to make sure |fmt= isn’t applied for digits less than 1,000, so I may code it in regardless as there will be no harm.

I see where you are coming from on the "recorded" piece. Though more exciting than "had" it isn’t technically correct. I haven’t landed on how I will adjust yet but your suggestions are helpful. I have ruled out the possessive version (City X's) though as my regex coding will erroneously create instances like "Blackfalds's".

I am not prepared to avoid the official name of Canada's census. Canada 2016 Census was moved to 2016 Canadian census with an edit summary of "common name" with out any discussion or evidence to support such claim. The true common name of Canada's five-year census program is indiscernible because there are so many variants (StatCan hasn’t helped given it has rebranded the official name of the census so many times over the years). When indiscernible, use of the official name is acceptable and shouldn’t warrant usage controversy. What was really at play during that bold move was consistency among census articles on English Wikipedia. Nearly all of them have since been moved over to "YYYY Country census" or "YYYY Countryian census".

I will amend my approach as outlined above as I implement in Atlantic Canada and then in ON, SK, and QC. In the meantime, I have put on my to do list to circle back and fix AB, BC, MB, NT, NU, and YT. Right now these things aren't breaking Wikipedia and are non-detrimental. Hwy43 (talk) 05:38, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Heck, among all the variants out there, I bet "YYYY census" would likely be ruled the "common name" of Canada’s five-year census event, but such would require disambiguation from others performed elsewhere in the world the same year. i.e., 2021 census (Canada). To work around this, the WP community started using the country name as the disambiguator. The format when I started was Canada 2021 Census. It has since evolved into 2021 Canadian census. Hwy43 (talk) 06:00, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

List of population centres in Ontario

Hi hi; I noticed the List of population centres in Ontario mistakenly included the number of population centres in the 2021 census for Saskatchewan. I've gone ahead and changed it to read "Ontario" and 300 instead of 63; I'm not quite sure if I've used the StatsCan website correctly since that would seem to be 14 more population centres than were included in the 2016 census, so I thought I would drop a note here in case I did something silly. --Ejl389 (talk) 16:00, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Holy crap! Thank you, Ejl389, for letting me know of my error. I will circle back in the next couple of days. Hwy43 (talk) 22:16, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

L H Vashon, Dr Carl Smith

Dear Hwy43, I'm currently investigating the disappearance of L H Vashon, or Lucy Vashon. I was wondering where you heard of the expedition to Bathurst inlet. Were you the one who made this edit? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.240.28.201 (talk) 19:23, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

No. Hwy43 (talk) 02:25, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

TFL notification – March 2022

Hi, Hwy43. I'm just posting to let you know that List of municipalities in New Brunswick – a list that you have been heavily involved with – has been chosen to appear on the Main Page as Today's featured list for March 21. The TFL blurb can be seen here. If you have any thoughts on the selection, please post them on my talk page or at TFL talk. Regards, Giants2008 (Talk) 21:45, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

That's awesome! Hwy43 is a real Barnstar... TheKevlar 23:20, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for all your work updating Canadian census results. Meters (talk) 23:16, 28 March 2022 (UTC)