Category talk:Provincial parks of British Columbia

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Suggested region subcats[edit]

The sheer bulk of this list, and the way its entries show up in various RD cats (thanks to the assiduous work of a certain editor intent on classifying things by RDs...), suggests to me that a series of subcats for regional breakdowns of the list makes a lot of practical sense. However I don't think subcatting them by RD classifications is going to work or, as I keep on going on about, is all that relevant. People are more likely to register "Provincial parks in the Cariboo" and/or "Provincial parks in the South Cariboo" than they would "Provincial parks in the Cariboo Regional District" - a classification which would exclude much of the South Cariboo, notably; this on the heels of edits made to Entiako Provincial Park, which is decidedly Nechako Country (and not Cariboo or Chilcotin, even though it's in the CRD. Also, provincial parks are not under the jurisdiction of the Regional District boards and BC Parks has its own region-classification system; that system, if anything other than the geographic regions I'm about to list, is really the only other option that has documentary support, other than, that is, using the Land Districts which BCGNIS and the CGNDB use for all geogrpahic objects. Anyway here's a proposed list of parks-by-region subcat:

Category:Southern Interior of British Columbia
Category:Thompson Country
Category:Shuswap Country
Category:Okanagan Country
Category:Kootenay Country
Category:Northern Interior of British Columbia
Category:Central Interior of British Columbia
Category:Cariboo Country
Category:Chilcotin Country
Category:Northern Interior of British Columbia
Category:Coast of British Columbia
Category:Vancouver Island
Category:Lower Mainland
Just to add that, yes, in many cases more than one region cat will apply; but the same is true if RD breakdowns are used.....Skookum1 (talk) 18:48, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support proposal. With 596 entries, it's a good idea to break this cat down into more manageable subcats by region. I see no problem with including these parks within RD cats as well, but the proposed regional break-down for this category makes a lot of sense.Skeezix1000 (talk) 19:23, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Though I agree that the cat would benefit from being split, this seems excessive. You've proposed over 40 new categories, which would contain an average of 15 entries (based on the current 596 entries in this category). In my opinion, so long as all entries are contained on one page, the category is of reasonable size (hence, about 200 entries per cat). A better approach may be to plan for some future expansion, so aim for 50 entries per category, or 12 categories in total. I think this would be more manageable. I'm not sure what structure these should take, especially considering your comments about RDs and other geographical splits. Mindmatrix 19:41, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if that's the case (200 entries per cat) maybe the easiest subdivision is the Coast/Interior paradigm, although each needs a bit of breaking down e.g. "Coast" includes Vancouver Island, which should definitely be a separate grouping, and the Lower Mainland - the MoE region for which includes the Sunshine Coast and Sea to Sky Country, though the cat name could be awkward/lengthy i.e. Category:Provincial parks of the Lower Mainland and Sunshine Coast (+Sea to Sky Country); the QCI and Gulf Islands also are distinct within the Coast as regions....(and have numerous parks, though not 200 each). The Interior similarly needs to be broken down maybe into Southern/Central/Northern although definitions of those subregions are hard to pin down; easier to use Category:Provincial parks in the Kootenays (which would include the Slocan, Elk Valley, Columbia Country and Columbia Valley]] and Category:Provincial parks in the Cariboo (which is definable though otherwise "Central Interior", along with the Chilcotin and also the Prince George-Omineca.....from their perspective that is (in southern BC that's considered "Northern Interior"). Maybe for the north, Category:Provincial parks in northwestern British Columbia (Skeena-Nass-Stikine-Cassiar-Liard-Atlin) and Category:Provincial parks in northeastern British Columbia (Northern Rockies-Fort Nelson-Peace River Block..."Northern Rockies" again meaning the range, not the RD with the same name). Okanagan-Similkameen-Thompson-Boundary's a bit harder to slice and dice since there are varying boundaries; I think MoE uses "Thompson Okanagan" for that area, including the Similkameen and Shuswap and of course the Nicola. As far as the Rockies go, maybe Category:Provincial parks in the Canadian Rockies would simplify things tbut that would overlap with any Kootenays cat although itwould solve the problem of the Robson Valley, which isn't exactly Central Interior, or Southeastern Interior, or anything else; administrtatively it's connected to Prince George so would tend to fall under any designation we make for that area. I guess I'll come up with a head-count for the major areas where subcats would help - the Chilcotin, the Cariboo, the Kootenays, Vancouver Island (-and-Gulf-of-Georgia), and the Lower Mainland-Sunshine Coast and see where the chips fall....Skookum1 (talk) 21:10, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've tried to arrange them by "macro grouping" and bolded ones I think are important and "populous" enough to warrant inclusion; I'll check MoE/BC Parks later and come back with their region-names....Skookum1 (talk) 21:23, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

more info yet, and many aren't written it seems; plan is to sort them into their respective Chilcotin and Cariboo region-cats and then count them....is List of British Columbia provincial parks absolutely complete, btw?Skookum1 (talk) 21:45, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's just under 600 provincial park articles, including protected area articles.....what's your rationale for categories having to have 200 entries? Seems to me there's a lot of categories out there with far fewer....if your 200 is a "rule" (as if Wikipedia had rules) then breaking this down becomes difficult, as three large groupigns won't help out anymore than the province-wide cat used at present.....the idea is to give some regional context to the mass of park articles; not to simply create thre e other smaller masses....Skookum1 (talk) 22:07, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, there's no rule about that. With 200 entries, there's only one page load when viewing the category, which is a big deal from a user interface perspective. However, I suggested aiming for 50 or so per category, to allow for future growth. I don't have much time now, so I'll read the rest of your postings at some other time. (BTW: I don't know if the list is complete, nor do I know how many parks there are. That detail may be useful to know before splitting the category, so we can make some reasonable decisions about it. Also, with 12 cats, nearly 150 new articles per category would need to be created to get them to 200, meaning nearly 1800 new articles about BC provincial parks. I'd bet there aren't that many for which articles don't yet exist, so the new categories would stay relatively "slim".) Mindmatrix 22:50, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What I'll do is make links to the parent region cats of t he boldfaced suggested cats above so it's easier to count them; this includes a couple of subcats like the Chilcotin and Cariboo ones, but if a larger region is needed a decision is needed whether to follow the region cats or somehow integrate either the tourism ministry or environment ministry region-system; please note that everything from parks to communities to mountains and whatnot are categorized by Land District, though parks are governed via the BC Parks/MoE Regions system. This sort of sets parallel precedents for further complications like classifying mines by mining districts (important in BC) and so on, in the same way that municipalities are grouped by regional districts, by the way; it seems/ed easier to use something based on the traditional-region system; we'll see what they add up to. Watch next edits.Skookum1 (talk) 04:41, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some fixes and the head-count yet to go, and it seems as if it's time to create the Central and Southern Interior catsas it may come down to only three our four Interior cats, by the sound of it with that pop.50 thing. I don't think there are all that many more articles; the list page says those that are "closed" are not listed, but I'm not sure what that would mean; not that the campgrounds are closed seasonally, certainly, if there are any; mostly what's yet undone is the Ecological Preserves and soem of the Protected Areas; I haven't had time ot compare the BC Parks website's directory with the Wiki list or the cat contents either.....Skookum1 (talk) 04:54, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are certain anomalies in the region classification; the Fraser Canyon spills northward into the Southern Interior and its very lowest reaches are sort of part of the Coast, the South Cariboo is more adequately classed as Southern interior than Central, Robson Valley is in its own space but tied to Central interior, Northern and Central Interior are vaguely defined by latitude and centrality; Smithers, Burns Lake and Hazelton I've heard referred to as Northern Interior, but what's east of there is Central Interior - "inside the mountains" is a good concept there, with the southern boundary being somewhere along the south rim of the Cariboo Plateau; Bridge River-Lillooet is Southern Interior if anything, though with historic ties ot the Central Interior and also grouped that way in both the BC Parks system and in the Coast Chilcotin Cariboo tourism gig. Category:Northwestern Interior of British Columbia may be a useful subcat although its parent Northern Interior may be large enough (not too big, not too little).....05:01, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

[undent]Just finished creating Central and Southern Interior cats, and realized int he course of doing so that I yet have to go through the parks list and a lot fo them need latlongs and any kind of locational information; I'll do the raw region-classification on all of them so they're all in teh respective categories that I'm looking to get provpark subcats made for....dkciey on Kamloops/Thompson/Lillooet as to Central or Southern; hte Okanagan-Shuswap is rather a different cultural regions, but this isn't about logical regions in a way, it's about sufficient articles for a new cat, so I'll stick to making sure they're all located in their respective cats; no way of knowing otherwise how fine the distribution has to be; the far north has surprsingly numerous parks, and also the Central Interior...Skookum1 (talk) 05:28, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cats created, which was needed for a while; Bulkley Valley maybe should be in Central, I'll contact a wikian up there who maybe could say for sure; some regions of the Northern Interior are not in subcats, e.g. Taku-Teslin, Liard and such which don't exist yet; and the mass of the Stikine Ranges and far Northern Rockies....at times I wondered if "by mountain range" might not be a better way to classify them ;-) (note "Columbia Mountains" in the Interior cat; it's because it's both Central and Southern, i.e. it spans regions, like the Fraser Canyon does...ditto the Coast Mountains and so on....no biggie, people don't access parks from the top down, but they do look at maps that way. Off to the parks category to start placing latlongs and region cats......sigh....(est. over 50% not done yet).Skookum1 (talk) 05:46, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

[undent]Hmmmm, all of the above I'd forgotten about, being ADD and all, though the same geographic subdivision issues apply in regards other categories....Skookum1 (talk) 17:23, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Protected Areas and Ecological Preserves[edit]

in the course of looking up Sikanni Chief Canyon Protected Area it occurred to me that a lot of protected areas are near-parks, or rather they're protected areas because the provgov didnt' want to create them as parks, or they WERE provincial parks and were "downgraded". Many of them should have articles, particularly if for specific features like canyons, springs etc - so that they can be "in" the various categories on those topics....ecological preserves are another matter and maybe best left for another Wikiporject to consider, maybe WP:Ecology; or at least within WP:Protected Areas. I'm going to create Sikanni Chief Canyon as it beongs on the Sikanni dismabiguation page and also in the canyons cats, but I suggest that the BC Parks site be "mined" for noteworthy Protected Areas that desrve articles/wiki-mentions.Skookum1 (talk) 17:23, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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