This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Halifax, Nova Scotia article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.
Halifax, Nova Scotia was a Geography and places good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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I feel like there should be an IPA pronunciation guide for the Mi'kmaq word Kjipuktuk. I'm not opposed to having both a "casual" and an IPA guide, but only the former seems unspecific and insufficient. Seokzine (talk) 03:35, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is kind of meant as a specific message to @MediaKyle, but I'm posting here, so that others can join the discussion, in case I'm out to lunch (so you can all tell me so!). Recently, there's been a bunch of deletion of unsourced material, as well as leaving most other paragraphs in the entire article tagged with [citation needed]. To be clear, I don't think this is any sort of vandalism or bad-faith editing, but I do think it's ended up farther than we want. While I agree that in general, material should be sourced, and that there's still too much of this article that is kind of just a legacy compilation of various people's original research over the years, it's still the case that some stuff is obvious enough, that it should stay. Obviously, it would be even better with sources, and we can work on that, but there are many basic general-knowledge facts that have been deleted or flagged. For example, there is no longer any mention of the the Atlantic International Film Festival, or the film/TV industry at all, and the very fact that Halifax is home to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic has a [citation needed] tag. This seems to be going overboard, to me.
I have no desire to start an edit war - there are too few of us editors as it is, so people who have time to contribute to this article should be welcomed, and their contributions valued, but I would like to sort out a way that we can calibrate our actions here. If I just dive in and start implementing my concept of sourcing standards without talking about it, I'm confident we'll end up in a fight, and I really don't want that. I'd appreciate feedback. AshleyMorton (talk) 15:16, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi AshleyMorton, thanks for the ping. All material must contain a citation, even material where the citation for that information is present in the linked article, like the case of Halifax being home to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. Without a citation, there is no indication that this is important enough to include in an overview article about Halifax. As Wikipedia is inherently a reference work, information without a citation is significantly less useful to the reader, which is why it may be removed. This is all covered at WP:V. You're of course welcome to restore any content I deleted, with citations. All the best, MediaKyle (talk) 16:13, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, surely we can have some sort of reasonable understanding of uncontroversial general knowledge. New York City doesn't bother to cite a source for the idea that ticker-tape parades are held there for sports champions. London doesn't cite a source for its statement that by the 11th century, London was "clearly the largest town in England." Baseball doesn't cite a source for the fact that when you make it all the way around the diamond, that's called a "run". Knitting doesn't cite sources for its clear and thorough paragraph-long description of "Courses and wales" - fundamental components of what knitting is. Beluga whale doesn't cite any source for the etymology of the name of the whale. ...And so on ad nauseam. I'm not finding exceptions. Rather, it's common and normal - arguably universal - on Wikipedia for *uncontroversial* information and description to be included without citing a source, and without having the "citation needed" tag. There's a lot of controversial things in this encyclopedia worth casting doubt on, or requiring sources before inclusion, but if we implement WP:V harshly and selectively (Why Halifax and not Truro, Nova Scotia or Salmon or Nova Scotia?), then aren't we just making the whole project less useful? AshleyMorton (talk) 01:17, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Let me see if I can clear things up for you:
At New York City, you've highlighted the unsourced content amongst an otherwise relatively well-sourced article. That information could be reasonably removed, because it is unsourced.
At London, I do see a citation for that statement. In any case, if the information didn't line up to the text, it should be tagged or removed, especially for a statement like "largest".
At Baseball, citations are provided for that information, in the body of the article. The lead doesn't require duplicate citations, per WP:LEADCITE.
The information on Knitting is unsourced. What you see on other articles does not reflect best practice - the fact of the matter is, that information should be sourced.
The etymology of Beluga whale should also have a source.
I don't think my actions are harsh or selective. I remove unsourced content across a wide variety of Canada articles. WP:No original research also bears some weight here - many of these articles are full of them. I feel that removing the accumulation of unsourced OR from these articles is improving the encyclopedia. Hope that makes sense. All the best, MediaKyle (talk) 01:25, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
level-5 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
