Talk:Sherbourne Street, Toronto

dab probably unnecessary

Normally we do not use a dab page when there are only two uses, but especially when one does not exist. A hatnote on both articles (or one in this case) is preferable. The one in Suffolk appears to be a farm lane on the outskirts of Boxford, so I doubt any information could be found for it, much less enough for an article. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 15:46, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

There are many other Sherbourne Streets without articles in Wikipedia. It is pointless to have a disambiguation page that points nowhere else. That would be the definition of "pointless"! Secondarywaltz (talk) 17:47, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

• Did you look at simple:Sherbourne Street? Geo Swan (talk) 20:36, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
• Yes! Secondarywaltz (talk) 20:39, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Ahistorical use of [[Bloor Street]]?

In ordinary casual conversation we would almost never need to distinguish between Bloor Street, Toronto and Bloor Street, Mississauga. But this is an article, not a casual conversation, so I restored the piped link to Bloor Street, Toronto. For what it is worth, the amalgamation of Toronto with Etobicoke and the other bodies in Metropolitan Toronto was not that long ago. So, IMO, Bloor Street, Toronto should remain distinct from Bloor Street, Etobicoke. If an older version of Bloor Street ran through Streetsville we should consider using Bloor Street, Streetsville to refer to it.

In my opinion, when any roadway is referred to in an older reference, we should consider referring to it with a link appropriate for the time the reference was written. Geo Swan (talk) 20:26, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I must apologize for my attempt to improve the article. I forgot it was you! Secondarywaltz (talk) 20:41, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Of course no competent good faith contributor should apologize for trying to make a policy-compliant improvement to some part of our joint project.

Competent good faith contributors can differ on what is or isn't an improvement. I differed as to whether the link should be piped, and I explained why. If you think there are counter arguments, and you think they are worth making, please go ahead and make them.

Cheers Geo Swan (talk) 03:08, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

There is no need to split an article on a single roadway into several mismanaged stubs based solely on municipal boundaries. A single article, and in fact a single section of that single article (ie. History), can more than adequately cover all aspects of the single topic, including how or when several once separated concession roads came to collectively became Bloor Street. Likewise, there is no need to point to the single article with unnecessary piped links. There are many editors who go around removing these (bypassing redirects), as there is no potential for an article. Work on expanding articles rather than spreading information thin. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 11:59, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Please don't unnecessarily rewrite references in your favorite style...

Some people prefer to write references putting each field on a separate line. Others prefer to place the entire reference on a single line, integrated into the actual text of the article. To the best of my knowledge there is no policy, guideline or widely accepted convention authorizing anyone to change references to their preferred style. On the contrary, from the point of view of maintenance, there are strong reasons for contributors to leave existing references as-is, unless they require correction. And if they require correction I believe it is best to make the minimal correction, and hold back from rewriting the entire reference in our preferred style.

"Tweaking" references that work perfectly well without tweaks breaks the important principle -- "if it is not broke, don't fix it".

"Tweaking" references that work perfectly well without tweaks very seriously undermines the utility of our history mechanism. Contributors commonly perform a diff from the last version they left, to the current version. If there were subtle changes to the article, this will show them. But, when someone un-necessarily rewrites the article's references the genuine changes to the text are drowned out by the noisy and unnecessary reformatting of the article's metadata.

I reverted one of those unnecessary reference reformattings. Geo Swan (talk) 19:26, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

• Oh, just shut up! You are so tiresome. 50.100.185.17 (talk) 20:48, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Except that a) the Toronto Star should be in italics by using |work= instead of |publisher=, and b) the Toronto Sun should also be treated the same with a correct spelling. Things were broke and fixed. Imzadi 1979 → 01:56, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
    • Well, if there is a policy, guideline, or consensus that recommends using a "work=" field instead of a "publisher=" field, then that would be a valid change to make. But changing the rest of template to put it in your preferred format was overkill -- and completely hid the portion of the change that was, arguably, defensible.

I continue to encourage you to make the minimum changes necessary to fix problematic references, so that our history mechanism continues to be useful. Geo Swan (talk) 07:30, 20 March 2013 (UTC)