User talk:H annavan/sandbox

Peer review by Paula

Overall

• Include pictures. This is an event that is near and dear to my heart and home. It is a huge vibrant event that demands pictures. Please include them. Beg borrow and steal or just contact the organizers - they have lots of great ones. The organizers have a call for Creative Commons images on the web page. http://www.carfreevancouver.org/
• Include maps. It is important to situate this event in the country and the city. Include BC Canada in the history section and include maps for the areas that host the vent the include the streets closed.
• Include source information and find more source information. Your information is weak. Why was it started especially. Is there any reason certain neighbourhoods host and others do not? What does it replace? Street festivals used to be common in Vancouver but stopped for many reasons. No fun Vancouver title was another reason they were started up and supported by the city. The web page has a page linking to media that has been published about the events - lots of info and sources to draw from. http://www.carfreevancouver.org/car-free-vancouver-in-the-media/
• Much of the info you have quoted from the car free web page directly - this needs to be cited but also expanded upon using the expansive media they are offering.
• Include community controversy. Many people drive to car free day creating headaches for residents and crazy amounts of traffic.

History

• The first few sentences are confusing. Do you mean Commercial Drive festival was run by 30 main organizers? Why is this important?
• Please include more information about the "response to the BC provincial government" you have alluded too. You have implied a controversy but need to define it.
• In Car Free day's first year over 25,000 people attended? Sources needed.
• Why did the other communities come on board?

Neighbourhood involvement

• Each neighbourhood should have its own sub-heading and a map associated.
• Why these 4 neighbourhoods - I believe the city decided which would be involved
• What is the associated attendance with Commercial drive event? sources
• All of the events close streets to traffic - that's why it's called car free, its necessary to make this clear by not in this section. You've already done that in the intro.
• The Kits section is larger and much more clear than the others. Why?
• Neighbourhood Small Grants Vancouver Foundation has a wiki page to link to.

~~User:Paulajgill~~

Review by Aaron

Hello H annav

I'm assigned to review your wikipikpedia page, so I've organized my comments by heading and paragraph. I'm following Rosie's example of being highly critical so don't take it personally.

Overall comments - Tell me who, what, where, when, and why. Overall this article is extremely vague, almost content-free. The "why" is completely ignored. You say nothing about environmental issues, greenhouse gasses, urban planning, etc. These topics have their own pages and all you have to do is mention and link to them. Also remember the global readership. You know Vancouver geography and culture very well, so a lot of things may seem obvious to you that someone from Seattle might not know, much less Australia, or people all over the world learning English as a second language. The vast majority of people who access this page will be A)environmentally oblivious and B)from another country. Be very clear and empathetic to other people's understanding.

Heading "Car Free Day Vancouver" - The heading and the first sentence repeat each-other You need to specify Vancouver, Canada (remember global readership). You talk about “busy streets” and “neighborhoods,” without establishing what or where they are. The last sentence is the only one which includes any specific information about festivities, and even that is extremely vague. Really the whole paragraph is pretty vague. You talk in more detail about neighborhoods later, so maybe draw our attention to that section of the page.

Heading "History" - Name some volunteer organizations that do all this stuff. There is no substantial information about who actually puts on the event, other than “main organizers” and “volunteers”. If you bring up the gateway/port mann controversies, you need to explain what they are, what side the organizers are on, and why it relates politically to the goals of car free day. (write it for an Australian) I am trying to imagine what 25,000 people were actually doing when you say they “attended”, but I have a very vague idea that maybe you could expand. You make it sound like a protest. Is this the case? Reference dates specifically. Who has participated since when?

Heading "Neighborhood involvement"

P1 - Include more than one sentence in this paragraph. Is there a network of car free zones? Or are there individual streets? Is the whole neighborhood shut off to cars? Also use participate, not partake. That has other connotations I don't think you want.

P2 - The ten year anniversary info might want to go in “history.” Tell me what streets are shut off, what happens on those streets instead of driving, and what people do when they “participate” Also there are no citations.

P3 - This paragraph is pretty good. Well cited, but short. Is all of main street closed, even south main heading to richmond?

P4 - This is vague, not cited, and you call attention to another paragraph that is vague and not cited.

P5 - This part is unbalanced and much longer than the others. Make sure you link to the block party wiki page, because it's not obvious to everyone on the internet what that means. You mention two years of block parties; 2012 and 2013, are these years special? Did they only start Kits events in 2012? I am glad that finally you are mentioning some of the organizations that actually did all this stuff. They should be named in your introduction, then referenced throughout when you talk about their projects.

OptimizeThis (talk) 20:49, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Page Feedback

Overall

• Citations needed
• Citations need to be properly implemented inside the <ref> tags. A References section can be automatically generated using {{reflist}}.
• Include images
• Feels like a stub rather than a full article

Introduction

• "closes busy streets to car traffic" - Ambiguous; is this saying that the streets are now free of car traffic, or open only to car traffic?
• "get involved" - Not quite the right tone
• "to dance and more" - Not quite the right tone

History

• "what would eventually become" - Relative time reference
• "know as" - Subject/verb agreement needed
• "30 main organizers along with 300 more volunteers" - Spell out numbers
• "to celebrate what is now a hit community event" - NPOV
• "in 2008 on Sunday June 15th" - Follow Wikipedia conventions for dates

Neighbourhood Involvement

• "This year’s" - Relative time reference
• "The Commercial Drive Car Free Day often has the highest neighbourhood turn out of all participating communities." - Citation needed. Fact or hearsay?
• "Kitsilano Car Free Day is made possible with help from the Car Free Day Vancouver Society, Vancouver Foundation, and the City of Vancouver." - Word choice makes it sound too much like an ad

Jovyeramela (talk) 12:09, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Review by Karolina

Hi,

Overall: I know this is a rough draft but don't forget PICTURES and SOURCES. Make a list at the end. Find more information!! Google relevant articles, newspapers, blogs, ask people or businesses involved in it. It's a good start but mentioning Car Free Day's IMPACT & SUSTAINABILITY. What are the green benefits of this day and going car-free? It sounds like most of your information is coming from one source and therefore it sounds tilted and not neutral. Are there oppositions to this day, maybe noise complaints or businesses that don't want to partake in it?

Intro: where did you get this information from? Last line sounds kinda vague/awkward.

History: where are you getting these facts from? Especially all the dates and numbers. Perhaps a few more tags here for words such as Kitsilano, Commercial Drive, Main Street, and the West End.

Neighborhood Involvement: Once again what is your source? "Main Street is closed to traffic and hosts a variety of entertainment including local artisans, musical performers, spoken word and food vendor" this sounds like a rendition of the first line in your first paragraph but it is sourced.

Good work so far and keep up the research and writing! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karolina7 (talk • contribs) 06:48, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Ruth

This is a good start but I feel you have a bit of a way to go until this is an excellent article. Here are my comments:

• I know a lot of people already said this but Photos needed!

• I know it may seem obvious but you need to include how long this goes on for? Just one day? How often? Once a year? Once a week? This needs to be very explicit at the start of the article

• What is the Commercial Drive Festival? Sentence or two needed to explain this. How did the Commercial Drive Festival become car free day and what does “The idea was conceived as a response to the BC provincial government’s Gateway Program or Port Mann/Highway 1 Improvement Project” have to do with anything? What are these organisations anyway? If it is important you have to explain what each of them are (i.e. BC provincial government’s Gateway Program) or don’t include that information at all.

• History section (and other sections): REFERENCES NEEDED

• "This year’s .." this page will hopefully be around for a long time so include just the year instead i.e. “Car Free Day 2014…”

General comments:

• The page does not flow well, the information is all over the place. You need to quite drastically reorganize the page so that it flows much better. For example “Commercial Drive is the origin of Vancouver’s Car Free Day, which took place in 2005. This year’s 2014 festival marks the 10th anniversary of Car Free Day on Commercial Drive. The Commercial Drive Car Free Day often has the highest neighborhood turn out of all participating communities.” These three sentences seem unconnected and one is a repeat so something you said earlier.

• You keep repeating yourself throughout the article. Remove the repetitions.

• Perhaps you could remove the Neighborhood Involvement section and replace that with sections for each of the areas the car free day takes place in Vancouver. You will have to find a little bit more information about each one but this would really improve the readability of the article.

• You need to include more links to other Wikipedia articles need i.e. festival, non-profit organization and many more.

• What has the impact been of car free day? Any opposition? Do some more digging and try and use articles other than the first few that come up from a Google Search

This article does need a bit of work but I think it is a super cool subject and deserves a great Wikipedia page.

RuthVancouver (talk) 18:56, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Feedback from Rosie

The peer-reviewer advice is all excellent, but don't feel obliged to make this page very long by including everything that anyone asks for. Do connect this page to car-free days in other cities or neighbourhoods. I found a website with free maps (http://www.maps-for-free.com/) - I think it's okay to copy these for a Wikipedia article. You could take a small screenshot of each neighbourhood, or at least a screenshot of the area of Vancouver and shade in the neighbourhoods with car-free days. But keep it simple - you don't want to get pulled into a big ambitious project at this stage. Rosieredfield (talk) 22:24, 27 March 2014 (UTC)