Talk:Victoria (British Columbia)

I moved this article to bring it in line with the article naming conventions. The disambiguator is supposed to be the next largest geographical unit containing the destination. So, I used "British Columbia" rather than "Canada".

I chose not to use "Victoria (city)" because there are a number of cities named Victoria in the world -- see the Wikipedia article for details. -- (WT-en) Evan 11:45, 4 Nov 2003 (PST)

This is starting to look really good! A few more listings and I think it would be ready for the main page. Nice work! (WT-en) Majnoona 00:28, 18 May 2004 (EDT)

1550's
Hey (WT-en) Dawnview, what do you like about 1550's? I haven't had a chance to get down there yet, even though it's just up the street from where I live. (WT-en) RickScott 21:32, May 20, 2004 (EDT)


 * The food. It's typical pub fare, but very good. --(WT-en) Dawnview 02:56, 22 May 2004 (EDT)


 * Don't they also serve pretty nice breakfast stuff? I think I've been there for hangover brunch, and sitting on the patio was quite pleasant.  Might be worth mention, since there's no write-up there at all for this place right now... (WT-en) Ryleyb 12:44, 31 May 2006 (EDT)


 * No idea. I'll just put in a short comment to that effect. --(WT-en) Dawnview 00:36, 23 June 2006 (EDT)

Health Authority reports
Information you may or may not want to know before going out to eat: the Vancouver Island Health Authority publishes its food facility inspection reports on the web:

http://www.healthspace.ca/Clients/VIHA/South/VIHA_South_Website.nsf/food-frameset

I'm wondering if this is something appropriate to work into the page, and if so, how best to present that gawdawful URL... (WT-en) RickScott 14:04, 17 Aug 2005 (EDT)


 * I think it's a good idea, maybe at first just throw it into the "victoria info links" section I added? (WT-en) Dorian —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Dorian (talk • contribs) 14:48, 2007 July 1
 * Unfortunately, it's against the Project:External links policy. One thing we want Wikivoyage to preserve is the usefulness in printed-out article. But you can't follow the links in a printed-out article to check the health records.  A better thing is to delete the review for any restaurant that gets a bad health rating. (WT-en) JimDeLaHunt 23:56, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

Gazebo Bed and Breakfast
This seems to be a real bed and breakfast in Victoria. Is there a reason it was removed from the list? I found the edit comment uninformative. --(WT-en) Evan 18:21, 19 June 2006 (EDT)


 * I guess I thought that the copy looked to be straight from an ad; the user that added it also created some orphan page with text ripped straight from the hotel website. Assuming this author is the owner of Gazebo, and that we have a fairly comprehensive mid-range list for hotels already, what is the value in this listing?  I understand that if s/he is the original author, that everything works out from a legal perspective (once permission is obtained), but I guess I'm not clear where the line is between providing enough information about Victoria, and providing misleading information:  most hotels of interest in Victoria are within a 10 minute walk of the downtown core.  This one is probably a 20 minute drive).  Please direct me to any wikivoyage pages that expand on this kind of stuff, I am very interested.  Maybe an alternative would be to add an "(Around|Near) Victoria" section, as I'm sure I will find if I go look at larger cities pages :) (WT-en) Ryleyb 18:56, 19 June 2006 (EDT)

Drink
So I went ahead and nixed the go-dont-go sections in the drinks listings. I thought it was a cute idea, but doesn't fit in with our current Project:Manual of style. As it is, the bar and club listings have a lot more detail than we usual have in guides. Comments? Questions? (WT-en) Maj 16:33, 22 August 2006 (EDT)


 * It was cute, but your clean up is much more compact and usable. I didn't write the section, but I agree it's improving... (WT-en) Ryleyb 12:01, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

BC Ferries paragraph troubles
The BC Ferries paragraph at the beginning of the article is wrapping really narrow and going on really long, which creates a lot of whitespace around it - at least in Firefox. Maybe that paragraph should be moved to the section below that lists more info about different travel resources? (WT-en) Dorian —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Dorian (talk • contribs) 14:48, 2007 July 1
 * I worked around the problem by changing the BC Ferries paragraph from a bullet point to a regular body paragraph. The line wrapping looks much better now. Thanks for pointing that out! (WT-en) JimDeLaHunt 23:58, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

External links section?
So... why was my addition of a links section removed? Was it not comprehensive enough? It was only two entries I know, but I could put a bigger, better list together. Or should they be integrated somehow into the other content, does wikivoyage frown on external links to travel guides? (WT-en) Dorian —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Dorian (talk • contribs) 14:59, 2007 July 1
 * Dorian, thanks for your initiative! That's a good thing. Unfortunately, the specific idea of a links section goes against Wikivoyage's Manual of Style. Specifically, it's against the Project:External links policy. One thing we want Wikivoyage to preserve is the usefulness of a printed-out article. But you can't follow the links in a printed-out article, you see. Hence we keep external links to the bare minimum, and limit them to primary sources. (WT-en) JimDeLaHunt 00:01, 2 July 2007 (EDT)

Get out section
I wouldn't call tofino near unless your taking a helicopter. By car it's gotta be six hours. I wouldn't even call Tofino near to Nanaimo, it's a good three to four hours from there! —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 66.119.176.236 (talk • contribs) 15:35, 2008 February 28
 * Good point. I revised the section. BTW, maps.google.ca thinks it is 316 km — about 4 hours 36 mins — from Victoria to Tofino. (WT-en) JimDeLaHunt 15:34, 1 March 2008 (EST)

Victoria region or huge city
Reading through the Victoria article, I'm not sure if it's about the specific "city of Victoria" or the Greater Victoria area that people generally think about when they say "they're going to Victoria". For example, Butchart Gardens is listed in both Victoria and Sidney (British Columbia). Of the two, Sidney is the more correct guide to place it in, but the gardens are a very common and popular attraction associated with Victoria. Another example is the University of Victoria -- it's listed in Victoria even though its campus is in Saanich -- but someone travelling there is going to think Victoria first and may not even be aware it's in Saanich.

Where I'm going with all this, is should we be treating Victoria as a huge city or create a Greater Victoria region to pull it all together? Victoria, the city, is small, but the name "Victoria" lends itself to a much larger area. I'm leaning towards treating it as a huge city because of the interconnectedness -- it's all one transit system and the core area (Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay & the Westshore) is mostly one stretch of urban/suburban sprawl. Carving out a Greater Victoria region will also make the remaining South Vancouver Island region a bit awkward (it would be the Cowichan Valley and Juan de Fuca coast, which aren't really connected because the roads run through Greater Victoria).

What I have in mind is to treat the current Victoria article as the huge city guide, move the listings to a new City of Victoria district, and then move four existing articles underneath the Victoria guide (i.e., change them from a small city to a district). The districts would be:


 * Victoria/City of Victoria - Most of the listings in the existing Victoria article. Covers the main tourist areas like the Inner Harbour, Beacon Hill and the parliament buildings.
 * Victoria/Saanich and Oak Bay - Merger of the existing Saanich and Oak Bay guides. Mostly suburban area north and east of the city center, with many parks and beaches. Also includes the University of Victoria.
 * Victoria/Esquimalt and the Westshore - The existing Langford guide with most of the Go next section re-integrated into See/Do. Would cover Victoria's western suburbs (Esquimalt, View Royal, Langford, Colwood and Metchosin).
 * Victoria/Sidney and the Peninsula - The existing Sidney (British Columbia) guide. A mix of rural and urban, Butchart Gardens and Victoria's main transportation links (Victoria International Airport and Swartz Bay ferry terminal).

Thoughts? -Shaundd (talk) 16:47, 17 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I would defer to you, but I have to say, seeing the text "Victoria is a huge city" on an article would look really odd. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:45, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * That's true (your comment gave me a morning chuckle). Victoria isn't huge by population, although it does cover a large area and attractions are reasonably dispersed. After I posted this, I thought a simpler thing is to just merge Langford, Saanich and Oak Bay into the existing Victoria article. The combined article probably wouldn't exceed 100k in size. And even though they're separate municipalities, on the ground, you can't tell where one ends and the next begins. -Shaundd (talk) 18:09, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Normally, the City/District structure is used for things which are within the municipal boundaries, such as Toronto/Scarborough in the former Municipality of Metropolitan Trawna. Mississauga isn't in Toronto (it's in Peel) so it's not a district. It is, however, in Greater Toronto.
 * Under that pattern, Saanich is in Greater Victoria, but it's not a district of the city of Victoria. K7L (talk) 18:32, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree that, normally, the city/district structure falls within municipal boundaries -- but there are examples in WV where it doesn't. Currently, Victoria is incorporating info from neighbouring municipalities that have their own article, which I think is a sign that our coverage of Victoria is too fragmented (i.e., the travel destination of Victoria is larger than the precise limits of the city of Victoria). A Greater Victoria region is a possibility, but then it fragments the South Vancouver Island region, and I'm not sure how much users actually read those "greater city" region guides. Since a huge city pulls together the various parts of Greater Victoria without fragmenting the parent region, it has those benefits. Although, as Ikan pointed, "Victoria is a huge city" looks odd.
 * That said, the more I think about it, the more I think it may be best to cover Victoria and the inner suburbs (Oak Bay, Esquimalt and Saanich) in one Victoria article with no districts. It deals with most of the current fragmentation and covers the main urban area. All it would require is merging Saanich and Oak Bay into Victoria and updating the lede and/or Understand to note the Victoria guide covers the four municipalities. Langford can remain as a separate article and should cover the five or so Westshore municipalities (which it does now anyway). -Shaundd (talk) 23:22, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * This article is substantial but not super-long; Saanich has a fairly brief article and Oak Bay, a very brief one. So this solution sounds sensible. We aren't talking about Los Angeles County here. I'd say, don't be shy about creating geographic subsections within the structure of the article, if that seems most useful. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:29, 17 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I've gone ahead and merged Oak Bay and Saanich into the Victoria article. The whole article needs some cleaning up, which I'll try to work on over the next while. -Shaundd (talk) 05:17, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

New banner
Here's one that I've got. While I like the current one, it appears a little bit blurry. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:26, 6 September 2021 (UTC) File:Victoria BC alt banner.jpg (ignore this)
 * Oppose. While blurry, it shows the Empress Hotel, the symbol of the city. The new one looks like a bunch of tents that could be anywhere. Here is another one, but I don't know if it is any better. Ground Zero (talk) 12:32, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I've cropped a fourth banner, which shows the waterfront and Empress Hotel. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:45, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * #4 looks good to me. Ground Zero (talk) 13:01, 6 September 2021 (UTC)