Talk:Toronto City Council

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Not enough information

This article seams to be vague and lacking of content. Perhaps we could add some more content; i.e. proposed laws, important decisions made in the history of the council, controversies, ect.

No more red links

The easy way out is to just remove the links. Of course, someone who's a true expert on this sort of thing can do a bit of research and make an article for each councillor.

Red Links

The red-linking to non-existent and non-notable councillors is an eyesore. Can this be resolved?

St Paul's ward

The article on History_of_neighbourhoods_in_Toronto claims that St Paul's was one of the original wards of Toronto, but it's missing from the list in this article. Could someone add it, and add information about its borders too? I suspect St Paul's corresponds to Yorkville, because there are multiple things in Yorkville named "St Paul's whatever". That would also explain why St Paul's is missing from the list of wards, because Toronto didn't annex Yorkville until 1883, which is later than the source cited. (Someone should also look into other parts of Toronto that were annexed late, like Parkdale and Brockton. Did they have their own ward names too?) 99.225.130.171 (talk) 03:30, 19 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And now I have a cite. "on Feb. 1, 1883, the Village of Yorkville vanished, joining the city as St. Paul's Ward." http://www.torontosun.com/life/columnists/2009/02/01/8221486-sun.html. (That took me all night to find!) 99.225.130.171 (talk) 04:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Notability of SOME of the Toronto City Councillors

Hi,

I'm just wondering: Does EVERY SINGLE council member need their own Wikipedia page? I understand more notable Councillors like Rob Ford for previously being Mayor of Toronto (and his shenanigans), and Kristyn Wong-Tam for her LGBTQ rights activism. But a LOT of City Councillors are known just for simply being a Toronto City Councillor (as elected) per ward. Would it be advisable to keep the "non-notable" Councillors on Wikipedia, or should we do a cut-down on pages for some of the council members. As some of them do NOT meet notability guidelines other than being a Toronto City Councillor who won the 2014 Toronto Election. Thanks!

Sincerely,
Tibbydibby (talk) 05:01, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I ping @Reval416, Jack Cox, 199.198.251.107, Bearcat, Shinyang-i, and Random86: since I kinda want your opinion on this. I know (to a few I pinged) that this is NOT a K-pop related issue but some of the City Councillors (like Paul Ainslie) are definitely only as notable as a typical member of EXO. Which in other words, NOT independently notable outside of the Council Chambers other than being a City Councillor of a certain ward. Tibbydibby (talk) 05:13, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For cities which meet the standard of being an internationally famous global city — such as Toronto, Montreal, New York City, Los Angeles or London — serving on the city council is accepted as an automatic WP:NPOL pass which qualifies the councillor for a Wikipedia article. That's not true for smaller cities like Sudbury or Fredericton or Fort Wayne or Peoria or Milton Keynes, but it is true for global metropolises like Toronto where even the municipal politics can and regularly does become a topic of national or international media coverage.

And even more importantly, there's no easy way to divide Toronto city councillors into notable and non-notable camps on any objective or neutral criterion beyond the fact of serving on the council — any attempt to decree that some Toronto city councillors are notable, while others aren't, would bog down in arguments of the "keep because I said so" or "delete because I hate their ideology" variety, and couldn't be resolved on any objective criteria.

You, for instance, think that Kristyn Wong-Tam falls into the notable camp and Ainslie doesn't — but a conservative from Scarborough could easily argue the exact opposite. There isn't, for example, anything about Wong-Tam's LGBT activism that's so uniquely notable that she'd get a Wikipedia article if she had to depend on that instead of her Toronto City Council seat to qualify — the coverage she gets for LGBT activism is because of the profile she has as a city councillor, and not because her activism (which mostly boils down to "helped to shepherd WorldPride 2014 through the bureaucratic and regulatory hurdles at city hall") is encyclopedically notable independently of that context. And almost nobody on council actually yet has a truly comprehensive article that says everything that Wikipedia could reasonably say about them — even Ainslie's article could easily get beefed up well beyond where it stands right now.

So the only strictly objective criteria we can use are that either all Toronto city councillors are eligible for articles without exception, or none are but the mayor and the ones who have also served in the provincial or federal legislatures — it's not a body where we can objectively and fairly split the members up into separate camps where some are notable for serving on the council and others aren't, because what further criteria would we use to divvy them up? Bearcat (talk) 13:32, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I too have struggled with this issue. Calling one councillor notable and another non-notable is a subjective mess no sane editor wants to broach. However, one possible option I have considered is grouping some councillor articles together in a single place. It might be possible to create a single article for councillors who have been appointed rather than being elected. These are people who have been appointed by council to fill a remnant term after some elected councillor has resigned before the next election. Tentatively called: Appointed Toronto City Councillors, it would include such people as Peter Leon, Ceta Ramkhalawansingh, and Fred Dominelli. It would not include Paul Ainslie who was appointed but then was subsequently elected. I am sure there are other examples. EncyclopediaUpdaticus (talk) 14:38, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You have all brought up really good points... Thanks for your input so far. Tibbydibby (talk) 16:09, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it's incredibly important when you have a city that is bigger then some provinces in this country and bigger than some U.S. States then yes the city council is vitally important.--Jack Cox (talk) 02:50, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Censorship

An editor reversed the addition of the well-sourced fact that this council allows discrimination against the disabled in housing if said disabled is not of the master faith. This is disgusting, he passively admitted in his edit summary that he finds this fact racist. It's a sad day when the theories of "white privilege" trump the actual disadvantage of having a non-functioning spinal cord. Yes, this editor thought this paralyzed man was oppressing these poor defenceless Muslims by having lower occurrences of melanin. It is amazing that such nasty people exist and control what the public read or do not read. Chrissie Avgie (talk) 00:47, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I can't speak for the editor, but this article is not the place for you to add your personal opinion in any case. It's not an internet forum. This article is about how City Council operates, etc., so that people can understand. If you wanted to write an article like "Housing policy in Toronto" then the incident that made the news could fit. Maybe Toronto Community Housing article too. But it's never about anyone's personal opinion, and its not about repeating news articles. Alaney2k (talk) 02:39, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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