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== Kilometres, yet mi? ==

Why is ''kilometres'' spelled fully, whereas ''miles'' isn't? Also, what's about other places that put the length at 5,527 mi?--[[User:Adûnâi|Adûnâi]] ([[User talk:Adûnâi|talk]]) 11:41, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Revision as of 11:41, 16 April 2018

Notable Crossings

I noticed that the list of "Notable Crossings" was seemingly a list of crossings in Ontario. I did add the Peace Arch, which as the biggest crossing by traffic west of Ambassedor Bridge, is probably more notable, then the crossing in Sault Ste. Marie. I think that this list should probably be gutted maybe to two the five or six biggest ones. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.189.210.213 (talk) 21:35, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The list should include crossings that have their own articles -- primarily bridges. That's how we define "notable". Powers T 15:24, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
At some point this section became retitled "Notable bridge/tunnel crossings", so I removed Peace Arch and Blackpool.Wbaron (talk) 02:04, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The TEXT of this article does not even mention the Rainy River (Minnesota–Ontario) between Ontario and Minnesota. Nor does it mention the Detroit River, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, the Niagara River, nor the Strait of Juan de Fuca. 47.215.180.7 (talk) 04:41, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Usage of Canada-United States border in Wikipedia

I noticed that some (about 20) articles used [[Canada|Canadian]] border and I've changed those to [[Canada-United States border|Canada–US]] border. I think it is more appropriate to use Canada–US than to use Canadian, as it is a joint border. I'm not sure where policy lands on this sort of thing. The majority of links use some form of Canada-US, e.g. United States-Canadian. To see what I mean, look at what links to this article. I consider it to be an improvement to use both countries in the name, but I understand that using Canadian by itself is common usage also. What do you think? Alaney2k (talk) 06:12, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Changing the link was a good thing, and I support that because it links to the specific subject being discussed, but the displayed text does not always need to changed. If the context of the article is clear, there's no need to list both countries. In many articles on highways, the first sentence does, or should, include a statement similar to "the US state of X" or "the Canadian province of Y", for example. In those cases, we can leave the second country involved out of describing the border at the terminus of the highway. Otherwise we run into the same formulaic approaches in our writing that produce something like "US Highway 2 (US 2) is a United States Numbered Highway in the US state of Michigan."

    In short, when the context previously makes it clear that the subject of an article is connected with one of the two countries involved at the border, using only the one to name the border is sufficient, especially when a reader can click or hover his cursor over the link to get the full name. Imzadi 1979  06:28, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Using the same logic, shouldn't we also always list both states or provinces when referring to those borders, even when context makes it clear we're already talking about one of the states or provinces? If that's the case, I have 10 years' worth of writing to fix. –Fredddie 11:23, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • But, what if I said, maybe you should? Are we being clear to readers who are unfamiliar with the subject? Would it be good practice to use brackets like "the Canadian (Canada-US) border" and use Canadian the rest of the way? I feel like it's more encyclopedic to use both countries, but who wants to write both countries each time? Is it being lazy? Are we using shorthand? Are we just being in a hurry? My concern comes from seeing how many serious (aka non-entertainment or sports) articles need work. In some of the articles that reference the border, you see more than one version of the link used, too. Which means it's not really been gone over (edited). Might be nice to take more care. I will try to find some Manual of Style references on the net. Alaney2k (talk) 12:47, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • This depends on context. "The person suspected of robbing a bank in Minneapolis was pursued by police almost to the Wisconsin border." It's the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin, but the context makes it clear that it's about an event in Minnesota, so it's appropriate to phrase it that way. When there is no context of that kind, both states would be named. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:06, 11 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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This could not have been before the boundary was delineated

This article currently says this:

The border [ . . . ] even divides some buildings found in communities in Vermont and Quebec whose construction pre-dated the border's delineation.

That part of the southern boundary of Quebec was "delineated" – marked by survey monuments – in 1771–3 by Collins and Valentine, but the buildings through which the border passes are plainly a lot newer than that, as may be seen via Google maps in Stanstead, Quebec and Derby Line Vermont, at the site of the Haskell Free Library and the house east of it through which the border passes, and some other buildings about two miles west of there. In particular, the Haskell Free Library was deliberately located so that the boundary passes through the building – hardly something that could have been done before the boundary was "delineated". Might it not better say that it was before authorities became fastidious about preventing construction in such locations? Michael Hardy (talk) 03:33, 8 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A border can be officially surveyed, and yet not actually confirmed for exactly where it's located. Just within the past five years, for example, the border between North Carolina and South Carolina was shifted about 150 feet southward at Lake Wylie by efforts to clarify the precise location of the border with modern GPS technology — and the effects included at least one property that got split by the new state line, so that the guy's house is in one state and his back deck is in the other. And that's a border that had survey markers on it too — but some of the markers turned out to have been off.
We could potentially stand to be more precise about how the buildings in Vermont/Quebec came to be divided by the border, if we can find proper sourcing to clarify it better, but we can't just presume that the logical explanation is that the authorities just weren't "fastidious" enough to prevent construction of a building that was already known to be divided by the border. 18th-century survey markers, for example, are known in a lot of locations to veer off from the proper straight line that officially demarcates the border — even in the west where the Canada-US border is officially the 49th parallel of latitude, the actual border is not a perfectly straight line that exactly matches the precise GPS location of the 49th parallel, but a spaghetti-like line that wobbles up and down across the 49th parallel. It looks like a perfectly straight line on a map, because the map scale is too small to actually catch the wobbles, but on the ground it is not a perfectly straight line — and guess what the reason is: surveyor error.
So in reality, it's far more likely that the border was roughly surveyed but not carefully or precisely verified until after many of the divided buildings were already on top of it, rather than everybody knowing exactly what the builders were doing and the government just being too lazy to stop them. It's entirely possible for Haskell to have been intentional without meaning that all divided buildings were equally intended to be located smack on the borderline. Bearcat (talk) 21:31, 11 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You are mistaken about this particular border. The Collins–Valentine line surveyed in the early 1770s was indeed "rough" in that they intended it to be the 45th parallel and it is in some places well over a thousand feet north of there, _but_ in 1842 the Webster–Ashburton Treaty said the border is to be where Collins and Valentine put the markers and _not_ at the actual 45th parallel. The Haskell Free Library and Opera House was deliberately located so that the border passes through the building, as required by Haskell's last will and testament, and the other buildings were very obviously built long after the treaty of 1842, as you will see from Google Maps.
I have sent an email to the two International Boundary Commissioners, in Ottawa and Washington, asking if they can clarify all of this and directing their attention to this present Wikipedia discussion page. I await their response.
And I wasn't alleging laziness; rather I was suggesting that standards of behavior were different during an earlier time, and it was not considered necessary to forbid putting buildings on the boundary. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:49, 12 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
People putting houses up
On the border louses up
Our ability to boss
Everyone who tries to cross.
    — John Joseph Enright
Michael Hardy (talk) 03:57, 12 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This edit and some other recent edits seem to be based on deductions from ASSUMPTIONS that appear reasonable only until one knows certain facts. The lack of accuracy of the Collins and Valentine survey of the 1770s cannot explain the location of houses through which the boundary passes because when the inaccuracy was discovered it was decided NOT to correct it but to leave the border at the position where Collins and Valentine marked it with survey monuments. The border that passes through the buildings on the boundary between Vermont and Quebec is NOT a more accurately marked border established later; it is the inaccurately marked border establish by the survey of the 1770s, and it is officially still the border. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:39, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, then find a proper source for what did happen. Because trust me, "everybody knew the houses were right smack on the border but nobody cared enough to do anything about it" is most certainly absolutely ten thousand per cent guaranteed not what happened either. Bearcat (talk) 21:51, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
They certainly cared in the case of the Haskell Library, where the building was deliberatly built on the border. That may have been the case with others too. Probably there was a time in the past when putting buildings astride the border was not illegal and not frowned on. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:02, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I received a reply from the International Boundary Commission, and it consisted of saying I might find the information here. To be continued . . . Michael Hardy (talk) 02:05, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Border exclaves

Just a reminder, once again, that the "exclave" list in this article is only for listing places that have already been identified as exclaves in reliable sources. It is not an invitation to go scanning Google Maps or Wikimapia yourself to look for unnamed or unpopulated peninsulas that happen to be hanging off the wrong side of a riverbank, but have never been written about or identified as exclaves by external sources before — that is original research, which is prohibited by Wikipedia policy. Your source for adding an entry to the list must be a reliable media source which explicitly identifies the location, either verbally or in writing, as an exclave; it cannot simply be an online map of the location, because online maps can be wrong. (Trust me, I once had to submit a correction to Google Maps because the house my grandmother lived in when I was a kid was not and still isn't a WalMart.) Bearcat (talk) 22:09, 11 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Schornack?

The material about the dispute involving Dennis Schornack is entertaining, but seems tangential to the topic of this article. I may create a separate article titled International Boundary Commission and if it gets long enough, include that material there. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:12, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

. . . . . and now I've created the new article. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:14, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Kilometres, yet mi?

Why is kilometres spelled fully, whereas miles isn't? Also, what's about other places that put the length at 5,527 mi?--Adûnâi (talk) 11:41, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]