Talk:Vancouver Community Gardens

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Peer Reviews

"Process of becoming a CSA in Vancouver" is a great idea to have some information on if you can find any. Is that why it is blank?

"bylaw as acceptable in the year 2005. [3], while this law changed to include backyard chickens in 2010." You have a period after "2005" oops!

The following sentence is a little confusing, "toward achieving 25% of minimum edible landscape." I think that wording it "toward achieving a minimum of 25% edible landscape." is a little more concise.

The "Climate/Land" heading is a little confusing being underneath "Products Produced by Vancouver CSA's". If you had it just in bold rather than as a heading it would make more sense.

I love that you organized your produce information in tables it is very easy to read and understand and a person could scan through to find what they are looking for rather than having to read through a paragraph. I am confused as to why "Leeks" and "Rhubarb" are have spaces above them. Also, are herbs produced year round? If not I think they should have a seasonal table as well but if so then disregard!

I think the phrase "organized alphabetically" isn't necessary. Also, the headings "Gardens in City Parks" and "Gardens on City Land" are both a heading and a title above your tables. This seems a little bit redundant and you probably only need one.

I am confused by the blurb "various locations/areas + City parks, city land, private owned property (community centres, personal lawns etc)" at the end. Maybe turn this into a short paragraph or leave it out. Are you saying that there are other ones other than the ones listed above? If so mention this. Also I am not sure why there is a link at the bottom, maybe make some sort of reference to this or put it in the citations section.

All in all, great start!

Lacee Smith Lazershea (talk) 20:05, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback from Rosie: Rosieredfield (talk) 03:08, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is all excellent advice.
In principle tables are good, but here I fear they're 'too much of a good thing'.

Hello,

Some of the things I noticed were mentioned above by Lazershea but I'd like to point out to some structural things you could improve on:

Obviously it is a draft, but it seems a bit too table heavy and there seems not be enough text content. While tables are extremely helpful (as mentioned above), I think you could add some more relevant content before each one to back the information you present in these tables.

What I also noticed was that your "Climate/land" section seems to have too many subheadings. This looks especially redundant in your table of contents. Perhaps you could try to group some of those subheadings, or integrate some of the tables as well bullet point lists together to create more comprehensive sections (i.e. aligning tables rather than giving each one its own section).

Looking forward to see it when it's done. - Batuhan DieDemokratieimmer (talk) 00:46, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback from Rosie: Rosieredfield (talk) 03:08, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

These structural suggestions are a good complement to the content advice above. Rosieredfield (talk) 03:08, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Peer Review by Eva Regehr

The concept of this page is great. The tables are great and very informative but I think you need to find a balance between content and tables (there seems to be some content missing). In the following sentence: "Vancouverites involved in CSAs pledge to support the farm (via money, land or labor) and in turn receive a portion of the goods produced." I would write " citizens of Vancouver" instead of Vancouverites- it is a little more formal, and I would write "a farm" instead of "the farm" because you aren't just referring to one farm. I would definitely add a "See Also" or "External Links" section with some helpful links/resources. You have linked to quite a few pages that don't have wiki pages for them yet (seen in red) and I found this a little distracting. For these pages you could add external links for them instead (e.g. link to "Hives for Humanity" website). The "Climate/land" section needs to be retitled to something like Climate & Land or Climate & Ecology... both need to be capitalized (the slash and uncapitalized "l" looks unformal). I would add more information under this section as well- there is a lot of information you can find about Vancouver climate/land/ecology. I think "herbs" should come before "meat and dairy" because it is more under the plant/vegetable category and putting meat and dairy in the middle breaks it up a little. I was a bit confused by the list of meat and dairy? I think more information is necessary to put this into context. I really like the tables for "List of CSA's in Vancouver" this is very helpful. You have a couple of bullet points below these tables and I don't really understand what they are referring to. One says "various locations/areas"- did you just forget to take this out? I would add a section on "sustainability" and outline some of the sustainability goals. Overall I think this is a great and informative topic. I look forward to reading the final copy!

Evaregehr (talk) 06:15, 16 March 2015 (UTC)Evaregehr[reply]

Feedback from Rosie: Rosieredfield (talk) 03:08, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Good advice - you've identified a lot of ways to make this page better.

Peer Reviewed by Laura Sierra

While the topic itself is great, the structure of your page needs some improvement. For one, while you have some well written texts at the top of your page, the remainder of your page seems to be more focused on large tables and point form structures with concentrated items. While this maybe be more narrowed down for the reader, I think this page would be better off with limited tables and more written paragraphs when discussing whats in these sections, writing about these topics in more depth. You can also add some pictures of the vegetables, herbs, and gardens you mention in your article! Under your reference list there are some links that are mentioned more than once...you can fix this by adding a reference name when citing a particular reference (check out the cite bar when doing this) - this would be better than having the same link twice in your reference list. You can also add a "see also" section and reference different wiki pages that are mentioned in your article or similar to your topic, such as the City of Vancouver.

Laurasweil (talk) 07:40, 23 March 2015 (UTC)Laura[reply]

Feedback from Rosie: Rosieredfield (talk) 03:08, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree about the tables - they overwhelm the page.
Thanks for the advice about formatting references and adding a 'See also' section.

Peer Review by Arik T.

I think that the first section of your article should not have the headers (What is CSA, Process..., Government, Applying...). Mostly it's because if you rearranged your content in the order of [What is...], [Government], [Prcoess...], [Applying] as a collection of just sentences arranged into short paragraphs, the whole section would read better, since the sections seems like a good summary of the whole topic. I do agree that the mass of tables in the end is a bit daunting, but I like the fact that the data is still there. If a map of Vancouver with these sites plotted or a graphic about the availability of produce to be grown was included, it would make the those sections a lot easier to read. Adding pictures of these sites also wouldn't hurt, if they can be obtained. Under [List of CSAs in Vancouver] you have three bulleted lines that don't seem to belong as well as the unexplained link in the end of the section, so that's something that could be edited.

Overall, the article was a bit data heavy with the tables and all, but it could be alleviated with having graphics that offer a simplified version of the tables. Getting more information about the topic might not be easy, so maybe you can just make the ones that you have to be easier to go through. Cheers!

Attt7 (talk) 06:13, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback from Rosie: Rosieredfield (talk) 03:08, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Good advice on reorganizing the first section.
A map and some photos would indeed make the page much more attractive.

Feedback from Rosie and Ruth

IMPORTANT! Does your List of CSAs in Vancouver confuse community gardens with CSAs? I think of community gardens as places where individuals are given a small plot of land to cultivate for their own use, and of CSAs as agreements between people who grow produce and others who will purchase it on a regular basis. You may be making the same error in other places.
The information in the lists is taken directly from the Farm Folk City Folk pdfs, so perhaps you could replace the full lists with shorter summaries, and suggest that readers should go to the pdfs for the complete lists. I imagine that the lists are always changing anyway, as growers try new products.
Be sure to explain what 'minimal edible landscape' means.
The 'How to apply' section is important and useful - be sure to complete it.
Why are leeks and fennel listed as fruits as well as vegetables?
Make sure this page is properly linked to and from the main Wikipedia page on Community Supported Agriculture, and connected to the main Vancouver page.