User talk:Seattle Skier

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archives January-March 2007

Welcome! Please feel free to leave me a message, use the [+] button above to start a new section. I prefer to reply here to keep conversations together in one place, so please watchlist this page. I will also try to leave a brief note on your talk page, informing you that I have replied. Also, please realize that I am occasionally out of town, in the mountains and away from internet access for days at a time, so response may sometimes be very slow. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience that may cause.

Contents 1 DYK 2 DYK 3 Overdoing volcano project? 4 DYK 5 Zuni Salt Lake 6 Del West 7 Markusse's pages 8 Jornado del Muerto 9 RFA Thanks 10 Diamond Craters

[edit] DYK

On 20 February 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Šárka Záhrobská, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

I hope we will have more opportunities to meet over some articles :-)) Jan.Kamenicek 17:13, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DYK

On 15 March 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Regal Mountain, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--ALoan (Talk) 14:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Overdoing volcano project?

Re: Talk:Nepheline, do you really intend to add your tag to every mineral article that happens to occur in volcanic rocks? Methinks that is a bit of overkill. Why not focus on improving articles rather than this project tag fun & games. My watchlist is overloaded :-) Vsmith 14:24, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm essentially done adding tags to volcanic rocks, so you shouldn't see too many more added by me at least (unless I've missed something important, like tholeiitic basalt which I hit a minute ago). I haven't actually added the tag to any of the common minerals in volcanic rocks (e.g. feldspar, olivine, pyroxene, etc.), so maybe nepheline is too far. You can remove it if you feel strongly.

You're also free to discuss narrowing the scope of the project, too. But I just see so many of those articles looking abandoned and forlorn, though, that they really need a WikiProject or some other means of drumming up support and attention. Having such articles on several people's watchlists is also key to fighting "random article" vandals, especially those who don't put in obscenities that the vandalbots can catch, but still type in ridiculous or annoying nonsense. I've reverted several cases of vandalism which had stayed for in articles for months (5-6 months in some cases), so having them on my watchlist is a price I'm willing to pay to reduce this source of abuse. I'd appreciate any other suggestions and experience you can offer in dealing with this problem.

And I do intend to personally improve several hundred of the volcano and volcanology articles once the tagging is done (I have yet to even tag any actual volcanoes, although others have started . . . it's my goal on this rainy Saturday to visit every volcano article on WP) . Going through and laboriously adding tags to every page has given me a good firsthand view of what articles exist on WP, which ones need work, and what the most glaring omissions might be. I've been fixing many problems as I've gone along, I must have cleaned and sectioned 50+ messy talk pages already, and merged a pair of articles on the same topic (summa volcano / somma volcano). So improvements are well underway.

Thanks for your comments. I'll keep them in mind. And please consider joining the project . . . you have 167 edits on volcano, wow! --Seattle Skier (talk) 19:14, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

No problem really - just seems that a whole bunch of the pages you tagged are on my watch list (5400+ pages is too many) -- and it got rather busier than usual. The nepheline article does need a bit of help/updating from the 1911 stuff, on my to do list somewhere...

167! hmm... been at it a while and probably 90% vandalism rollbacks. With 167 I guess I'm already on your project team, but am reluctant to commit further by signing up. Still watching all those articles - and expecting great improvements - keep up the good work, Vsmith 02:02, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DYK

On 23 March 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Bill Mathews, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Carabinieri 13:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Zuni Salt Lake

On 24 March you removed Category:Craters from the article Zuni Salt Lake, stating that "it is for impact craters". The correct category for impact craters is Category:Astroblemes. Craters includes all types of craters. I hope that you have not been erasing all of the volcanic craters and subsidence craters from the various subcategories of craters. --Bejnar 07:27, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have. As far as I could tell, Category:Craters was populated with 99% non-volcanic craters, essentially all impact craters (there may be subsidence craters in there, but I haven't found them yet). So I have removed those tags from the 3 volcanic craters I found it on thus far: Zuni Salt Lake, Amboy Crater , and Valle Grande. I also removed the tags (more reluctantly) from three other volcano-related articles; volcanic crater, caldera, and pseudocrater.

There are well over 1400 volcano articles on WP, and the overwhelming majority of these volcanoes have craters (and perhaps up to 100 may have "Crater" in their name, too). If ony 3 of them were listed under Category:Craters (there may be a few more, too, which I haven't found yet), then it seems completely appropriate to remove the tags from those few instead of adding it to 1000+ articles.

Also, Category:Craters of the United States had been set as a subcat of Category:Volcanoes of the United States. This was totally incorrect if only a tiny fraction of the items in it were volcanoes (and also such a subcat relationship existed only for the US, not other countries), so I have fixed it.

Whatever the intent of the creators of Category:Craters was, it is unknown to me, but the category is now de facto an impact craters category, and excludes volcanoes. If you have any info or insight on the original intent, I would love to know. Thanks. --Seattle Skier (talk) 08:22, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

The original creator was a physicist who was only interested in impact craters, and who didn't have much, if any, geological background. But I don't think that the "intent" of the original creator should be our guide. I think that we should look to how people are likely to use the categories. Most people don't know the word or the meaning of caldera. They are much more likely to use the word crater. Also, I would be embarrassed to put a cinder cone crater under caldera. I would love to see the categories astroblemes and volcanic craters separated, but it is a huge task, as you pointed out. Additionally, there are landforms like the Rio Cuarto craters and the Sirente craters which are ambiguous. Maybe the easy way out is to put a hatnote at the top of all crater categories saying something like for volcanic craters see .... As I see it the volcanic categories have not been fully put forward or populated. On a related note, subsidence craters do not even have their own category --Bejnar 08:52, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think your words about the original creator are a fair characterization of User:Bryan Derksen, a longtime Wikipedian with well over 77,000 edits, and an admin since 2002. I would suspect that he knows much more than you or me about properly categorizing things on Wikipedia.

I'm also confused by what you're saying: "cinder cone crater under caldera"? There are separate categories for both Category:Cinder cones and Category:Volcanic calderas, which are both subcats of Category:Volcanoes. The volcano categories are in fact quite well-developed, and not in any immediate need of revision or expansion.

The categories for impact craters and volcanic craters are already 99+% separated, so there is no huge task at all. I completed most of the task by deleting Category:Craters from those 6 articles mentioned above. There is very little else left to fix.

You say, "I think that we should look to how people are likely to use the categories." But even more important, we need to look at how the categories are being used now. Category:Craters is being used almost exclusively for non-volcanic craters, and it should remain that way.

Although some people may be confused by "caldera" and use the word "crater" instead, that is not reason enough to miscategorize things on Wikipedia. Geologists know that volcanic craters and calderas are very different things, with a fundamentally different mechanism of formation. There is no reason to use Category:Craters on volcano articles, they already have their own categories. For example, Zuni Salt Lake is in Category:Maar volcanoes, so there is no need for Category:Craters there. Same with Amboy Crater, which is correctly in Category:Cinder cones and does not need Category:Craters either. And Category:Volcanic calderas is already correctly placed as a subcat of Category:Volcanoes, so it should not be made a subcat of Category:Craters.

I do realize that you are working in good faith and only trying to do what you think is best in terms of categorization. But it seems best to leave the current categorization scheme in place, with only a few minor tweaks to a small number of articles, instead of trying to develop a completely new categorization which will require re-tagging 1000s of articles. I would rather spend my time writing articles than changing category tags. Thanks. --Seattle Skier (talk) 09:23, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Del West

I've removed the speedy deletion tag because it doesn't quite meet WP:CSD#G11. However, feel free to create an AfD for it. --Wafulz 20:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Having international offices/divisions could be seen as an assertion of notability, so I say take it to AfD just to be safe. --Wafulz 20:21, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks for your advice. I have created the AfD now. --Seattle Skier (talk) 20:45, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Markusse's pages

Hi there, I have seen your messages. Thanks for pointing out the issues with the entries. As you can see they are my first wikipedia efforts and I haven't managed to do it very well. Should get better with a little help though. Let me explain, I am a marketing undergraduate and I just noticed that The Enginge Group, second biggest advertising agency in the UK was not in the index. This Engine group is unique in the way they have built a conglomerate of specialised teams and small agencies and I thought it was worth to note. If you know about this industry you understand what I mean. I did make the mistake of taking most of the info from their website, rather than coming up with something 100% original. However, I still believe it is relevant and worth to be included. The two chairmen of the company are also interesting characters, especially Robin Wight who has written quite interesting papers about the relation between human brain and advertising. I would really appreciate if you give me some time to edit what it is there (although most of it has already been deleted). thanks, Markusse 17:38, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I see that you have voiced the same concerns at User talk:FisherQueen, who provided some helpful answers already. I would just like to reiterate two items: In Wikipedia:Notability, it states "A topic is generally notable if it has been the subject of coverage that is independent of the subject, reliable, and attributable." If the subjects of your articles were notable, there would be numerous newspaper and magazine stories about them, but apparently there are none and so this company and its executives are not notable either. Thus the articles completely fail to meet the official policy (WP:A or WP:V), which state '"Articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable sources." They are simply not notable enough for inclusion in WP, unless you are able to find reliable, independent secondary sources which discuss them and cite their notability.

If you want a semi-private space to develop articles to a mature state prior to release on the main Wikipedia space, please consider creating your userpage at User:Markusse, along with subpages of it such as User:Markusse/Test or User:Markusse/Article development. But do note that anyone can see and edit all pages in your userspace, and inappropriate content (blatant advertising, etc.) will still be deleted from there. If you wish to save the articles you have worked on, you need to go through the history of each one and save the most complete version to such working pages in your userspace, because all appear certain to fail their AfD and will be deleted within days unless reliable, independent secondary sources are found. Thanks. --Seattle Skier (talk) 19:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jornado del Muerto

You are correct that a small part of the Jornada del Muerto is a large lava field. But a look at the map shows that the large lava field (at the northern end) is but a very minor part of the Jornada del Muerto, less than 2%. The lava field in question basically defines the northern boundary of the Jornado. I did not believe that the tag was appropriate, and I thought that it was the result of the (I thought) inappropriate category tag "New Mexico volcano" on the main article. The actual fissure is north of the Jornada del Muerto. I removed the project tag without discussion because I thought that it was obvious that the article was not about volcanic issues, even though it did mention the lava field. I will be more careful in the future. --Bejnar 19:36, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation. The issue here is that the lava field, though it may be a small portion of the overall desert basin, is known as "Jornada del Muerto" lava field in geology and volcanology texts. This lava field has been the subject of a few published scientific papers, in addition to a detailed description in the book Volcanoes of North America. Someone looking for info about the lava field will find this article. I intend to expand the section on the lava field in the future, but need the {{Volcano}} and Category:Volcanoes of New Mexico in order to easily find this article (and others like it) in the future. I'll re-add the category. --Seattle Skier (talk) 19:44, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer to keep the Jornada del Muerto article balanced. Could we instead create a new article Jornada del Muerto Volcano which contains the volume of information about the volcano and the lava field? See Talk:Jornada del Muerto#Volcano Project. --Bejnar 20:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with you. I was actually just minutes away from creating the article. I'll make the words Jornada del Muerto Volcano which I added to the Jornada del Muerto article be a link to the new article. It's funny that we were both thinking the same thing simultaneously. It's nice to be able to find some common ground that we can agree on. --Seattle Skier (talk) 20:52, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I look forward to mutually satisfactory collaborations on volcanic articles. I expect to add a sentence or two to the Jornada del Muerto Volcano article shortly. Sometimes the librarian in me takes precedence over the geologist. --Bejnar 21:31, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RFA Thanks

Thanks for your support on my Request for adminship, which was successful, with votes of 49/0/0. Lemme know if you need help on something I might know a little something about....(check my userpage).
cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 14:03, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Diamond Craters

Hi there- any plans to make a page about the Diamond Craters? Seems (at least to my non-geologist mind) like a pretty major absence in the Oregon volcanoes realm. -Pete 18:54, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Pete, I definitely think Diamond Craters is worthy of an article, it is an interesting area (although it is relatively minor on the overall scale of worldwide volcanic features). Have you been there? I've visited the craters in May 2002, but only spent about an hour driving around and taking numerous photos. I had no time for real exploration since I was on my way to Steens Mtn and the Alvord Desert that day. There is a nice 17-page paper about the craters in The Ore Bin, 1964, which would form a solid foundation for writing an article.

But most of my Wikipedia time right now (since March 17) is being taken up with placing {{Volcano}} tags for WikiProject Volcanoes on 100s of article talk pages, so article creation will probably have to wait (unless you want to go ahead and do it). The tagging is a very boring and monotonous task, but I have been fixing and improving many of those volcano articles which is why the task has taken much longer than I expected (I thought it would only take a few days). We've placed about 1300 tags so far, and probably have several 100 more left to do. Then I can get back to writing articles, which is much more fun and interesting than tagging. --Seattle Skier (talk) 03:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)