Talk:Surfing
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[edit] To separate the physical phenomena from the social phenomena
Perhaps the section entitled "Depictions of surf..." should be moved to the article about Surf culture. Then the article about Surfing could focus on the sport itself, including such topics as types of surfing, equipment, maneuvres, conditions and locations. The article on Surf Culture could then deal with the more social themes, including the many forms of representation, such as music, print media, film, etc. and perhaps also History. Maradja 12:21, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Science of waves around Jetties
These papers seemed a little over specialised to be included in the section on surf conditions.
Maradja 18:29, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Famous surf breaks
Perhaps this section should be deleted now that each surf break can instead be placed in the Wave intensity table, within the section entitled Wave intensity classification. Any surf breaks that don't make the grade can still be listed on the List of surfing areas page and also in the Surfing locations category (although both of these do need a lot of work). --Maradja 00:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Origin of surfing
I have a query Wasent it Captian King who first recoreded surfing?
i have read in many other websites it was Captian King and he discovered it SHORTLY AFTER Captain Cooks death.
Have a look around for yourself
Nick
According to FROM POLYNESIA, WITH LOVE: The History of Surfing From Captain Cook to the Present By Ben Marcus (http://www.surfingforlife.com/history.html), Captain Cook and his crew (including Lt. King) would have WITNESSED surfing, but Lt. King was indeed the first to write about it. From the text:
On Captain James Cook's third expedition to the Pacific, his ships, HMS Discovery and Resolution, made the first recorded European visit to Hawai'i in 1778, when they stopped at the western end of the island chain on their way from Tahiti to the northwest coast of North America. After a frustrating year fruitlessly looking for a passage from the North Pacific into the Atlantic, Cook brought his ships back to the Hawaiian chain, this time stopping at the Big Island of Hawai'i. There, at Kealakekua Bay, Cook was killed by Hawaiians when he made a misguided attempt to kidnap their high chief to force the return of a stolen boat.
Lieutenant James King was made First Lieutenant of the Discovery and was given the task of completing the narrative portion of Cook's journals. After Cook's death in 1779 but before the Discovery and Resolution returned to England, Lt. King devoted two full pages to a description of surfboard riding, as practiced by the locals at Kealakekua Bay on the Kona coast of the Big Island. His following entry is the earliest written account of surfing.
"But a diversion the most common is upon the Water, where there is a very great Sea, and surf breaking on the Shore. The Men sometimes 20 or 30 go without the Swell of the Surf, & lay themselves flat upon an oval piece of plan about their Size and breadth, they keep their legs close on top of it, & their Arms are us'd to guide the plank, thye wait the time of the greatest Swell that sets on Shore, & altogether push forward with their Arms to keep on its top, it sends them in with a most astonishing Velocity, & the great art is to guide the plan so as always to keep it in a proper direction on the top of the Swell, & as it alters its direct. If the Swell drives him close to the rocks before he is overtaken by its break, he is much prais'd. On first seeing this very dangerous diversion I did not conceive it possible but that some of them must be dashed to mummy against the sharp rocks, but jus before they reach the shore, if they are very near, they quit their plank, & dive under till the Surf is broke, when the piece of plank is sent many yards by the force of the Surf from the beach. The greatest number are generally overtaken by the break of the swell, the force of which they avoid, diving and swimming under the water out of its impulse. By such like excercises, these men may be said to be almost amphibious. The Women could swim off to the Ship, & continue half a day in the Water, & afterwards return. The above diversion is only intended as an amusement, not a tryal of skill, & in a gentle swell that sets on must I conceive be very pleasant, at least they seem to feel a great pleasure in the motion which this Exercise gives."
Thus, Lieutenant James King, commander of the Discovery, 1779, recorded in the ship's log the first written description of Hawaiian surfing by a European.
I wonder what "dashed to mummy" means. --Fluffbrain 01:06, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] External links
Should the list of external links be limited to websites that have to do with the topic of surfing, rather than surf forecasting? Maradja 14:58, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
I probably should have sought consensus first (sorry), but I cleared out all the commercial and quasi-commercial External Links. I thought that these various unobjectionable Surfrider Association links and surfing university programmes might "set the tone" for any subsequent external links, and possibly deter some of these ambitious surf shop owners. --Joybucket 04:41, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Spirit of surfing reads like a sermon
I tend to agree. Should we delete it? I don't mind. Maradja 05:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
Spirit of surfing
"Surfing's unique relationship with nature afforded it a mythic quality, which set the stage for its commercial simulation.[1] However, there is a vital core to the culture, which is both local and global in scope. These "hard core" members of surf culture are united in their dedication to the sport's essential practice of riding waves. A disciplined surfer will check local surf conditions at dawn when the wind is calm, having already assessed the day's prospects based upon weather reports, swell predictions, and tide tables.
When surfing conditions are ideal, social commitments can be relegated to secondary priority. In this way, surfers can be said to defy the temporal order imposed by capitalist culture. Their subculture is founded on the aesthetic appeal of naturally occurring patterns and processes. The obvious contradiction between the surfing experience and its depiction as serving commercial interests highlights the contemporary western history of separation from the natural world, its utilitarian valuation and exploitation. Through direct involvement with nature, surfers appreciate the intrinsic value of the biosphere. Indeed, their world view embodies the very principles, which underpin ecosophies such as deep ecology and ecophenomenology."
- ^ Waves of Semiosis: Surfing's iconic progression. The American Journal of Semiotics. Vol.5, Issue. 3/4.
Or, should this section follow the one on surf conditions? Perhaps then, the idea of "naturally occuring patterns and processes" would be appreciated. Maradja 15:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
I feel it is important to have some mention of surfing culture in the main page, but this section glorifies the "hard core - we are one with mother nature" surfers which are only part of the whole surf culture. A change is definitely necessary. If nobody objects, I will begin to soften this section up in the next couple of days and try to make it better represent surfing culture as a whole because that is essentially what the section is dealing with. Sgman61 05:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Well I changed it quite a bit. After changing it, I noticed that it should probably be connected somehow with the section Notable Surfers. It still needs work, but this seems to me to be a good direction to go in. Any feedback or input from anyone??? Sgman61 11:21, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Do you disagree with the decision to separate the social phenomena from the physical phenomena, as proposed in topic one above? There is an article devoted to surf culture. Maradja 10:02, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Surf etiquette
As a non-surfer, I know little about this, but from surfing acquaintances I know it exists. Would someone like to comment?
[edit] I find it rather suspicious that...
...a few days ago someone with a brand-new ID of "Silverfish" created a Wikipedia page for "water sunglasses," when a) Silverfish Water Sunglasses are the first link on that page's external refs "companies selling water sunglasses"; b) one particular non-logged-in IP address fine-tunes the water sunglasses page, and then c) the same IP address adds a bit of text on the Surfing page about water sunglasses, conveniently internal-linked to the new water sunglasses Wikipedia page. Actually, it's not just suspicious, it's totally obvious that this character is trying to boost business for his "water sunglasses." Also linked to water sunglasses are the pages for Kayak, Water skiing, Sunglasses, Kitesurfing and Windsurfing. So, one can easily delete these references, or not, from the respective pages, but how does a non-Admin-type signal that this kind of monkey-business is going on? Plus, surfing since 1968 I have never heard of "water sunglasses."Fluffbrain 06:04, 6 November 2006 (UTC) OK, I figured out how to propose a deletion. --Fluffbrain 06:27, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Lee shore
I just created an article on lee shore and windward shore from the perspective of boating, particularly sailing. It seems that a lee shore would probably offer more aggressive waves for surfing, but as I no next to nothing about surfing, I'm not in a good position to track that information down. If anyone here would like to add to the lee shore article with respect to surfing, I'd appreciate it. scot 04:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Semantics
1) What does this sentence mean? "Surfers represent a diverse culture that depends on the naturally occurring process of ocean waves." At least the previous (now deleted) section entitled "Spirit of Surfing" actually said something!
2) Why has the section on Surf Conditions been subsumed under the new section entitled Surfers?
3) Why even start a section entitled "Surfers", without responding to the entry above, which proposed a separation of the physical phenomena from the social (which is dealt with in another article entitled Surf culture)?
4) Why not explain edits with a description of the edit and its justification?
5) Why not allow this article to be developed by those very few Wikipedians who possess the necessary language skills and (dare I say it) the knowledge of surfing? You could try developing Wikipedia's Simple English article on Surfing, instead.
6) If you are not so qualified, but still have concerns about an article's content, its style or how it is otherwise formulated, you still have the opportunity to discuss the matter on the article's talk page. This gives other contributors the opportunity to respond to your concerns, before any changes are made. Maradja 03:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Cleanup
This article has been marked for cleanup December 2006. I am trying to get this article up to scratch, can people please comment on the cleanups and make suggestions to get the article up to standard. I have also been working on the article in my sandbox, User:Richtom80/sandbox/surfing, feel free to edit.
The main two changes I am putting forward are a change to the structure of the content (logical order) and also the inclusion of a history subsection. Richard Thompson (Talk! | Contribs) 13:57, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
