Talk:1976 Longling earthquake

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On-going work[edit]

@Skyfiler: The "Shen Zongpei" source you added is probably the kind source we want, but it is hard to tell, as that is a crappy citation. And here I must apologize for leading you astray, as you were obviously following the crappy citation I added. Sorry. That was done as a temporary expedient for a source hardly worth citing.

For a proper citation we need to collect certain data, such as the authorship (generally, who takes responsibility for the accuracy of the material), the title, the data published, etc. E.g., is "Shen Zongpei" the author here? Are there other authors? Or this just the webpage of Sichuan Earthquake Adminstration? Could it possibly be part of an earthquake catalog? Does it reference any journal articles or other authoritative sources?

Another problem is the Chinese ideographs: for most of the English-speaking world (and many browsers) these are totally incomprehensible. Ideally we should have the ~~English versions~~ transliteration into Latin characters of the author names. Titles might be done in pinyin, with English translations. For any journal articles: it helps if they have a link on en.cnki.com.cn (or similar), as that provides more details and definite identification.

If you can dig out those kinds of data I'll see about plugging them into the appropriate template. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:11, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a paper. It is a memorial article written by Shen Zongpei and published by the Sichuan Earthquake Administration. It has no references. A journal source I can think of would be the book Annals of Yunnan province: Annals of earthquake, Yunnan People Press, Kunming, China 1999 but it's behind paywall. --Skyfiler (talk) 22:09, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well, memorials are sometimes in the form of paper. Okay, the author is Shen Zongpei. Presumably there is a date, right? And a title? (Preferably with a translation.) Plus we have the url, so we have a bare minimum citation.

The Annals itself poses a bit of a problem as a reliable source, as we have no information on how reliable it, or how might need to interpreted. E.g., to use a modern example, are "dwellings damaged" counted by buildings, or by rooms? Or: would a number for "houses fallen down" mean that part of the house — such as a wall — fell down? Or the entire house collapsed? What would be nice is a book or article where various experts on these kinds of matters provide an assessment. (Provided it's not behind a paywall!)

A similar problem applies to any statement of earthquake magnitude. Most magnitudes are measured instrumentally, and of course we don't have actual magnitude measurements from before the instruments were invented. So ALL magnitudes assigned to historical earthquakes are estimates, derived in various ways. If in a discussion of the magnitude of a historical quake you see mention of "felt area", "epicentral intensity", or "macroseismic effects", those would be good points to note. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:32, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Skyfiler: We still need more details on those Chinese webpages you linked to, like the title (preferably in pinyin) of website and any subsection, the author (person(s) or organization responsible for the content), and date. If you can grab those I'll plug them into the citations. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:03, 6 November 2018 (UTC) @Skyfiler: Haven't seen anything from you. Are you still with us? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:37, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@MarkH21: Could you help getting more details from the two Chinese webpages cited in the article? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:41, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]