Talk:Geopark

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The term 'geopark' is sometimes thought to be a contraction of 'geological park' (ie a portmanteau word) but this is incorrect. The presence of 'geo' here signifies 'earth'. It is indeed the case that all Geoparks will have a significant geological heritage but they are intended to be of much wider appeal than just for this admittedly important element of their characters. Geopersona (talk) 20:44, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi geo-persona. I'm doing some work on this. I can see you are highly motivated geo-person. I don't mean to cross you but from what I can read on the history of the concept in the beginning it actually DID mean geological park. Then it exploded into this "earth" thing. The only way to settle anything on WP of course is references. It seems to me quotes are called for so I put a few in. If you find an early source that defines geo-park as "earth-park" do speak up and we will change it. Nothing is cast in concrete until it is. You do know, of course, your or my opinion on the Internet isn;t worth anything per se to the rest of the world. They want to know what the published savants think or thought. Ciao.Botteville (talk) 16:11, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Some of the information in the article is now outdated due to UNESCO's changing position regarding Geoparks - there are currently (Dec 2012) no 'UNESCO Geoparks' although the phrase 'UNESCO-assisted Geoparks' is in common use by agreement between the European Geoparks Network and UNESCO. Geopersona (talk) 21:34, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The map currently in use is significantly out of date, it includes none of the three geoparks in the Americas, nor in Morocco, Iceland, Finland etc. perhaps someone who knows how to do these things can get hold of the map which portrays all 120 current geoparks ? Therefater it will still need updating each year. cheers Geopersona (talk) 08:48, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

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New map please!
The existing map is so old now that it only shows a very small fraction of the Global Geoparks - 161 as of yesterday. Can somebody replace it? I may yet just remove it as being misleading. cheers Geopersona (talk) 11:32, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The above comment remains true but the map of the European Geoparks is also significantly out of date even on the day it is added. Personally I'd rather see no maps than ones which give a misleading impression of the extent of the network(s). Geopersona (talk) 20:21, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Rome was not built in a day, much less WP. There has not been a steady person on this. I'm doing some rewriting, making some recommendations. I note you'd rather have NO map. I wonder if we have an updated map. As I write let me think about it. I take it that If I decide no map is better, I will have a consensus to take out the maps. Maybe a history of maps is better, so we can see how it has grown. Let me se how it develops. Anyone else, of course, can weigh in, but if they do not, then it is you and me.Botteville (talk) 15:48, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I also see a map in the 'maps' section which makes very little sense so far as the key is concerned. Again I'd rather not see this map at all, it being difficult to see what it adds to the article beyond confusion! cheers Geopersona (talk) 08:02, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
 * In fact taking a closer look, it seemed best to remove it entirely as it does not add anything positive to the article. Geopersona (talk) 08:09, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

The concepts section
This section references the UNESCO Geoparks site, but the current reference is out of date. The current site where that material is found however can be easily located - try "UNESCO Geoparks". The problem is, when you get there, a lot of the material in our section was just copied word-for-word or only slightly modified therefrom. I only did enough comparison to satisfy myself that this is so. I believe this is way too much text to be so close to the UNESCO presentation. Moreover, UNESCO has enough credibility, I think, to be taken as the original source, rather than WP. But there are other problems. The copied or copy-modify text is an essay on sustainability, not defining information for a geopark. If I had not tagged it as being mainly a copy I would have tagged it for it essay style and suitability. We have plenty of articles on the various kinds of sustainability. It would have belonged there, had I not tagged it as a copy. In this article we like to give long copies of our own or other articles. Too easy for us I think. The public can copy it themselves. Therefore I suggest we just plain delete this concepts section. For the copy of our article, I plan to rework that material into another section.Botteville (talk) 12:02, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Whole article is a mess
The article requires wholesale attention to bring it up to standard. I've removed some of the unreferenced material which is most egregious but there's a lot more that needs looking at. I may get around to doing something but I'd hope that someone else with more time and some inclination to do so, can put in some effort. thanks Geopersona (talk) 08:35, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, that was fast. I'd rather have you on it than not on it. I'll go with it for a way until it seems more solid. The hope that you expressed I have had for many an article, but mainly no one ever picked it up and finally I had to take the fall for it. I find I have to work on groups of articles so after I think we have got started here I will be bouncing around to my other articles in the group, not to be finally done until I think it is OK. But, we need to draw a start line. I'm developing this online, so you aren't looking at final material. Naturally some of it is wrong and unreferenced. I'm still working it up. If you want to dog me line by line, OK I guess I can stand it. But, I like non-contributary dogging a bit less. Your taking out an unreferenced statement of mine only to put or imply your own unreferenced idea off the top of your head is not OK. Sooner or later we will arrive at referenced statements and I expect those to stay unless we find a consensus for better referenced statements. I may put some of your deletions back in but commented out so I can get the larger view. Writing must have a thread which sometimes in WP can get lost. That's it for now. Ciao.Botteville (talk) 11:54, 8 August 2022 (UTC)


 * You know what? I just looked at your condensation of the intro and in fact I liked it. I do a lot of condensing myself. The only thing that bothers me is whether the ref covers that, which was the original problem. I note you cutting out the geological heritage part in favor of the current UNESCO "unified area" idea. We might need the current UNESCO ref to cover that. The ref has to match the text. I see this is going to take a while, but surely it is worth the work. Just hang in there until I can get it together. One step at a time. Meanwhile, what do you say we cut out the "concepts" section? What is your take on that?Botteville (talk) 12:20, 8 August 2022 (UTC) P.S. You know what? You're taking such an interest I tend to feel that intro is fine. It does mention geological heritage. Let's see if if I have to do anything with the refs. I know this is time-consuming, but you know, WP IS time-consuming. You have to decide if it is worth your work.Botteville (talk) 12:27, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
 * It would be better if the article was focussed purely on Geoparks and not on Geoconservation which has its own article though it is much less developed than it ought to be and is very much in need of an international perspective and not just the British one that I provided when I began it some years ago. All of the material in the 'Geoconservation timeline' section would sit better in that other article than in this one - it's not about geoparks until near the end. I'd suggest that the image of Fossil Grove is not anywhere near a geopark and therefore shouldn't be in this article. Also, the three maps could be whittled down to one - keeping only the 2020 one though a 2022 version would be preferable obviously.
 * the fossil grove is not an example of a geopark. It is an unsystematic protected area. But I suppose we can find one that once was unsystematic but became a geopark. But, we might be taking this section out.Botteville (talk) 09:46, 24 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Now, if you find material that I have inserted that is unreferenced and that you are unhappy with then you are welcome to remove it; conversely you may think it suitable and you can help by finding suitable references and tweaking as may be required; Wikipedia is a collaborative exercise (and yes, time-consuming, don't I know). For myself I was keen in the main to remove material that was a) irrelevant to a focussed article on Geoparks and b) that I know not to be true, having been involved with Geoparks for many years. If the material I deleted had been properly referenced then I would not remove it, though occasionally issue can be taken with certain information sources as they don't necessarily know what they are talking about - the onus then is on finding something more authoritative to use. And of course anything that has been removed is easily re-added from a previous version but please equip it with a reference so that I or anyone else can check its veracity. If you believe something should be restored, please flag it up and we can agree on its merits or otherwise - I'm not here to decry other folks' hard work. As to developing the material online as you put it, you can work up material in your own sandbox and then add it to an article when it's ready to go. If you simply add it to an article, intending to add references later then it runs the risk of being removed - not a criticism, just an observation - I've done it myself many a time - sometimes I've had time to complete it, other times some other editor has intervened!  I'd flag up the observation that the term 'Geopark' is used in different ways in different parts of the world and indeed within individual countries (I think you know that), whereas those territories which are UNESCO Global Geoparkss have a lot more in common since they must conform to UNESCO strictures. I'm undecided how these two articles should inter-relate. Geopersona (talk) 17:46, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi GP. hanks for your input, which I just saw now. I think you have some valid things to say. On geoconservation, well, I had some similar misgivings myself, and that is why I halted work on the section. I was going to try to develop the idea of a geopark the way the sources do but then I realized we didn't need that section to do it, could do it in the previous section. Didn't know which way to go and then discovered it was headed in the wrong direction. Americans have conservation but not geoconservation. Now I don't know what to do with it. We can make it apply to geoparks. I did look at the geoconservation article but there did not seem to be any room in it for a timeline. It isn't that kind of article. But you seem to be expressing a willingness to rewrite it or parts of it. I take it that this is some kind of consensus to put such a section in a rewritten geoconservation article. OK by me. Until we decide what to do for sure I am not working on the section. I got a new policy though of working on groups of articles rather than one at a time. It works better. So either you or I would have to undertake the geoconservation rewrite. Think about it, let me know, or just do it if you are so inclined. When geoparks is reasonably solid I plan to go on to UNESCO global and then get back to the geopark in east Crete but there is some room for digression. It looks as though all these geopark articles could use some reformatting or clean-up. Commons needs more work.
 * Pictures - need more pictures. You can have one map if you want. Will fill in with pics of geoparks but first we have to discover what those are. Feel free. Ideally I was looking for an infobox. Couldn't find one. Maybe we should innovate a new infobox, "infobox geopark". There is an infobox protected area. Maybe it could be squeezed into this article. What do you think? Let me know, will you? You're practically my sole source of consensus. But, if you DON'T reply, I will just go ahead and do as I think best.
 * Development method. Well, I can't dump in an article if one is already there. If you develop it in sandbox no one can find it. I have dumped new articles in, especially after I encountered my first AH who is going to question every single statement you make and not let you work. I do use dump-ins to some degree. You get more consensus this way. I have a sandbox. I use it mainly to test template parameters. Time - ah yes, time. I console myself with the knowledge that professionals can take weeks, months, to do their articles. No time no quaiity. You got know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to take stand, when to run away. Ciao to next deal.Botteville (talk) 04:24, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Slight directional change
This is a tough article to get hold of, and the commons pictures are equally tough, but I think we are making some progress. Thanks for letting me work on it unmolested. There were a few directions implied by some of the sources and jumped on by the editors that turn out to be misdirections. Some were saying or implying geopark is a term in general use and any old park can be a geopark as long as it has some interesting geology. Not so. UNESCO has a pretty tight grip on the topic. No UNESCO, no geopark. Mention of various types of network was the most confusing part. But, they are all under UNESCO control, which gates the regional and national geoparks as well as the global. I'm distingishing that in the article.

A second misdirection is that the US has anything to do with geoparks. Some eds even listed american parks as geoparks. Geoparks were entirely European and Chinese (the fossil sites) spreading only minimally. Some people had some hopes that the US would pick up the geopark idea. And do what with it? The American system of national and state parks covers just about every aspect of geoparks and is older and I dare say in most cases better. We want to keep our parks as the right of the people. They want to sell theirs on the market (more or less). No profits, no geopark. In any case the US is NOT about to go for geoparks as some imply and I do not think we should say they are. There are none here. To rebrand all the thousands of parks as "geoparks" would no doubt cost far more than it is worth, but that is only my opinion. It is a fact, however, that there are none here, and due to the resignation of the US from UNESCO in 2018, probably are not going to be. We don't need the French experts to tell us how to run our parks. There are at least a few dozen within a day's ride to my house, both federal and state. I spend a lot of my time there. The population contributes generously to the parks. If we are sustainable, they are sustainable. There are plenty of jobs for rangers if you are so inclined. So, geoparks are not the only way to go, and the US has not gone that way, so I'm changing direction so that we don't state or imply that they have or will or even are thinking about it.Botteville (talk) 11:45, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Just to note that the term 'Geopark' is not copyrighted and so any place can call itself a geopark just as the Malvern and Abberley Hills Geopark in the English Midlands does. They and others cannot however call themselves a Global Geopark. Geopersona (talk) 10:15, 22 July 2023 (UTC)