Talk:Mono Lake/Archive 1

photos
FYI: More photos at User:Maveric149/images/Mono Basin. If you use any, then please either drop a note on my talk page or just move the image from the 'Orphan' column to the 'Images that have homes' column. --06:47, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

hydrology question
Am I correct in thinking that Mono Lake and Mono Basin are naturally endorheic? Am I also correct in believing that while the tributaries of Mono Lake have been redirected, there's no artificial outflow from the lake itself (it's not exactly drinkable, after all). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:15, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, yes. Mono Lake is in a basin; the mountains are actually pretty high on all sides, and there is no artificial outflow (that I know about).  See .  Antandrus 23:30, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There definitely is not an artificial outflow. The lake (then Lake Russell) did overflow, however, at least once during the ice age. 66.82.9.34 01:09, 3 November 2005 (UTC)Sarah

New info
I added a little extra information about California Gulls (the main nesting species at Mono Lake) and alkali flies just to fill in a few holes in the article. My source of information is The Mono Lake Guidebook written by David Gaines. We live in the tiny town of Lee Vining, right next to Mono Lake, and were so excited to see this article. My husband runs the Mono Lake Committe and is interested in putting together some additional information to give the article a major update--maybe to expand the geology section and maybe to add a section on the political history of the lake. Are you guys interested? I'm not sure of the proper etiquette, but we'd like to add some more to what you guys started. 66.82.9.34 00:38, 3 November 2005 (UTC)Sarah


 * Yes,please do! Thank you for the additions. Stbalbach 01:16, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Contributions are always welcome! Feel free to create a log-in: it makes you have more credibility --- people can contact you in one place.


 * Other articles you may be interested in:
 * Mono Lake Committee
 * Lee Vining, California
 * California Water Wars
 * Sierra Nevada (US)
 * Mono County, California
 * Mammoth Lakes, California
 * Bridgeport, California
 * Mono-Inyo Craters
 * Long Valley Caldera

Origin of the name
Hello, nice article. What is known about the origin of the name "Mono Lake" ? It could be from the Spanish mono (monkey) but since there are no native monkeys I guess that's not it ... Thanks for your help & keep up the good work, Wile E. Heresiarch 03:09, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

June 21 Edits

 * I've added the infobox, and I dug up some additional information on the internet. Some of the values are approximate, and are very obviously not 100% reliable.  Of particular note is the length & width.  If someone can verify the correct values, this article could be improved.
 * This article has a few issues with presentation. Not serious issues, but the opening paragraph is very short, and the Geology and Ecology sections are a tad confusing.  It almost seams as if those sections should be renamed.  Any thoughts are welcome!! Em3rald 03:34, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

"Mono Craters to the right of the image are rhyolitic domes"
The "geology" section begins "Mono Craters to the right of the image are rhyolitic domes" - it's not clear to which image this refers. Any ideas? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:14, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Image Layout
Had some time to think about it; here's what i've got so far:

1. we have too many "tufa" pics scattered around the article

2. more effort needs to be put into arranging the pics in a logical, relevant way

3. layout needs to be more than just a looooong row of pics on the right-hand side

4. gallery needs improving: sorting, & etc.

Gallery: right now it's a dumping ground for pics that haven't been properly placed in the article. it should be a "best of" collection of additional pics. ideally it would be sorted by subject matter, possibly as a set of sub-galleries, & in some cases it might be a good idea to make small galleries in relevant article sections (i.e.: map-stuff, topically relevant charts & info, tuffas; all the different parts & aspects of mono lake, where we have enough good media to justify he effort, & too much to reasonably fit it all into the relevant text areas))

i'm going to spend some time working on this (over the next few days), as i get time availlable; will be moving pics around a bit & in & out of the gallery, please be patient

also: commons link should point to the commons category, not just page. the commonscat:monolake is the highest-level cross-reference; the media there needs to be sorted into sub-categories more/better than it is now; but a user linking from here should see the cat first. they can then durf sub-topics more easily. a non-savy user who just sees the one page on mono lake might not understand that wmc has more media onthe topic.

Lx 121 (talk) 10:55, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Lx121, for your good faith efforts in improving the article! Let me further explain my edits, below:


 * The image gallery The WP guidelines for image galleries is available at WP:IG. Most galleries that I've come across in WP (including the one on this page) seem to be 'indiscriminant collections of images of the article subject', and therefore should more properly be a Commons gallery.In fact, in my experience, galleries within WP articles tend to be a nightmare to maintain: they simply tend to accumulate misc. photos. Thus, I believe that the bar for placing a gallery in a WP article should be high (although not impossible). I've observed other editors acting in the same way.


 * Accordingly, I transwiki'ed the gallery to Commons:Mono Lake, and changed the commons link to point to the gallery. I used CommonsHelper to move WP-only photos up to Commons, to replicate the gallery. Further, I expanded the gallery at Commons with a sample of high quality photographs of Mono Lake (which is why the gallery has ~20 pictures, instead of 4).


 * Link to commons category or to commons gallery? I did not find any guidance about which is preferred in WP. Relevant guidelines about constructions of these are available at Commons:Categories and Commons:Galleries. For the specific gallery of Commons:Mono Lake, I want to point out advantages by quoting Commons:Galleries ---
 * "Most importantly, captions and information regarding each image can be added. Images in a gallery can be arranged in a way that isn't possible with categories. They also allow editors to exclude some of the poorer quality and redundant images that many times fill categories and make them less useful to users who simply are looking for an image, say, to illustrate a Wikipedia article"
 * Sub-categories don't have these advantages. Further, making a Commons sub-category such as "Tufa at Mono Lake" doesn't follow the guidelines at Commons:Categories --- it isn't categorizing photos into a broad "who?" or "what?" category but instead a very specific category that readers may not easily find. I think it's better to simply have a Commons gallery on Mono Lake with a section on Tufa.
 * Because of the extra information provided by the Commons galleries, I believe this article should link to the gallery itself, and then users can browse to the category by following the link at the bottom of the page. Alternatively, we can provide a link at the top of the page, if you prefer (it would be non-standard, but probably OK).


 * Image choice/selection Over the years, I've been involved in several discussions on image choice, and it's very easy to devolve into an argument over aesthetics. I've found it useful to think about the guidelines given at WP:Images. What I sometimes do is read through the article, making sure that interesting topics are illustrated by nearby images. For the previous version at, there were 3 tufa photos, which I agree may be too many.


 * Image size The current photo of Mono Lake from Mount Dana summit is too large --- generally, images should not have a forced size, except in unusual circumstances, which don't apply to this photo. See MOS:IMAGES, which states "As a rule, images should not be forced to a fixed size (that is, one that overrides the default). Where it is appropriate to force size, images should generally be no more than 300 pixels wide, so that they can be comfortably displayed on 800x600 monitors."


 * HDR images There's certainly no guidance in favor or against HDR/tone-mapped images. Often, I find tone-mapped images to be misleading --- tone mapping adds a luminous quality to the image that isn't present if you actually were at a location. Given this misleading quality, I tend to remove tone-mapped images from articles, because they don't illustrate the article's topics well. That is why I removed Monoreflect.jpg


 * Long-term editing It's not in the spirit of WP editing to ask other editors to hold off on editing an article for a long time. For short amount of time (less than two hours), you can use the inuse template. But, longer periods would imply ownership, which goes against the WP philosophy. Instead, I can recommend making a temporary subpage here --- if you copy the current state into that page, you can edit in peace and then propose the large edit back to other editors.


 * I'm going to remove the gallery, link back to the commons gallery, shrink the Mount Dana pic, and remove the reflection pic, according to the explanation above. I'm sure we can continue to discuss the article and come to consensus. Thanks and happy editing! —hike395 (talk) 17:11, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

unindenting; it's too much work!

finished preliminaly proposed photo layout; using mostly pics already on the article; might swap with some WMC media once if gone thru it all & thought abt the possibilities some more.

we're down to x2 tufa pics (one of them a feature), which is a reasonable number i think, unless/until we add an article section about them specifically

got my friend to upload another version of the "general view" pic; the other version wasn't altered very much; the only mod was to adjust the colour contrast a bit. this version is exactly as it came out of the camera; he shoots on film & the colours come out very rich/vivid. i'm being persistent in keeping it because we need a good ground-level "establishing shot" on the article: we have sat. pic, long range view, a couple semi-poor maps, & the tufa pics. there should be something that gives a sense of the general location as viewed standing there @ ground level.

open to re-arranging the order, but this seems reasonably logical.

re: sizing: i've put some images back up to the 300px lvl. in these cases, you can't rly see the pic contents properly if it's any smaller. the mt. dana view is still barely large enough to show the necessary detail. the b&w Captain John pic just looks messy & weird @ thumbnail default; you don't get a sense of the person just "some old indian guy" from 100+ yrs ago. he deserves better than that. i can't fix the USGS map image; the text just won't display smoothly & readable in anything much less than full-size, so i've left it thumbnail default, with the note abt enlarging (wish we had better maps).

re: commons: restored the link to point to mono lake category. commons is not a photo album, it's an archive (& usually somewhat messy). i know that hike has spent some time making up a good page, neatly arranged, but it won't stay that way (neatly arranged). all pics meant for a wikip article should be on wikip; on the article, or a closely-related/sub- article. the purpose of wmc is to provide media resources, & the logical process is to point to the top-level reference for a topic when cross-linking btwn wikimedia projects. conceivably, once there is enough material & it's all been sorted, the mono lake cat might contain logical sub-cats for islands, flora, fauna, media types, chronologically ordered stuff, etc. (as well as cross-referencing).

final note there needs to be more on the history of the lake, human & geological both, but esp. geo. what's there now is badly written & therre is no name mention of lake russel; that should be added & the one lake russel shoreline (remnant) pic that (seems to be all that) we have, should go there.

will return tomorrow to check for new developments. night all

Lx 121 (talk) 21:46, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

To be incorporated
Moved from Mono-Inyo Craters. I plan to incorporate the below text into this article later. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs) 21:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Mono Lake - lakebed exposed - from CA 120.JPG

The purpose of the tunnel was to divert water from Rush, Lee Vinning, Parker and Walker creeks from their natural outlet in Mono Lake into the Owens River, which in turn was diverted farther downstream into the Los Angeles Aqueduct system. Once the tunnel was in use, the water level of Mono Lake dropped 1 to 1.6 ft a year. The aqueduct system was expanded in 1970 and diversion from streams feeding Mono Lake intensified. Lake level was at 6417 ft above sea level before diversions began through the Mono Craters Tunnel and reached a low of 6372.3 ft in 1981. Starting in 1989, no diversions were allowed if the lake level fell below 6377 ft above see level, and in 1994 the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power accepted a decision by the state government to cut back its water diversions until the lake level reaches 6392 ft. In 1994, lake level was 6374.6 ft above sea level and by 2008 it had risen 7.7 ft.

Arsenic concentration
The concentration was announced to be sometime as high as 20µg/l. --Stone (talk) 19:54, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Tweaks
At the risk of causing more upset, I've moved algae from the list of species, since it's not a species. I'm noT clear why Alkali fly is capitalised, but not brine shrimp. Is it just because it's first in the list? jimfbleak

Suggeston: Under Ecology|Fauna|Aquatic Life, the last sentence of the third paragraph should be reworded. I suspect it’s the flies that encase themselves in air and walk under water. However, the way it’s written now it sounds like the birds are walking under water. 98.161.34.26 (talk) 15:32, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Dimensions
I know water level will affect surface area dimension of the lake, but there is still a large error in the given maximum length and width. Perhaps the max length and width (7.5 km) simply needs to be changed to miles. This 7.5 km equals, according to the article, 4.7 miles. This is contradicted by:

1) Pahoa island length: 4 miles by itself, fully contained in Mono Lake.

2) The lake's surface are stated in the article (69) miles (which is too big for a max diameter of 4.7 miles).

3) A casual eye ball comparison of lake Tahoe, which is known to be 22 miles long, North to South. It is not 4.5 times longer than Mono Lake. See for yourself.

This is only my second time making a suggestion here, so pls. forgive any errors in protocol.

Louis Irwin162.15.5.105 (talk) 18:02, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Pink Floyd connection
Should we add a little bit about the fact that Pink Floyd photographed much of the artwork for Wish You Were Here in Mono Lake (notably "the diver" photos)?? The Chief 06:09, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Sure! Ill add the bit about Mark Twain and create a new section on "Mono Lake in culture". --Stbalbach 06:30, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * seen this Arsenic-Based Sea Monkeys ? --Gebl Gebl Gebl (talk) 17:20, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Where did the name come from?
Maybe I missed it in the article, but where did the name come from? --AW (talk) 16:31, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I see it now. --AW (talk) 17:27, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I added it in response to your question. Thanks for asking it! —hike395 (talk) 18:24, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Semantics
Can the lake's "width" really be greater than the lake's "length"? Doesn't that make the width the length and the length the width ?

Tspofford — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tspofford (talk • contribs) 03:21, 28 January 2014 (UTC)