Talk:Mount Vesuvius/Archive 1

Untitled old comments
I don't see it as Americacentrism when the article on the city is located at Naples, Italy. RickK 05:45 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * Of course it is not US-centric to mention that Naples is in Italy. But the specific form "Naples, Italy" is used in the U.S. and probably nowhere else. The context makes it clear that this is about Italy. Naples is primarily a city in Italy, and if there are other places of that name, they are certainly not too prominent. So there is no reason to use the US-centric form here. 145.254.41.145   Furthermore, the article did not use the link to "Naples, Italy" (which exists as an article), but rather two links, one to Naples and one to Italy, which is why I changed it. 145.254.41.145

I would like to suggest that a disambiguation page referencing the USS Vesuvius be added under vesuvius. I do not know how to do this.alex is wired


 * I'd suggest adding a "== Namesakes ==" section at the end, use it to mention USS Vesuvius and the (twelve) HMS Vesuvius, since their names were inspired by the mountain. A full-blown disambiguation seems like overkill here. Stan 22:38, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Content moved from article
This text is still in the article: "(Note: In the original Greek mythology, Hercules is name Heracles, and is the son of Zeus and Hera (thus Heracles: "Son of Hera").)"

And an anonymous user added this: "Ehhh wrong!!! Zeus just called him Heracles to try and diffuse Hera's anger at his infidelity with Alcmene(among others. Zeus was a bit of a slut!). The name thing didn't really work and she still tried to kill him."

I moved it here instead. Perhaps the original claim is incorrect. Quadell (talk) 13:35, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)


 * Since this link seems to support the anonymous user's claim, I'm going to change the article. Quadell (talk) 13:36, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

gabe says hi —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.78.225.254 (talk) 18:48, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Anon Comment
(Darco 06:15, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)) An anonymous user posted a commend on the main page that looked like it belonged here. Here it is:
 * Hey. It is said in the article that "It is the only active volcano on the European mainland, although it is not currently in eruption." I guess it should be "the ancient active volcano" or something like that since the sentece follows says "It is one of four active volcanos in Italy, situated on the coast of the Bay of Naples..."


 * Italy includes several islands, such as Sicily. I presume that the other three volcanoes are on those islands (but that's just a guess) Nik42 03:51, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Oops ... should've re-read the article. I see someone else already pointed that out Nik42 03:53, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Jll 21:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC) I have changed the statement that it is the only active volcano on the European mainland to say instead that it is the only one to have erupted within the last 100 years. The volcano page has three possible definitions for active:
 * "Scientists usually consider a volcano active if it is currently erupting or showing signs of unrest". Vesuvius isn't active according to this definition.
 * Erupted within historical time - Shouldn't this include Campi Flegrei (1538)?
 * Erupted within the last 10,000 years - ditto.

Mt Etna, Europe's highest active volcano is on Sicily. Most of the other active volcanoes in the area are on the Lipari Islands. There are several recently (in the last 2 or 3 thousand years) active volcanoes in other spots in Italy such as Mt. Vulture and Campi Flegrei. CFLeon 02:04, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Height of the main cone
Is height of the mount 1,281 m or 1,277 m? See http://www.answers.com/Vesuvius --ajvol 06:06, 11 July 2005 (UTC)h

Delisted GA
There are no references. slambo 17:15, 23 October 2005 (UTC)


 * There is also some problems with the tephrochronology; ages don't run in order and the eruptive sequence notation is confusing and/or wrong. Not being a volcanologist, I'm not really au fait with what is right, but it's currently wrong. Rolinator 01:22, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Elevation
Is there any modern elevation measurement? Brandmeister 18:50, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

GA
The referencing now looks adequate for a GA. If the editors here intend to raise the page to an FA, probably 50% more line citations will be needed. Some of the sections and passages really ought to be cited but aren't. Based on overall comprehensiveness and encyclopedic tone I think this meets GA standards. Good work and keep improving. Durova 15:21, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Casualties
All that is in the article are the estimated populations of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Is there any way we could find out the estimated casualty figures for Naples, etc.? - Weebiloobil 21:13, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The simple answer is only if someone has been able to make, and publish, such an estimate. I have never seen one - the dynamics of the eruption and subsequent history of the region meant that Pompeii and Herculaneum got preserved with their human remains, and that probably wasn't true of the Naples area. Jll 18:37, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Today before Future?
Should the "Vesuvius Today" section be before the future section? - jlao   0  4  12:23, 26 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think so, because "The future" is the last sub-section in the Eruptions section which describes the eruptive history (and predictions about how it may erupt in future) in chronological order. The "Vesuvius Today" section doesn't contain anything relating to volcanic eruptions, or even to the mountain being a volcano. Jll 18:01, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Vesuvius today image
Can someone edit the image to give it more contrast? - jlao   0  4  14:03, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I've changed the photo to an identical one from the equivalent Spanish article, it looks a bit better, I hope the original editor doesn't mind. Is this what you were looking for Jlao04? Ok, so this is nearly a year later - but hey :-) Fossiliferous 10:55, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Separate article for the Pompeji eruption?
I think there should be a seperate article on the Pompeji eruption, like it has been done with the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens or the Minoan eruption of Thera. We should split this article right here. --Bender235 14:26, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. It is one of the most famous eruptions, possibly the most famous. Jll 09:55, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * There already is a good article on Pompeii and one on Herculaneum: together with this one, the three cover the 79 AD eruption decently. With a separate page about the great eruption, there would likely be a good deal of repetition from the other three and (more seriously) an over-ambition in trying to trace the exact chronology of the eruption. As has been pointed out a few times on this discussion page, we don't really know the sequence oif events as completely as it appears in some books. There is no way of knowing, for intance, *when* the eruption actually started - at 9 am, at 12 am, at 2 pm? It was fully noticeable around 2-2.30 pm (the letter to Pliny the Elder by a woman friend living on the coast, and Pliny the Younger noting the cloud) but it may have been plainly noticeable a few hours before, it may even have started in a small way during the night - we have no written testimonies at all from people who actually lived in Pompeii or the immediate vicinity. Also, the Romans didn't have a clear concept of "volcano", so if somebody looking towards the peak of Vesuvius at 3 a.m on the day of the eruption saw a dim glimmer of red, even if they realized it was fire, it wouldn't have lit a lightbulb with them and so it wouldn't have counted as important. Strausszek (talk) 03:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Reference is Wrong
The Reference #33 is an incomplete link because the page has been moved. It has to do with the planes destroyed in the 1944 blast. Lachliggity 20:07, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Pliny
The article says that Pliny the elder was possibly killed in the 79AD eruption. Pliny the younger states that he definitely was, and goes into considerable circumstantial detail. It's only a matter of removing one word. Does anyone mind?--Anthony.bradbury 23:47, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Go for it. I've never heard of anyone seriously disputing the younger Pliny's account. -- ChrisO 23:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

great job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #1
great job i've just read it all. i have to say it was very long but, very informational. i honestly didn't know Herculaneum was named after hercules i didn't even know Mt. Vesuvius was a volcanoe in ITALY. Now i can do the assignment that my teacher assigned. Oh, and i'm in the sixth grade. this comment is important because usually this kind of articl is boring and dull but this one is attention grabbing!1!!!!!!!. i loved it
 * Cool. I had to do a project on this too. But I am not in grade 6. I did get an A, though :D

Date of AD 79 eruption
The Italian Wikipedia has an article dedicated to the discussion about the date of the 79 AD eruption: Modifica di Data dell'eruzione del Vesuvio del 79 d.C., and there are references to other documents and articles, all in Italian.

I added a paragraph to the page to note that there is an issue with the date of the eruption, and of course this has been cited for lack of references. Trouble is that I have never found any authorative discussion of this issue in English. Does anybody know of any? Or should I add a reference to the Italian Wikipedia page and/or the references cited on that page? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.4.68.188 (talk • contribs).


 * An English language source would be nice, but failing that the reference cited on the Italian Wikipedia page could be used. I'll add that for now. -- Avenue 14:43, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * So far all I can find online in English is a tangential note from a course on natural disasters (which I've now cited), although they do reference this book: A. Scarth and J.-C. Tanguy, "Volcanoes of Europe", 2001, Oxford University Press; ISBN: 0-19-521754-3). Does anyone have ready access to it? Another possibility might be: S. J. Sparks 1982. The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79: reconstruction from historical and volcanological evidence. American Journal of Archaeology 36. 39-51. -- Avenue 15:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I've entered the gist of Sigurdsson, Cashdollar and Sparks. Is more detail required? JSTOR gives contemporaneous reports of C17-C19 eruptions: would quotes improve this article?--Wetman 21:49, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Article in English: G.Rolandi et al. The 79 AD eruption of Somma: The relationship between the date of the eruption and the southeast tephra dispersion. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 169 (2007). From its Abstract:

... New high level wind data collected at the weather stations of the Aereonautica Militare data centres at Pratica di Mare (Rome) and Brindisi have been compiled to characterize the prevailing wind condition in the Somma-Vesuvius region. The common north-easterly dispersal directions of the Plinian eruptions are consistent with the distribution of ash by high-altitude winds from October to June. In contrast, the south-easterly trend of the AD 79 products appears to be anomalous, because the eruption is conventionally believed to have occurred on the 24th of August, when its southeast dispersive trend falls in a transitional period from the Summer to Autumnal wind regimes. In fact, the AD 79 tephra dispersive direction towards the southeast is not in agreement with the June–August high-altitude wind directions that are toward the west. This poses serious doubt about the date of the eruption and the mismatch raises the hypothesis that the eruption occurred in the Autumnal climatic period, when high-altitude winds were also blowing towards the southeast. New archaeological findings presented in this study definitively place the date of eruption in the Autumn, in good agreement with the prevailing high-altitude wind directions above Somma-Vesuvius. Moreover, wind data and past eruptive behaviour indicate that a future subplinian–Plinian eruption at Somma-Vesuvius has a good chance to occur when winds are blowing toward the eastern sectors (northeast–southeast), in the Autumnal–Winter period, and only a slightest chance in Summer, when winds are blowing toward the west, depositing ash fallout on the Neapolitan community. Q Valda (talk) 15:28, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

March 1944 Picture of Eruption
I've added a picture of this eruption. My grandfather was in a bomber crew in Italy during WWII and was able to snap this picture. I just recently scanned it in and thought it'd be a good addition. can anyone help me out with the whole copyrights and use police stuff? i'm not really sure what to do there. Tnflyboy 15:51, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I've tagged it as PD-USGov-Military-Air Force. This assumes he was on duty when he took it. -- Avenue 03:58, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, the caption for the picture of the 1944 eruption of vesuvius should be changed. It says USAAF which stands for United States Army Air Force, but the Air Force wasn't created until 1947. Prior to that, it was part of the Army and known as the Army Air Corp. NeoKryos (talk) 19:59, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Areas affected
Should there be a list of the cities/towns/etc. affected by the 79 AD eruption? Reading through, Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae are mentioned in the article referencing this eruption, while Boscoreale, Oplontis and others are left out entirely. Looking up Boscoreale and Oplontis, both refer to the Vesuvius article but aren't referred back to.

Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae, Oplontis and Boscoreale are the ones typically listed as "destroyed" by most sources, but I've also seen a longer list mentioned a few places. http://researchitaly.us/historyofsouthernitaly/ad1toad500.html lists "Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae, Oplontis, Sora, Tora, Taurania, Cossa and Leucopetra", and I've seen Torre del Greco mentioned elsewhere. Obviously several of these need more verification, but some sort of list would be helpful. Merennulli (talk) 04:20, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Pliny sentence misplaced?
In there's a brief section describing the usual eruption pattern of Vesuvius which ends with a sentence which seems to more clearly belong to an article or section about the fate of Pliny the Elder. -- Mark J (talk) 11:48, 5 August 2008 (UTC) the place is badly affted —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.8.254 (talk) 13:09, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Bot report : Found duplicate references !
In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :) DumZiBoT (talk) 10:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * "global volcanism" :

Contradiction
There appears to be a clear contradiction in the text for the Casualties section.

The remaining 62% of remains found at Pompeii were in the pyroclastic surge deposits,[42] and thus were probably killed by them — probably from a combination of suffocation through ash inhalation and blast and debris thrown around. In contrast to the victims found at Herculaneum), examination of cloth, frescoes and skeletons show that it is unlikely that high temperatures were a significant cause.

Seems to contradict the following paragraph: -

Herculaneum, which was much closer to the crater, was saved from tephra falls by the wind direction, but was buried under 23 m (75 ft) of material deposited by pyroclastic surges. It is likely that most, or all, of the victims in this town were killed by the surges, particularly given evidence of high temperatures found on the skeletons of the victims found in the arched vaults, and the existence of carbonised wood in many of the buildings.

Wxb2744 (talk) 18:27, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

No contradiction. The first of those two paragraphs refers to the impact on the victims at Pompeii ("In contrast TO the victims found at Herculaneum..."), the next is about the skeletons located at Herculaneum. And the two cities were affected in different ways, of course, though both were destroyed and buried.Strausszek 15:57, Septmeber 8 2008 (CET) wat ever —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.68.139.250 (talk) 18:30, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

MOUNT VESUVIUS

Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79. Mount Vesuvius is located in Napples, Italy. It's the only volcano in European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years, although it's not currently active. Millions of people were killed when Mount Vesuvius erupted. When Mount Vesuvius erupted it also covered it's neighbour Herculaneum in ash and cinders. The lost city of Pompeii was discovered when a man was diging in his garden and found an old wall belonging to the city.

BY:Roisin Conlan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.124.91.31 (talk) 19:37, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

DISCREPENCY PROBLEM
1. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drusilla_(daughter_of_Agrippa_I) "Josephus states that they had a son named Marcus Antonius Agrippa and a daughter Antonia Clementiana. Their son perished together with his mother, Drusilla, in Mount Vesuvius in 79." [note 7: "Mentioned in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, xx.7.2, and in a lost section of the work."] 2. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Vesuvius "Along with Pliny the Elder, the only other noble casualties of the eruption to be known by name were Agrippa (a son of the Jewish princess Drusilla and the procurator Antonius Felix) and his wife." [note 29 "Mentioned in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, xx.7.2, and in a lost section of the work."] 3. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonius_Felix "Felix and the Judean Drusilla, had a son, Marcus Antonius Agrippa, who died along with his [whose?] wife in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius." [this one has no documentation]

So who was it that died? Agrippa and his mother, Agrippa and his wife, or was it possibly all three of them? Wawruckhemmett (talk) 20:39, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Section relocated from To-Do list
I don't know if I'm handling this the right way, but there's an important comment that needs to be made about this article, concerning a FACTUAL ERROR. Under the section 'Pliny the Elder' appears this comment: "The prevailing southerly wind also stopped him landing there, but he continued south under it to Stabiae" This error is repeated or was initiated in Robert Harris's book and possibly other references. I'm sure I've seen it elsewhere in the literature, possibly even in this article. FACT: the prevailing wind was not southerly. It could not possibly have been. The plume of pumice from the eruption was indisputably carried in a south-easterly direction from the cone, hence covering Pompeii. For this to have happened, the wind was a north-wester (wind direction, as any sailor knows, is described in terms of where it comes FROM, not where it's going TO). In a similar vein, Pliny could not have continued south under a southerly wind - he'd have been sailing into the wind, an impossibility.

Someone needs to correct this glaring error. Submitted by kerville.

````


 * 50% more line citations will be needed.
 * Get to FA
 * Generally I think polishing is required - many sections are rather short, there are capitalised headings which don't conform to the MoS, and things like that. I think the article is not particularly scholarly at the moment - no references cited from journal articles or other academic sources. And the external links section is unnecessarily huge at the moment. But it's a solid article on a topic which is ideal for bringing up to featured standards. I have been planning to work on this article for a while, as Vesuvius is a Decade Volcano and thus included in Wikipedia:WikiReader/Decade Volcanoes which I created. I should be able to find time in the next week or so to give it a thorough editing which I hope will improve it a lot.
 * I didn't check up on the sources themselves yet, but a lot of those external links are linked to as sources within the text and the Osservatorio Vesuvio local national park authorities and eyewitness accounts are all good sources IMO, even if not literally scientific. I'll contact you, so we don't do duplicate work.


 * The type of lava that is erupted here should probably be changed. The article claims: "Its lava is composed of viscous andesite." Bill Rose, a volcanologist from my Geo. Dept. took issue with this and doubted that vesuvius ever has or ever will erupt andesite. He said that it is an ultrapotassic volcano which generally erupts leucitites, and this is backed up here (http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/img_vesuvius.html) and here (http://www.springerlink.com/content/w236567tw1453r57/) --Alguth 14:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC)


 * In the Formation section, the following statement is incorrect: "The crust material became heated until it melted, forming magma, a type of liquid rock." Significant melting of the subducting slab does not occur. Rather, dehydration of minerals in the subducting slab releases water that ascends into the overlying mantle, reducing its melting point and generating melt that ascends into the crust.

The section that talks about how the inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculanium died of asphyxiation is wrong. Here is the facts, as quoted by the Discovery Channel at http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/pompeii/history/history_02.html: "Herculaneum could not stand out in all its importance because of problems with digging. The resistance of the volcanic material made it very difficult to excavate, not to mention the urban settlements that had grown above the ancient town. There is still a lot to discover about this place," archaeologist Mario Pagano, director of the town's excavation, said. Indeed, a 18-year dig led by Pagano near the ancient seashore has provided the conclusive evidence on how the victims of history's most famous volcanic explosion died.

The excavation uncovered 300 bodies, a significant and precious sample of Herculaneum's population, which at the time of the eruption in A.D. 79 numbered about 5,000.

Pagano's team found bodies of adults on the surface, many carrying money and valuable objects; deeper down, they found children and newborns.

Most of all, Pagano found 80 nearly intact bodies trapped by death as they packed into 12 storerooms on the beach to escape the molten lava and boiling mud pouring down from the crater.

It has long been assumed that the victims died from asphyxiation. But a study of the bone fractures and the position of the remains, indicates that the fugitives died instantly from extreme thermal shock when the surge hurled down on the beach area, covering the seven miles to the coast in about four minutes. Herculaneum was baked in seconds.

"These 80 people do not display any evidence of voluntary self-protective reaction or agony contortions. They were killed before they had time to display a reaction, in less than a fraction of a second," said study author Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo, a volcanologist with the Vesuvius Observatory.

Quoted from http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/pompeii/history/history_03.html: Aug. 25, A.D. 79

1 a.m.: A cloud of gas and ash plunged down on the town; the hot breath of Vesuvius killed the fugitives in a fraction of a second. By studying bone fractures and the position of the remains, anthropologist Paolo Petrone and volcanologist Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo established beyond a doubt that the fugitives were wrapped in a 900-degree Fahrenheit cloud. They died instantly of thermal shock, not from slow suffocation as scientists long assumed.

PROBLEM OF INCONSISTENCY 1. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drusilla_(daughter_of_Agrippa_I) "...Josephus states that they had a son named Marcus Antonius Agrippa and a daughter Antonia Clementiana. Their son perished together with his mother, Drusilla, in Mount Vesuvius in 79." [note 7: "Mentioned in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, xx.7.2, and in a lost section of the work."] 2. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Vesuvius "Along with Pliny the Elder, the only other noble casualties of the eruption to be known by name were Agrippa (a son of the Jewish princess Drusilla and the procurator Antonius Felix) and his wife." [note 29 "Mentioned in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, xx.7.2, and in a lost section of the work."] 3. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonius_Felix "Felix and the Judean Drusilla, had a son, Marcus Antonius Agrippa, who died along with his [whose?] wife in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius." [this one has no documentation]

So who was it that died? Agrippa and his mother, Agrippa and his wife, or was it possibly all three of them? Wawruckhemmett (talk) 20:12, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

AD 79
All the links that lead to "AD 79" should be "79 AD" because there is no page for AD 79. Could some one change this?
 * Both AD 79 and 79 AD redirect to 79, so it shouldn't be a problem. Rumiton (talk) 12:15, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

New file File:Vesuvius erupting at Night by William Marlow.jpg
Recently the file File:Vesuvius erupting at Night by William Marlow.jpg (right) was uploaded and it appears to be relevant to this article and not currently used by it. If you're interested and think it would be a useful addition, please feel free to include it. Dcoetzee 12:38, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Section:Formation
I've noticed that this section lacks any citations. Can the person who edited that bit add some citations?-- Guan long   wucaii  14:51, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The Future
'Extremely approximate' means 'exact'. Was this intended? (RJPe (talk) 21:45, 7 March 2010 (UTC))

Eruption sequence
I do not like this eruption sequence, I think GVP is a better reference, at least for the Holocene.
 * Pompeii eruption: 79 AD Oct 24 (?) - 79 AD Oct 28 ± 1 day, 2.8 to 3.8 km3 of tephra
 * Avellino eruption: 2420 BC ± 40 years, 3.9 km3 of tephra
 * Mercato Pumice: 6940 BC ± 100 years, 2.75 to 2.85 km3 of tephra
 * --Chris.urs-o (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
 * --Chris.urs-o (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Pompeii eruption - discussion back up

 * Edit summary: "Date of the eruption, discrepancy; the Smithsonian page doesn't discuss its choice of date or "explain" the difference". See the DATA SOURCES page, it might help you. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 20:05, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Now, that's a list of articles and books that have some bearing or have been used for their summary of the eruption, or even of all eruptions of Vesuvius since the stone age. It contains no discussion at all of why they chose the October date, nor any attempt to explain why (our text of) Pliny differs from the apparent implications of the archaeological data. See? It doesn't make an attempt to explain or reconcile those views, which is what the article said before I edited, it just settles for Oct. 24 and gives no reason.

If ýou'd ask me I personally think the October (or November) date is likely, but the Smithsonian Vesuvius page or that list of books in itself - they simply don't do anything to explain this matter. They don't even mention the August date which is, after all, what most scholars hold to. That's why I reworded the text: it's not meant to be read as if it were now proven that it happened in the autumn. Btw it seems there's not many texts that even discuss the problems with the date in a scholarly way. Strausszek (talk) 20:31, 14 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Global Volcanism Program, just cites the best reference, updates with trustworphy work. I think they can judge who does the best job. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 02:39, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Look, science is not about picking one arbiter and saying "this authority (this university, this group of scholars, this professor, this theory) always does it right". Science, or critical historical research, discusses and scrutinizes any kind of findings and theories it wants to bring to the table. Unlike some wikipedians, scientists and historians never argue from "there are many good scientists who think X -> so X is true" or simply from the generic value of the books that support a certain view on a problem. if a view isn't backed from presented arguments and independent sources, then it's worthless, no matter how many professors have signed up for it.

The Smithsonian program doesn't say anything about how and why archaology and written statements differ, or propose how they can be reconciled, it simply doesn't discuss the problem, at least not in any published source. So it's obvious the article can't state they have "offered a possible explanation"; they have done nothing of the sort. All WP can do here is to explain the existence of this problem and the kind of sources scholars are dealing with for it; something many books on Pompeii don't even do - they just accept the August 24 date.

By the way, if more replies are needed I think we should continue on the Vesuvius talk page.. Strausszek (talk) 03:02, 15 April 2010 (UTC)


 * It's ok, I just wanted to tell you that the Global Volcanism Program is very good at eruption date and tephra volume uncertainties. It's just a database on reliable sources, no reasons are given; the data source is there if anybody wants to check :p . There is C14 dating, ice core or tephrochronology; historians and witnesses are not trusted very much by physicists. By the way, wikipedians, scientists and historians do not differ very much, e.g. IPCC and K/T extinction event. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 04:28, 15 April 2010 (UTC)


 * It looks excellent, thanks for pointing to it. Strausszek (talk) 17:56, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok, the Volcanic Explosivity Index (tephra volume), surely before Holocene, correlates badly with the eruption power and the sulfur dioxide emission. The Global Volcanism Program is the reference database for volcanic activity in the Holocene. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 08:40, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

A sortable table would be nice
It would be a nice feature in the article to have a table of all known and believed eruptions sortable by year as well as by eruption index. Even though this information would be incomplete the table would make a useful and informative addition, in my opinion. __meco (talk) 19:33, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
 * How about this: List of large volcanic eruptions, Vesuvius - Eruptive History is good too. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 08:21, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Temporarily removed etymologies
Sorry folks, your etymologies are not allowed - that would be original research, breaking the no original research policy. As these have been here for a while I am exercising my prerogative of removing unreferenced material. I do have a referenced one to put in and undoubtedly will find more. If I see one of the removed ones I will put it back in with the reference. By the way there is an interesting string of comments here. It will take time to get around to all of these. Removed etymologies:

"* Heracles was a son of the Greek god Zeus and the queen Alcmene of Thebes. Zeus was also known as Huēs (Ὓης) in his aspect as the god of rains and dews. Heracles was thus alternatively known as Huēsou huios, "Son of Hues." Transliterating the "ου" as "V" (as is normally done), and the other upsilons (with rough breathing) also by V (rather than the usual "HY") and changing to the Latin nominative ending "us", gives V ESVVIVS – Vesuvius. "
 * From the Oscan word festf which means "smoke".
 * From the Proto-Indo-European root ves- = "hearth"
 * PS, on the personally innovated "Herculean" etymology, sir, you are connecting unconnected things. Herculaneum was named so because settled by freedmen, as Hercules was once enslaved and then set free. Vesuvius must have had its name long before then. Also Vesuvius was a manifestation of Jove, not Hercules. It was worshipped under Jove's name. Nice try though. That is why WP insists on the authoritative thinking of credible sources. Billions of speculations are possible and this can't be a place to publish them - that would be quite a different site from what it was intended to be.Dave (talk) 11:19, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * PPS The secret to this article is that it is a rehash of this student paper: Michelle Sciarrone's paper. While it is not exactly plagiarized, its indebtedness is manifest. The supposed etymologies are almost word for word. There are no references on them because Michelle gives no references. We can't really blame Michelle - how are students supposed to learn unless they write papers? As far as who transposed it is concerned, I wish you wouldn't do that. What's the goal here? It is to get authentic info, right? Why on earth would you ever put this type of stuff up? What advantage would you get from it? Michelle I do apologize if you have taken offense. The paper must be worth something or the department would not have put it up. I would say - hmm. Keep working. I think WP standards are higher than the college's. That is not to say WP lives up to its standards. On WP you don't count as an encyclopedic source. Geograpic lore - people spend decades on that sort of thing. If you had a historic frame of mind I would say take that one Hercules theme and work it up into a publishable paper it it still seems viable after doing the research. Meanwhile this whole article needs to be gone over and practically worked up again. Best wishes, ciao.Dave (talk) 01:32, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I did find the Hercules etymology. Apparently there is nothing new here. I will try to represent the whole situation with refs.Dave (talk) 08:20, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Hercules/Herculaneum Internet Myth
Removed this passage. "Mount Vesuvius was regarded by the Greeks and Romans as being sacred to the hero and demigod Heracles/Hercules, and the town of Herculaneum, built at its base, was named after him."

It is repeated on the Internet without substantiation. We could find someone who repeats it and list that as a ref but it is not true. The mountain was not sacred to the god, it was the god, and the god was not Hercules. One late author (Martial) mentions a shrine to Hercules and to Venus. Mainly the deity was considered a form of Jove, god of the heavenly flashes. For the origin of Herculaneum, it is obscure, probably named after a Greek mother city, Herakleia. Naturally the later population would claim to have named it after Hercules or that Hercules named it. Sure. The emperors were descended from the gods too, didn't you know that? Well, the mountain was not named after Hercules or Herculaneum and whether Herculaneum was named after Hercules' legendary visit to Campania remains to be proved. Probably not. This statement is oversimple and there is no ref so I'm taking it out. I will put something more accurate in there.Dave (talk) 08:35, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, if Herculaneum, founded by Greek colonists who had sailed from the city of Herakleia, had been given that name to show the link to its "mother city" then you could say it was, by a slight extension, named after Heracles. It's safe to assume that the people of Heracleia were worshippers of Heracles in some form, and their town was named after him; so when the name was useed fo r deriving a new name, and the cult went with it (as it surely did: ancient greek towns identified with their cults, and their colonies followed) the name ?Herakleionion/Herculaneum became a declension of heracles/Hercules. And Heracles was connected to hot springs, volcanic mountains and openings into the netherworld in Greek myth and religion 8see G.S. Kirk, The Nature of Greek myths) - so it's not at all unlikely that the people of the new town linked him to a mountain they, unlike the later population of the area, recognized to be volcanis. But I'd agree the phrase as you cited it is vague: it doesn't say who - claimed a link between the name of the city and the demigod - the early Greeks who founded the town or the mostly Roman population in the imperial age. Strausszek (talk) 07:23, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

This is supposition, and therefore original research. My "author", to which I turn when trying to sort out some new ideas from old ones, is William Smith's Classical Dictionary (1852, 18th ed. 1880, 1993), which pretty much nails down most of Roman and Greek culture, apart from the modern research that has upturned some of the old stuff, but as for Herculaneum it only says that Oscans formed the city, and Tyrrhenians conquered it, and then Romans conquered it in 88-89 BC, and it was buried in ash in August 24, 79 AD. No mention of Hercules who is the next keyword... takes up pages upon pages. This from the classical histories. Mythological origins are the stock and trade of old reference books, if Smith fails to mention it, it must be later folk-etymology, or unproven research. 91.156.122.224 (talk) 10:53, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Formation
Not so. Vesuvius is in the Campanian cogmagmatic province which with the Roman comagmatic province are on a deep fault or faults of the Tyrrhenian extensional zone. The crust is thin and faulted there and the faults reach to the Moho. I will get to this when I finish Apennines meanwhile it stays for lack of anything better. EB1911 does not cut it at all here.Dave (talk) 01:58, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Norman Lewis
Suggested removal:
 * Norman Lewis, Naples '44 ISBN 0-907871-72-0

Norman Lewis is not referenced in the notes. He only mentions Vesuvius because it erupted when he was there, and only in connection with what the native population thought of the eruption. There are other sources on the eruption and I am sure the general bibliography on it is pretty substantial. The lady on the front cover definitely could not seriously pass for a volcano. Is there any encyclopedic reason to put this in? Lewis has since passed away and I am sure we could all enjoy vicariously his experiences in war-time Naples as a young man but this is an encyclopedia.Dave (talk) 09:29, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Mr. Appleyard and *wes
Mr. Appleyard, I removed that because there is no reference on it, not because I did not agree with it. There still is no reference on it! We need a reference, Mr. Appleyard, one of those footnotes citing the source where you got it. The derivation looks like a bright idea and it is, except in this field there is very little new and bright. Someone at some time proposed this etymology. In fact, I believe I have seen it skimming through somewhere. I did not put it in yet because I am still working on it. FYI, you can't just throw these things in because they are your opinion or because you saw it somewhere. You have to say where. However it is no big deal to leave it until I get to it. I have no doubt I can find the ref. If you want to gain more experience, why don't you find the ref yourself and put it in? Or better yet take some of those other unreferenced generalizations in the first few paragraphs and find the sources for those? All three of those derivations are in fact going back in even though some are far-fetched and unlikely. They are possible. We just need a suitable source. The most far-fetched I do not think we should bother with; for example, the one that derived Italic place names from Welsh words on the theory that Welsh was a universal language. Humbug. But that is what speculators of the 19th century believed. So long for now and I think helping to clean up an article such as this would be good experience for you.Dave (talk) 02:30, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

The Kilburn Book
There are two technical refs for this book. It is cited properly except for one little item: the page numbers. What is the reader supposed to do, search the whole book? He can't do that on Google because it is not previewable nor on Amazon either. What do you say, how about the page numbers? So far I have found that the info the citation says is supposed to be in the ref is in the ref so I am going to give the editor the benefit of the doubt. WP does like page numbers (and so does everyone else) so if you could please put those in it would make the article more credible. This part of the article was obviously written by someone with more experience, or talent, or whatever, except for his peculiar predilection for "whilst." Whilst whilst whilom was considered winsome in English prose, it ain't now. It sounds like you are trying to steal an unmerited authority from our ancestors. It's not unmerited so if I were you I would give up the use of this archaic word. By the way this kind of prose is immediately suspect to me but so far I have found no evidence of its being lifted. I'll be looking, however. Good writers don't usually write for WP, with a few exceptions. On the other hand some writers advertising themselves as good steal blatently from WP. One has to be vigilant.Dave (talk) 19:51, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Date of the eruption
"non-relevant ref - please, you can't FOOL us into accepting your thesis - we need to find a ref that fits this info, which no doubt is good" Sources

Quote: "It shows that within the 15 centuries which elapsed between A.D. 79 and 1631, the effusive activity of Vesuvius clustered in the relatively short period of time between A.D. 787 and 1139 and was followed by a 5-century-long repose period. During this time Vesuvius prepared itself for the violent explosive eruption of 1631."

Quote: "In fact, the AD 79 tephra dispersive direction towards the southeast is not in agreement with the June-August high-altitude wind directions that are toward the west. This poses serious doubt about the date of the eruption and the mismatch raises the hypothesis that the eruption occurred in the Autumnal climatic period, when high-altitude winds were also blowing towards the southeast. New archaeological findings presented in this study definitively place the date of eruption in the Autumn, in good agreement with the prevailing high-altitude wind directions above Somma-Vesuvius." Is this ref. better? --Chris.urs-o (talk) 17:18, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks buddy - I see you are on top of it now -Let me check this out - it would be shame if we did not have a ref for the different date. No need for us to lose interesting info just because the Italians don't keep up their links. You could have put this in yourself, but I will look at it and if it fits will put it in (and be glad to get it) but it might be later today or even tomorrow. While we are at it you might address the next one if you can.
 * You're using the abstract as the reference. The article itself in your reference is a pay item and we cannot put a link to a pay site. If you had read and quoted the article we could put a ref to the article with a specific page number for the quote, and leave it up the public to find the article wherever they could. They would have had the quote. But, you did not. We can use the abstract - I've done it myself successfully. But, either the quote or the link has to go and we have to say, abstract, as we are not giving them the article, only the abstract. This is the same case as Amazon and other book seller sites. We don't put links to Amazon. We can't sell articles here. I choose the link. But, it still does not give the archaeological evidence! And, we have said nothing about wind! So we have to say something about that before we can reference it. A mere statement that the archaeological evidence suggests a different date is no information at all. You have to say what evidence. We have said so but that part still has no ref. Do you have a better idea how refs work now? I will have to put this in later today as I have to go now for the usual reasons. Ideally someone should go back to the Internet and look for another article that does list the evidence and can be used as a reference. I don't have time for that on this pass - I'm only fixing English and format and policy questions such as references. If you want to do it go ahead.Dave (talk) 10:50, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Ordered a copy, let's see if I get wiser. Found a citation, did not read it though. Roger T. Macfarlane, Vesuvian Narratives: collisions and collusions of man and volcano --Chris.urs-o (talk) 14:13, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You didn't ask my advice but I will give it on one point anyway. I would say, don't order any copies unless you want them for other reasons, educational or personal. That is playing into their hands. You can subscribe to the whole journal for less than what they want for one article. Prices on these are typically exorbitant. You could spend a lot of money on this sort of thing. Surely the Internet must have the info for free somewhere! WP is a free public service and cannot allow itself to be used to sell material. If ever it needs to feature commercials to make ends meet, these will have no effectiveness if people are allowed to advertise for free on here. I threw in with the free public service. I do my best to stop the selling. I guess I will put your ref in tomorrow as it is late now for me. We can improve it anytime if you turn up something better.Dave (talk) 03:28, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I just ordered a copy per email from the main countries' library, not so ooo expensive. You live in USA. Do you have a library card? If you don't, get one. Most libraries give you remote access to JSTOR, etc.. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 03:37, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I always wondered how that works. I am in the US, I do have a card and I certainly will investigate that as JSTOR has a lot of articles. PS I'm putting your ref in this morning.Dave (talk) 10:49, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The first one we talked about is in there. Note that we speak English not professional article abbreviationalese, which can be pretty incomprehensible unless you have the list of abbreviations, which never gets included. For further action I think I will wait a bit to see what you got from the order. The rest of the refs are somewhat of a mess and I still have the promised etymology and latest geological thinking on the Campanian comagmatic zone. Later.Dave (talk) 11:18, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Good morning Chris-urs. I have read the article. It is an excellent source and can now be cited fully with page numbers. Regarding Pliny's text, it is not a matter of text corruption but of MSS interpretation. The Romans had their own abbreviational style, which is the forerunner of our more extensive abbreviationalese. Sometimes their abbreviations make reading difficult for us non-ancient-Romans. Anyway, a given abbreviation might be interpreted in different ways, or a given slice of text also might be interpreted differently. That is the gist of the argument in this article and backed up by the archaeological evidence it looks pretty cogent, certainly worth more of an report on WP. If no one else expands this a little I will do it - or I will check what you do - but I would need a few weeks time to understand the argument fully. It is one of those different traditions WP ought to cver. Thanks for your time and trouble. Later.Dave (talk) 10:10, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * U r welcome ;) --Chris.urs-o (talk) 10:20, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

The independent date
"The portion of the Histories of Tacitus where Pliny's letter was used to describe the disaster unfortunately does not survive; if it had been extant, it might have provided an independent view of the date."

If Tacitus was using Pliny's letter, how can he be said to be independent? He is not independent; he depends on Pliny. You mean, an independent view of what Pliny said? The "corruption" possibility is only one possibility; as far as I know, there are no textual problems there. Did he say what he said? Whether Tacitus thought so or not has no bearing on the discrepancy of date. Suppose he was the one who got it wrong? Anyway I am taking this sentence out either to stay out or be rewritten so that it makes sense logically. Beware of sweeping generalizations and incomplete logic. Very few things actually "prove" anything.Dave (talk) 17:37, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There is indeed a textual problem in Pliny at this point (which you indicated in the article too, I guess, but maybe after you wrote the post above - discovered it later?) There's at least two variants of the date in the Plinian textual tradition, corresponding to August 24 and November 23. You can find it in scientific editions of Pliny, they'll write August 24 in the body of the text but note that some text witnesses say IX kal. Decembres/ Nov.23; that was the date actually used in the first printed editions, pre-Aldus. And it's mentioned by some quite reliable third-party books on the eruption, like British classical scholar Michael Grant in Cities of Vesuvius. He mentions the alternate date in a footnote as he gets into gear with the beginning of the eruption. So we know, somewhere along the way at least one scribe miswrote, and it was perpetuated: both dates can't be right of course. It might have been October 23 (Kal Novembres) or 24 in the early copies, "Novembres" then getting corrupted to "Decembres" and then, in some copies, to "Septmbres" - month names were often written in shortened forms in the middle ages and that would have made those slips easier. Anyway, the text is disputed in the sense that there are clear variants and no certainty (a majority of editorial choice doesn't really equal full certainty in a case like this one). Tacitus was drawing on Pliny's letter (and likely on other sources) for his own account, which we don't have, and since the disaster had happened in his own lifetime, he and Pliny would certainly have known the same date, and given it. But the textual traditions of Tacitus and Pliny are fully independent, and the codices we have of tacitus though they're few -basically, one of each major surviving block of his works - are unusually old, written in the 9th century I think. So a preserved Tacitus would have given at least a good pointer to what the date had been in Pliny's original.
 * For people who don't know about textual criticism, this is how it applies to Pliny and Tacitus (you know about it I reckon, Dave, but others might not, and it's kinda hard to grasp at first if you're used to that every book has a fixed text deriving from a proofed first printing): Books from pre-Gutenberg times are not preserved through a first printed edition that was proofread by the author but ultimately from a line of manuscripts, and there isn't a single ancient book where we have the original script to check with, or even a text from within the same century (unless it's a long text hewn into rock, like Augustus' Res Gestae). The writings of the New Testament are exceptional in the relative closeness between date of composition and the oldest text witnesses. Now, there are actually two variants of the date in the manuscripts we got of Pliny (they're all medieval) and there's really no way of knowing with certainty which one Pliny wrote and he may have written October 23/24, which could have been miswritten into both of the two variants we have, by different scribes. Every ancient text we possess, including the books of the Bible, has hundreds of those points where the manuscripts tell you different things on the wording. Some of those errors can be solved easily, others are highly controversial. Sometimes the text is so corrupted you have to make a scholarly guess and insert a wording supportd by no single manuscript (conjecture; an October 24 date in Pliny would have been that). The reason you don't find this in a paperback translated copy of Cicero, Caesar or Pliny is because the "text apparatus" has been eliminated there, but in a scientific edition (e.g. the Loeb Classical Library) it's right there on the nottom of each page).


 * The two date variants in Pliny show at least one scribe made an error (and his error was followed by a line of later manuscripts copied from him). The trouble is we don't know which date was the original one. Strausszek (talk) 05:49, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, Mr. Strausscek, I just saw this now, after I created a section for you at the bottom. Sorry. So, you DO understand the situation. I don't know if you can access my source but there are quite a few MS variants, not just 2. There seemed to have been a confusion between nonum, Nones and Nov. You can probably find all the variants just looking through the old books on Google, and sometimes Amazon lets you look at several pages you specify. I often do a web search on pdf files for accessible articles. Seeing that do understand I am at a loss to figure out why you thought it necessary to insert a personal defense of Pliny. I suppose you were mislead by what was there. As a new user, I got to caution you, Mr. Strausscek, you think far too much of WP. The main problem is the unsourced opinions of everyone and his brother. People tend to mistake this for a blog. It isn't. You should learn how to do a reference immediately and never edit without them! I trust my removal of WP's misleading text solves the problem, but see my comments below. I'm sorry, I don't work very fast on WP. Some of my text only gets in but not the rest and then there are problems such as these. I completed the date section, however, which I originally questioned as unsourced myself. I was corrected on that one so our source, which is a good and recent one, is there. By the way we are keeping the previous text unless it can be corrected or improved according to WP standards of good or bad. You can find those in the help. Ciao.Dave (talk) 10:32, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I've been around for a while here and what's more, since we both seem to have studied Classics to some depth and we're familiar with the site, I think it's understood that obvious, reliable printed sources count too even if they're not available full-text online. I've already indicated Michael Grant and scientific editions of Pliny; they don't discuss the whole issue of when the eruption took place vs different kinds of evidence of course, but mention the different readings of Pliny's date reference which is all I was after from them. If you'd read a bit on this discussion page, and at the Pompeii discussion page, before editing away, you'd have seen that the question of the date vs arcaheological/written evidence had been up before and that we were aware this was an issue, but it was hard to find good texts by arcaheologists or historians discussing it in detail. -With Grant and academic editions of Pliny however, nyone who takes the trouble to visit a university library can check them out so they are just as much valid sources as anything you might find on Google Books. A text doesn't have to be available in a moment to every user on the web to be a good source, it suffices that it's available in public somewhere and can be checked. Will take a look t your revised text now.


 * I've seen the kind of users who edit as if this was just a ragbag blog but have a bit higher standards myself. I don't go to the other extreme though, the point of thinking every single WP rule would be an ineluctable _law_ at all times. They are rules of guidance, not immediately binding laws you can punch into the heads of other users. If people have done that to you, I'm sorry. Strausszek (talk) 12:05, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

The list of links in one note
Thanks for your contribution - it seems you need more WP experience. A note gives a source or additional information on the sentence noted. Some articles use two sets of notes, one for the sources, one for the additional info. Lists of links to related or more detailed information belong in "External links." Those links must be encyclopedic in tone and content. Blogs and essays are not encyclopedic, nor is anything that sells anything. I will have to abolish that note making proper disposition of the links in it. Some will go away. At least one is dead anyway. Don't take it to heart - just keep learning. Best wishes.Dave (talk) 03:35, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Doug Criner reference
Doug is an engineer who visited Pompeii while in the navy and was so impressed he created a blog site offering some of his own observations on the engineering of Pompeii. Very interesting, Doug. I was amazed to note the lead pipes carrying running water to some houses. All Pompeii enthusiasts should check out Doug's site. Nevertheless the work is not one of an archaeologist, this is not a professional study of the site, the tone is that of a travellogue, he invites others to comment, and he cites no references for his few facts, such as the populations of the two towns. I think therefore we must reject the site as an encyclopedic reference. You would never find Doug in, say, Britannica. But thank you Doug. If you are truly interested enough to spend some professional time I suggest volunteering to do some archaeological work for one of the many excavators of Pompeii; alternatively, write a book from an angineer's perspective. I am sure Doug would agree, this is not a professional study of the kind funded archaeologists do. Find another ref on the population, one which gives some demographic basis for the figures. Thanks.Dave (talk) 08:03, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * PS - some of the links are to the writing of professional volcanologists and I believe I saw some population numbers worked up in that - you may not have to look far - it is really a matter of learning to use encyclopedic references rather than blogs and essays.Dave (talk) 08:09, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

The magnetic studies section
I put the label magnetic studies on there. The section has no references and as a result is pretty confused and confusing. Some of it has been mildly plagiarized from The Natural History of Disasters.. Moreover it attempts to combine it with information from one of the few professional articles made available to us reporting on a TRM analysis of clastic deposits done apparently in 2006 by Gurioli and others, as it references works published in 2005 and was published 2007. The Gurioli et al. article is rather technical but our intrepid editor tackles it anyway with no success. The history of disasters authors, who are not geologists, draw their own conclusions without explanation or references. A Harvard ref lacks the supporting footnote, so we have little idea of its provenience. This thing is basically wrong or meaningless and yet it has received wide recognition by being copied word-for-word by all the plagiarists on the Internet. For myself I don't see any point at all in putting this sort of thing out as we do not profit from it and the public learns nothing from it and it only contributes to the vast confusive babble that is the Internet. But, in a way I am glad it is there, as this is the sort of Internet baloney I was hoping to be able to address directly and fling my handful of sand at the breaker of ignorance that rolls down human history like a tsunami in the ocean of nothing. So, I am going to drop the unsupported conclusion about the gas temperature and stick to the palaeomagnetic study as best I can in a couple of paragraphs. The article can be downloaded and read but I doubt that will help most people very much. We do have some few supportive articles on the topic but they are nearly all tagged. Someone should step forward with more of an interest in public education and make them so's the rest of us can actually read them.Dave (talk) 01:58, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

The tectonic activity
I removed this:

"However, this may have been a tectonic event rather than one associated with the re-awakening of the volcano. - cite news| title=Three Decades of Seismic Activity at Mt. Vesuvius: 1972–2000"

as being editorial opinion with a phony ref. The ref only gives you title. If you look it up, there is no news item of this title. There is an article in a technical journal but it is not for free. The abstract is for free, however, and that does not say a thing leading us to this conclusion. In fact, it implies the opposite. Tectonics is not mentioned. In any case the editor is really quite obscure. Why do you give us the options of tectonic or volcanic but not both? And what do you mean by reawakening? The volcano has never been dead as far as I know and is not now dead. It only slumbers until forces have built up for another eruption. No, this is no sleeping volcano. Everyone is quite familiar with the risk of living there and when it happens it will be no surprise to anyone, although many will be most regretful as long as they live, which may not be long. This statement is sort of inserted inappropriately into the flow of ideas so I am taking it out. The editor does seem to be influenced by the phony geology section, which portrays a subduction going on under Vesusius. No, the subduction zone is far out to sea to the south. The faults that let Vesuvius out are extensional. So, this is coming out until you can support it. I dare say, you seem so certain of your opinion that it seems important to make a ref up! I don't see any point in that. Who cares what YOUR opinion is? This is not an opinion poll, we are not tossing our opinions around for consideration. That is a blog or a coffee break. This is an encyclopedia. Thanks.Dave (talk) 01:30, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Wells and springs on the 20th - fictional reconstruction
I removed this:

"In early August of AD 79, springs and wells dried up. --http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/sites/europe/pompeii.html Pompeii at the Minnesota State University E-museum]."

That would be an interesting event if it really happened. As far as I can tell it is in the domain of Internet mythology. For one thing, if the date of the eruption was in the autumn, then any drying up in August can't be related to the volcano. But what is the source of the supposed event? No one else seems to have it. If we look at the supposed e-museum site we find there not a professional presentation but an emotional display write-up designed for children. Much of it is totally reconstructive fiction and includes the now-rejected mud-flow idea. The farm animals were supposed to have gotten restless. How on earth would the Pennsylvania "e-museum" know that? There is no documentary of the reaction of the farm animals at Pompeii that I know of. We have to separate documented fact from historical fiction. The reference is in the historical fiction category (Harris' book again?) and therefore is unencyclopedic. If you come up with some scientific hypotheses that the volcano caused the waters to dry up a few days beforehand or that the farm anumals became hard to control, then by all means put your encyclopedic references on and put it back. Otherwise we are not interested in juvenile fiction here - the children (most of them) have parents to read them bed-time stories and there are lot's of good children's books. WP is not entering the field as far as I know. Thanks.Dave (talk) 08:39, 28 May 2010 (UTC)