Talk:North American Cordillera

Jargon
It seems that this article has had some difficulties in the past because of differences between U.S. and Canadian nomenclature, and the need to pick one or the other, or the need to explain both. I would suggest that it might be best to avoid country-specific jargon altogether, and that way we won't have to get into these language difficulties.

Per WP:Technical, "If an article is written in a highly technical manner, but the material permits a more understandable explanation, then editors are strongly encouraged to rewrite it."Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:14, 20 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Could you give an example of this jargon? I'm not sure I understand what you're referring to exactly. Pfly (talk) 00:46, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Sure. Consider this sentence which Skookum1 removed from the lead on 12 January 2009: "The area is loosely defined in geographic scope as it has evolved through a dynamic geological history of tectonic activity, colliding terranes, orogeny, epeirogeny...."  Skookum1 was entirely correct to remove this from the lead, but not because these words are foreign to official toponymy, but rather because the sentence would be largely incomprehensible to a casual reader.  I've rephrased this idea in plain English, and put it in the last paragraph of the lead.  I've also edited the lead to emphasize physical geography, which might help focus the article on the physiographic aspects of the Western Cordillera.
 * The “original research” and “synthesis” tags were put at the top of this article in January 2009. I hope we might be able to at least move these tags down to the sections of most concern, because the lead doesn’t seem so bad now.
 * Some fairly popular articles wlink to this one. For example, this article is wlinked from the lead of Rocky Mountains, and is also wlinked from Americas, and from Western United States.  So, it would be nice if this article didn't look like such a disaster.  :-)Anythingyouwant (talk) 01:52, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

New name
I would like to raise a suggestion that I made back in 2009. Can we name this article North American Cordillera ? My reasoning: that is what Encyclopedia Britannica calls the subject of the article. —hike395 (talk) 10:36, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi. The lead of the article mentions that this thing is also called the "North American Cordillera, the Western Cordillera of North America, or the Pacific Cordillera" so maybe that's adequate, instead of changing the title of the article, unless you think that "North American Cordillera" is a more common term than "Western Cordillera" (the best way to find out would be to search both terms on Google Books and compare the results).Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:08, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The 'ol Google test. I tried it out, and immediately ran into a problem. On the first page of results at books.google.com, there are many mentions of "Western Cordillera", but they refer to North America, South America, and Borneo! It looks like Western Cordillera is an ambiguous term. I don't think we should move back to Western Cordillera (North America), because, as you say, there are no other Western Cordillera articles. But, the ambiguity may confuse our readers.
 * Instead, I used the Google book test to investigate the three other names:
 * "Western Cordillera of North America" gets 1290 results
 * "North American Cordillera" gets 10,500 results
 * "Pacific Cordillera" get 1200 results, and is ambiguous with the Phillipines, too.
 * When not restricted to books, the plain Google test returns:
 * "Western Cordillera of North America" gets 13,400 results
 * "North American Cordillera" gets 283,000 results
 * It looks like the dominance of "North American Cordillera" is robust. Shall we move it? —hike395 (talk) 19:37, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I get 15,900 hits in Google Books for "Western Cordillera" when I screen out Borneo and South America. That's a lot of hits. :-)  I am happy with the current title, but I wouldn't object if you change it.  But then you'll have to go through the whole article and make that change as well. Note that many sources also refer to an Eastern Cordillera of North America. So, if we change it, a better title might be "Western Cordillera of North America".Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:47, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * When I filtered out "of North America" in your Google books query, I'm down to 13,600. But, you raise an interesting point that the North American Cordillera can refer to either the eastern or western mountains. I'd like investigate more before doing any moves. —hike395 (talk) 01:13, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Here's an interesting query of the Google ngrams service:. For books published in the late 20th century, both "Western Cordillera" and "North American Cordillera" are equally common. Given that many of the uses of "Western Cordillera" are actually in the Phillipines, etc., I think that North American Cordillera is the more modern term for the range being discussed. The fact that Britannica also uses that terminology makes me think we should move the article.

I'm thinking that the western cordillera is much more common that the eastern cordillera: take a look here, where "Eastern Cordillera of North America" never shows up in books. So, calling this article "North American Cordillera" shouldn't cause any confusion. —hike395 (talk) 04:55, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay by me.Anythingyouwant (talk) 12:22, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I'll attempt the move/cleanup. —hike395 (talk) 20:42, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Oops, I can't do it. I'll try a requested move:

Requested move
Western Cordillera → North American Cordillera – See above: North American Cordillera is a less ambiguous name than Western Cordillera (which can refer to North America, Philippines, or Borneo) (per WP:PRECISE). Further, North American Cordillera is just as common in Google Books as Western Cordillera. (per WP:UCN) Thanks! —hike395 (talk) 20:50, 14 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Done. Vsmith (talk) 00:08, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * It has a long time since I last looked at this article and the first thing I noticed is the name change. I disagree with the current name because North American Cordillera would seem to include all of North America. There is also the Arctic Cordillera of Northern Canada, which isn't part of the same cordillera as this one. Western Cordillera (North America) is a better term for this cordillera.  Volcano guy  08:14, 7 March 2012 (UTC)


 * If you look at how the term is used in books, American Cordillera"&tbs=bks:1&lr=lang_en, it seems unambiguous to me. It is referring to the mountains on the western side of the continent, not the (quite wonderful) Arctic Cordillera up by Baffin Island. —hike395 (talk) 09:52, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Are Columbia Mountains in the eastern part of the Cordillera like the Rockies?
The main problem I'm having right now with the article is figuring out how to describe the Columbia Mountains. This Wikipedia article classifies all the mountain ranges of this cordillera into three parts: coast mountains in the west, Nevadan mountains in the middle, and Laramide mountains in the east. But the Columbia Mountains are turning out to be a problem that could also mess up how we classify mountains further north. From what I can tell, the Columbia Mountains are a northern extension of some mountain ranges that are definitely considered part of the Rockies. But, in Holland's book about the physiography of Canada, the Columbia Mountains are not only considered to be west of the Rockies, but also west of the "Eastern System" of mountain ranges. Holland's reason seems to be that the "Rocky Trench" in Canada separates the Columbia Mountains from the Canadian Rockies. When I get a chance, I'd like to study this further, but don't have time right now.Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:08, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I have overhauled the article. Hope you like it.  Cheers.  (By the way, I am commenting in reply to myself here.)108.18.174.123 (talk) 16:46, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Canadian sections
User:Typhoonstar created an article, The canadian cordillera, that consists of "THe Canadian Cordillera is one of seven physical regions in Canada. It is broken down into 3 parts. These are: The Taiga Cordillera, The Montane Cordillera, and the Boreal Cordillera". I was going to move a mention of these three areas into this article before redirecting that article to here (which I decided to do because I found that there's already a Canadian Cordillera that redirects here), but I don't know where that info would go, since the Canadian portion of the geology is itself split up among several sections. Is this a correct breakdown of some portion of the Canadian system, and can someone help by reflecting them in the article? —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:49, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
 * That's because he was wrong; his name is familiar to me but I haven't looked at the history (on whichever page, long ago) about these areas, which are Environment Canada Ecozones and not actual physical geography, they have a different focus (link them and see); see my reply just now to Talk:Boreal Cordillera about this and more.Skookum1 (talk) 14:08, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

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