Talk:Seattle Fault/Archive 1

Scope?
I was questioning the appropriateness of separate sections for such a short article, but you (Sasata) are saying that it is the shortness that is the deficiency. Particularly, that "it doesn't give sufficient coverage to the information out there". So the core issue here seems to be what is the proper scope or coverage.

The standard of the WP:Good article criteria is that an article be "broad in its coverage", and that "it addresses the main aspects of the topic". A footnote qualifies this: 'This requirement is significantly weaker than the "comprehensiveness" required of featured articles; it allows short articles, articles that do not cover every major fact or detail....' So "short" articles are allowed, but the question of proper scope is not resolved.

I think the proper scope depends on the intended audience and purpose. And my intent here is a popular introduction. Most of those 76 or so articles on the Seattle Fault are too technical for non-experts. Not that I couldn't probably explain all of the technical stuff, if I wanted to make a major project of it. (Atwater's "The Orphan Tsunmai of 1700" is an excellent example of this. But that involved a whole cast of experts; I have no pretensions of such competency.) But such coverage would likely intimidate the great many people who just want to find out what the Seattle Fault is.

Another way of assessing proper scope is relative to the coverage of related items, such as the Farallon Plate (scientifically more significant than the Seattle Fault, but it has barely half the coverage), Laramide orogeny (ditto), or the Straight Creek Fault (does not even have a Wikipeida page); I could cite other examples. The Seattle fault threatens a large metropolitan area, and that is the principal reason there is more funding to study it, and more papers. But I don't believe that warrants substantially greater coverage than comparable topics. J. Johnson (talk) 21:25, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, it's just my opinion, one among thousands here. I think a lot of those research papers could be summarized adequately with roughly a sentence each, in relatively simple language, without intimidating newcomers, but giving them a better sense of what is known about the fault. Rather than trying to argue the point, how about I'll just add the info myself, and we'll see if the article can be improved. Sound reasonable? Sasata (talk) 21:56, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, you can't really judge the proper scope of this article by comparing it to barely written stub articles (or unwritten articles); this just shows that those other articles need a lot of work. Comparing to one of the several earthquake articles would a more valid comparison. Sasata (talk) 23:47, 12 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Note that I am not saying that the article can't be expanded, I'm questioning whether it should. I think the current scope of this article is adequate for the purpose and audience intended.  That a lot of work is needed else where is, I think, an argument that work should be done elsewhere.  (Implicit in this is another issue, of whether development should be done more or less evenly, or concentrate on a subset of "super" articles.  I am rather inclined to the former view.)


 * As to the other papers, sure, there could be a brief description of what they are about. (Such as I did with the five 1992 papers.)  But to what point?  E.g., I did cite a recent paper that discusses previous models of the fault geometry, but as I did not discuss these models (nor see any need to consider "historical" hypotheses) I did not cite the earliar articles.  To even mention them would be more information then all but the most ardent students would want, and they can easily find the earliar works from the source given.  J. Johnson (talk) 22:54, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Then we simply have a difference of opinion regarding the scope. Personally, I like to have more information (and I'm not even all that ardent), and from this article it doesn't really give me an accurate overview of the body of knowledge on the Seattle Fault. Perhaps your best bet is to try renominating and see if a different reviewer agrees with your perspective. Cheers, Sasata (talk) 23:10, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I think that 'scope' is kind of a higher level consideration, and I feel fairly confident on that. (Now if I was intending a review article, yes, reviewing the literature would be mandatory, no doubt about it.) And frankly, my request for a GA review wasn't so much for the status itself (though it would be nice) but for some intelligent, informed criticism on editing and such. You have done that well, for which I thank you. (oops, forgot to sign this) J. Johnson (talk) 23:31, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Notice of pending changes
In case anyone wants to raise a concern or suggestion: I am preparing to revamp the article. A small amount of additional material (including updates), splitting into sections, and switching to parenthetical referencing. (The last because otherwise it is unnecessarily difficult to maintain.) Hopefully this will be satisfactory to all. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:28, 11 April 2010 (UTC)