Talk:Stream

Most Article Pictures are not of Streams or Brooks
There are captions for "creeks" and even a "river"!

A stream is none of these. The article should have pictures that reflects this, not rivers and broad creeks.

64.134.62.127 (talk) 02:25, 18 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The pictures can always be improved, but I see nothing amiss with the current selection. Streams are a generic name that is given to small rivers. A creek is another name for a stream, widely used regionally in certain parts of the world. There is no generally accepted point where a stream or creek should be called a river. It's true that Perkiomen Creek, in the article, looks somewhat large for a stream, but it is tributary which flows into a larger river, and tributaries are often referred to as streams or creeks. Maybe at other times of the year, Perkiomen Creek is smaller than the version we see in the article. --Epipelagic (talk) 23:17, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Even more, "stream" is a common generic term for all rivers, creeks, brooks, and so on, of all sizes. The page's second sentence points this out. Pfly (talk) 23:48, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Stream vs Watercourse
By the definition adopted by this page, what's the difference between a Stream and a Watercourse? The Watercourse page seems to assume that a stream is a small watercourse, whereas the Stream page does not seem to (any longer). If the two pages actually describe the same thing, shouldn't they be merged? Or if they describe different things, shouldn't the difference be clarified? I'm asking because that difference might matter for people trying to link these articles, via Wikidata, to the matching concepts of the Wikipedias in other languages, or of other projects such as OpenStreetMaps. The latter, as well as the Wikipedias in those few languages that I understand, map the "small river" concept to the "stream" page; the Merriam-Webster online dictionary and the Oxford English online dictionary agree with them. Peppepz (talk) 16:26, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

definition
When does gully erosion become a stream? Gully erosion has a bed and bank. Is ephemeral. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:100E:B022:48A5:4C8E:86CA:8867:288 (talk) 17:56, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

That "low level stream in Macon County, Illinois"
....looks an awful lot like a sunken road that later became a stream, not a natural formation. Anmccaff (talk) 21:11, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 10 September 2017

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. See also: WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. (non-admin closure) —  nihlus kryik   ( talk ) 21:15, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

– I think it is time to consider moving the geographical subject away from the ambiguous title. The word "stream" is now being used quite often to refer to specific aspects of technology, most notably the concept present in Streaming media. The word "stream" can be used to describe streaming media, for example "Let's stream the music." At the present time, |Streaming_media Streaming media receives an average of 2-4 times as many page views as Stream; in addition, the concept at Live streaming seems to have |Live_streaming a quarter the amount of page views as the geographic concept. In other related cases, a product of technology has become such a popular topic that a geographic concept is not located at the base title, the most notable probably being Channel (geography) (which is why I'm recommending the current subject be moved with the disambiguator "(geography)".) Also, since the concept of streaming media does not seem to be going away any time soon, I do not see the popularity of streaming media being subject to WP:RECENTISM; unless technology somehow disappears from this planet suddenly, the technological use of the word "stream" will probably be popular for quite a while. Steel1943 (talk) 16:10, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Stream → Stream (geography)
 * Stream (disambiguation) → Stream
 * Oppose Popularity is not definition. The geographic sense is still obvious the original and primary meaning, even if there is now a fashion for music by streaming it. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:28, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I apologize that my use of the word "popular" distracted from the emphasis on the rest of the facts I presented in my nomination statement as that was not my intent. I don't see why we should force readers to first view the geographical concept when they do not seem to be looking for that themselves, given the evolving uses of the word "stream". Steel1943  (talk) 16:36, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Apple, Poppy, etc. 'Streaming' video or music 'streams', per association with Stream. Randy Kryn (talk) 18:59, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment would a merge to River be reasonable here? Neither article is so long as to prevent it, and much of this one is a list of other terms for small rivers.  Beyond that, Creek and Brook are examples of how this is handled for similar terms (as a DAB). Power~enwiki (talk) 02:06, 11 September 2017 (UTC)at
 * Row, Row, Row, your boat, gently down the River, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a Diver, so maybe not. Streams are kind of small river-like naturally occurring drains, but probably not commonly considered big enough to be rivers. The template/navbox also seems to differentiate the two in reasonable encyclopedic form. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:32, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Move to Stream (watercourse)? ("Life is but a Diver"; scuba or hardhat?) Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:28, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, evolutionary or designer genes and midge-parts plunging headlong into apparently a perfect dive to create the first trillion functioning cells. Forcing myself back on point, alternate names for 'Stream' don't seem needed ('Brook' is already an alternate name) as it seems to be primary in terms of familiarity and long-term application. The term 'Streaming' is directly based on the actions of water, rock and soil that we define as 'stream'. Changing 'stream' from the primary because something was named after it would be like redirecting 'Cloud' because another term has emerged which is dependent on our familiarity with the original. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:48, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The small river is still the primary topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:31, 15 September 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Poor definitions: ephemeral, intermittent, seasonal
Not 100% clear to me a) where the distinction is made between ephemeral and intermittent, and b) if it's universal or US-specific, and therefore c) where the anchor tag for "Seasonal stream" really belongs. As seasonal streams are a very large percentage of rivers and streams worldwide, maybe a majority even, it is a very poor job indeed on our behalf to leave this matter so under-elaborated. Arminden (talk) 08:44, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Seasonal stream
What I was looking for and got disappointed is "Seasonal stream/river/watercourse", with wadis in mind, but there are several other regional types as well (arroyo, winterbourne, etc.). There are two attempts at dealing with the topic, "Stream" and "Intermittent river". I've created redirects to the latter for all possible terms, and cross-reference ("see also") between the two. The problem is, Anyone interested? Thanks, Arminden (talk) 18:54, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * there is no one useful article on the topic. Between 30% and 50% of the world's watercourses are not perennial, and we still deal with the topic in a "by the way" manner.
 * The "Stream" page is undersourced and needs a lot of work altogether. Still, the "Stream" paragraph has more info in several regards than the dedicated "Intermittent river" article.
 * There is confusion between US definitions, which are specific for that one country, but readily available online and therefore too heavily represented, and terms & reality elsewhere in the world.
 * Maybe connected to the above, the strict distinction between "ephemeral" and "intermittent" streams. Additional to that difficult distinction, I dare say that "intermittence" can also have a spatial meaning (in karst areas, where streams disappear in dolines and reemerge at karst springs), so not just temporal.

Apparent copy vio in Distributary
An editor has reverted text added from Distributary as a potential copy vio from here. This site is a spam site selling exams answers for NECTA exams. NECTA is an examination system in Tanzania established in 2019. The quoted text was present on the Wikipedia answer prior to 2017 so this is an unauthorised copy of Wikipedia text and not a copy vio.  Velella  Velella Talk 12:01, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Ephemeral spring. Intermittent karstic springs.
Since I've introduced the previous 2 related discussion topics, there has been progress made, but very patchy (lingo by countries rather than presentation of hydrological phenomena). Terminology is important, but hydrology is even more so.

There still is nothing here on ephemeral springs and on karstic phenomena (as opposed to runoff forms). Anyone willing? Cheers, Arminden (talk) 11:49, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Perennial stream into Stream
very wide duplication, e.g. Perennial_stream and Perennial_stream. fgnievinski (talk) 01:56, 4 December 2023 (UTC) fgnievinski (talk) 01:56, 4 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Support - Perennial stream can be easily merged with the main article. &#39;&#39;Flux55&#39;&#39; (talk) 05:27, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Stream
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Stream's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "GNIS": From Gut (coastal geography):  From River:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. Feel free to remove this comment after fixing the refs. AnomieBOT ⚡ 06:13, 30 May 2024 (UTC)