Talk:Volcanic explosivity index

Requested move 4 January 2017

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Not moved. There is a clear absence of consensus, and no realistic prospect for this to change in any further period of discussion. The evidence that the term is properly capitalized, while not dispositive of the issue, is reasonable to support the position of those opposed to the move. bd2412 T 20:33, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Volcanic Explosivity Index → Volcanic explosivity index – Better sources (many or most books, and the original defining paper) use lowercase, treating this as a generic. Prior claims that the 1982 source capped it are seen to be false if one looks beyond title, headings, and abstract; in the text they say "The volcanic explosivity index (VEl) is a general indicator of the explosive character of an eruption." Per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS, let's reserve caps for proper names. Dicklyon (talk) 07:05, 4 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Support as nom, though I must apologize that when I had it moved by a technical request a while back I had forgotten about my previous RM that was thinly supported and closed with no consensus. I hope we can get more people to see it this time, and actually look at better sources such as books, and acknowledge that about half of all books use lowercase.  A "quick Google search" is a poor substitute, since Google tends to rank headings and titles and things that look like them higher.  Please do note that the original authors used it lowercase in the cited and linked 1982 paper, unlike what GeoWriter asserts above.  And when I last checked (2014), all of the other linked sources also used lowercase.  It's not clear why this proposal didn't just pass.  Since then, the linked glossary seems to have been updated, too, since the term no longer appears there. This glossary was the basis for the one objection last time.  Dicklyon (talk) 07:10, 4 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Oppose the original paper refers to it in caps in the abstract, and lowercase in the main text. Our sources in this article mostly refers to it in caps , as does the USGS see . We have one source that uses lowercase. It seems to me that the caps are warranted. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 10:48, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Headbomb, other than the 1982 abstract, none of the sources you link ever use the term in a sentence except where defining the acronym, so provide no evidence on whether they would consider it a proper name or not. One does use it lowercase in a ref title, which could signify that they think it is not. Dicklyon (talk) 18:34, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Then you haven't read the sources, because they do. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:42, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
 * It's possible that I missed something, since I scanned and searched, but didn't read them in their entirety. Can you point out what I missed?  Dicklyon (talk) 21:51, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I've rechecked all of them; in every case the caps are associated with the acronym defining only. Dicklyon (talk) 22:02, 4 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Dicklyon wrote "Better sources (many or most books)". Please clarify what you mean by "better". "Most books" - are you claiming that most geology books written since 1982 use lower case for the term under discussion? How many books is that exactly and have you checked them all? GeoWriter (talk) 14:12, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
 * "Better" sources are what you're likely to find with book search or scholar search, as opposed to web search. A quick scan of hits shows about half lowercase, and many of the uppercase ones are in titles, headings, and defining the acronym, so provide no evidence of whether they are considering the term to be a proper.  I didn't read or count them all, as it's already very evident that they don't meet the MOS:CAPS criterion of "consistently capitalized in sources".  Dicklyon (talk) 18:27, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Dicklyon wrote "note that the original authors used it lowercase in the cited and linked 1982 paper, unlike what GeoWriter asserts above." What I asserted above (on 24 August 2016) was that Newhall and Self in their 1982 paper "give initial capital/uppercase letters to all three words in the name of the Volcano Explosivity Index". To show that I am not making anything up, here is a quotation from the Newhall and Self 1982 paper: "A composite estimate of the magnitude of past explosive eruptions, termed the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI), is proposed..." GeoWriter (talk) 14:43, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, as I pointed out in the move rationale, you need to look "beyond title, headings, and abstract" to see that the original authors use it lowercase in the text. That is, they do not consider their newly proposed term to be a proper name. Dicklyon (talk) 18:27, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, Newhall and Self use both "Volcanic Explosivity Index" and "volcanic explosivity index" in their 1982 article. If only they had been consistent one way or the other, we would probably not now be troubled by this issue! I see no evidence within the Newhall and Self 1982 article to support Dicklyon's claim that the authors' upper case version (which appears not only in the article title but also in a block of article text) is invalid and should therefore be disregarded, yet the authors' lower case version is somehow allegedly correct, apparently based only on Dicklyon's opinion that the authors "do not consider their newly proposed term to be a proper name". It is up to Dicklyon to provide proof rather than opinion that the authors did not write, did not approve and did not give equal significance to the upper case spelling. The fact that the authors used both upper and lower case versions of the term suggests to me that a more likely explanation may be that their understanding of what is and isn't a proper noun was less than perfect and/or they didn't care enough. It's probably a salutary lesson to scientists on the pitfalls of defining new terms. I expect other sources are likely to use either upper case or lower case, not both. Ironically, should the original spellings in Newhall and Self 1982 now even be considered an unreliable source for the spelling in this Wikipedia article, because it seems to actually be the least definitive spelling source? GeoWriter (talk) 20:46, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I would never suggest that someone else's style is "invalid" or should be "disregarded". Just that we should follow wikipedia style, per MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS.  Dicklyon (talk) 20:57, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes other sources also do it different ways. This book uses ALLCAPs for defining the acronym, Title Case in the original article title, lowercase otherwise. This book uses Title Case for defining the acronym, lowercase in the title of the original paper. This book has it many times lowercase and a few Title Case.  And so forth.  Generally speaking the caps are either for the paper title, a section title or heading, or with the acronym definition – this is One Conventional Stye (OCS) but Not Ours (NO).  A few sources do use Title Case when using the term in sentences; but not very many (e.g. a clear minority of those with "Volcanic Explosivity Index is"). Dicklyon (talk) 21:25, 4 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Volcanic Explosivity Index is a proper noun.  Volcano guy  14:30, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Just because most sources clarify with (VEI) afterwards does not negate the capitalization. They could have written volcanic explosivity index (VEI) just as easily. It seems to be treated with all caps in most book and news sources; we should follow suit.  --В²C ☎ 00:32, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Some styles suggest capitalizing when defining acronyms, as "If you are going to acronym it, then capitalize it to indicate which letters form the acronym." And though most style guides suggest the opposite, the practice is very common. That doesn't mean it can't be a proper name, but that seems like the logical interpretation when uses not defining an acronym are overwhelmingly lowercase, as they are for this one. Dicklyon (talk) 00:52, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing that. The usage in Gizmodo, this book on Climatology, etc., is typical of what I see. .  --В²C ☎ 01:05, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm also calling WP:IAR on any style guidelines that call for sentence case for titles that are names of things. I agree with sentence case for descriptive titles, as in Democratic Party presidential primaries, but when the title is the name of the article's topic,as is the case here, I think title case makes sense. --В²C ☎ 02:47, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * We have a pretty long tradition of only capping proper names, per WP:NCCAPS. If you want to change that, you'll probably need to propose it at a more central venue, not just ignore it here because you suddenly have a better idea. Dicklyon (talk) 03:40, 5 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Support. The major style guides in the US and the UK say to minimise capitalisation. Our own MOS says that the capping of initialisms is not a good reason to cap the initials when the item is expanded. We have countless examples of "index" on WP that are not upcased. Like this. Explicitly, our guidelines say not to upcase laws, hypotheses, rules, theories, etc. User:Volcanoguy, please explain what you understand "a proper noun" to be?  Tony   (talk)  01:08, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * According to a dictionary, a proper noun is a noun that is used to denote a particular person, place or thing. There is only one index with this name and I can tell you from years of research that the Volcanic Explosivity Index is generally capitalized.  Volcano guy  14:20, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * User:Tony, your link is to Diversity index, i.e. a diversity index, of which there are many, so I think it is not a proper noun. There is only one Volcanic Explosivity Index, i.e. the Volcanic Explosivity Index, which I think is a proper noun. GeoWriter (talk) 14:45, 5 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Support per WP:NCCAPS, MOS:CAPS. The fact that some sources capitalize it is irrelevant; unless virtually all of them do so consistently, WP uses lower case. There's nothing magically special about this topic that makes it an exception to the "when in doubt, do not capitalize" rule. The opposer's rationale, "the original paper refers to it in caps in the abstract and lowercase in the main text" is an observation that actually strongly supports the move and indicates a lack of awareness of how WP article title and prose writing work (it is based on mainstream usage, not "can I desperately search around for someone else doing the weird style thing I want to do and try to claim that as justification").  The fact of the matter is that specialist literature virtually always can be found that capitalizes "Special Important Stuff in Our Field" as a form of emphasis of terms of art, for speed-reading by specialists skimming the specialist materials (especially their abstracts). It's the same practice as using caps and boldfacing in field guides to reptiles or wildflowers to make entries stand out for easier visual scanning. This is not encyclopedic writing, and the first rule of MOS:CAPS is .  See also WP:SSF for more detailed rationales against this sort of "my favorite journal does it this way, so WP has to also" fallacy.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:55, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I accept that Wikipedia needs guidelines on "house style" and they are very useful, but WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS are only guidelines (best practices) not rules nor policy. Therefore, I think you are overstating their implied unbreakability when you claim "The fact that some sources capitalize it is irrelevant; unless virtually all of them do so consistently, WP uses lower case. There's nothing magically special about this topic that makes it an exception to the "when in doubt, do not capitalize" rule." GeoWriter (talk) 15:26, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * An appeal to violating guidelines, as you and B2C are doing, is a pretty weak argument. There is no good reason to violate the guidelines here, especially considering the prevalence of lowercase usage in sources for this term. Dicklyon (talk) 16:11, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not appealing to violating guidelines, I am only pointing out that guidelines are not rules and not policies, but they are being used by User:SMcCandlish as if they are rules, facts and unbreakable. GeoWriter (talk) 16:34, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, the fact is we have these guidelines. I don't see what in SMcCandlish's comments you are reacting to.  It was you who introduced the notion of unbreakability; that's not usually a property of rules in any system I'm aware of.  Rules and guidelines can be broken; but why should we? Dicklyon (talk) 17:12, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * When a rule or guideline serves no useful purpose with respect to improving WP, and especially if it worsens it, it should be ignored. This is the point of WP:IAR.  We disagree on whether this proposal improves or worsens WP, but please understand that for those of who see it as regressive, ignoring any rule that supports this proposal is reasonable.  --В²C ☎ 22:47, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yet no compelling case is presented that this is "regressive" in any way. This is a move, removing "Specialist Capitalization for Emphasis". We do this literally hundreds of times per year, because specialists in every field on earth (except perhaps linguistics and copyediting) have a strong desire to Impose Fancy Decorative Capitalization onto Topics They Think Are Overwhelmingly Important to Their Work, which are not actually special in any way to anyone else.  If we did not do this lowercasing work, virtually everything less generic than "tree" and "puppy" would be capitalized on Wikipedia, and it would be a global laughingstock of terrible writing.  The vast majority of RM cases that involve style are in fact cases of overcapitalization; they account for probably 80% of the RMs I comment at.  It is a constant maintenance matter, in almost every case of which someone feels Their Special Needs are not being met, but which everyone else can see is routine cleanup. IAR never applies to WP:ILIKEIT rationales. For a rule to be ignored (and yes, guidelines are rule, just less rigid ones that policies; see WP:POLICY), the ignoring of it must result in an objective  to the encyclopedia, not just make some editor happy about some obscure typographic peccadillo they are trying to force on Wikipedia and encyclopedic writing from some off-WP, rarified, narrow-audience context.  People keep venting about how much editorial productivity is wasted on style-related feuding.  Simple solution: Stop feuding about style and just following the guidelines. We have them for a reason.  There are zero guideline line items (in any of our guidelines on anything) that 100% of editors agree with, and no editor agrees with 100% of our guideline line items. We all agree to abide by WP guidelines and policies, as a group, despite them not being 100% perfect for each of our idealized reality tunnels. We do this so we have a system in which we can work instead of being in constant conflict that gets in the way of productive editing.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:22, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

The others I would support decapitalising. They are descriptive titles. They are capitilised frequently due to more common titlecase used elsewhere, but are not capitised according to Wikipedia's chosen sentence case - leaning titlecase style. In many productions, there is a style of reproducing the title case for repetition of the title phrases in the body, minimised only in accordinace with minimising any form of repetition. It is just a matter of style, and I am happy to be persuaded otherwise if there is meaning beyond style. I am not sure of the history of Wikipedia's choice in this style, but it is very deeply entrenched, and not disagreeable in any way I have discovered. On title capitalisation, although Dicklyon tends overly strident, I find he usually makes sense and I am happy to follow his lead. I won't be nominating them myself. Noting WP:TITLECHANGES, I personally don't thing these are worth the bother changing, but if the discussion is already happening I am happy to !vote. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:02, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Decapitalise. There is a common style of capitalisation of letters used to form the capitalised acronym, for simple clarity. This is not enough to make a proper name. The index is not a thing with character. VEI is not a proper name. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:55, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link to Proper name. It says: "A proper noun is a noun that in its primary application refers to a unique entity, ...".  Isn't Volcanic Explosivity Index exactly that? There is only one such index, as far as I know, right?   --В²C ☎ 00:07, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * My pleasure. I do think that backroom discussions should be informed by article content, where editors can correct the facts based on reliable sources. I notice again, As you can read in the article, English is not known for hard and fast rules. That condition is necessary but not sufficient. Not every description of a unique entity makes for a proposer noun, in English, unlike German. VEI refers to a unique concept, but not a unique entity.  Every volcano has, or can have assigned, its own VEI.  It is a characteristic.  Concepts rarely get proper names, unlike entities.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:48, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * What about Big Bang? Dow Jones Industrial Average? Philadelphia Gold and Silver Index?  Value Line Composite Index?  Geographical Disease Risk Index?  Are these entities or characteristics?  --В²C ☎ 02:48, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Entities or concepts, was my distinction (not "characteristic"). A concept can be used a characteristic, the concept of VEI can be used to characterise different volcanoes.  Big Bang is an extraordinary concept, a theory, given a catchy title and referred to as such.  The others are definitions, involving statistics, and are simple concepts.  None of these are entities.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:08, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Big Bang is a composition title and stays capitalised as such.
 * I would support capitalising General Relativity before volcanic explosivity index, the first can pass as a composition title and is poorly read as descriptive, the second is clearly and accurately descriptive. Neither are proper nouns, let alone proper names.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:19, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yep. If we're not even treating natural laws and major theories with caps, then stuff like this (and comparable things - methodologies, indices, scales, processes, procedures, schools of thought, best practices, etc., etc.) do not qualify, except of course where they are work titles, or have an embedded proper name, e.g. "the Johnson system". Even the work-title exception doesn't apply when the term is genericized beyond the context of the original publication, e.g. the overall concept of future shock versus the original book by Toffler.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:27, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Most if not every supporter of decapitalizing this article's title does not even participate in geology so how would they know decapitalizing Volcanic Explosivity Index is the correct format? This is at least one of the reasons why WP articles get messed up. Those who edit outside their knowledgeable fields normally don't know what they're doing/saying, especially when they're challenging specialists in that particular field!  Volcano guy  16:59, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:SSF is called "fallacy" for a reason; and that's it. Dicklyon (talk) 23:41, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * What's the rationale for preferring sentence case over title case in (ahem) titles anyway? I get it for descriptive titles that we make up, but when the title reflects the well, proper name of the article topic, why not use title case? --В²C ☎ 21:22, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * There's no need to invoke title case, since proper names will be capitalized in either case. I think the rationale for WP article titles being in sentence case is so that you don't need to make downcased redirects to link them when they're used in sentences.  Whether you think that's a great rationale or not, you're about 15 years too late to influence that decision. Dicklyon (talk) 23:41, 6 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Oppose - I searched using Google Books Ngrams (which is case sensitive) on "Volcanic Explosivity Index", "volcanic explosivity index" and "Volcanic explosivity index". The results strongly suggest that the capitalisation is the preferred option in current usage. Mikenorton (talk) 11:16, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
 * That level of evidence is only a very weak suggestion, since it doesn't attempt to compensate for uses that are capitalized for other reasons than treating it as a proper name in a sentence. Many (most?) of them are capitalized as "Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI)" or "VEI, Volcanic Explosivity Index" in defining the acronym; and many are for titles and headings.  Click through to the book search and you'll see that is it not close to "consistently capitalized in sources" as MOS:CAPS calls for.  Where wikipedia clones and the acronym are not in play, it's overwhelmingly lowercase in books.  Dicklyon (talk) 21:34, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I checked out all the results from that search that I was able to see and found that the capped and non-capped version were about even, no prepoderance either way. I then looked at Google Scholar results for papers dating from 2010 to the present and found that twice as many papers had it capped than non-capped (I just looked at the first 50) but that the commonest of all was "Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI)", with VEI used throughout the rest of the text, exactly as we have it in our article. I see no reason why we should change what we have here. Mikenorton (talk) 16:08, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
 * But that is exactly the reason; your search supports my observation that the caps in sources are most often for defining the acronym; that's a style that many sources use, but one that wikipedia specifically does NOT use, per Manual of Style/Capital letters. Dicklyon (talk) 16:26, 8 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Oppose - "Volcanic Explosivity Index" is a proper name, it's the unique name of a single system of classification, so it can't be compared with "diversity index", or "consumer price index", of which there are many. @SmokeyJoe, assigning VEI values to a single eruption, or even to classify a series of events in a volcano's eruptive history, doesn't constitute creating a separate VEI. @Dicklyon, the link you provide to the Google search, the results do not show "volcanic explosivity index" to be "overwhelmingly lowercase in books" - if you go past the first page of the search results (i.e. to the first three pages of results, which is still a small sample) then "Volcanic Explosivity Index" is still ahead by a wide margin. Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 01:58, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. It's a proper noun because it is commonly capitalized.  Calidum   21:06, 9 January 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. No further edits should be made to this section.

Age of Holocene
Why is the age of the Holocene variously described as 10,000 and 11,700 years?Royalcourtier (talk) 01:37, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Temperature drop
It should be possible to associate a temperature drop to each VEI. Should be added here. --Arnd (talk) 07:29, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Temperature drop would vary depending where on Earth the eruption is happening so every eruption would not have the same drop in temperature. Volcanoguy 20:51, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Aso Caldera?
Per the rather poorly referenced Aso Caldera page, it should be listed as a VEI-7 event. This is not my field, but having spent some time at Mount Aso I would like to bring this up as a topic for consideration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Russwallac (talk • contribs) 03:13, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Add all Decade Volcanoes
Some Decade Volcanoes are missing from the Classification table:
 * Avachinsky-Koryaksky
 * Mauna Loa
 * Mount Etna
 * Mount Rainier
 * Teide
 * Ulawun

And these are already in the table: User talk:Xose.vazquez Sat Feb 20 12:10:13 AM CET 2021
 * Volcán de Colima
 * Galeras
 * Mount Merapi
 * Mount Nyiragongo
 * Mount Vesuvius
 * Mount Unzen
 * Sakurajima
 * Santa María
 * Santorini (Thera)
 * Taal Volcano

here comes the VEI9 talk again... but for the last time since we cant ignore the new toba info...
note this is a sort of second same talk going on somwheres else but anyhow... this is the hard part to talk about but. it was recently found out that 2 volcanoes might have had a eruption volume of 10,000 KM or more this is base on ... Flat landing brook, stating to have had a super eruption of AT LEAST yellowstone/toba , both are at 2,000 cubic km , it also list its eruption at 12,000 cubic for flat landing brook that at least all happend less then a million of years , making the dispute range from 2,000-12,000 cubic km.

the next one is Toba, this one has 3 different listing 1978 listing:2,000 km 2004 listing:2,800 km 2014 listing:13,200 km

the whole lower range of both 2000 km in a way.

but toba is newer range of 13,200, ive seen at least for star radi wiki page that its best to only use the most recent info.

however if we do this then we have to figure out if the VEI scale stops at 8 or goes to 9, because some source says the scale stops at 8 but some state it contiues to 9 , this is very confusing.

seen here makes it a bit more confusing, that for most VEI8 , it will show as VEI8 and magnitude 8.0 , but for toba its listed as VEI8 and magnitude 9.1 , im not sure what to say , like this could point it stops at 8 but it could be that the site isn't able to put vei9 , toba is the only volcano to have its magnitude as 1 point above its vei scale.

so the question is what do we do? a extra note is there is now a volcano listed as VEI8 in africa should we include it? Joshoctober16 (talk) 00:32, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
 * it is to note we have to do 1 of 2 things.


 * A:remove all mention of open ended or (unless im mixing up the defenition of what open ended)
 * B:add VEI9 to the wiki page ,
 * we cant keep it as open ended and not have VEI9 with the 2 volcanoes listed above.Joshoctober16 (talk) 00:46, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Most of the 12,000 cubic km you mentioned for Flat Landing Brook consists of rhyolite flows rather than pyroclastic rock from explosivity. Therefore the VEI for Flat Landing Brook would not be as high as what you're assuming it to be. Volcanoguy 09:04, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Hunga Tonga
According to some sources it "shot thick ash and steam 20km skywards." -- Seyyed(t-c) 04:48, 21 January 2022 (UTC).
 * Other sources are refining: The eruption column rose 55 km into the mesosphere accordind to which later was verified by BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60088413 and contained approximately 2–2.6 km3 of material, roughly twice that of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.  ChaseKiwi (talk) 18:20, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 30 July 2022

 * 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 after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved per MOS:CAPS and the discussion below. (closed by non-admin page mover) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:49, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Volcanic Explosivity Index → Volcanic explosivity index – It's been 5 more years without a consensus on capitalization, so let's look at this again. As pointed out before, sources are pretty mixed and lean toward lowercase; our guideline in that case is to use lowercase. The capitalized version appears mostly in connection with defining the acronym, as in "Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI)", as that's a pretty common style, and in titles and headings and such. Per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS, we go by usage in sentences, and that's where it's more often found as lowercase, as in "a volcanic explosivity index of 5". So let's bring this in line with our guidelines. Dicklyon (talk) 18:28, 30 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Evidence – let's look at sources, staring with the cited sources.
 * Newhall – never uses the term in a sentence except where defining the acronym; so no evidence of proper name status or not.
 * Smithsonian – never uses it in a sentence except where defining the acronym VEI; uses lowercase "The volcanic explosivity index (VEI)" in a citation to Newhall 1982, the same way Google Scholar cites it. No evidence of proper name status.
 * GVP – Nothing but VEI.
 * Dosseto – Uses it only with "(VEI)".
 * Rothery – Uses it once only in defining the acronym.
 * Froggatt – Does anyone have a copy they can check? I don't want to buy it. Doesn't use it at all (per Mikenorton below).
 * Mason – Lowercase"a volcanic explosivity index (VEI) of 8" in the abstract. I can't see the body of the paper.
 * Bryan – Not used at all.
 * Siebert – Yes, this one capitalizes "Volcanic Explosivity Index" in a sentence without "(VEI)" in one place.
 * Miles – Can't access; not in abstract. Uses it once, capped in defining acronym (per Mikenorton below).


 * Overall, little evidence of proper name status, and also little evidence of lowercase usage; just a little of each.
 * Books more generally are pretty mixed. To use book n-gram stats, it helps to find an n-gram that's likely to occur mostly in sentence context and excludes the acronym, such as "Volcanic Explosivity Index of", which gives this clear result of dominant lowercase usage, especially before Wikipedia took to capitalizing it, polluting recent data.  And many books can be seen using lowercase (I see 6 of the first 10 using lowercase).
 * So the idea claimed by several before that "it's a proper name" is not supported by the data. Per MOS:CAPS, we cap when it's consistently capped in sources.  This is not that. Dicklyon (talk) 18:28, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
 * You're wrong about the GVP not using "Volcanic Explosivity Index"; it's used in their Database Search and here. Volcanoguy 18:59, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Indeed. I was checking the cited page, not the whole site. Dicklyon (talk) 05:21, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Frogatt et al. doesn't use it at all. Mikenorton (talk) 09:52, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Miles et al. use it once to define VEI. Mikenorton (talk) 09:52, 1 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose per last RM and others. You will never convince me and probably many others to agree with your RMs. The subject of this article (Volcanic Explosivity Index) is the Volcanic Explosivity Index. There is only one index with this name. I'm not an expert in English grammar, but I think this index is a proper noun, more strictly a proper name, similar to e.g. North America (which we do not write as North america). I still think all three words of Volcanic Explosivity Index should start with a capital/uppercase letter. I'm surprised these RMs are still happening after so many oppositions. Volcano<i style="color: black;">guy</i> 17:41, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Your North America example is great for illustrating what we mean by "consistently capitalized in sources". Very unlike the current question. Dicklyon (talk) 18:47, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Support, obviously. Volcano, French–German border ... there's only one of them, but we don't cap "border". Likewise we don't cap hypotheses, laws, rules, etc. (See MOSCAP). <b style="color:darkgreen">Tony</b> (talk)  08:06, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Support. This is another MOS:DOCTCAPS case.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:03, 1 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Support This is intrinsically a descriptive noun phrase. It is an index of the explosivity of a volcano.  While it may be a specific index and specificity is a property of a proper noun|name, it is not a defining property since specificity in a common name is achieved by use of the definite article (the) and descriptors that modify the root noun.  The term is not ipso facto a proper name.  Per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS, we would only capitalise when "necessary".  An index is analogous to a law or theory and, per MOS:DOCTCAPS, we do not capitalise in full or part except that which is a proper noun (eg Newton’s third law).  There is no part of volcanic explosivity index that is a proper noun.  We might capitalise the term if it was consistently capitalised in sources (per MOS:CAPS) when used in prose and thereby has risen to be considered a proper name.  The counterpoint is WP:SSF, that notes specialist terms are often capitalised for emphasis or significance by specialists but we don't do that either per MOS:SIGNIFCAPS.  As DL notes, some style guides would capitalise a term when it is being used to define an acronym/initialism.  Per MOS:CAPSACRS, we don't do that either. Then we consider the evidence of usage in sources provided by DL to determine if it is consistently capped (per MOS:CAPS).  Of the sources used in the article that can be viewed (and excluding those that only cap when defining the acronym) there is not consistent capitalisation. The ngram evidece provided fairly clearly indicates that usage in prose does not meet the criteria for capitalisation set by MOS:CAPS: consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources. The google book search provided by DL would confirm this. Consequently, in consideration of guidance at multiple points and the evidence presented, I can see no reasonable case that the term should be capitalised and the move should be supported. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:22, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose per User:Volcanoguy. It is the Volcanic Explosivity Index. It's the only index with this name. - Darwinek (talk) 19:02, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Nobody disputes that "It's the only index with this name"; not me, not the supporters, and not the sources that use the name in lowercase. Have you reviewed our guidelines at WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS? Dicklyon (talk) 00:25, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Support: This is a simple case of MOS:DOCTCAPS / MOS:SIGNIFCAPS, like Body mass index, Poverty gap index, Newton's law of universal gravitation, Schrödinger equation, Black–Scholes model, or Richter magnitude scale. —&#8288;&#8202;&#8288;BarrelProof (talk) 21:07, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Examples in table in Classification section
User:GeoWriter added a maintenance template warning for excessive examples in this table, with which I fully concur. It seems appropriate here to seek a consensus of editors on what the rule of thumb should be for including examples. My view is that this table is clearly not intended as a database or other comprehensive listing of eruptions of various sizes; the table is here to give readers useful, succinct information on how each explosively category is defined. The examples should be chosen to further this goal. Too many examples is counterproductive because the reader gets lost in a sea of examples, many of which are simply not that well characterized. I suggest not more than three or four examples in each category, the first of which should be the type eruption (to the extent there is such a thing) and one of the others the most recent well-characterized eruption of that category. For example, VEI 5 should start with the 79 AD Vesuvius eruption, which is the classical example, to which I would add the 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai eruption as the most recent example. VEI 0 should start with the most recent Hawaiian eruption, and then include a couple more recent eruptions from around the globe that are particularly notable or well-characterized. And so on. Kent G. Budge (talk) 14:00, 4 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Please include my items. I'm about to be 16 years old and I have austim. 2601:2C0:8C00:3270:15B5:FB29:8A11:A415 (talk) 17:17, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
 * What is austim? - Darwinek (talk) 19:00, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Autism... <i style="color: red;">Volcano</i><i style="color: black;">guy</i> 19:06, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
 * : Would you be willing to register a username at Wikipedia? I have an autistic son and three autistic nephews, and I may be able to give you some advice on contributing meaningfully to Wikipedia that belongs more on a user page that in an article talk page.
 * This IP should have been blocked already for disruptive editing. <i style="color: red;">Volcano</i><i style="color: black;">guy</i> 17:08, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Meanwhile, the concern other editors have is that the table already has too many examples. The purpose of the examples is to help readers understand what kind of eruptions are typical of different VEI levels. A few carefully chosen examples is more useful for this than many examples, some of which are not as well characterized or as notable. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 19:30, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
 * The tables have way too many entries, and the text is scaled down to a smaller font to accommodate more. I suggest cutting down the number of examples in in each column to three, the three most notable ones. ---Lilach5 (לילך5) discuss 20:14, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I've made a start, though I'm sure it can be trimmed further. As a general rule, listing a few eruptions that resulted in significant fatalities or damage, recent examples in each category, each of the decade volcanoes and not listing the same volcano more than once should be the way to go. Mrmp2402 (talk) 21:11, 4 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Those seem like excellent criteria. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 21:17, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Each set of examples for each VEI should have a set of inclusion criteria (in addition to the current single criterion, VEI) to prevent the table becoming an unhelpful example farm. (I added the "excessive examples" template because there were 186 examples.) I think the new inclusion criteria suggested by User:Lilach5 and User:Mrmp2402 are workable improvements for the table. Limiting to 3 examples for each VEI still allows 27 examples in total, which is plenty. GeoWriter (talk) 19:39, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
 * 5-8 examples seems alright, something I can agree with so I have removed the tag. WP:EVENT should be applied to comply with notability. The removal of 2020–2021 Taal and La Soufrière in favor of Fukutoku-Okanoba is not sitting well, coming from a notability POV. Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 01:31, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I can agree with putting in Taal and La Soufriere instead of Ulawun and Fukutoku-Okanoba. I was thinking going forward in having the most recent eruption in the VEI-4 and above categories in the table, though Fukutoku-Okanoba was only a few months after La Soufriere and a few months before the VEI-5 Hunga Tonga so in this case it should be left off Mrmp2402 (talk) 01:56, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree that a single listing per volcano is a good criteria, and that fatalities/damage is a good sign for notability. ---Lilach5 (לילך5) discuss 20:24, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

I added more edits. (DO NOT REMOVE)
I added more edits. (DO NOT REMOVE) 2601:2C0:8C00:3270:ED17:5BA4:AC84:E3D9 (talk) 21:17, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
 * We may have to report this IP on the Administrators' noticeboard if they continue with their disruptive editing. <i style="color: red;">Volcano</i><i style="color: black;">guy</i> 02:59, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
 * At this point, much as it pains me, I see no alternative. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 19:31, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, there is one -- put a semiprotect on this page. I'll recommend. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 02:02, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
 * 2601:2C0:8C00:3270:ED17:5BA4:AC84:E3D9|2601:2C0:8C00:3270:ED17:5BA4:AC84:E3D9, please stop. You are cluttering the table up. ---Lilach5 (לילך5) discuss 06:51, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Clickable imagemap needs updating
Does anyone know how to update this map? There are a few eruptions that need to be updated or added to the map Mrmp2402 (talk) 06:32, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Will you add VEI 9?
The fact is lake toba has been erupted at 74,000 years ago and also it was VEI 9 eruption and also Flat Landing Brook eruption also VEI 9.

The information of VEI 9:

The ejecta volume is >10,000 km³ but also Plume height is >30km. Will you add VEI 9 to the Classification? Jovandrisus777 (talk) 05:12, 24 March 2023 (UTC)


 * And also VEI 9 color should be purple. Jovandrisus777 (talk) 05:13, 24 March 2023 (UTC)