Template:Did you know nominations/San Quintín Volcanic Field

Insufficient progress toward resolving outstanding issues

San Quintín Volcanic Field

 * ... that there are 10 volcanoes in the San Quintín Volcanic Field, a mere 7 km from an exposed sea cliff with abundant 3 million-year-old fossil shells?
 * Comment: 2nd article nomination, first was John Dabiri. I will review other nominations after more familiarity with the process
 * Comment: 2nd article nomination, first was John Dabiri. I will review other nominations after more familiarity with the process

Created by Mathwhiz 29 (talk). Self nominated at 04:27, 11 October 2013 (UTC).


 * Symbol question.svg Article is new enough and long enough with adequate referencing for DYK purposes. The structure of the article is could use some refinement, e.g., the WP:LEDE doesn't really summarize the article, but that can be addressed through editing over time and should not preclude DYK.  I can AGF on offline sources and copyvios. However, I do have some concerns with the hook.  I found at least one source that claims there are 11, not 10, cones in the field.   While I can't say for sure that this is a reliable source, it claims to take its information from the Smithsonian, which is reliable but whose website is currently down, preventing further checks.  If there is a dispute over the number of cones, that should be addressed in the article (and in the hook).  Further, the 2nd half of the hook "a mere 7 km from an exposed sea cliff with abundant 3 million-year-old fossil shells" seems to come from the line in the article "Another marine terrace escarpment is found 7 km to the east, rising 40-80m above the coastal plain, with more late Cretaceous sediments overlain by early Tertiary conglomerates and Pliocene marine sediments," which does not have an inline citation and which doesn't explicily mention the fossils.  So for this hook to be used, that would need to be sourced.  And I would suggest that since the wording of the hook is clearer than the wording of the sentence in the article, some editing of the article for clarity may be beneficial.  But the real issues are to clarify how many cones are in the field and making sure the enitre hook is explicitly sourced with an inline citation. Rlendog (talk) 02:23, 14 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Symbol possible vote.svg Hook issues have not been addressed, although the editor has edited since being notified on October 14. Giving final courtesy ping to talk page now. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:01, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi! Would interpreting your suggestions as this DYK needing a new hook be correct? If so, how about this hook? first addressed nov 3, forgot to sign/timestamp - mathwhiz  29  07:26, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * ALT1: ... that the volcanoes in the San Quintín Volcanic Field were formed by repeated eruptions over a quarter of a million years?
 * Symbol question.svg I can AGF on the fact, since I do not have access to the relevant sources.  But I think some clarification is still needed, either to the article or to the hook.  The first line of the article states that the erruptions occurred from the "Pleistocene until 3000 years ago."  Which could mean that the erruptions occurred over anywhere from 2.5 million years to a few thousand years.  And under the "Volcanism" section there is a statement that "the third oldest volcano has reliably (using 40Ar/39Ar step-heating) been dated to 126,000 years ago," which would be 1/8 of a million years, but doesn't provide the age of the oldest volcano, and I am not sure that even the age of the oldest volcano would necessarily be the same as the period over which the eruptions forming the volcano occurred.  And the lede has a statement that the volcanos of the Southern group "formed over a much larger and undetermined span of time." (emphasis added) Is it possible to add an explicit, sourced statement to the article stating the quarter of a million years?  Rlendog (talk) 13:49, 15 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Hello, sorry for the bad hook. I've been searching papers, and actually don't know where the 1/4 million year age came from, and I probably made that up. Thanks for catching it it :S There's no place that even attempts to date the oldest volcanoes, not that I can find/
 * ALT2: ... that the intraplate volcanoes in the San Quintín Volcanic Field were formed by repeated eruptions over hundreds of thousands of years, but no direct evidence for faulting has been found?
 * Better? :( Sorry for all these useless iterations. mathwhiz  29  18:49, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Symbol redirect vote 4.svg I've numbered the newer hooks for clarity; need reviewer for ALT2 hook, and to make sure issues raised with article have all been addressed. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:14, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the modifications. :) mathwhiz  29  04:40, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Symbol question.svg I struck through the proposed ALT2 hook because it isn't true (eruptions apparently lasted not much more than 100,000 years in total) and it doesn't make a lot of sense (there's no particular reason to think that volcanoes would be associated with direct evidence for faulting). The article seems to be OK with respect to copyvio considerations, but it needs more ref citations -- for example, there are no footnotes for the last paragraph in "Geochemistry", and no sources are identifiable for some other factual passages in that section, "Regional geology," "Evolution of areal faulting," and "Xenoliths". Those things need to be fixed. Meanwhile, I suggest a new hook:
 * ALT3: ... that lavas erupted in the San Quintín Volcanic Field in Baja California have the same composition as ocean island basalts found in Hawaii and the Azores? --Orlady (talk) 21:09, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Mathwhiz 29, please address the above issues to help finalize this nomination. Here is another alt hook (from this):
 * ALT4 ... that, along with Lassen Peak in California and Sunset Crater in Arizona, the cinder cones of the San Quintín Volcanic Field make its volcanoes the most common of four main types of volcanoes? -- Jreferee (talk) 12:47, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I read the ALT4 hook several times, here and in the article, and it didn't make any sense to me. The source (CNN Fast Facts) isn't exactly a scientific authority. The page cited lists the four main types of volcanoes and lists a few examples of each type. In the cited source, this field is identified as one example of cinder cones, which are a very common type of volcano (and, IMHO, possibly the least interesting of the main types). There is no significance of the association with Lassen Peak and Sunset Crater, other than the fact that someone at CNN (likely someone in California) chose to list these three sites as examples. Many more examples exist. I've stricken through the hook and deleted the sentence from the article. --Orlady (talk) 16:49, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I emailed the user, who hasn't edited recently. --Orlady (talk) 16:53, 23 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Symbol delete vote.svg Nominator has not edited since late November (except for a single December 11 post above), but many issues still exist as noted by Orlady and the nomination has been open since early October. Regrettably, it's time to close this as unsuccessful. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:27, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The only real issue, as I see it, is the need for additional inline citations for a few passages. --Orlady (talk) 01:03, 2 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Orlady, I took a look at the article as it currently stands, and from what I can see each of the paragraphs is cited. Are the additional inline citations needed of the sort to preclude the article from being placed on the main page, or is their absence not the sort of thing that would normally hold back a nomination? If this is okay for the main page, then what this needs is a review of your ALT3, not closure. However, if in your judgment the missing inline sourcing enough to keep the article off the main page, then I'll close this now. Thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:59, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Symbol delete vote.svg Re-reviewing the article, together with the cited sources that I can see, I have to conclude (reluctantly) that the article has problems that prevent it from going to the main page. Actually, the problem is larger than sourcing. The problem is that there is a lot of content here that I don't trust: text that doesn't make complete sense, statements that appear contradictory, and content presented as "fact" that is derived from sources that actually present somewhat speculative interpretation of available evidence. For example, the statement "these primitive magmas originated from progressive partial melting of spinel lherzolite at unusually shallow levels in the mantle" is crisply stated as fact, but this is an interpretation of evidence, not fact. Nobody has ever seen or touched the earth's mantle, and the cited source actually says "Our results indicate that primitive magmas erupted at the SQVF probably formed by melting of spinel lherzolite at unusually shallow levels in the mantle" (note the words "our results indicate" and "probably formed").  Several of the other references cited in the article are (based on their abstracts) technical papers focused on geologic features rather far away from this volcanic field; it's not clear how they can support content that belongs in this article. I'd very much like for the article creator (who presumably has access to the sources) to weigh in here and discuss the article, as I think that some dialogue would be productive and would result in improvements that would make me more comfortable with the article. --Orlady (talk) 17:53, 6 January 2014 (UTC)