User:Pepsidrinka/Sandbox


 * Oppose It's a good article, but I have some serious concerns. There's a lot of editing to be done, with some poor wording, as well as quite a few weasel words.  Paragraphs need a tighter focus and overall, organization needs improvement.
 * 1) The last sentence of the lead seems out of place and should be incorporated into something.
 * 2) "Unfamiliarity with warning signs" and "Signs and warnings" should be retitled, as those are not characteristics of a tsunami (those sections do go into characteristics of a tsunami, but spend a lot of time on other stuff, and the section titles are still bad)
 * 3) Only the first two paragraphs under "Quake characteristics" appear to be about characteristics of the earthquake. "Quake" strikes me as an informal term too -- should it be changed to "Earthquake"?
 * 4) While I can pretty much understand what "The earthquake was unusually large in geographical extent" means, it doesn't seem like a useful sentence.  It looks like an early attempt at a topic sentence that should have been edited into something more useful. I disagree. The following sentence(s) build off this rather general statement.
 * 5) Overall, it does need some editing (several runons, e.g. "However, the northern rupture...", "The only other recorded earthquake") "The only other recorded earthquake..." is not a run-on.
 * 6) The link to volcanic arc ought to be incorporated into the prose somewhere.
 * 7) I'm not an expert on the subject, but the paragraph beginning "The India Plate is part of the great" seems out of place. The paragraph after it begins by referring to "the sideways movement between the plates", which I think means the "strike-slip" the paragraph before "The India Plate".  If you start off the one paragraph referring to the sideways movement like that, it should be clearer what that is referring to (by putting the paragraphs together, and preferably describing "strike-slip" as "sideways movement", assuming I am correct in my interpretation; if I'm wrong, it should be clearer what "sideways movement" refers to).
 * 8) Define or link "triggered earthquake"
 * 9) Not clear what "a 6.5 magnitude earthquake occurred on February 19, 2005 off Sulawesi at the other end of the Indonesian island chain" has to do with anything.
 * 10) "Coincidentally, the earthquake struck almost" should either be removed or justified.  It's a coincidence, but not too terribly unlikely, I think -- unless someone's made a big deal out of it, who cares?  If someone has made a big deal out of it, explain why. I disagree. It is a big deal. While nothing may materialize from the fact because it is a coincidence, it is quite extraordinary.
 * 11) There's a paragraph on aftershocks, then a paragraph on other stuff, then one beginning "As well as continuing aftershocks", which seems out of place.  This paragraph should be expanded too, or folded into some other spot.
 * 12) "Coincidentally, Mount Talang has since erupted and is now on top alert" looks like an even more irrelevant coincidence.
 * 13) The paragraph beginning "More spectacularly, there was 10 m" needs to be sourced, as it is weasel-wordy.  "There were also calculations" is particularly egregious (did the calculations just appear out of thin air?)
 * 14) "An oceanic trench several kilometres wide was also found in the earthquake zone" -- not clear whether the quake created the trench or made it able to be discovered
 * 15) " (Earthquakes and tsunamis, Lorca et al.)." should be made into a footnote like the other sources
 * 16) "The tsunami, like all others, behaved very differently in deep water than in shallow water" seems like an unuseful sentence I disagree. It shows that tsunamis are dynamic entities and that what you see isn't what you always get.
 * 17) Paragraphs need to each have a clear topic. Take the "Tsunami characteristics" section.  The first par. is about how the tsunami is formed and affected distant regions, which is fine.  The second par. starts off talking about the speed in deep water, then veers to the height in shallow water; the next par. goes back to height and deep water, then to satellites not providing a warning.  The next par. is fine.  Then "Because the 1,200 km" starts off about the difference in effects btwn north-south and east-west, then there's a blurb about the northern area being less affected than the south (which is already covered elsewhere); the next par. eventually returns to Bangladesh some more, but only after spending some time on waves going around coasts before coming back to distance (the reason the distance isn't necessarily too important is because the waves can go around coasts, and the reason Bangladesh wasn't as badly affected was because it was the northern rupture zone -- these are all related topics, but these paragraphs jump about without explaining the connections).  The next par. is about time, which is fine.  The par. after that could be folded into it.  The last par, is fine too, though the last sentence is too weaselly (I know it's cited, it's just an ugly sentence).
 * 18) "Measured in lives lost, this is one of the ten worst earthquakes in recorded history, as well as the single worst tsunami in history." should be expanded or incorporated elsewhere.  It could make a topic sentence for that section.
 * 19) Seems to be some overlinking, especially of placenames.
 * 20) Need citation for "An article in The Wall Street Journal on December 31, 2004" -- and that sounds like a weak source anyway.  Unless they consulted someone else, the Journal can't be considered a reliable source for the effects of mankind on Indian Ocean coral reefs, nor the effects of those reefs on the tsunami.  I don't doubt that it's true, but the Journal doesn't seem like a good source for it. It is properly cited now. I don't see what the problem with citing the WSJ is. It is a newspaper just like the NYT and the Washington Post. As far as I know, it is equally reputable, despite usually focusing on matters economic.
 * 21) The next par., about the mangrove thing, should be expanded or incorporated elsewhere, and needs to be cited (or does that come from the Journal too?  If so, same problem applies).
 * 22) Lots of passive voice everywhere ("humanitarian aid was needed", "effort was spent", "risks may have been", "It has been reported", "is considered to be") and lots of sentences beginning with "there is"/"there are", which is a weak opening.
 * 23) I know no one likes lists in FA, but the worst way to solve that is to turn a list into prose (e.g. "Nations all over the world provided..." -- I don't see why that can't be a sidebar list or something). I disagree. It is not an exhaustive list, but rather a list of some of the countries that gave the most aid in terms of money. A complete list may be available on Wikipedia somewhere, but for the purpose of this article, I feel that the handful of countries and the corresponding prose is preferable to a list of the same countries. If you propose a list of every country and their aid (assuming one doesn't already exist), then this is not the article for it.
 * 24) Define or link "artisanal fishery"
 * 25) "But some economists believe that damage" and "According to specialists, the main effect" are both uncited weasel words.
 * 26) "establish a Task Force with this aim" -- not clear what the aim is
 * 27) "Traditional beliefs in many of the affected regions state that a relative of the family must bury the body of the dead. Some psychologists interpret this as evidence of psychological trauma."  Which psychologists feel these traditional beliefs are evidence of psychological trauma?  How can beliefs that presumably predated the tsunami be caused by the psychological trauma from the tsunami? Not quite sure I understand the objection. Despite the fact the belief existed prior to the tsunami, it is quite traumatic if one had to bury the body of a relative that died in such a manner. That is how I interpret the sentence.
 * 28) "Some believe that the tsunami was punishment for lay Muslims shirking their daily prayers and/or following a materialistic lifestyle. Others have said that Allah was angry that there were Muslims killing other Muslims in an ongoing conflict." -- for an organized religion with leaders and scriptures and stuff, there needs to be more on this. This is not really a sufficient source for all that, I think, and it isn't clear why only the Muslim stuff from that article is included here.  I know Muslims were more affected than Jews, but in order to be comprehensive, we ought to be covering why Jews think it occurred too.  A number of things are mentioned in that article about why people think it occurred, but aren't in our article -- why?
 * 29) External links seem a bit bloated.  Are they each so uniquely useful to this article?
 * Tuf-Kat 17:58, 22 April 2006 (UTC)