Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography/Archive 1

Geography
Surprisingly enough, this article need a lot of work. It has been added to the list of the top 150 topics which should be covered in any encyclopedia, and will be included on the wiki cd that is supposed to come out. Anyone with an interest in geography should contribute to this. SCmurky 07:02, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I have to say that as far as geography is concerned, wikipedia is woefully inadequate. I created a geography template: Please edit this so that all the primary divisions of geography are listed, but keep it concise eg. no 'geography of the maori people', instead human geography or cultural geography. We should add this to all geography related articles so there is a quick link to several main topics. SCmurky 05:13, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Geostatistics
This article needs attention, needs NPOV edit. SCmurky 01:26, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Hills
I would like to put foward the article Hill for improvement. It is a candidate to Collaborations of the Week. I would like to ask you your support and help. --Francisco Valverde 18:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Ladakh (Peer Review)
Ladakh is on Peer Review. Please give your suggestions on how to raise it to FA status. deeptrivia (talk) 02:53, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposal related to Geography project
Please see Locations in fiction, fictional locations, and settings and pass this on to others who may be interested. &#151;Lady Aleena talk / contribs 07:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Featured List Candidate
List of areas in the National Park System of the United States is a candidate for featured list. Comments are welcome at Featured list candidates/List of areas in the National Park System of the United States. Nationalparks 02:52, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 * It passed! Thanks to all those who helped out. Nationalparks 13:03, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Release version work
I am interested in working on high-importance geography articles toward a release version of WP. Is anyone interested in helping with this? Maurreen 20:10, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Lastovo
Lastovo is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 21:08, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Sealand
Sealand is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 22:12, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Sarajevo
Sarajevo is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality.

Sorry to hit you with three at once: we could use the help :-)  Sandy 23:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Dawson Creek, British Columbia
Dawson Creek, British Columbia is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 21:23, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Geography on wikipedia, broadly speaking
Having recently been looking through the 11th edition of Britannica, I realized that while wikipedia has fairly detailed coverage of places, the actual coverage of geography, per se, is quite poor. Compare the lengthy discussion of the topography of Italy in the 1911 Britannica article, detailing the natural borders of "Italy" as a geographical concept, all the rivers of Italy and their sources and course, all the mountain ranges, all the off-shore islands, the general nature of the coastland and of the country, and so forth, with the discussion to be found at Italy (very brief), at Geography of Italy (a rather sad transplant from the CIA World Factbook), and at Italian Peninsula (mostly a description of the different political units that make up the Italian peninsula.) I myself am not an expert in this kind of geography at all, but it seems as though this kind of thing should have considerably more coverage in wikipedia. Arguably geography is the most basic encyclopedic concept, and it seems to me that we should be able to have a genuinely decent Geography of X article for just about every country. Just (carefully) adapting the 1911 stuff would make a good start, although this would be difficult for countries that didn't exist in 1911, or whose borders have changed. At any rate, is this something that people in this wikiproject would be interested in working on? It seems like an eminently achievable goal - it is non-controversial and information is widely available, and for many articles the 1911 text provides a good starting point (although it should obviously be cross-checked with more recent information, the basic information about rivers, mountains, coastlines and so forth should be roughly the same). Anyone interested? john k 18:20, 7 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd like to see more and better "Geography of ..." articles, and not all limited to countries, continents, etc. A "Geography of the Himalayas" for example could be done without limited to single nations; although nations would be part of the geographical description..  I'd love to see more articles on geography less focused on political units..  and trying to help here and there on such things.. Pfly 16:16, 1 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Do we really need a "Geography of the Himalayas" article? Shouldn't that be covered in detail at, er, Himalayas?  I don't think the problem is that geographical articles are divided by political units.  It's more that the geographical articles tend to have very weak discussions of physical geography, especially when you compare them to the 1911 Britannica. john k 17:59, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Great Salt Lake peer review
I originally posted this at WikiProject Lakes' talk page, but I figured you guys might be willing to help out as well, since this is also under your jurisdiction:

Great Salt Lake has now been listed as a good article, and I plan to submit it for peer review soon. Before I do that, I'd be very grateful if everyone could copy-edit it (see How to copy-edit) to improve grammar, punctuation, tone, etc. Also, please review it and list any opportunities for improvement on Talk:Great Salt Lake. Thank you. --Lethargy 22:45, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 22:00, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Quick link?
Is there any quick link to this WikiProject (e.g. WP:Geography)? If not, I'd be happy to make one. mwazzap 04:22, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. mwazzap 10:56, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Project Template
I've just created a project template to be placed on all the pages relating to geography, the template should be placed on the talk page only.AlexD 15:39, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

add to page by addingWikiProject Geography

You can asses your geography article when ever you like. Simply add the above template to the talk page of the article you wish to assess, then go to Category:Geography articles by quality and using the assessment scale on that page, decide where you think the article fits on the scale and add the relevant cdlass to the feography template on the talk page. Although if it is an article that you have made significant contributions to I'd advise against assessing it yourself, as you will have a bias when judging the article. Hope that helps AlexD 09:56, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
 * How can I or when can I access my geography article.Showmanship is the key 00:59, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Pedology
Pedology is currently depicted on the Geography WikiProject page as a branch of geography (see Geography topics) and as a sub-discipline of physical geography (see Physical geography topics. While I am sympathetic to this perspective, pedology could be similarly represented as a branch of both agronomy and geology with equal justification. Because parallel hierarchies confuse, WikiProject Soil supports the use of one hierarchical structure. Formally, pedology is one of two main branches of soil science, which in turn is one of the earth sciences, at a level of equal standing with geology, hydrology, etc. While the first pedologists were geographers, and while geography and pedology continue to interact in many important areas, terming pedology a branch or sub-discipline of geography doesn't accurately characterise that relationship. A more accurate term would be that pedology and geography are related disciplines. -- Paleorthid 21:22, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Hello, I believe that the present situation does not present any confusion and as pedology is regularly taught along side biogeography in terms of teaching in geography I do not believe that removing it as a sub-field of geography is a good action (if that is what you are suggesting), as geographers have played a key role in pedology and countinue to do so. In terms of removing the geography wikiproject template from the page, I can see a reason to do so if the soil project is working on the page in order to avoid any confliction or future problems. AlexD 21:52, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I believe that removing pedology as a sub-field of geography, depicting it instead as a related discipline, is an excellent move that better serves the interests of the Geography WikiProject. -- Paleorthid 06:23, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I do not think that, that would lead to a better situation, as pedology is taught as a part of geography and is need for a basic understanding of many aspects of geography such as tropical environments, hydrology and geomorphology as well as biogeography. I do not think the present situation is causing any confusion for instance geomorphology is listed as a sub-field of geology and geography and hydrology is listed under geography, environmental science as well as civil engineering and no confusion is seen in those. Again I can see a reason to remove it from the wiki-project for geography if the soil project has or is working on the article etc but not from the list of sub-disciplines of physical geography. AlexD 10:53, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * With geography, many (or most) of the subdisciplines are interdisciplinary. For example, glaciology is a subfield of both geography and geology.  Geopolitics would involve both political science and geography.  Pedology is also interdisciplinary and can fall under multiple categories or be a "subfield" of multiple disciplines. --Aude (talk contribs) 14:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * My position is that the terms Branch (see Geography topics) and Sub-discipline (see Physical geography topics communicate formal and exclusive relationships within the hierarchy of the scientific disciplines. Without qualification, these terms as being used communicate that pedology is fully within the realm of geography. This is not the view of the international scientific community which treats pedology as under the auspices of the International Union of Soil Science and independent of the International Geographical Union.
 * The position of both AlexD and Aude is that branch, sub-discipline and sub-field are workable synonyms for something along the lines of important-to-and-related. Furthermore, Aude holds forth that pedology, being a multidisciplinary system cannot be primarily the branch of any one scientific discipline. I believe this concisely delineates our dispute. -- Paleorthid 19:29, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I just entered "pedology" into google and in the top ten results, got:
 * Pedology/Soil Science Group - Department of Geography - University of California at Santa Barbara
 * I'm sure at many other universities, pedology falls within the "agriculture" department or something else. But, not always. --Aude (talk contribs) 19:37, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I can explain. Since the 1970's undergraduate soil science enrollment in the USA has trended lower, resulting in soil science departments being folded into various other departments. This is a practical response to the financial reality of trying to maintain qualified soil science instructors sufficient to inform students in other disciplines.  Many well intentioned people, yourself included, have misinterpreted this arrangement to mean that the discipline of soil science has now been downgraded to a sub-discipline of the whatever discipline is hosting it at the educational facility they are associated with. It is important to note that UCSB no longer offers an undergraduate degree in soil science. Students with undergraduate degree from minimal-soil-teaching-capacity institutes like UCSB will find, for instance, that their coursework will not qualify them as licensed soil scientists. What has occurred at UCSB is not occurring uniformly across the planet. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (see here) awards between 100 - 200 undergraduate degrees in soil science on an annual basis. The UCSB observation is of interest but does not alter or inform the underlying positions I have delineated in this dispute. -- Paleorthid 21:09, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I have moved the template to Physical geography topics. Subdisciplines may not be the best term.  Basically, geography is about taking a "spatial" approach to studying some other topic that has some spatial quality to it. (be it soils, marine/ocean environments, glaciers, politics, economics, crime, ...) I wouldn't consider any of these a "subdiscipline", but rather topics or specializations.   Geographers usually specialize in one or a few of these topics.  As such, I still see it proper that pedology remain listed in the template, but perhaps having it called "topics" rather than "subdisciplines" will help. --Aude (talk contribs) 22:09, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree and I appreciate the sensitivity. -- Paleorthid 22:54, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Template table
Hi all. Hope you don't mind, but I've substantially revised your template table. it now has links to the actulal templates, no longer lists this project page as a stub in various stub categories across Wikipedia, and replaces the list of six specific geo-stubs to the full list of 400+ (which I'm sure would be a bit too full for this page!). Please also note the comment I've added to the table about geo-stub - as a template it should be virtually never used, since all geographical locations are more correctly assigned to a continental, national, or regional geo-stub template. Grutness...wha?  00:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Release Version 0.5
If anyone is interested in helping with this, we have a page for reviewing articles on countries. Maurreen 22:00, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, I have been trying to gin up interest in Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Geography, concerning high-priority articles for a release version. Maurreen 22:41, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Human Geography stubs...
Human Geogrpahy is home to a number of pretty poor stubs/articles, Feminist geography, Urban geography and Social geography in particular. I'll have a shot at Feminist geography sometime soon, and maybe Urban geography, but Social geography seems a bit of an odd-one to me - isn't allhuman geography social geography, by definition? I certainly can't find any reference to social geography as a seperate sphere to human geography, I wouldn;t be sure what to put in the article?

I'd appreciate any help/feedback and any suggestions of other human geog areas that need sprucing-up whilst I'm at it? --Cooper-42 11:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I've re-written feminist geography and cleaned up urban geography, although the latter requires quite a lot of work in terms of citing and acknowledging criticsms of associated theories --Cooper-42 10:50, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Geology-stub subcats
Given that there's no WikiProject Geology, I thought I'd let this project know about this proposal to split up the, which are considerably oversized. Comments and suggestions welcome. Alai 05:26, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Tagging talk pages and assessing articles
Hi. If you still have work to do tagging talk pages and assessing articles, my AWB plugin might be of interest to you.

The plugin has two main modes of operation:
 * Tagging talk pages, great for high-speed tagging
 * Assessments mode, for reviewing articles (pictured)

As of the current version, WikiProjects with simple "generic" templates are supported by the plugin without the need for any special programatic support by me. I've had a look at your project's template and you seem to qualify.

For more information see:
 * About the plugin
 * About support for "generic" WikiProject templates
 * User guide
 * About AWB (AutoWikiBrowser)

Hope that helps. If you have any questions or find any bugs please let me know on the plugin's talk page. --Kingboyk 13:10, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Category:Rivers in X
I want to sort out Category:Rivers in Sheffield. This category is a bit of a mess. It now has a subcat called Waterways in Sheffield that contains all the same articles. One of them has to go but the situation is a bit complicated.

I would prefer to use Waterways in Sheffield as this would include Sheffield Canal. However, the category system uses Rivers in X everywhere else. So Waterways in Sheffield would become a subcat of Category:Rivers in South Yorkshire, creating another oddity. Upon further investegation I also found that Category:Canals in England is actually a subcat of Category:Rivers of England, which also doesn't make sense.

What I propose is that a new category called Waterways be created. While categories with just rivers can continue to use Rivers in X others with both canals and rivers can use Waterways in X and remove the problem of having to put the canals an inaccurate category. josh (talk) 19:16, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

John Dee
John Dee is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 21:01, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

English or native names?
I do not know if this is the right place for the following question. If not, please direct me!

My question is: Is there any general policy on a preference established English names or names in the local languages for geographical names in en:wiki? Alternatively, are there different etablished policies (one for names of countries, another for provinces, a third one for rivers, etcetera)?

If there are not, then I guess that the general en:wiki guide lines should hold, i.e., more or less 'use the name most English speaking people would be expected to look for (and redirect from variants)'. However, more English speakers would look for Calcutta than for Kolkata, I suppose.

My reason for asking is that I've noted that a number of us Swedish speakers have been moving names of Swedish (and even Finnish) provinces back and forth between traditional English or modern Swedish name forms (Scania ←→ Skåne; Dalecarlia ←→ Dalarna; Ostrobothnia ←→ Österbotten). Now, we could work out our own policy, if this was on the sv:wiki; but it is in en:wiki, and if there are some general en:wiki guidelines we should apply them in the first place. Besides, probably we Swedes are less apt to decide whether Dalarna or Dalecarlia is more wellknown to English speakers, than e. g. the British are.

Furthermore, a general policy for a name space is much more encyclopædic; and this concerns not just Sweden and Finland. (Munich or München? Bretagne or Brittany?  Braunschweig or Brunswick?  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, stayed at the town Elsingore on the island Zealand or Amlete, Prince of Danmark, stayed at the city Helsingør on the island Sjælland :-) JoergenB 19:22, 11 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Naming conventions perhaps is what you're looking for. -- J A X HERE | T a l k 16:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Use of project banner
I have just recently started a project dealing with Germany, noting that there is another existing project dealing with Prussia out there as well. We would very likely be adding both banners to several projects, with potential further banners for areas which have fallen into border disputes and areas in the old German Democratic Republic being potentially in other extant or future projects as well. Would your project be interested in setting up your own project banner in a manner similar to that of WikiProject Australia, which allows for indication of the various specific projects in the area below the main project banner space. User:Badbilltucker/Australia banner shows all the various "additions" to the banner, any one or more of which can be made visible individually. I also think, particularly in areas which have been added to various countries over the years, such a generalized banner might be the best approach. Thank you for your response. Badbilltucker 18:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Mount St. Helens
Mount St. Helens is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 03:16, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Problems with the usage of sub-categories of Category:Biota by country
I am trying to get a discussion going on the Flora of /Fauna of /Biota of  categories.

Please see Category talk:Biota by country GameKeeper 13:58, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Colditz Castle
Colditz Castle is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 17:20, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 14:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

English Channel
Hi, everyone, I recently stumbled upon the article English Channel, and I would like to point out some areas of improvement.

First, the article has a very large table of notable Crossings. Tables aren't supposed to be so big.

Second, the whole article is dominated by a huge section called "notable channel crossings". There is very little mention of anything else. A solution is to make a sub-article called English Channel crossings.

I think we should have more people working on this article. Anyone is interested to work on this article with me? -- ¿¡Exir  Kamalabadi?! Join Esperanza!  12:19, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

How to deal with multi-faceted overlaps?
Two articles have a special kind of conflict which I think only geographers can solve: Pacific Northwest and Cascadia. Each of these describes an area for which there exists a number of quite different definitions, and several of the definitions in one are the same as in the other. I am thinking of changing Cascadia to a disambiguation page (between Cascadia subduction zone, Cascadia, Oregon and the Cascadia separatist movement) and merging the geographic content from that page into Pacific Northwest. Maybe I (or better someone who's good at drawing maps) could draw a map that compares all different definitions. Is that a good idea? &mdash; Sebastian (talk) 10:05, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

How to find someone who can draw a map?
The article Pacific Northwest needs a map showing the many different definitions of the term. (I will try to sort them into a table shortly.) How can I find someone who's good at drawing maps? &mdash; Sebastian (talk) 03:48, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Im a geography student, if you let me know what you need I can probably create the map you need. I have all the programs I need for creating this type of map. SCmurky 20:06, 8 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Great - thanks a lot! I'm roughly thinking of something like the map to the right, which I cobbled together with MS Paint. This is currently under discussion at Talk:Pacific Northwest. I will get back to you when that discussion reaches a conclusion. &mdash; Sebastian (talk) 18:52, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Bath
Bath is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 19:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

==Topography - terrain Per the discussion at topography, that page is now a fleshed-out disambiguation page. There is now a page at terrain dealing with the three-dimensional aspect of landforms. I'm going through links to topography, changing links where appropriate. Any help/hints appreciated. Also, not sure what to do with the topography link to the Atlas portal. --Natcase 03:48, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Antarctica
As there is currently no WikiProject Antarctica, nor any task force/work group dealing with Antarctica within any WikiProject in wikipedia, as far as I know, I've recently begun a proposed WikiProject Antarctica page. The rather limited scope of this proposed project, and the fact that just about every page in the scope of the proposed project is geographical, makes me believe that this work could be easily accomplished by a group fuctioning within the Geography WikiProject. Please indicate to me whether or not you would find such an arrangement acceptable. If for whatever reason you find it unacceptable, I will probably try to start it on my own. In any event, any interested parties should indicate their interest in the interested parties section of the WikiProject/List of proposed projects section. robertjohnsonrj 20:05, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Carlsbad Caverns National Park FAR
Carlsbad Caverns National Park has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy (Talk) 22:18, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:35, 29 December 2006 (UTC)