Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers/Archive 5

Village Pump proposal to delete all Portals
Editors at this project might be interested in the discussion concerning the proposed deletion of all Portals across Wikipedia. See Village_pump_(proposals). --Bermicourt (talk) 17:58, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Bermicourt, the ironic thing is that I created Portal:Rivers late last year, but felt that it needed a bit more work before adding it to the project etc. Clearly I will wait for the outcome of the RfC before doing anything else.--Jokulhlaup (talk) 08:31, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it'll be a shame if they go because they're a great navigational aid and very useful for project editors to see the state of the project and what needs doing. Some portals are in need of improvement and maintenance but that's not a deletion issue. --Bermicourt (talk) 08:35, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Couldn't agree more, and have expressed my opposition at the RfC.--Jokulhlaup (talk) 11:10, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject
The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template Transclude lead excerpt.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background
On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you. &mdash; The Transhumanist  07:52, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

New article: Rio San Jose
Anyone want to help tune up this new article I made? Getting good data is hard. Dicklyon (talk) 19:09, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
 * If you are looking for data on a river, it is always worth looking to see if it has any flow measurement stats. There was some info from the USGS which allowed me to expand the article...Jokulhlaup (talk) 16:13, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I see that you did! Dicklyon (talk) 04:45, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

I also find quite a few river articles with no photos; so when I stop by a river, I take pictures, and later check to see if WP has pix. I added some to Rio Ojo Caliente, Dickey River, and Calawah River, which had none, and also added some to a few other rivers I visited this week. Dicklyon (talk) 04:45, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Dolu River / river
I have come in NPP across an article which had a title in Bengali (but was in English). I moved it to Dolu river, it is about the river in Bangladesh. I then discovered that there is already an article Dolu River about a river in Romania. We had at some point conventions about capitalizing river, and it was country-specific. Could somebody please advise what would be better names for these articles? They are both listed at Dolu. Thank you.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:23, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Jordan River (disambiguation)
An article that you have been involved in editing&mdash;Jordan River (disambiguation)&mdash;has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 10:04, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Updated version of USGS Hydrological Unit Codes
I have been working on Water Resource Region articles for regions of the HUC watershed system, and while I notice that there is an updated version, I'm not sure how to access the updated hierarchy. It seems to require GIS and I don't yet have any familiarity with how to run a GIS program. The old version is available, but it seems like some changes were made at the Subbasin level (level 4 of the 6 levels) of the US Hydrological code. Does anyone here happen to know Also, any pointers to some resources to learn GIS would be welcome. -Furicorn (talk) 08:26, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Anything about the changes made - are they just new levels of granularity, or did the levels exist before and they have been refined
 * 2) If there is any way to tie GNIS info back to HUC info - for example, is there a way to find the HUC info for Abbot Branch?
 * Yes to both of those, the new data added a level 10 and level 12, but it did also make changes at all levels, even level 2, the biggest change was moving the Lake Champlain watershed from the Mid-Atlantic to the Great Lakes region. It also made significant changes to HUCs along the borders, so that cross-border watersheds are properly represented instead of cutting off at the border. You can browse without GIS using the National Map, https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/advanced-viewer/, you want the Watershed Boundary Dataset layer.  If you do want to take the plunge into GIS, I recommend QGIS, which does have a active support community around it.  Kmusser (talk) 13:17, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks for showing me the map! I'm definitely struggling to strip highway and city information off the map, but I'll keep at it. More importantly, it's still not clear to me how to use GNIS info for something like Abbot Branch to find the HUC. The "Abbot Branch" I'm interested in is a stream in Missouri, but if I search for "Abbot Branch" it shows me a point in Mississippi, and feature id 748552 shows me a point in Alabama. I'm feel at a dead end about how to connect that GNIS data to the National Map you linked. If you (or anyone) has any thoughts about how to proceed, I'd be grateful. -Furicorn (talk) 23:55, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, is there an equivalent to this page of Boundary Descriptions and Names of Regions for the updated regions and subregions? I'm hoping we can put the most up to date information in the Water Resource Region tables. -Furicorn (talk) 07:33, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * In the National Map, if you enter "Abbott Branch, MO" in the search box (note the two t's), it should come up with the stream you want. In the layer list (accessible via one of the icons near the top), turn on the layer "Watershed Boundary Dataset" to see which HUC it's in. (The default setting is to adjust the HUC level as you zoom in and out.) The basemap gallery (also accessible via one of the icons near the top) has a couple of options that don't show roads and cities. I hope this helps! I don't know the answer to your question about the Boundary Descriptions and Names of Regions page, unfortunately. --TimK MSI (talk) 13:16, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * To add to that, I don't think there is a direct GNIS connection using the website, you'd just have search on the name. If you did go the GIS route, there is a GNIS variable for stream segments to connect the two database, but it isn't always populated, I usually still go by the name even when using the GIS layer, just watch the spelling.  I do not know of an updated page listing out the whole hierarchy like the old USGS page, you could make one from the GIS layer, but it'd be a lot of work.  Kmusser (talk) 15:53, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Took another look at that map, definitely change the basemap, under the Basemap Gallery icon, for what you're doing I think you want the USGS Hydro Cached. And GNIS is in there, but GNIS streams are not turned on by default, in the Layer List expand the Geographic Names (GNIS), and then expand Physical Points and there you'll find Streams (Mouth) which needs to be turned on (and you can turn off the cities if you don't want them, they're "populated places" under Political Points).  You might also want to turn on the National Hydrography Dataset which includes some smaller streams that aren't shown on that USGS Hydro basemap.  Kmusser (talk) 16:08, 14 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I was able to find Abbott Branch, turns out I was just misspelling it. The USGS Hydro Cached did do the trick, thanks for that recommendation. The only thing I'm struggling to find (which I'm not sure if anyone knows) is a narrative description of each region/subregion for the newest version of HUCs. -Furicorn (talk) 17:21, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Stay tuned, I'm going to see if I can extract those out of GIS for you, because yes, the HUCs at every level do have an actual name as well and it doesn't look like those are available through the National Map. Kmusser (talk) 19:58, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, versions after 2011 dropped most of the name fields, so I have both the 2011, which names the other levels, and 2016 for the 8 and 12 levels. I don't think there were any changes to the 2, 4, and 6 levels between those two - most of the new records that pop up in the 2016 version are Canada and Mexico additions. level8 2011 (includes levels 2, 4, 6) level12 2011 (includes level 10) level8 2016 level12 2016.  For citation purposes these are all derived from GIS layers obtained through https://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/ (not that I have any idea of the proper way to cite that).  Kmusser (talk) 23:25, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Thats a great excel sheet, thanks so much! I'm actually interested in which level 4 subregions shifted between level 2 regions, since I'm developing tables at level 4, so hopefully if I dig into what you shared, I can figure out the latest subregion assignments. I still don't have 100% of the information, but this seems like a start. The narrative I was talking about is actually a longform description of the unit, usually a couple sentences, but I would be really shocked if that narrative was available in the GIS data. Would it be hard on the level8 sheet to include data on area for each of levels (mostly care about levels 2 and 4 right now)? -Furicorn (talk)
 * I think the only change at level 4 is the Lake Champlain one I mentioned earlier, which is 0201 becoming 0415, but you'd have to compare the spreadsheet to that old USGS page to check for others. I don't think longform descriptions exist anywhere, I think those old ones were written specifically for that website. I'll see about adding in areas, that should be doable. Kmusser (talk) 18:26, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Acres added to the level8 2011 file - I just put in the level 8 acres which are what is in the original data, you'll need to subtotal to get the level 2 and 4. Kmusser (talk) 19:28, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Good to know about Lake Champlain, but I figured I'd have to do the analysis myself. Also thanks for adding area, I can convert to square miles, but just figure I'd ask if it's available just in case it's easily added. Bummer though if your intuition about the narrative descriptions turns out to be correct. -Furicorn (talk) 21:35, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

USGS Hydrological Unit Codes vs CEC Hydrological Levels
So I've continued filling out the missing subregions on Water Resource Region, and I've found the agency responsible for harmonizing hydrological basins between the members of NAFTA, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). The CEC has a North American Environmental Atlas with a variety of base maps, and of particular interest here is the watershed map. It comes in 4 levels, with level 1 being the largest. I'm interested in maybe creating a list of CEC North American hydrological regions, but I'm having trouble finding statistics on any of the regions, and some of the level 4 unit names (esp for Mexico). I've found two sources on the Mexican hydrological region scheme here and here, but I'm having a hard time trying to eyeball matching regions. Any thoughts are welcome. -Furicorn (talk) 23:25, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I think what's going on there with the Mexican regions is that Mexico updated their regions and the CEC has not yet updated theirs to match, buried in the metadata for the CEC it's sourcing Mexico to a 1993 data layer and the Mexican websites are citing 2015 data. Kmusser (talk) 20:41, 17 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Ah, Im glad you're metadata kung-fu is stronger than mine. I was able to find the links I was looking at in part through the metadata, but I wasn't able to figure out that discrepancy. It makes a lot of sense though. -Furicorn (talk) 07:02, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Template for discusion
Templates_for_discussion/Log/2018_October_19 may be of interest. -- WOSlinker (talk) 23:49, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

RfC: New Category Tree for Bodies of Water

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Having setup articles for all of the Water Resource Regions, I think it makes sense to create a Category tree for North America using the USGS Hydrological_code. The USGS HUCs include small portions of Canada and Mexico, but eventually the goal would be for a category tree that fully includes Mexico and Canada using the Commission for Environmental Cooperation's (CEC) water basin boundaries that span all three countries. An example of my proposed initial structure is as follows In theory, while the latest USGS update may have some slightly HUC mappings, I haven't been able to easily find descriptive titles or listing of HUCs for that data. Also, I wasn't planning on setting up categories below the subbasin level, both because I haven't ever found descriptive names at this level, although it is certainly possible they exist. My overall approach would be to start creating a few of the region level categories and add a couple bodies of water to each one. I'd be interested in people's thoughts on this topic. -Furicorn (talk) 22:07, 1 October 2018 (UTC) Edit: I setup the Water resource regions category so people can take a look. -Furicorn (talk) 20:03, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Category:Bodies of water of North America
 * Category:Water resource regions
 * Category:Missouri water resource region - Region level HUC 10). Note that some standalone US Regions are subsumed below the Mississippi in the CEC classification scheme
 * Category:Gasconade–Osage water resource subregion - Subregion level HUC 1029)
 * Category:Osage basin - Basin level HUC 102901
 * Category:Sac subbasin - Subbasin level HUC 10290106
 * Sounds like a good idea to me. I'd say go for it. CapitalSasha ~ talk 16:25, 7 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose (without further information) (changed to Agree after further reading/investigation) I love the idea of an online encyclopedia and people being able to type things in and find them. But more and more I, as an editor, I am stumbling across articles that are redundant but named differently and that have some unique information but not enough. This bugs me. I'm just wondering if your scheme would be more of that. Remember, we are not a listing site, having things outlined or listed in a particular order is not so important as what is typed in that little "search" box at the top of the screen. Would users be typing in these branches of your trees? Are these branches already defined in an article explaining all of them? Could you give some examples here of the way rivers are currently classified and how they relate to this structure? Could you create on your sandbox page an example of what you are proposing to do? StarHOG (Talk) 12:57, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if you were able to follow the links I provided above, but all of the top level and almost all of the second level US hydrologic units are described here on wikipedia (see the above mentioned Water resource region and the pages linked there). More broadly, hydrologic units are all mapped out by the USGS in cooperation with US state agencies, using maps at 1:24,000 scale. Currently, rivers are not necessarily classified into very structured watersheds, for current structures, you could take a look at Category:Watersheds of the United States or maybe Category:Drainage basins of North America. However, I would argue these are a bit haphazard. Within the context of the US, these hydrological unit categorizations provide the advantage of having been developed in a structured and consistent way by highly technical third-party specialists, and since they are in the public domaain they can be externally referred to and validated by anyone (although they may have to figure out how to navigate some of the tools). I don't think categories generally make it into the search box (do they?), and I typically view them as suggestions for people who are interested in further exploration of a topic. Most, if not all, articles on streams or bodies of water in the US have their coordinates listed, so the hydrological unit code for any given stream or river (or lake or reservoir) can be traced and placed with a combination of the USGS Streamer service, the national map and GNIS searches. You can look at a specific example I setup at Category:Upper Mississippi water resource region. I hope that answers some of your questions. -Furicorn (talk) 20:03, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * It does, thank you for being so specific, and no, I failed to look at the links you put above before I wrote my piece. I'll look over everything you mentioned above tomorrow and update my humble opinions. StarHOG (Talk) 20:29, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I have reviewed the links and your points and have changed my opposition to an agree. Once you are done, however, I do not envy you going into all those river articles and placing them in the categories :) Good luck, StarHOG (Talk) 17:52, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree This is an interesting proposal and the structure makes sense. From an implementation note: the GNIS import in WikiData could help with matching pages to categories. The entity resolution has started on Mix'n'match for | GNIS streams which would facilitate tagging the articles with categories. The lake GNIS resolution is nearly complete, nearing |GNIS bulk import once that is outlined. Still some ways to go on |GNIS reservoirs. Hope this is useful for the categories. Wolfgang8741 (Talk)
 * That sounds very interesting, I'll want to look more closely into that. I'm also very interested in finding out if there is a way to search for all items that fall within the boundaries of an area described in GIS that's more complicated than a box. If you know anything on that topic it would also be very helpful. -Furicorn (talk) 13:37, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

I'd say go for it. One word of caution on using the USGS scheme is that the USGS HUCs don't always match actual drainage basins, sometimes they'll lump small basin together just because they're close to each other and not because they're hydrologically linked or they'll include small endorheic basins with the basin surrounding them. The differences are small and probably won't matter for categorization purposes, but if you start doing articles on them just be aware that the Osage River HUC and Osage River drainage basin might not quite match. Kmusser (talk) 13:48, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree This seems like a cool idea. signed,Rosguill talk 04:40, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This is a good point, but I actually didn't imagine most categories would go beyond 4-digit HUC level. I imagine most of what you describe is more common at 6-digit HUCs and below. -Furicorn (talk) 13:29, 13 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Recusing myself I am insufficiently familiar with the considerations involved in such a complex subject, to give a significant opinion. But in passing, one remark. The intention clearly is to apply a hierarchical structure of categories, because hierarchies are convenient, as long as they are appropriate. The catch is that the parameters that determine the hierarchy can be changed, or even just changed in the sequence they are applied (eg size within position gives a different hierarchy from position within size) so one either needs to identify a sequence and choice of parameters that the great majority of users will accept, or to consider whether to have more hierarchies than one for classifying the same population, or in extreme cases, simply to identify atomic sets of which various set intersections and unions happen to be useful to recognise. I think that the latter two options are unpopular, and they certainly are not necessary in all cases, but I leave it to you to decide whether the consideration is appropriate in this topic. JonRichfield (talk) 06:24, 22 October 2018 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Merging Geobox|river into Infobox river
We are discussing how best to merge these two templates at Template talk:Infobox river and there are several specific questions that I would like comments on. Any editors with experience of either of these templates are invited to participate. Many thanks &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:56, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Articles using Geobox river- why has count declined
The Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers/Archive 4 Rfc listed 15,788 articles using Geobox river and 14,277 using Infobox river. The Templates for discussion/Log/2018 October 19 Tfd listed 15,559 and 14,968 respectively. The counts are 15,585 and 14,989 respectively as of this moment. Can anyone explain why the count for Geobox River declined by more than 200 in the time between the Rfc and Tfd, about a year? I know I added articles in the period. Regards, --papageno (talk) 07:02, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Featured quality source review RFC
Editors in this WikiProject may be interested in the featured quality source review RFC that has been ongoing. It would change the featured article candidate process (FAC) so that source reviews would need to occur prior to any other reviews for FAC. Your comments are appreciated. --IznoRepeat (talk) 21:50, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Template:Geobox nominated for deletion
It has been proposed that we delete Geobox. That may effect this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the Geobox deletion discussion. ɱ (talk) · vbm  · coi) 18:55, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Seeing as it was already decided that we will no longer use geobox for rivers... not sure why it would... -- Zack mann  (Talk to me/What I been doing) 01:07, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Infobox river
A discussion is underway at Template talk:Infobox river regarding the ability of editors to record the lengths of source/headwaters tributaries in Template:Infobox river. Thanks--TimK MSI (talk) 20:26, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Ukrainian name-changing at Dniester
I recently corrected the article Dniester, which had suffered from some Ukrainian POV-pushers changing the English common name Dniester to Dnister and changing the name of the Dnieper to Dnipro and even Dniper in one case. As other rivers and geographic features are mentioned in the article, I suspect they have also been given non-English names, but I don't know enough about the region to be sure. Knowledgeable editors ought to read through the article and check whether the forms used are the English common names or not.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:56, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I looked thru it. The rest are tributaries, minor rivers. For minor geo it is usually difficult to make a decision which is "correct" English name, and usually nobody cares. Especially when the river flows in several countries and you have to choose between equally weird Strv'yazh and Strwiąż. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:57, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

River Notablity
Got a question that I'm hoping this project can shed some light on... What is the story with notability for rivers? I've stumbled upon a few articles (Fărcădin River, Fărău River, Fătăceni River being the 3 most recent ones) that IMHO don't meet general notability. I don't want to spam nominate dozens of articles... But curious what other people think here? Is there a rule here? I'm sure there is a policy somewhere in the notability guidelines that explains this. Can anyone shed some light or link me to a page? To me, these fall under WP:MILL. I have nominated ONE article for deletion in hopes of getting some insight, but also want to see what others, particularly those who are involved in this project, think.

As a follow up to that can I request that some of the active participants in this project put together some notability guidelines? A while back I wrote a guideline for the Wildfire Project that can be see here. It doesn't have the force of documented policy but at least provides some guidelines. Would be great to have something similar for this project. Thanks! -- Zack mann  (Talk to me/What I been doing) 21:14, 28 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you for opening this discussion. Size is an obvious basis for notability; and, after a career in water resources from an area of water scarcity, I would suggest consideration of what we termed beneficial uses. On a similar basis to the wildfire list, I might suggest the following: Thewellman (talk) 23:37, 28 November 2018 (UTC)


 * River average annual flow exceeds (criterion)
 * River drainage basin area exceeds (criterion)
 * River drainage basin population exceeds (criterion)
 * River forms one or more international boundaries
 * River used for commercial transportation
 * River provides regionally important wildlife habitat
 * River provides regionally important drinking water
 * River provides regionally important agricultural irrigation
 * River provides regionally important recreation
 * River provides regionally important hydropower
 * River provides regionally important cooling water
 * River has a notable historic flood event


 * I thought that as long as the river/stream has a name officially recognized by a governing body, and there are reliable sources attesting to its existence, it is "notable". Even a number of our river fAs (like Balch Creek) are tiny streams that may not be considered notable under 's criteria above. Regarding these rivers in Romania, they appear to be direct translations from ro.wikipedia.org? I suppose whoever created those pages should be consulted for sources... Shannon [ Talk ] 06:47, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I suggest Balch Creek would qualify for notability as regionally important for both recreation and wildlife habitat in the Portland area. Depending upon the criterion selected, it might also qualify on the basis of basin population in an area as densely settled as Portland. Thewellman (talk) 17:26, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I wasn't saying that Balch Creek isn't notable, I think it very much is, and it's a fantastic article. I just meant that due to these factors, it would be difficult to come up with criteria that could be fairly applied across all rivers worldwide. Shannon [ Talk ] 18:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * you make a great point. I think this is where the WP:GNG would come in. Balch Creek definitely meets the "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention". It has tons of coverage. One thing to consider is that the guideline is more of a "if it meets 1 or more of these it is DEFINITELY notable" than a "if it doesn't meet any of these it is definitely NOT notable". Going back to my example with WP:WILDFIRE-NOTE. Any fire that meets 1 of those 4 criteria is definitely notable. But lets say there is a 50 acre fire with no loss of life but it burns through Griffith Park and destroys the Griffith Park Observatory. That would definitely make the fire notable even though it doesn't meet any of the 4 criteria. So if an article doesn't meet any of the prelisted criteria, I would say it warrants a discussion, but it certainly isn't a speedy delete for not fitting some predefined template of notability. IMHO the notability guidelines are just that, a guide. -- Zack mann  (Talk to me/What I been doing) 18:42, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * See the creator (User:Afil)'s reply at WP:Articles for deletion/Fărcădin River. I suppose whatever criteria we decide on should consider that a river in a densely populated area is probably more notable that a small stream in the middle of a Siberian tundra. I really don't think all 8000+ articles about rivers in Romania are about notable rivers, nor all 90 tributaries of the Wupper. If a river meets the general notability guidelines (significant coverage in reliable sources), I guess it's notable. Note "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention". So if the only mention is: "Rivers A, B, C, D and E are tributaries of river F", that doesn't make A-E notable. For other cases Thewellman's list of criteria above is a good start. I think 10 km2 would be a nice lower limit for basin area. Markussep Talk 13:58, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The "if it can be verified it exists then it is notable" as been the informal guideline over at AfD for all natural geographic features, not just rivers. I'd be ok with applying something more specific in theory, but agreeing with Shannon that coming up with something that can be applied fairly worldwide would be tricky.  Part of the problem is that for much of the world even relatively major rivers don't have much in the way of data sources. Kmusser (talk) 19:49, 29 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I think we should stick to the general notability criterion. If there are no reliable sources about the river there must be no article about this river. However, sometimes sources are not esly to find - they might be offline, or online on a language which makes them difficult to be accessed, or whatever. For this case, we might have something of the sort proposed above. If a river satisfies the above criteria it is presumed notable - at least not a well-grounded AfD case has been made that the sources are not just hard to find, but they likely do not exist.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:26, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I think we're drifting towards a consensus here. Something like this: Markussep Talk 09:35, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
 * A river is notable if it meets the general notability guidelines (significant coverage in reliable sources; significant coverage is more than a trivial mention). Note from WP:GEOLAND: "Named natural features are often notable, provided information beyond statistics and coordinates is known to exist."
 * Since reliable sources may be difficult to find (offline and/or in a foreign language), a river is probably also notable if it meets at least one of the following notability criteria:
 * River average annual flow exceeds 1 m3/s (proposal)
 * River drainage basin area exceeds 10 km2 (proposal)
 * River drainage basin population exceeds 10,000 (proposal)
 * River forms one or more international boundaries
 * River used for commercial transportation
 * River provides regionally important wildlife habitat (may be difficult to define/verify, omit?)
 * River provides regionally important drinking water
 * River provides regionally important agricultural irrigation
 * River provides regionally important recreation
 * River provides regionally important hydropower (requires a minimum annual flow, omit?)
 * River provides regionally important cooling water (requires a minimum annual flow, omit?)
 * River has a notable historic flood event not, see WP:NGEO

Thoughts on the proposed omissions:
 * All rivers are (or were) ecosystems relatively sharply defined by terrestrial boundaries although the adjacent riparian zone (and connected lakes, wetlands, and marine estuaries) should be considered a part of that ecosystem. The importance of that ecosystem as a wildlife habitat often depends upon its distance from adjacent river ecosystems offering similar habitat. That distance often depends upon regional precipitation (greater distance in arid areas) or human modification (greater distance in areas of high population density.) Important wildlife habitat should be captured by drainage basin area criteria in arid areas, but there is an inverse probability of capture by drainage basin population or any of the other specified criteria with the exception of flow volume (and possibly boundary definition.) I suggest correlation of species distribution maps with surface drainage patterns would provide verification of wildlife habitat.
 * Hydropower potential is not entirely defined by river flow. Elevation change is equally important; and hydropower use may exceed the simple potential energy of stream flow and elevation change when water is allowed to flow from an uphill reservoir through power turbines to a downhill reservoir during periods of peak demand, and (like recharging a battery) pumped back into the uphill reservoir when power from other sources (like sun, wind, or steam) exceeds demand.
 * I'm inclined to agree with the capture of cooling water use by a flow volume criterion, and with the avoidance of inherited notability. Thewellman (talk) 18:17, 8 December 2018 (UTC)


 * What about the length of the river? Can we add a criterion for that? Because finding the average annual flow or the drainage basin area might be more difficult. Razvan Socol (talk) 05:57, 10 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, good idea. 10 km seems a good lower length limit to me. Markussep Talk 09:58, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree. Thewellman (talk) 17:29, 10 December 2018 (UTC)


 * My thoughts: I'd use length rather than flow since flow data for many rivers is non-existent, agree that 10 km seems reasonable. For boundaries I'd be tempted to add rivers that are state/province/whatever the appropriate 1st order division is boundaries as well. I'd drop the wildlife habitat - all rivers are important wildlife habitat, so including it will make the criteria effectively "all rivers are notable", rendering this exericise a moot point.  I'd simplify hydropower to "river used for hydropower" - I think any river with a hydropower dam on it is going to be notable, if you want a qualifyer I'd put it in energy produced (nominating at least 1 megawatt).  I think you could drop the cooling water one, I have trouble imagining a river meeting that that wouldn't also meet one of the others. Kmusser (talk) 20:54, 10 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Length vs Flow - Perhaps include both since only one is required?
 * Boundaries - Smaller political subdivisions may be appropriate until we reach the point of political boundaries subject to frequent change such as city boundaries where adjoining land is periodically annexed as population increases.
 * Wildlife habitat - We might clarify the definition of important to specify habitat for threatened species or species not otherwise found within a specified distance from that river.
 * Hydropower - I have no objection to River used for hydropower, although I suggest we consider historic watermills and potential future emphasis on dispersed energy production to minimize transmission losses. I have seen hydraulic rams on some very small streams. Perhaps use of a watt criterion should consider the difference between peak flow and average flow.
 * I agree with eliminating cooling water. Thewellman (talk) 22:27, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Including flow doesn't hurt anything, I just don't think there is going to be any flow data for a river whose notability is in question. Kmusser (talk) 15:58, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

I like these criteria including modifications arising from the discussion. Can any of them be documented as applicable to this AFD? Thanks-- TimK MSI (talk) 14:36, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

For a chance to see these guidelines in action I applied them to a stream currently at AfD and it passes the basin guideline at 13 km2. I think it would fail all the rest, except maybe the wildlife one, which would take more research. Kmusser (talk) 19:38, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It may be noted subject article presently fails to include a description of either the wildlife habitat or the drainage basin notability criteria as suggested by the proposed notability guidelines. Thewellman (talk) 20:06, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
 * True, but notability applies to the subject, not the article, that the article is lacking doesn't really tell us whether its subject is notable or not - and these guidelines are still pending, the current de facto guideline is that all named geographic features are notable so there really wouldn't have been a reason to include anything more in order to assert its notability. Kmusser (talk) 20:37, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
 * As an aside, while it would meet these proposed guideline, I think that streams notability is dubious, I'm not at all sure that it would have enough sources to write a real article on it. Kmusser (talk) 20:43, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

NRIVER proposal

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Add a Notability section to the project page with the following language:

The following criteria are considered for each river to meet notability guidelines, and the article should describe those criteria establishing notability. A river not meeting any of the below criteria is unlikely to be notable; although a river is considered notable if it meets the general notability guideline of significant coverage in reliable sources. 19:16, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) River length exceeds 10 km
 * 2) River average annual flow exceeds 1 m3/s
 * 3) River drainage basin area exceeds 10 km2
 * 4) River drainage basin population exceeds 10,000
 * 5) River forms a territorial boundary separating two areas of equivalent political structure
 * 6) River used for commercial transportation
 * 7) River used for hydropower
 * 8) River used as habitat by threatened species or species not otherwise found within 10 km
 * 9) River provides regionally important drinking water
 * 10) River provides regionally important agricultural irrigation
 * 11) River provides regionally important recreation


 * Support for reasons described above. Thewellman (talk) 19:16, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * With regard to Wikipedia's gazetteer functionality, we might consider small rivers as being either tributaries to larger rivers or feeding directly into an ocean, lake, or endorheic basin. In either case, information about small rivers not meeting the proposed notability guidelines could be included in the article about that larger river, lake, etc. Many river articles already include a list of tributaries. The question is whether entries on that list are links to separate articles, or if a simple name would be sufficient. The name might be followed by geographic coordinates and/or length. The proposed guidelines emphasize description of notable features where additional information is available. A potentially difficult situation arises for oceans or very large rivers where the list might be so long as to make the receiving water article unwieldy. That may be handled by breaking out separate list articles either alphabetically, by continent or smaller geographic or political landforms, or both. Thewellman (talk) 18:46, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Support --TimK MSI (talk) 20:01, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Support and I think it would be good to include this in Notability (geographic features). Markussep Talk 20:06, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose Any river with a verifiable name and location should be considered notable. Requiring some reference other than online maps is reasonable. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 03:29, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Any river with a verifiable name and location should be considered notable -this is just an opposing opinion (of course you are entitled to it), But to taken seriously you have to support it somehow. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:10, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, I for one am taking it seriously. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:11, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Procedural comment this MUST be advertised as an RFC to become policy; this discussion is fine to set a guideline for the WikiProject, though. I plan to blatantly ignore this in AfD discussions as a non-binding WikiProject guideline if there is not an official RfC and will challenge any addition of this to Notability (geographic features). power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 03:29, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Good point, I just tagged it for RfC. Markussep Talk 09:00, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose, per Power~enwiki. Named streams are permanent geographical features and it's Wikipedia's function as a gazetteer to include them.– Gilliam (talk) 20:01, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Redirects will serve gazetteer just as well, see my vote below.Staszek Lem (talk) 02:10, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * No, they don't. Redirects in these situations just confuse people. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:41, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * support in principle. Details may be discussed further. Minor features may just as well described in the "Tributaries" section of lager rivers and safely sit as redirects until it becomes more prominent. There were severel precedents. Exactly same situation was with Category:landforms of Antarctica, where zillions of articles were created for all named features by copyediting drafts generated by some bot from the US geo survey data, with the only content being location and who named them and how. Later they were happily merged into larger features without much fuss. Still another similar situation was with asteroids and minor planets. They were merged into several lists of these.  Staszek Lem (talk) 02:10, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose - changed opinion after some thinking. The suggested criteria list (skipping size criteria) basically means there is some nontrivial verifiable information about the river, i.e. it is WP:GNG, ie redundant. Whereas size criteria, as mentioned, are rather arbitrary. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:23, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Procedural comment When dust settles, this must be "unowned" from the "river cabal" semi-local consensus here and incorporated into WP:NGEO . Staszek Lem (talk) 02:10, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose as unnecessary instruction keep with fussy criteria, WP:GEOLAND guidelines and WP:GNG is more than enough. This proposal would result in the proposed deletions of thousands of articles about small rivers, creeks and streams when the best option would be merging them into the tributaries sections of river articles and other sections of geoland articles so that there would be no overall loss of information, and then keeping the original articles as redirects. Other editors and myself would deprod any prods and oppose at AFD the deletion of natural features on the rationale that merging and then redirecting is the best option, regards Atlantic306 (talk) 16:41, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I disagree with your statement that This proposal would result in the proposed deletions of thousands of articles about small rivers. Saying a page is not notable doesn't mean the page gets automatically deleted... It would provide a guide for what rivers are notable enough to get their own page. So if a river doesn't meet this guidelines it should be merged and redirected just like you said. This guideline would provide the rationale for doing just that. Right now, without the guideline, attempting to merge and redirect is almot immediately undone by other editors who insist that their 2 sentence article about a tiny creek is notable. -- Zack mann  (Talk to me/What I been doing) 17:49, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose per . This runs contrary to our mission. We are also a gazetteer. Any river that has a name and can be verified should be included. This is one of the many reasons WP:N is not a policy. Geographic features will usually not meet it and shouldn’t be expected to. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:41, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose per power~enwiki, and also because so many of the suggested criteria are entirely arbitrary. Why 10km and not 1,198 feet (the length of Vrelo (river))? Why a drainage basin population of 10,000 and not 2,937 (the 2010 population of Riverside, Missouri)? Why is use for transportation not considered notable unless money is exchanged? Generally speaking, named geographical features of any type are inherently notable by virtue of having been named (which is literally an act of noting them). Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:38, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I would welcome discussion of bases for alternative quantitative criteria. It seems the Vrelo would be notable for recreational use and possibly flow. Is there a notable Missouri River tributary in Riverside not captured by the other specified uses? Can you suggest an aquatic transportation situation other than commercial or recreational? Thewellman (talk) 19:18, 21 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment So, if this passes, what would we do with the articles linked in List of rivers of the Bahamas, most of which have a text consisting of "The [name of the river] is a river of the Bahamas"? They all flow into the Atlantic Ocean. - Donald Albury 19:43, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * those are exactly the sort of articles that spurred me starting this thread. IMHO articles like Staniard Creek are pointless and should just be deleted. IF they were part of a larger river system, I would say redirect to the parent page, but what value does Staniard Creek serve? There is no information there. -- Zack mann  (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:23, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Who cares? It hurts nothing and might be beneficial to someone who lives in the area and wants to click the external link. The point of notability is to prevent articles that are harmful to the projects credibility from getting in. There's literally no problem at all if every name body of water on the planet had one sentence of Wikipedia so long as it had a source. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:41, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Support this is a much more detailed set of notablity guidelines than is provided at WP:GEOLAND. That guideline states that Named natural features are often notable, provided information beyond statistics and coordinates is known to exist. This includes mountains, lakes, streams, islands, etc. The number of known sources should be considered to ensure there is enough verifiable content for an encyclopedic article. This proposal takes that and builds on it. Now it is absolutely possible for a river to be notable without meeting any of the above guidelines. The way I see this being used is If it meets these guidelines, it is notable, period. If it doesn't meet these guidelines then it is worth further discussion. Failing to meet the guidelines is not criteria for WP:CSD, but would certainly be grounds for opening a WP:AFD.
 * I agree that this needed to go to an RFC so thanks for raising that. To your point about the deletion process, I'm curious if you can address what I've said above. Assuming for the moment it IS adopted via this RFC (because I agree if the RFC doesn't result in support then it is moot), but IF the decision is to support this sort of guideline, do my comments above make sense? I think stating at an AFD that "this river doesn't meet any of the guidelines laid out for river notability" would be worthy of discussion. Not immediate deletion, but certainly discussion. Curious as to your thoughts.-- Zack mann  (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:26, 21 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose - I feel this is a needless set of instructions on top of the nice and simple GEOLAND. I would really rather not have the AfD discussions spread to include disputes over this. In effect - this serves no purpose. Editors could combine a small tributary with a bigger river if they wanted now, or it could be separate - leave it to them! Nosebagbear (talk) 21:35, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose as worded. While these include factors that should be considered, am not at all convinced that a 10.1 km river with no other information is any more notable than a 9.9 km one with no other information. Agree with comments above that it's reasonable to boldly merge/redirect sub-stubs with limited sourcing to listing at a more comprehensive article such as the parent river, drainage basin, a list on tributaries of the major river system, a list of rivers of the area, or similar. River articles should only be sent to AFD for deletion if there is a likelihood of error/hoaxing, or for merge/redirect if other processes fail and there's no useful information visible. Conversely, redirects and list entries should be created in preference to sub-stubs where there appears to be limited prospect for expansion. In the case of List of rivers of the Bahamas, this should be a (sourced) table that contain name, coordinates, any notes, and if possible a picture. Other such lists might include stream order, parent, etc. ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~ 22:10, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose per power~enwiki and others, above. No argument ash been put forward as to why the current policy is not acceptable or is not working. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:11, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose The guidelines listed above are arbitrary. WP:GEOLAND seems to be working well, and including a set of arbitrary criteria for what is and what is not a notable river won't help the project. I also believe we deleted a river recently that didn't pass WP:V, so I don't feel as if this is an overly inclusionist argument. SportingFlyer  talk  08:25, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose per enpower. No argument has been put forward that requires such arbitrary restrictions. Sourcing is another matter ut that is already covered in other policies. Agathoclea (talk) 10:42, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose as constructed. The above are correct that this would be redundant with GEOLAND (and is too specific in comparison to it), and that too many of the criteria are arbitrary. However, something like this could be useful as a list of signs that a waterway is likely to pass GEOLAND and GNG, rather than as a checklist of new criteria that can be used to exclude.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:37, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose There seems to be no justification for these values, and many other alternate criteria could have been used. Usually just calling something a river is enough to claim it is more significant than some other named watercourse. I am happy enough to see redirects to a section on the topic if the GNS is not applicable. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:39, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment Calling a stream a "river" does not in itself make it more notable than streams known by some other term. I'll just note that Econfina Creek has a Wikipedia article more than four times as long as Econfina River. I am having a great deal of trouble finding anything more about Goose River (Bahamas) than its location, which makes me doubt its notability. - Donald Albury 03:31, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment - A lot of these criteria are ambiguous due to Western-centrism: e.g. hydropower, drinking water, commercial transportation. How does one define commercial transportation in a third-world informal economy? Do villagers using river water count the same as a developed nation's government constructing pumping stations, water purification plants, etc.?  Daß &thinsp;  Wölf  20:42, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * My interpretation of the discussion leading up to this proposal was hydropower included watermills and hydraulic rams in addition to electric generators. I would similarly include unmechanized withdrawals for drinking and irrigation. Transportation might be modified to specify any use by canoes or larger boats. Can you suggest other alternative language to avoid your interpretation of Western-centrism? Thewellman (talk) 21:59, 2 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Oppose Will lead to endless bickering. These statistics aren't always readily available, especially for the small streams we are talking about.  Should we require a source to prove the 10 km length?  Are meanders counted in the length, or must it be straight line?  Can it be measured from a map?  At what scale?  Must it be a government map?  Better off to funnel this effort into improving the articles rather than policing them.  GeorgeofOrange (talk) 01:02, 10 January 2019 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC notability rivers
Should the criteria for river notability listed above become part of Wikipedia policy, as part of (for instance) the Notability (geographic features) guideline? Markussep Talk 08:59, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Please continue voting in the section above, to avoid confusion with split discussion. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:14, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Alternative view
The RFC was about adding this suggestion as part of WP Law. It looks like the WP:SNOWBALL is rollin' rollin' rollin'.

At the same time, IMO the suggestion makes sense as a recommendation for participants of WikiProject Rivers in making a decision whether to waste time writing a standalone article, with infoboxen and bells and whistles, or just put the text straight into #Tributaries section of the drain river. As such, I see no harm for it to sit here within the WikiProject scope with the warning note that per this RFC these criteria cannot be used as arguments in deletion discussions, only as a rule of thumb in making "article vs. redirect" choice during the initial content creation. Also, avoid using the term "notability" in its description, to avoid confusion with the policy. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:35, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Auto-generated lists
I recently created Lynx Creek (disambiguation), adding all the creeks by this name that I could find already mentioned in other articles. I presumed that there were probably more (did not go to the GNIS). Then I received a notification from Wikidata that the article had been linked there, which led me to this Swedish WP page and this Cebuano WP page. These pages are much more extensive than mine, appearing to be auto-generated from GNIS. They even have coords and maps.

Has this been considered here? Such pages may not meet guidelines here for DAB pages (but perhaps SIAs or List articles). And there would probably be a large manual effort to link rivers to existing articles due to varying naming conventions. It looks like the Cebuano WP has gone and created one-line stubs on every entry also (I wouldn't advocate for that myself.) Comments? MB 14:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd be wary of that, the GNIS is very useful, but it does contain mistakes. There are duplicates, streams that are no longer there, or go by another name, whatever - it could be used to start a list, but I'd want to check each entry and manually checking them would be a huge task. Kmusser (talk) 18:59, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed, I thought I would just start the conversation. These seem to be disambiguated by coordinates when necessary, of which there is no precedent here. Perhaps a tool could create Drafts, only to be made articles after manual editing/verification. There are a lot of things to iron-out first, including overlap with existing dab pages. MB 21:00, 14 January 2019 (UTC)