Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Milbanke Sound Group/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Laser brain 02:12, 27 February 2010 [1].

Milbanke Sound Group[edit]

Nominator(s): BT (talk) 17:17, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Featured article candidates/Milbanke Sound Group/archive1

I am nominating this for featured article because I feel the text in complete. BT (talk) 17:17, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. No dab links and no dead external links. Alt text is present, but needs work. It should cover the main points of the image, for example where the important islands are located in the first image. The alt text of the second image appears wrong, as the land mass is not entirely surrounded by water. Ucucha 19:32, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hopefully I made the alt texts clearer. BT (talk) 00:10, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, better now. Thanks! Ucucha 00:15, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, the prose could use some looking over. After reading the lead, I think parts are a bit wordy. I'd provide more examples but I need to get off the computer. If you could try and use the edits I made as a guide that would probably be helpful. Best, ceranthor 00:14, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Images appear to comply with policy. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 16:07, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Awickert (talk)

General

General: I usually see that articles like this have an ecology section, and this article doesn't. But if there is no info (or people who know more about process think that there is no need), then ignore me here. Awickert (talk) 09:01, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If there's any human history here, that should be mentioned as well (unless irrelevant to the scope, as per my ecology caveat). Awickert (talk) 09:01, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing about the ecology other than what is in the article and there is not much about human history. BT (talk) 19:14, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, then you can probably ignore me on that. Awickert (talk) 19:46, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A tectonic background is probably necessary for sufficient background to be a FA. These volcanoes lie at an interesting spot, around the North end of the Juan de Fuca Plate, so I imagine that there's an interesting tectonic history. The "origins" section approximates this, but could use some more broad-brush information for the interested novice. If you've exhausted your resources, email me and I'll see what I can find. Awickert (talk) 09:01, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A regional map would be nice. Folks like me from the mid-continent can't identify the location based on the zoomed-in images alone. Awickert (talk) 09:01, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I found a number of things that weren't supported by sources on a brief look-through. The major points seem to be supported, but everything will need to be for this to become a FA. Awickert (talk) 09:01, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Everything is sourced. A lava flow lying on beach deposits would obviously have some kind of interaction with water; when there is a beach there is water. BT (talk) 15:51, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Lede

Can you specify what type of mature forest? Awickert (talk) 09:01, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not really. The source only uses mature forest. BT (talk) 15:51, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Volcanoes

"...basaltic tuff breccia was sent throughout the surrounding landscape that deposited on glaciated granitic rock and unconsolidated beach gravel near the volcano...": I am thoroughly confused here. (1) Tuff is volcanic ash, and is not a breccia unless it later becomes one through sedimentary or deformational processes. (2) "was sent throughout the surrounding landscape" --> would deposited on the surrounding landscape be better? (3) "landscape that deposited" --> you mean the tuff was deposited, clearly. (4) Back to the beginning, tuff usually is rhyolitic in composition; are you sure it was basaltic? I don't currently have access to the source, and don't have time to check it out from the library :-(. If you're not in a hurry, I will have time when I get back in town at the end of the month. But the clock ticks at FAC... Awickert (talk) 09:01, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Blocks of basement granodiorite, some up to 2 m (6.6 ft) wide, are randomly suspended within the breccia": this makes sense for a deformational breccia (or a really riproaring sedimentary one), but not for a tuff. So this needs to be clarified. Awickert (talk) 09:01, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Origins

The first paragraph is wordy, but the science is good. Thanks to you, I'm learning about this hot spot!
As mentioned above, a basic tectonic background (perhaps for another section, touched on in the 2nd paragraph here) is probably necessary to educate those who don't know the regional tectonics or geology. This can be short and heavily wikilinked, but should be here IMO.

Wouldn't a tectonic background be a bit questionable since the origin and relationship of the Milbanke Sound Cones are uncertain? BT (talk) 15:51, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Monitoring

This is currently a bit of a smorgasbord and needs to be refined, perhaps into one or two focused paragraphs. These could be (1) local monitoring, and (2) volcanic hazards and broader impacts. Then the section would need to be renamed to "Monitoring and hazards". Awickert (talk) 09:01, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Overall the info in the article is pretty solid (with the tuff/breccia confusion as an exception), but I feel that it needs stylistic work and content expansion (biology/ecology, regional setting, any human history). I'm sorry that I won't be around to help and have to comment and run like this. I will be in touch roughly through Tuesday morning (Americas time). Awickert (talk) 09:01, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

BT: You just made the age of the Holocene wrong again, and the source for the "erosion" says nothing I can see about it. Please fix. Awickert (talk) 19:49, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing wrong with it. I gave the wrong source: [2]. In that source it says: Minimal erosion indicates all five volcanoes formed after the last glaciation, so they are probably less than 10,000 years old. BT (talk) 19:56, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. That is not the source that was there; thanks for fixing the reference. Yep - you're right. Awickert (talk) 20:07, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Sources look okay. We do rely rather heavily on a handful of references; are there no papers available in volcanology journals, etc? --Andy Walsh (talk) 02:31, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There aren't too many volcanological journals. I'll look through Nature and some others for references. ceranthor 19:08, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So far, I've found only a Science Direct article called "Body-wave tomography of western Canada", but it looks useful. It can be found on Google Scholar, at least an abstract. Perhaps, in addition to the aforementioned suggestions, you should add information about Milbanke Sound? ceranthor 19:12, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose on sourcing for now. I await response on my query above (and Ceranthor's helpful follow-up remarks) but I'm also troubled by other anomalies:

Your first two references are different, but they are represented the same in the References section.
I did a random fact check and the source does not support what you've written: "Although not related, the Milbanke Sound Group is close to the remains of a much older magmatic feature that was formed during the Tertiary period." You have that sourced to the Smithsonian page that reads "may be as old as Tertiary". As such, you can't state "was formed during the Tertiary" because your source doesn't definitively state that. More fact-checking should be done to ensure sources have been used properly.

--Andy Walsh (talk) 20:13, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Take a closer look at the first two references. They are not the same. One is for the subfeatures in the volcanic group and other is the main page about the volcanic group. There are no volcanological sources for these volcanoes because of their poor knowledge and 13 million years ago is the Tertiary period. I'm also done with this candidate anyway so I don't care if it fails or not. BT (talk) 01:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. You might inform us that you're withdrawing the article so additional reviewers don't waste their time. --Andy Walsh (talk) 01:58, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.