Talk:Meteor Crater

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Wouldn't this article be better located at Meteor Crater as the most common name, per the Wikipedia:Naming conventions?

Consider google's results.

  • "Barringer Crater": 5,330
  • "Meteor Crater": 56,900

Now, some references to "meteor crater" may be generic, but even if we include the location:

  • "Meteor Crater" and Arizona: 36,400

So clearly, "Meteor Crater" is many times more popular, and I think Barringer Crater should be the redirect. What do you think?--Pharos 02:02, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)


Hmmm, I'm not sure, for two reasons:
  • 1) "Barringer Crater" is the crater's official name, and I'm not sure if the naming conventions refer specifically to the proper names of locations. It's true, however, that were this a person's name we'd go by the most common reference.
  • But 2) I'd be worried about making this the main site of an article entitled "Meteor crater." According to Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Be_precise_when_necessary, we shouldn't "write or put an article on a page with an ambiguously-named title as though that title had no other meanings." For the moment there is no article on "meteor crater," but clearly this is not only the name of a specific site, but also a general term for a hole in the ground caused by a crater. By putting this article in the one with the more general term, we'd be effectively blocking out that page, and preventing the creation of a more general article.
I'd go for the specificity argument over the common name one personally, though I can also see reasons for changing the title. -- Asbestos 17:45, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I'm undecided on this. Prior to this article, I had only heard this crater referred to as Meteor Crater, never as Barringer Crater. However, I'm just an amateur; I have no formal education in geology or astronomy. Meteor Crater is a well-established name for this crater, though. Furthermore, I do not think that Meteor Crater could be used as a generic name, as it is technically a misnomer—any crater produced in such a manner should be called a meterorite crater. So I don't think we have to worry about; however, for the same reason, Barringer Crater probably is a better name. — Knowledge Seeker দ (talk) 01:24, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If "Meteor Crater" is so ambiguous and vague, then how is it that in an encyclopedia of a half-million articles, it seems to work perfectly fine as a redirect to "Barringer Crater"? When something is a redir instead of a disambig page, that's a pretty strong hint that nobody is confused about where the redirecting name should go. "Meteor Crater" will be perfectly fine as a name - "Barringer Crater" is OK, but a little on the pedantic side. Stan 05:43, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"Meteor Crater", capitalized, refers to this specific impact crater. Only "meteor crater", uncapitalized, is generic and the (quite rightly) redirects to impact crater. As to "formal names", Wikipedia, is not intended primarily for professional astronomers etc. but for the lay reader, who is much more likely to be familiar with "Meteor Crater".--Pharos 1 July 2005 22:51 (UTC)

[edit] New Nature Article

Someone who knows a lot about physics and/or the crater should go through and make sure that all the information is correct in light of the new analysis from Nature. Dave 00:10, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Use of definate article

Hi Pharos — you wanted the article to start with "Barringer Crater is a famous impact crater..." instead of "The Barringer Crater is a famous impact crater...", and suggested I look at other crater names. A brief glance at the articles on famous craters finds that most of them start the way I suggested:

Indeed, this is a style employed when talking about the majority of geological formations:

...and so on so forth.

Also note that the Barringer Crater website, http://www.barringercrater.com/science/ starts their article with "The Barringer Meteorite Crater is a gigantic hole...". The point isn't whether its name is "Barringer Crater" or "The Barringer Crater", obviously it's the former, but when discussing the Crater and starting an article on it, as in the case of the hundreds of articles on similar subjects in this project, you generally start with "The Barringer Crater". — Asbestos | Talk 13:51, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Images

Let's not overdo the number of images - four images, one per section, is quite enough! Also, please consider what value the images actually bring to the article. -- ChrisO 09:26, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

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