Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mountains

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Talk archive 1

Talk archive 2

Contents 1 Hikipedia 2 Infobox british hills double 3 Alpine huts in Canada 4 Descendant WikiProject Proposal 5 Clarification about Prominence 6 Opinions wanted on an AfD 7 More Geolinks templates? 8 Geolinks template now urgently needed 9 Categories 10 TopoZone.com map coordinates? 11 Mountain Pass infobox 12 Coordinates in two places 13 Figuring out the name of a mountain 14 What next for this Wikiproject? 15 Mount St. Helens 16 TfD nomination of Template:Infobox US mountain 17 Descedant project: WikiProject British hills 18 Project directory 19 Add Google maps to {{Infobox Mountain}}? 20 WP:Climbing is back

[edit] Hikipedia

Hello,

Some time ago I was inspired by Wikipedia and a few other hiking sites to create Hikipedia - a wiki entirely focused on hiking trails. I need your help in making it the best place for sharing information about hiking trails. Could you please visit the site and then give me some feedback about it?

I am especially looking for actionable feedback that I could use to improve site's engine and site's content. Would you consider submitting a trail to Hikipedia? Why? Why not? Can I do something that would change your mind? Would you contribute by submitting a photo? A trail report? Voting for trail's difficulty? Do you think that putting the content into public domain is a good idea? Do you think that I should add or improve handling of some trail-specific metadata?

Please post your feedback either here, on Wikipedia or use the feedback page on Hikipedia. Your feedback will help me greatly in building the site.

Let me tell you in a few words, why I think there is a place for Hikipedia and why it might be better suited than Wikipedia for building a free database of hiking trails. If you disagree with some of my opinions, then please by all means reply with your contrarguments.

First of all, Hikipedia is built around trail metadata - it can use that metadata to automatically embed weather report (via accuweather.com), to provide driving directions to the trailhead (via google.com), to search for trails using the metadata (i.e. one can search for easy to moderate trails within 100 miles from Seattle, WA). There are links to topo maps of the trail, to nearby geocaches and to nearby trails. In a separate section I can list guidebooks that include the trail together with a picture of frontpages (via amazon.com).

Additionally Hikipedia puts all its content in public domain, which makes it easy to legally republish the content in short publications like guesthouse handouts or hiking club posters - something that cannot be said about Wikipedia (as discussed on WikiTravel )

Currently Wikipedia has advantage over Hikipedia in an ownership structure. Wikipedia is sponsored by a non-profit foundation, where Hikipedia (at least its engine) is owned by me. Nevertheless Wikipedia also started as a one-man project and I hope that putting Hikipedia content into public domain will ensure everyone that I am not here to steal your work, but to share trail information with the rest of the hiking community. I plan to put google adsense textual advertisments on the site at one point, but it won't happen anytime soon - I am in the US on a H1b visa and currently it would be illegal for me to earn money from any other source than my primary employee (and with the current low trafic the hosting costs are still affordable for me).

Please share your thoughts and comments, so I can improve Hikipedia. Thank you for your time,

Regards,

Lukasz Anforowicz

PS. Disclaimer and apologies for readers that are not in the USA: Hikipedia uses US-specific information for weather reports and finding nearest town, so it cannot be used for storing hiking information about trails outside the US.

Anforowicz 03:00, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox british hills double

It would be nice if the fields in {{Infobox british hills double}} were made optional, as they are in {{Infobox Mountain}}, so that information such as translation or pronunciation doesn't have to be included if it's irrelevant. Is anyone able to do the necessary work? I'm afraid that kind of thing is a bit of a mystery to me. I'd ask Locke Cole but he seems to be on an extended wikibreak at the moment. -- Blisco 19:21, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alpine huts in Canada

I've begun adding articles for the various huts maintained by the Alpine Club of Canada, along with links to near-by mountains and features. The most recent addition, the Elizabeth Parker hut, has been nominated for deletion, with a suggestion to merge into the main ACC page. If we do this with all 24 huts, it'll make for a very long single article; I'd prefer to keep one article per hut but I can only do one or two articles a day. If anyone's interested in expressing some support for inclusionism, now would be a good time to speak up. Oh, and check Category:Mountain huts in Canada for what I've added so-far. Thanks!  :-) --ghoti 03:06, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Descendant WikiProject Proposal

I'm interested in creating a proposal for a WikiProject devoted to volcanoes, which can be a descendant to your WikiProject. I'm not sure if I can propose it, though because I'm what you Wikipedians call anons. Also, I might need someone from this WikiProject to create the initial page for my proposed WikiProject, since I might be restricted from creating a WikiProject, so can I propose a Volcano WikiProject even though I'm an anonymous user?74.225.117.237 17:13, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Just a question: why not register a username? It would be hard to contribute significantly to a new project as an anonymous user, and your credibility would be low. It's relatively painless to sign up ;) -- Spireguy 03:55, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification about Prominence

IMO it would be a good idea to clarify that the prominence referred to in the infobox should be the Clean Prominence and not the Optimistic Prominence. A general definition of prominence is also interesting. Maybe this distinction could be added to the Wiki article about prominence by someone who understands this better than I do.

There is no universal agreement among those who calculate prominence as to which method is best: "clean" (better called "lower bound" or "pessimistic"), "optimistic" (or "upper bound"), or "midrange". (This issue has generated a certain amount of traffic on the Yahoo Groups prominence mailing list.) It usually depends on the purpose of the list thus generated: do you want to include all contenders for a certain list, or only include the ones that are sure to make the cut? However, if one follows standard scientific practice, the midrange is the most reasonable, since it is most likely, on average, to be closest, and doesn't consistently under- or over-estimate the prominence value (minimizing systematic error, in other words). Hence when I enter prominence values I try to use the midrange value. (If using peakbagger, just average his clean and optimistic values.)

That said, the errors involved in most cases are small, and since prominence is most useful as a qualitative measure, it is unlikely to be important. Also, peak elevations, saddle elevations, and contour maps all have height uncertainties anyway, so absolute precision is rarely possible to achieve. A discussion of methodology, and this issue in particular, should probably be on prominence, but I don't think it's crucial. -- Spireguy 19:59, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate your discussion of the issue. The articles on prominence and fourteeners seem to be vague. Without clear criteria they seem meaningless to me. Even if arbitrary criteria are used they should be specified it seems. Sorry if forgot it sign my first post. Droll 20:46, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Clearly the prominence article does need at least some discussion on accuracy and methodology. However I'm not sure why you would say a prominence number is meaningless without a precise statement of how it is obtained. If the prominence is taken from a typical USGS topo map and is given as, say, 2,300 ft, then it's one of: 2,300-2,340 ft, 2,280-2,320 ft, or 2,260-2,300 ft (ignoring all other sources of error besides reading the height of the saddle). The differences involved in this example are about 3 percent, which isn't (to me) terribly significant. I guess my philosophy is that in an encyclopedia (as opposed to an original scientific paper), not every number has to be fully qualified and explained with details about methodology, especially when those details do not materially affect the way the number is used.

Certainly for some peaks, say fourteeners near the 300 foot prominence cutoff, it is significant to try to get as exact a figure as possible, and to specify any errors in an inexact figure. This is done on the fourteener page by giving a range of possible prominences. Is that what you are saying is vague on that page? I had hoped that giving the range is clear enough. Thanks for your input-- Spireguy 02:59, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Opinions wanted on an AfD

The Jim Haberl hut has been nominated for deletion. It's one of the 25-odd mountain huts in Canada for which I'm gradually writing articles. I believe this particular hut has sufficient notability to warrant an article, but deletions here are based on democratic process, not verifiable objective criteria. The hut is one of a collection, and *has* been written about in external references. Do folks here think we should have articles on huts? Also, should articles be deleted simply because they're about new things? If you have an opinion, PLEASE express it on the hut's AfD page.  ◉ ghoti 18:52, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More Geolinks templates?

{{Geolinks-US-mountain}} is great, but includes links that are inappropriate for Canadian mountains. Does anyone see a reason not to create a {{Geolinks-CA-mountain}}? Many of the US links don't work for Canadian locations, but there are some alternatives. And it would be nice to standardize it with a template.  ◉ ghoti 20:40, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I originally wrote {{Geolinks-US-mountain}}, before {{coor dms}} was written. I think that now Geolinks-US-mountain is superceded by the coordinates field in the infobox, and shouldn't be added to new articles. I haven't gone on a cleanup rampage, because other people disagree. So, I would think the same for Canadian mountains, too. -- hike395 22:43, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

You know what? I disagree.  :-) Unless I'm missing something, I think that while {{coor dms}} is important, it doesn't provide the quick mountain-oriented info that your template does. {{Geolinks-Canada-region}} or {{Geolinks-Canada-cityscale}} are close, but still not ideal. From my WP reading, I don't see anything that would prevent me from filling a need that I see, as you did.... Am I being too bold, as I seem to have been with alpine huts??  ◉ ghoti 04:18, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

First, rest assured that I won't post such a template on TfD. I think you are being unfairly punished for your alpine huts articles at AfD --- that's a hotbed for rampant m:deletionism. I think RedWolf's suggestion about merging into a Canada-wide or province-wide article is a good one.

There's nothing against the rules for creating {{Geolinks-CA-mountain}}: I was just suggesting that it may not be needed. hike395 12:53, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Geolinks template now urgently needed

For some reason (which I don't understand), {{coor dms}} now points exclusively at Google Maps. This doesn't have much value for mountains: you usually can't see a mountain peak on the Satellite view, and never on the Street Map view.

So, now Geolinks are really vital: if we want to link to topo maps, we have to use our own Geolinks templates.

I urge all project participants to now use {{geolinks-US-mountain}}, and as ghoti says above, we should extend it to other countries, too.

Does anyone know what happened to coor dms? Later: apparently, the web host that coor dms points to is broken, see Template talk:coor dms

hike395 08:22, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

A replacement web site has been created, so the urgency on using the geolinks template is reduced. However, now I believe that coor dms is fragile, so I see the utility in the geolinks template. hike395 20:35, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

I have a question about categories. I noticed that "Category:Volcanoes of Oregon" is a subcategory of "Category:Mountains of Oregon". It is my understanding that it is undesirable to use both of these categories in the same article since one is a subset of the other. What I did was remove the category "Category:Mountains of Oregon" from most of the articles about volcanoes. Was I right in doing this. If not I'll go back and fix things. --Droll 08:24, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I just read the discussion above and it would seem to imply that volcanoes are not a subset of mountains. Now what? --Droll 09:48, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Never mind. I recategorized the Oregon volcanoes as mountains. --Droll 23:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Keeping volcanoes and mountains separate is correct, I think, but then I thought this 2 years ago, also hike395 03:17, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TopoZone.com map coordinates?

I have noticed that when using Template:geolinks-US-mountain the link resulting for TopoZone.com yields a result which interprets the input coordinates as being NAD27. I have been entering coordinates based on NAD83/WGS84 for North America based on Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates#Geodetic system which says that "All coordinates should be referenced to WGS84, or an equivalent datum". I could easily modifying the template if there is no objection. I think this is the proper place to discuss this since the template relates to mountains. --Droll 10:27, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, this sounds like the right thing to do. hike395 01:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Without objection it is done --Droll 00:20, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mountain Pass infobox

I recently created an article, Pinkham Notch, about a mountain pass in New Hampshire. Is there an infobox I can use? If not, can someone help me make or find one? Its an FA candidate, and could use one. Feel free to fix it up while you're there. -- Sturgeonman 16:23, 1 October 2006 (UTC) Sorry. I found it above. Sturgeonman 16:24, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Coordinates in two places

I am curious if anyone knows why the Template:Coor dms is posted at the upper right, on the title line of every Mountain article...seems silly when we already have the coordinates in the infobox...if anyone knows how to fix this or can tell me how, let me know. Thanks.--MONGO 15:57, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I just reverted Template:Infobox Mountain Pass to the previous version before the redundant coordinates were added. Nationalparks 18:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

And now they are out of Template:Infobox Mountain as well. Nationalparks 18:40, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Figuring out the name of a mountain

I added a description to Virginia State Route 16, and it appears there are two mountains named Brushy Mountain that it crosses. But only the second one is in the USGS database. Can someone help me determine if the one between Sugar Grove and Marion, along which the Appalachian Trail runs, has another name? This can be seen here, including the name. Thank you. --NE2 20:14, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Topozone.com shows a Brushy Mountain there, in the middle of that clump of mountains between Marion and Sugar Grove. It appears to be the mountain over which the Appalachian Trail runs. But yea, the USGS GNIS database doesn't seem to list it. Odd since the maps in topozone.com are USGS maps. I'd go with the maps over the GNIS database. GNIS seems to have more gaps. Also, the DeLorme topo-atlas of Virginia, while it doesn't name Brushy Mountain there (has no name at all for the main ridge with the Appalachian Trail on it), it does name "Brushy Mountain Road" right there. There are so many Brushy Mountains in the central/southern Appalachians, I wouldn't be surprised if GNIS missed a few. I can't keep track of them all myself, that's for sure! Pfly 20:39, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

How would you disambiguate this? The one further north (just north of SR 42) is longer and more major, being shown on road maps like the VDOT transportation map. --NE2 20:50, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Are they in different counties? We've done things like XXX Mountain (YYY County, Virginia) and XXX Mountain (ZZZ County, Virginia). hike395 00:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Both of them enter Smyth County. --NE2 00:47, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The larger Brushy Mountain is the largest Brushy Mountain in Virginia, isn't it? It crosses a bunch of counties, I think. Perhaps it could be called "Brushy Mountain (Virginia)", if it really is the largest and most important. Then others could be given county names. Or the large one could be given the full list of counties it is part of, although that might get unwieldy. Also, there is the question of whether smaller Brushy Mountains, like the one in southern Smyth County, will ever get a page on wikipedia. Isn't it relatively small and not very notable? Maybe it doesn't need a link to a page that isn't there anyway. Just some thoughts. Pfly 01:15, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What next for this Wikiproject?

Looks like the infoboxes are under control. I can see work going in 2 directions:

1. Expand out from mountains: mountain passes, mountain ranges, etc.
2. Bring our favorite articles up to good article / feature article / V 1.0 status

What do others think? hike395 00:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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) 03:17, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:Infobox US mountain

Template:Infobox US mountain has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. RedWolf 06:52, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Descedant project: WikiProject British hills

I've set up a WikiProject British hills for all the hills and mountains of Great Britain (with scope for it to be renamed "British and Irish hills" if there's enough interest in that direction). There's plenty of work going on in these articles at the moment with very little collaboration or coordination, and I think a new project with a relatively narrow scope should help focus efforts. Please consider signing up if you have any interest or involvement in the area! --Blisco 00:01, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia: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 14:50, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Add Google maps to {{Infobox Mountain}}?

See the discussion at Template talk:Infobox Mountain. Thanks! hike395 10:32, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:Climbing is back

Yes, wikiproject Climbing is back up! We're going to be working with you guys on mountain related articles, and we'd appreciate your help on climbing related articles as well! Check it out at WP:CLIMB.⇒ SWATJester ^Ready Aim _Fire! 06:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)