Talk:Great Barrier Reef

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	To-do list for Great Barrier Reef:	edit  · history  · watch  · refresh
Find more information about Indigenous Australian use, management, and association with the GBR. - probably very difficult. Add more stuff on human history on the GBR in general. More stuff on the ecosystem and ecology. [1] (nb. out of date.) "The Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area has been divided into 70 bioregions.[1]" Put more information on the different corals and sea-life. See [2] Look into the scientific literature on the GBR. Coral Reefs, Marine Biology [3] Put more information on the actual geography (different areas etc.). Not zoning! [4] Update climate change section with info from [5] Mention research into biological compounds found on the reef eg. sunscreen. Find out more about what cyclones do to the GBR. (see [6] [7] [8])
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Contents 1 Britannica highlight 2 Pop Culture section? 3 Passed GA 4 Conflicting numbers on size of GBR... 5 Human use 6 Royal Commissions - Help! 7 Reef vs reef 8 Automated Peer Review 9 Vandalists 10 Great Barrier Reef 11 Gallery 12 Species 13 Split off "Environmental threats" section?

[edit] Britannica highlight

An article entitled Great Barrier Reef appeared at britannica.com as a Britannica highlight on 30 May 2005. See [9]. Courtland 17:03, 2005 May 30 (UTC)

[edit] Pop Culture section?

I think it would be fun to list movies, books, and TV shows that take place in the Great Barrier Reef. Finding Nemo is the first thing that comes to mind. 68.103.154.11 04:11, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Passed GA

Congratulations to editors of this article its now attain GA status. Please continue to expand the two stub sections Gnangarra 11:39, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Conflicting numbers on size of GBR...

Fodor's reference [10] puts the number of reefs at 3,000 and islands at 900, which has been in the article for some time. However, the CRC Reef Research Centre [11] puts the numbers at 2,900 reefs and 618 islands. I'm inclined to think the latter are better numbers than a travel guide. Also, the marine park authority states that the GBR is up to 18 million years old [12], while the CRC Reef Centre says 500,000 years old. [13] What do people suggest we use? --MattWright (talk) 00:26, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the source of the size confusion is between the Reef itself and the larger Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. I'd want to try and double-check the CRC figures with another academic source, if possible - most literature on the GBR seems to be on its health, not its size or its age/geological composition. As for the age confusion, due to fluctuating sea levels, the Reef has grown at different times - it could just be that the Marine Park Authority drilled down further. Can you locate any academic sources on either of these matters, at all? I'm willing to try and help, but I'm not very knowledgeable on what journals to go to. While I'm here, can I just please make a request to keep the article to Australian English? Thanks :) - Malkinann 00:52, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about the English changes, it's just natural for me when writing to use US English, but I am fine with it being corrected. I actually don't always know how to write in Australian English, so hopefully you will understand. I certainly didn't change any of that on purpose. One change you made, however, was adding Torres Strait Islanders under Human use of the Great Barrier Reef. They are already included under the term Indigenous Australians according to that page, so I don't know why we are singling that group out? --MattWright (talk) 01:40, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

No worries.  :) I must have gotten confused between "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander", as used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and "Indigenous Australian" (also used by the ABS), which does seem to cover both. Whoops. - Malkinann 03:47, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Human use

I keep on finding that the 'human use' section is retitled to 'Indigenous Australians'. Please don't do this - if you can find more information on Indigenous Australian use and association with the GBR, please feel free to expand it into a sub-section of 'human use'. As it is, 'human use' covers both Indigenous Australian use (poorly, I'll admit) and European and current usages of the Reef. - Malkinann 11:07, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Royal Commissions - Help!

I'm going to need some help finding out anything more about the Royal Commissions on oil and the GBR. As they were from 1970-1975, there's not much on the web, and it looks like it'd be in the National Archives... Are there any things that have analysis of Royal Commissions? The thought of going to the National Archives is a bit scary... It seems like after the commissions, the governments got their skates on and turned the GBR into a park. But there's nothing really available on the GBRMPA site, or anywhere else in detail, for that matter. It just seems to be that 'There was one', and that's it. Thanks. :) - Malkinann 02:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reef vs reef

I agree, there is no need for the word "reef" to be capitalized unless used in the title of Great Barrier Reef G8summit 20:09, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Why are many mentions of the word "reef" capitalized? Surely this must be a mistake.--Tug201 13:39, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Automated Peer Review

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

• Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of undefined, use undefined undefined, which when you are editing the page, should look like: undefined undefined.^[?]
• When writing standard abbreviations, the abbreviations should not have a 's' to demark plurality (for example, change kms to km and lbs to lb).
• Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Build the web, years with full dates should be linked; for example, link January 15, 2006.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), headings generally should not repeat the title of the article. For example, if the article was Ferdinand Magellan, instead of using the heading ==Magellan's journey==, use ==Journey==.^[?]
• Please make the spelling of English words consistent with either American or British spelling, depending upon the subject of the article. Examples include: meter (A) (British: metre), metre (B) (American: meter), ization (A) (British: isation), cosy (B) (American: cozy), program (A) (British: programme).
• Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
  • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
• Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.^[?]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Malkinann 22:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalists

All right now this is getting annoying! Can you guys just grow up and STOP destroying a good article on a good part of Australia. Go find something else to do, instead of vandalising wikipedia!!! Cocopopz2005 04:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Great Barrier Reef

I was reading the article about the Great Barrier Reef and found that someone added a swear word(f.u.)to the article. I'm just 11 years old and I would like to do my school reports without having to worry about immature people editing the content of the articles in such a way. I hope you will do something about it, Sincerely, Concered User

Replied at this user's Talk Page. - Malkinann 08:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this! I'm 12 years old and while doing a report for Great Barrier Reef, I found many words that weren't appropriate. Please stop doing this!

[edit] Gallery

I'm just putting the gallery pictures and information here for now - the clownfish and the giant clam photo can probably be used if we expand the Species section. All of these pictures are on the wikicommons anyway, so they won't evaporate if we don't use them right this minute. - Malkinann 08:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Clownfish on the Great Barrier Reef

Satellite image of the northernmost part of the Great Barrier Reef

Giant Clam on the Great Barrier Reef

[edit] Species

I thought I heard on a documentary that the GBR has the highest concentration of species per square kilometre, or the highest number of different species per square kilometre (or something) of any place in the world. If it can be verified, I think it'd go well in the introduction.

It would, but you'd think the tourist brochures would be all over a figure like that. -Malkinann 11:54, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Split off "Environmental threats" section?

I'm proposing this split because I think the article is getting too long (37KBish) and the Environmental threats section is the longest. This would give room in the main GBR article for more stuff on the geology/geography and ecology/ecosystems/species stuff, which has a wider appeal. Thoughts? -Malkinann 11:54, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't necessarily think it is too long at this point, but it might make sense to split that section into its own article "Threats to the Great Barrier Reef". The existing text would just need to be synthesized into a few coherent paragraphs that remain in the main article. --MattWright (talk) 17:35, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Why just 'Threats to the Great Barrier Reef'? is this this 'future proofing' that I see thrown about every so often?-Malkinann 09:16, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, Environmental threats is fine, I didn't purposefully leave off that word. --MattWright (talk) 14:54, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this article should be split. This would allow for further expanding of the section without worrying about changing the context of the article in general. That way anyone just wanting info on the barrier reef can find it, while people wanting to know specifics about threats to it can find that in a separate article linked to this one in a brief section. G8summit 20:12, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I've done it, but I need help summarising what's in the main article. -Malkinann 22:04, 24 March 2007 (UTC)