Talk:Krakatoa

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Contents 1 Picture 2 Spelling 3 "Citation needed" for the lead 4 Reverts of Child 5 Atricle could be visually improved. 6 Talk item found in text referring to lower right map 7 Who is Lady Bull? 8 Media section 9 Vandalism 10 Jan 22, 2007 edit regarding research on pryoclasic flow experiment 11 SI units? 12 Futureweapons: Krakatoa 13 Waves from the tsunamis were recorded as far away as the English Channel... 14 A Question 15 Krakatoa to Krakatau? 16 "Hecacres"? 17 Requested move 17.1 Survey 17.1.1 Survey - in support of the move 17.1.2 Survey - in opposition to the move 17.2 Discussion 17.3 Wikipedia guidelines

[edit] Picture

Anyone have a recent picture? The engraving currently illustrating the article is from before the 1883 eruption, which was massive and explosive enough that the volcano really looks nothing like that anymore. --Delirium 00:01, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

You're right - but the article is about the volcano that was called Krakatoa - and strictly speaking it no longer exists. The current 19th century illustration is an accurate depiction of that volcano before it was blown to smithereens. The new volcano is named Anak Krakatoa - same place, different mountain.--Gene_poole 05:19, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't know about that picture- I know that Winchester uses it, but I first saw it used for Krakatoa in the juvenille version of Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us (dating from the early '60s). It doesn't seem to have used for any of the 1880s publications (if I'm wrong, please let me know!), and bears no resemblance to any of the sketchs before or after the eruption or the May 1883 photographs. Granted, the photos are of Perboewatan with probably Danan in the background, and the woodcut is of Rakata to the south, but it doesn't seem to have room for two more cones even on the other side. And, the island DOES still exist. The northern 2/3 disappeared with Perbowatan, Danan and the northern half of Rakata (along with a good chunk of seabed to the NW), but the southern half of Rakata still remains and actually grew in area to the west due to pumicefall. The island went from approxiamately 18 square miles to 6 square miles. Photos of Rakata's cliff are quite striking, in part due to an exposed dike in the middle. Recent pics may be found online at Volcano World. CFLeon 22:59, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I still don't know anything about the origin of the woodcut, but the more I look at it, the more I can see some similarity to pictures of Rakata seen from the south- in particular, Verbeek's Oct 1883 woodcut reproduced in Furneaux. If you remove the uppermost white area at the summit, it's quite similar. Soime of the 1883 accounts seem to indicate that Rakata's summit collapsed before August 26. But the altitude measurements of Rakata's peak before and after the catastrophe indicate no change, and there doesn't seem to be much similarity to other pre-1883 drawings from the west or east. Plus, when I tried as a control, I was also able to see a resemblance to Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens pre-1980. CFLeon 06:00, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I have lots of photos of Krakatoa that I took recently but dont know how to upload them. If someone wants to email me at edwin_phillips@hotmail.com i can send them through.

I've added a Landsat picture of the area from 1992. Anynobody 07:38, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

The correct spelling of the old volcano is "Krakatau." Shouldn't we use that one in the article, and flip around the way things are set up right now (Krakatau redirecting to Krakatoa)? Of course, the section explaining the roots of the name should stay, to explain the common misspelling. I checked on Google, and the score is about 197,000 to 84,000 in favor of Krakatoa. Google shouldn't be the final arbiter, but it does show that a sufficient proportion (about 30%) are using the correct spelling. On Wikipedia, though, it's overwhelmingly in favor of (the incorect) Krakatoa). The US Geographical Survey (a far superior authority to google) prefers Krakatau.

I personally think that as much as possible, Wikipedia should use local geographic forms. (Is there a wikipolicy on this? I looked in the style guide but couldn't find it.) However, I checked another one (Turin/Torino), and it goes in favor of the English spelling (Turin). However, for Livorno, it avoids the English spelling (Leghorn). So it's pretty inconsistent throughout. I guess putting the local name in parenthesis after the English name is ok, but in this case, where the common English spelling is ?based on a typo? [suggested in the article], I think we should go with the correct (Bahasa Indonesia) spelling. (Ironically, "Bahasa Indonesia) redirects to "Indonesian" grrrrrr) Binkymagnus 18:38, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

You're right that there's no consistency - I think these things need to be decided on a case-by-case basis. For example, someone suggested moving Victoria Falls to Mosi-oa-Tunya, but that was not done because Victoria Falls is by far the most familiar name to most people. Ayer's Rock, on the other hand, redirects to Uluru - not the most common name for it but probably as well known as the old colonial name and increasingly commonly heard these days. In this case, I would personally think we should stick with Krakatoa, because it's the name most people are familiar with and would be searching for information on. But to be honest I don't feel too strongly about keeping it there, I'm happy with either way.Worldtraveller 23:21, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that we should use the terminology that most people are familiar with, as that is what we can reasonbably expect them to be searching for. Our job is not to correct historic "errors", but simply to report them, along with an explanation of how they came to be. --Gene_poole 23:41, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've been poking around on the internet, and noticed something interesting. A lot of geological sites tend to use Krakatau [USGS, U. of South Dakota] whereas lay sites use Krakatoa [Simon Winchester's popular book]. On the issue of putting in what people are searching for, that's what the redirect is for, and anyway, I personally think the point of Wikipedia should be to inform people of things they didn't know. And really, if we really wanted to cater to what people are searching for, Wikipedia would become a porn site ;) Anyway, ref worldtraveller's comment, I did the same google test I did for Krakatoa/Krakatau on Uluru/Ayers rock, and came up with almost the same results. 650000 Ayers Rock, 320000 Uluru (33% Uluru), and Uluru is the name of the article. On the Victoria Falls one, it's not even close to that (2.6 million Victoria Falls, 23,000 Mosi-oa-Tunya). I say we take a stand for historical accuracy, and against typos, and rename the article Krakatau. For Mt. McKinley/Denali, the Google test is overwhelmingly in favor of Denali (although that one is skewed by the fact that there's an SUV called Denali). In this case, it's so minor that I don't think any damage would be done by switching to Krakatau. Anyway, I'm going to start this same debate on the McKinley (should be Denali) page. But I also think it should not be a case-by-case decision, but I think there should be a wiki-wide decision to create consistency. I'm kind of new to wiki, is there a community-wide page to dicuss policy issues like that? Binkymagnus 01:18, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

Don't forget that Wikipedia is designed for a general readership, most of whom are familiar with "Krakatoa" and have never heard of "Krakatau". As long as we explain the difference within the article we are being sufficiently informative. Concerning the google test, it is not a valid benchmark in this case; most of the scientific references it pulls up are related to the new island of Anak Krakatau, which did not exist before the 1920s - although it is sited at the same location as Krakatoa. --Gene_poole 02:12, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough, but the inconsistency thing is bugging me. I wonder if there's an external authority that could be agreed upon for place names. But anyway, I don't think Anak Krakatau had that great of an effect on the googling, since there are only 840 hits on it. Not surprisingly, the proportion of Anak Krakatau to Anak Krakatoa is similar to the Krakatau/Krakatoa. Although to me (I speak Indonesian) Anak Krakatoa is really weird, since anak is Indonesian, and Krakatoa is not. Oh well, I guess I should be "shocked, really shocked" that there are inconsistencies out there. But I do think there should be some normative educational value to Wikipedia, since, for example, I did not know that Ayers Rock was called Uluru until I saw it on Wikipedia. So I guess you learn something every day.

But either way it's spelled, I don't much like sentence 2 of para 1 of the origin of the name section. Because either way you like to spell it, the statement "nearly all mentions used the spelling Krakatau," is simply not true. And I think "probably" is too strong for the theory that Krakatoa was a typo. I'll freely admit that Krakatoa appears to be preferred (even if it bugs me). I've made a couple of changes to that (I've also italicized Krakatau, since it's in Bahasa Indonesia). I left it as is (Krakatau) in the reference to onomatopoeia, though, because the original namers who were allegedly inspired by the parrots, called it "Krakatau." As for the thing about "Kaga tau," should it stay? It says that explanation has been discounted (it is silly), but it's a good story, even if it is apocryphal. Feel free to make changes if you think my anti-Krakat"oa" ism has crept in. Binkymagnus 03:31, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

I am in two minds about this issue. On one hand, the English language version of Wikipedia should use the most common English name, as the Bahasa Indonesian Wikipedia (for example) should use the most common Bahasa Indonesian name. On the other hand, moving the page to Krakatau, with Krakatoa redirecting to it, wouldn't do any harm as readers would still be able to type in Krakatoa to get the article they want. How is this rectifiable? --Urbane legend 12:27, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

To complicate matters, some older sources (pre-World War 2) spell it 'Krakatao'. I'm ignoring all the other variants which never caught on (I've found about two dozen) - just the ones used after 1883. The Dutch always used 'Krakatau' in every source I've ever seen; and that does seem to be the preferred spelling in the non-English world, as well as academically. English references are stil influenced by popular treatments (21 Balloons, The Time Tunnel, the movie and all those children's volcano books) which use the '-toa'. It seems that since the 1983 centennial, the push has been to use the '-tau'. CFLeon 01:09, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

All the variant spellings before 1883 that I've ever seen make it clear that 'Krakatau' was the form actually heard. Another point: 'Krakatau' and 'Rakata' obviously have a common origin; this is more apparent if you hear how 'Krakatau' is actually pronounced by a native speaker. CFLeon 00:16, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I've collected about 2 dozen spellings variants and not one is 'Krakatowa'. In all literature I've seen, the Dutch used 'Krakatau'. However, I'll freely admit I have no access to any original forms except the 1883 Nature report. CFLeon 07:20, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm...I was just wondering about this article title being misspelled (even if it's become colloquially correct due to constant misuse), and saw this discussion. I agree with Urbane legend that the public would be better served by having the correct spelling (as shown by the results from the various academic/scientific sources mentioned by Binkymagnus) and having the popular misspelling redirect to it. I trust the results of querying academic/scientific sources much more than Google. So, shall we settle this issue? ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 04:39, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I think I've found the origin of the spelling 'Krakatoa'. Just the other day, I was going through some hand-written notes I had made and found an instance where I had written 'Krakatau', but I had been a bit rushed and the last 'a' had not looped as much as it should and looked more like an 'o'. Someone else reading a hand-written note or journal entry could easily mistake the 'au' for 'oa', and the South Pacific-type ending actually sounds reasonable. It's quite common to find this sort of confusion (another example is 'gavial' for 'gharial').CFLeon 01:07, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Citation needed" for the lead

Someone tagged Atmospheric shock waves reverberated around the world seven times and were felt for five days with "citation needed". The same statement is found verbatim in [1] and probably other places as well. I've no idea where it originated, so I wouldn't want to simply drop that URL in as the source. Awyong Jeffrey Mordecai Salleh 01:17, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reverts of Child

In Indonesian, anak is 'child' and does not have any gender attributed to it - Son is not implied or literal - please desist from changing that SatuSuro 01:50, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming this. I hope this ends the silly sexist edits. Since it might be asked, How WOULD the male form be expressed? CFLeon 06:00, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Atricle could be visually improved.

I thought that there needed to be a few visual additions to this article, such as clear and scaled before and after maps of the islands. Also, a side on profile of the layers/magma chambers (labeled) inside the volcano before the eruption. If anyone could add these without infringing copyright it would improve the article greatly. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 58.104.37.245 (talk • contribs) .

[edit] Talk item found in text referring to lower right map

We have made a certain typo since when in the picture we have posted up on the right, panjang means long, not lang - unsigned (22:04, 26 September 2006 210.213.158.163 (Talk) (→Anak Krakatau)) pasted here by SatuSuro 14:14, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

But Lang is Dutch for 'long' and was the Dutch name for the island. It may be a mistake, but is not an error. CFLeon 07:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Who is Lady Bull?

"The area around Java is now known as Lady Bull because of its fiery nature." What does this sentence mean? Adam 12:12, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

The sentence was added here in May 2006 by a user with a solitary edit, and I can find no reference to this, so I think its safe to say it was undetected vandalism. Funny and sad that all the Wikipedia mirrors have the same sentence when you do a google search. -- I@n 14:28, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Media section

I am now in the process of moving the media section (which, let's face, is just another name for "popular culture") to a new seperate article: Krakatoa in media and popular culture. This section simply informs us of these things. That is very different to information that actually informs us about the subject - ie, the volcano. Ie, does mention Yngwie J. Malmsteen's musical actually help us understand the volcano? Or video games? I think not. I will now put a link to the new article in the See Also section. Merbabu 09:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

This article has got to be the most vandalized out of the > 1000 articles we have on the Indonesia wikiproject. Has anyone considered asking for semi-protection? Reverting the frequent contributions of mindless anonymous vandals becomes tiring for those involved after a while. (MichaelJLowe 12:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC))

Sounds like a job for...duh-duh duh-duuh! MichaelJLowe! I agree, it is odd how much this is vandalized. I suspect it is probably specifically linked from one or more popular sites. Any of the tech. articles have this problem when an outlet such as slashdot.org links to them. —Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 13:14, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I think its just because little boys (and girls) have a fascination with volcanoes, and Krakatoa is one of the most famous. Not to mention its significance to the wacko-scientologists. Instead of me asking an admin for protection and being rejected (as per SatuSuro), we have a better chance if there is a consensus among the editors here for protection. (MichaelJLowe 03:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC))

I have an idea. How about making this article into FA? We wouldn't worry after that for vandals. ;-) — Indon (reply) — 13:27, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

i had asked on admin about it few weeks ago - he said one vndl a day was not enough for protection.... I think he was hinting there are some with such incessantt vndlsm that they get protection prefrence.... sigh SatuSuro 13:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jan 22, 2007 edit regarding research on pryoclasic flow experiment

German university test as televised on United States' Discovery Channel, http://www.discovery.com/krakatoa, showing results of superheated steam and tsunami creation due to interaction of flow with water. [edit]Kiel University, Germany, shown as (televised) source of experiment. Dinosnake 01:35, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SI units?

Why does it say it has no SI units? Isn't "cubic kilometres" an SI unit? Thanks. AstroHurricane001^{(Talk+Contribs+Ubx)} 18:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that, though the page lacks the base SI unit of volume (cubic meters), it is far more fluid to speak of cubic km than billion cubic meters. I think that cubic km is perfectly acceptable.

[edit] Futureweapons: Krakatoa

Watching an (rerun) episode of Futureweapons on Discovery Channel. There's an ordnance device named after the volcano. It's a handheld munition which can penetrate one inch of steel at 50 meters, or do the same magnetically attached to a steel hull with an underwater package. Can anyone find more info? — Nahum Reduta 10:43, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

what is its relevance to this article? It has nothing to do with the volcano. Rather, the volocano is relevant to it, but not the other way around. Merbabu 11:25, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Waves from the tsunamis were recorded as far away as the English Channel...

This sounds...impossible without causing huge amounts of damage between Indonesia and the U.K. The entire continents of Asia, Africa, and parts of Southern Europe are in the way. I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but I seriously think land stops tsunamis which is why Australia and the Persian Gulf didn't get hit hard by the 2004 tsunami, Indonesia and India were each in the way. Anynobody 07:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Your action of removing the fact is justifiable because there no citation to this fact, but I think the recorded wave does not necessarily a tsunami wave, but some minuscule irregular wave recorded by some devices to monitor the ocean wave. — Indon (reply) — 07:19, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your support, deleting info always makes me feel weird. I agree with you though, I wouldn't dispute the fact that as a coincidence they had irregular waves in the English Channel around that time. I would need to see a pretty solid source saying they were related. I also have doubts about the concussion bouncing around the atmosphere seven times. 200 megatons is a big bang, to say the least, but the Soviet Union once tested a 50 megaton device, the Tsar bomba. If 200 Mt would go around seven times then 50 Mt should go around almost twice (meaning some parts felt it twice). I figured I'd leave it while I look for a citation. Anynobody 08:28, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

The citations for both of these facts can be found in Simon Winchester's book on the subject. I don't have my copy to hand or I'd add them myself. --Gene_poole 12:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I double checked, and the rebounding atmospheric shock waves are accurate. I'm not familiar with Mr. Winchester's book though, I know you said you don't have a copy handy but do you remember how he explained the connection between the eruption and the English Channel? If there is a rational explanation I can accept it. (There are many natural events that are unbelievable yet true, ie the rogue wave.) Anynobody 00:43, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A Question

Has there been anything done to minimize the destruction that was caused in 1883? Ed Vice 21:12, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean, to minimize comparable destruction in case of a future similar eruption? If so, there is not a lot that can be done short of moving many millions of inhabitants. However, another gargantuan explosive eruption is moderately unlikely for a while - you need to build up the big cone such as was there in 1883, or was at Mt St Helens in 1980, to constrain things and allow for the violent explosion. This is not to say there may not be small ones, even killer ones. But you need a big pile of rock constraining the underlying pressure to have a big one. Cheers Geologyguy 21:24, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Krakatoa to Krakatau?

I've noticed that the USGS and the Smithsonian Institute refer to the volcano by it's Indonesian name. Krakatoa is more of an onomatopoeia than a name as I understand it. Would anyone oppose changing the name to Krakatau and adding a redirect to it from Krakatoa? Anynobody 08:39, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The volcano is primarily known as Krakatoa - not Krakatau. If there are any redirects the less popular form should redirect to the most popular. --Gene_poole 09:15, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Primarily according to what source though? To see which one the USGS uses, I performed two searches on google, the first with the Indonesian spelling: krakatau site:.gov got 916 hits most of which discuss the volcano. krakatoa site:.gov returned 545 hits many about the volcano, but several about the movie, a coffee house, and a brand of cigarette among other things. Most of the USGS hits were under the Krakatau spelling, whereas other agencies such the as the NOAA or the treasury dept which had the coffee house hit tend to refer to it as Krakatoa. Does anyone know how they refer to the volcano in other prominent geology agencies? Anynobody 10:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The official name of the mountain is Krakatau. The Krakatoa name is truely a spelling mistake by a British journalist when he reported the event. I don't know why Wikipedia adopts the wrong one, maybe because it was more popular in media or in pop culture. However, I will support the move proposal. — Indon (reply) — 10:24, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I always understood 'Krakatoa' to be the English name, 'Krakatau' the Indonesian. Merbabu 10:56, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

There are over a million google results for "Kratakatoa" and only about half that for "Krakatau". We should use the most common spelling as the default option, and have the less common usage redirect to that - not vice-versa. --Gene_poole 23:24, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

There is a basic problem with citing the shear number of hits on Google, you've got to look at the actual results themselves. When I did this above I pointed out that both searches led to unrelated sites that happen to use the name. There are a lot more unrelated links under a search using Krakatoa, in your example the fifth hit was for The Krakatoa Java Program Tool and the sixth a band called Krakatoa.

Merbabu you are correct in saying Krakatoa is an English name for the Indonesian Krakatau. I believe we should use the native name, but if people want to use a colonial name then Krakatoa is still incorrect. The Dutch essentially took the area away from the Portuguese, which explains the Krakatao name. Until WW2 the whole area was called the Dutch East Indies, so an English name shouldn't really apply. Anynobody 06:35, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Since I'm not the only editor who feels a name change is warranted, I'm going to add a proposal for namechange tag. Anynobody 22:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Hecacres"?

In the section on "Handl's occupancy" it stated that his lease was for "870 hecacres". I think this must be a typo, but it's not obvious whether it was supposed to be hectares or mumble-acres. I have changed it to hectares, but if anyone knows for sure what it's supposed to be, please update. The entire section is uncited, which is unfortunate. Rocinante9x 15:45, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd never heard of hecacres either, nor has the default spelling dictionary of my browser. I support Rocinante9x's change unless a citation to the contrary can be found. Anynobody 22:48, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move