Talk:List of glaciers

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1 Title
2 Multi-country bodies of ice?
3 Sections
4 Unreferenced
5 Subheadings
6 Multiple columns
7 Additions

[edit] Title

Can we move the page to maybe List of glaciers and icefields or List of glaciers and ice fields?Jarfingle 03:21, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Not sure...by icefields I suppose we would mean also ice sheets as well...I'll have to look up the defs on ice sheets, ice field and glacier to see if there are any reasosn they aren't all one and the same, with glacier being the geology/glaciology accepted terminology.--MONGO 05:04, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Still thinking about this.

List of glaciated areas?
List of glaciers, icefields and icesheets?

etc...--MONGO 21:40, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Other related terms are "ice sheet", "ice cap" and "ice shelf". I'd be inclined to keep the existing title and add new titles as above as needed. These terms are not necessarily well-defined. For ice cap, I found "A dome shape mass of glacier ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 19,300 miles" but I don't know if that is generally accepted. [1] Lists are intended to guide the user to content that may be of interest. As such, I think some overlap and ambiguity is acceptable. Walter Siegmund (talk) 14:43, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-country bodies of ice?

Do we list bodies of ice in two countries (e.g., Stikine Icecap) under both entires? Jarfingle 03:24, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I would list the glacier under both countries. Another area that was confusing when I expanded this list were the glaciers in Kashmir, which is disputed, so I listed them under what appeared to be the currently controlled and most likely of either India or Pakistan.--MONGO 05:06, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sections

I'd prefer to see the top-level sections alphabetically arranged. Charles Matthews 08:28, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks...I was meaning to get a hold of you since you started this page. I'll arrange the headings alphabetically.--MONGO 08:31, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unreferenced

I've added the tag to this article because the number of references is far less than the number of names contained within it. Rvwedd 12 Decemeber 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure there are pages in greater need of the tag. Is your concern that the articles listed as about glaciers are not really about glaciers? This is pretty easy to check? Or that the red links are about non-existent glaciers? Or what?

Charles Matthews 16:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm just concerned about the lack of references for such a large list, although I have no doubt about the validity of the glaciers names but the tag was added becuase it is an issue about the article that does need to be dealt with as this is one of the more important glacier articles. The aim of the addition of this tag was not to cause shock but bring the issue to attention aiming to alleviate problems in the future of the lists creation.

Rvwedd 18:04 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subheadings

I think the recent improvements here look fine, but hope that too many subheadings under the U.S. section won't make this list seem too U.S.-centric. (I'm from the U.S. in case anyone was wondering). Maybe as more glacier articles from other areas of the world are created, this will sort itself out.--MONGO 04:58, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I added {{globalize}} but I don't think it will help much. I don't really know if it is necessary to list all glaciers or if some WP:N criteria should be established. At one point, I thought an area greater than 2.5 km² might be a reasonable criterion for notability. Walter Siegmund (talk) 05:48, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I want to limit articles based on a size of glacier crieria, though, there is some cutoff between what is glacier and what is a permanent ice/snowfiled that is partially based on size I believe. The USGS has stated that 0.10 km² is the minimal size for a glacier.[2]...but that is really small.--MONGO 13:14, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I think a problem with size being the only criterion is that a small glacier may be notable in an area where glaciers are rare and vice versa. Also, a small glacier may be notable because of its association with winter sports, dry season water supplies, because its anticipated or recent demise, or by its significance in history. Walter Siegmund (talk) 15:03, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Yup...no disagreement here. Just to get back to where we were...any objections to moving the individual glaciers/mountains back into the states and simply detailing where they are in each state...or should we wait and see if more articles from outside the U.S. get created? There are a lot of red links now and that's fine, but not really best for a list outside of userspace.--MONGO 15:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi folks, I should respond since I was the one who added a ton of US and Canadian glaciers, and split all those sections into subheadings. I am planning to eventually write articles for almost every glacier I added to the list, but I'm also hoping that others might also take the lead now that there are so many red links. I think most of these glaciers can eventually have an article as nice as Boulder Glacier. I have good photos of many of these glaciers, too. Regarding the Oregon glaciers which are marked "unnamed on map", there is a very nice article in Mazama (1938) titled "Our Vanishing Glaciers" which names and details these glaciers. I have personally verified and photographed the continued existence of the Jack Glacier and Diamond Glacier in 2000 and 2004. Glaciers that are on the verge of disappearance (or have already done so) are all the more notable for inclusion in WP. By the way, someone tried to delete all those glaciers, but I reverted those changes.

As for the globalization issue, it will be difficult (impossible) to completely resolve. Since we need published sources to write WP articles, and the vast majority of such references cover US and European glaciers, this systematic bias will always remain. Unless glaciologists start writing tons of articles about South American and Asian glaciers (or even Canadian glaciers, almost all of which are in terra incognita in the Coast Mtns), which is unlikely, we will have no way to fix this. Certainly we should make an effort to intentionally include as many glaciers as we can from those areas for which references do actually exist. It would be a major library/journal research project to do this, but it can happen, all in good time. --Seattle Skier (talk) 20:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I understand and the work you ha done to expand the list isxcellent, but rather than listing them by the mountain they are located on we should instead resume listing simply by the state and detail after that the more specific location. This should probably be the best way to do it so the article, regardless of a lack of info about glaciers that haven't been stuudied well.--MONGO 13:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand. They appear to be listed by continent/country/. For the US, subdivisions are state/mountain or mountain group. For Canada, the only subdivision is mountain group. Provinces don't work well for Canada because the continental divide separated British Columbia from Alberta. Do you want to delete the headings below state in the US section? I'll concede that the eight subheadings for Washington may be excessive, but I'm not sure that I like deleting them all. Walter Siegmund (talk) 01:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think having anything below the state level is too U.S. centric for an international list, especially since few of these articles exist yet and there is very little aside from topo quads that that can be googled to find out info on them. It really isn't a big deal one way or the other I suppose, but I do feel that listing on a state level by subhaeding and detailing what peak or mountain complex they are on is the best way to go.--MONGO 04:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

In the interest of uniformity, I wonder if it might be better to follow the example of Canada and eliminate the state headings in favor of range and subrange headings. What I don't like about the Canada example is the repetitive parenthetical Alberta or BC. What I don't like about no subheadings below the state level is the resulting list of 70 or 80 glaciers in an unbroken list for Washington. For Alaska, it potentially is much worse. My preference would be to rename this article "List of major glaciers" with areas greater than 2.5 km² or some similar criterion. That article would link to more detailed lists, as needed, that would be more inclusive. However, most readers would likely find the major glacier list most useful. This is a unwikipedia approach, however. List of mountains is a more likely paradigm, an incomplete and disorganized mishmash, but useful at some level. Walter Siegmund (talk) 22:40, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the best thing to do is to just let this thing continue to accumulate until it becomes easier to figure out what is best. In addition to the list Wsiegmund has noted...there are also...

So those list could probably serve as further examples that this one isn't really that "bad" in its formatting. If anything, the expansive Wikipedia:WikiProject Mountains/List of mountains should be moved from there to the List of mountains...but that's not a problem unless you are a member of the Mountain project as I am...oh boy.--MONGO 06:39, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I just thought of a good partial solution to the subheadngs issue. I changed all the 5th level (=====) subheadings to bold headers (;). This keeps them out of the contents. I think it is important to retain the geographic subdivision of glaciers within each state, and not go back to a single list in each state. I think 2-column formatting to reduce page length (and needless scrolling) is also the way to go, at least until the other issues voiced above are discussed and acted upon. --Seattle Skier (talk) 02:44, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple columns

Well, I went ahead and reformatted most sections of the list into multiple columns, either 2 or 3. The page is now less than half as long as it was, so much less scrolling is needed to view it. I hope this is OK with everyone here. Thanks, Seattle Skier (talk) 04:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)