Talk:Southern Oregon Coast Range

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[edit] Change in elevation referneces

I changed the source of elevations of peaks from GNIS to Northwest GeoData Clearinghouse, Department of Geology, Portland State University because this is more in keeping with practice within WikiProject Mountains. See a comment by RedWolf here. I know this is not a resolved issue but after working on mountain articles on and off for awhile now it seems to be the general practice to accept the elevations given by SummitPost.org, Peakbagger.com or NGS. The elevations at the Northwest GeoData Clearinghouse seem to have the same source and that is why I chose to use them here. --DRoll (talk) 08:23, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

When I started the articles for the Northern, Central, and Southern Oregon Coast Range I started to use Peakbagger, but quickly realized it should not be used on Wikipedia. A disclaimer such as Sub-peaks are excluded from this list. List may not be complete, since only summits in the PBC Database are included and also their policy of When a range or mountain grouping has no clear name, a bogus name is created, using real range names, directional indicators, political unit names, or whatever other logical name best describes the area tend to show it fails WP:RS. It also appears to allow user editing, which if the case also means it fails as a RS. Throw in the fact that their top ten list for this range includes a bunch of mountains that are geologically part of the Klamath Mountains to the south. The boundaries I used come from the Geology of Oregon book cited for the overall Oregon Coast Range vs. Klamath/Calipoya/Cascades ranges. Internal came from some other map, but I don't recall which one. It would be great to find an online source for all of it, but I don't think Peakbagger should be it, or any other user edited site for RS reasons. Aboutmovies (talk) 11:31, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, per the discussion on my talk page, I checked out Peakbagger, and it claims that Spencer Butte is part of the Southern Oregon Range. Like the Car Talk guys like to say: "Bogus!" It's a butte, and not part of any range. Katr67 (talk) 16:32, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi, coming in from WikiProject Mountains. First, GNIS is known to have a fair number of false elevations. For example, if you use Topozone, they have a warning that the initial elevation listed for a peak (which I believe is from GNIS) may be wrong, and that the user should doublecheck the actual topo map. (Sorry if this fact is already known to you folks.)

Second, about Peakbagger. It does not allow user editing of the basic peak data, as far as I know (and I have used it extensively). It does allow users to edit their own summit lists. The basic peak data is all due to the author/maintainer, Greg Slayden, who has done a very impressive job, imo. But I agree that it is dubious in terms of WP:RS. I do cite it for certain info, but it is not the work of an organization with a reputation for fact-checking, it is the work of a (very careful, but not infallible) individual.

And yes, in particular, Greg does not care very much about official range names and groupings, and as he makes clear, he is more interested in arranging peaks into a hierarchy that makes sense for his site than in tracking down the correct range identification. So his range info in particular should not be treated as reliable. Also, as Aboutmovies mentions, some of the lists and statistics he provides are based only on his database, so e.g. if he has a list of the "20 highest peaks in X range", this means "the 20 highest peaks that peakbagger knows about in peakbagger's version of X range." That said, very often this will be right on the money, but that doesn't cut it for WP:RS.

I tend to use peakbagger to look for info and context on a peak, but use some other source for a citation, unless I can't find one. -- Spireguy (talk) 02:42, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I have used it as well, and I think its fine if there is nothing else, or use on an individual peak article for something GNIS may not have. But if there is conflicting data, then GNIS or something more official should take precedence. All sources likely have errors (something about humans being fallible) but at least with GNIS we can blame it on the government. Aboutmovies (talk) 18:05, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Note the conversation is also taking place here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mountains#Mountain data. Katr67 (talk) 22:23, 31 March 2008 (UTC)