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	Volcanic ash has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
February 15, 2008 Good article nominee Listed

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Contents 1 Increased Fertility 1.1 Article improvement 1.2 Good article assessment 1.3 Good article nomination on hold 1.4 Ash Formation

[edit] Increased Fertility

Shouldn't there be some info on the fact that soil which contains volcanic ash is generally very fertile for agriculture? Don't know enough about it myself but seems relevant. Lebanese blond 09:55, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article improvement

For a five year old article, this article was in bad shape. Added inline references and a reference section, convert templates, as well as more detail to the body of the article. The lead wasn't constructed appropriately per wikipedia standards, so a significant portion of it was moved into the body under characteristics, and rewritten to represent what lies within the article. Much of what was written with the body of the article was in decent shape...it just needed a bit of rearranging to follow more fluidly. Thegreatdr (talk) 17:40, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Good article assessment

I am putting this article on hold in order to give the editors a chance to address the following issues:

[edit] Good article nomination on hold

This article's Good Article promotion has been put on hold. During review, some issues were discovered that can be resolved without a major re-write. This is how the article, as of February 6, 2008, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: Fail: It is clear as far as it goes, but a bit choppy, does not "flow." No glaring errors in spelling, punctuation or grammar, just feels like there are no transitions, just one fact jumping to another with some organization, but earlier versions of the article actually had better "plain English" explanations and descriptive passages. The information is good as far as it goes, but hard to read the article and concentrate with the disjointed nature of the narrative

Transitions have been added, and the text has been edited to flow smoother. If any glaring errors remain in regards to this note, please provide examples so they can be fixed. Thegreatdr (talk) 13:17, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

2. Factually accurate?: Pass

3. Broad in coverage?: Fail: Article is a good start, but not really broad in coverage, it promises much but does not deliver. For example, the lead promises more on the formation of ash without going on to explain it in more depth. The lead also discusses the ecological aspects of an ashfall but does not significantly expand on this below. The information on the aviation hazards seems out of proportion to the other dangers to human health and to ground-based machinery.

Ash is a fairly simple thing to define, which probably explains the lack of too much additional detail. Where in the lead is a statement made that is not supported in the article below? If you let us know, we can fix it. Thegreatdr (talk) 13:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

4. Neutral point of view?: Pass

5. Article stability? Fail, a ton of work has been done, but much of it with in a two week period. Has been changed dramatically. Would like to see it sit for a bit to note what other editors who have worked on it think.

Not really much we can do about this other than leave the article alone, which is not possible considering the comments left above. Thegreatdr (talk) 13:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

6. Images?: Pass -- lovely images

Please address these matters soon and then leave a note here showing how they have been resolved. After 48 hours the article should be reviewed again. If these issues are not addressed within 7 days, the article may be failed without further notice. Thank you for your work so far.

So, what's wrong and needs to be fixed? All I see are pass remarks. Thegreatdr (talk) 01:24, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok...that spells it out more thoroughly. Thanks for comments. Thegreatdr (talk) 01:51, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about the delay, I load the template and then reedit it. I remember Mt. St. Helens eruption, the article is interesting. Hope you can expand it out, but if you can't now, you can always renominate later. Montanabw^(talk) 00:16, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Let me know what you think of the changes. Even after checking several sources, I can't see a way of expanding the definition/creation of ash, since it is a simple process. Volcanic eruptions create ash when their shock waves and resultant heat shatter rock and create fine particles of glass. I tried to reword the article to be more readable. Thegreatdr (talk) 17:16, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

No problem I was off wiki a couple of days myself. I think you have made some good improvements, though in doing so you may have also removed some useful material too, the trick is wordsmiting so it all flows together. I couldn't quite get a handle on what exactly was bugging me, even after the changes, so I asked another reviewer to give it a peek and he provided the following additional thoughts, based on the article as it sits today. I think I was stuck that it was a bit short, but short alone is not a problem, I think it seems a little choppy yet and just needs some transitional phrasing here and there. Here is the other reviewers take on it, I agree with his areas for improvement: Montanabw^(talk) 02:36, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

"Here's my eval:

• The lead should be in two paragraphs, it's too long to be in one grammatically and in terms of readability.
  • It has now been separated into two paragraphs. Thegreatdr (talk) 12:51, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
• WP:MOS#Images dictates that an article should have a single lead image, usually forced to 250px (unlike the rest of the article, which ideally should not force thumb size). It also prohibits stacking images on top of one another in a row on the right, like the lead images currently do. Pick one lead image and stick with it. The same issue is going on in Atmospheric effects. The solution in the case of stacked images in the body is to have alternating left-right alignment (or simply move images down so there is space between them. Anyway, I'm sure you're competent handling a fix on this.
  • I've moved the second image out of the lead. Thegreatdr (talk) 12:51, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
• If I remember right WP:CITE requires that exact numerical figures such as stats and other things have in-line citations. Precise numbers stuff like that are almost always required to be cited in GAs, so in Composition were it defines ash as being "less than 2 millimetres...", there needs to be a direct in-line citation.
• Same thing as above, "as only 100 millimetres" needs a cite."
  • The citation for the 100 mm line is the same as the 300 mm line. The 2 mm line is cited as well, just below after another line. Did you want multiple consecutive lines cited with the same reference, individually? I've done this in the case of the 2 mm line, because it was more than one sentence away from the last use of this reference. Thegreatdr (talk) 10:31, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Other than that, I do think it's ready to be GA. It's short, but broad and fairly comprehensive.

I think you are there, give me a bit of time to run over to the GA pages and get the right templates to make the required changes. (I'm not as anal about "cite every last fact, even if it means saying "Id." a dozen times as some reviewers). I did an article once where someone was fact tagging sentences and so I just added a <!--hidden text--> comment that said something like "citation covers entire preceding paragraph." Seemed to settle the matter. Montanabw^(talk) 17:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

You passed. Congrats! Montanabw^(talk) 20:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ash Formation

There are three mechanisms of ash formation: gas release under decompression causing magmatic eruptions; thermal contraction from chilling on contact with water causing phreatomagmatic eruptions and ejection entrained particles during steam eruptions causing phreatic eruptions (Heiken & Wohletz 1985, volcanic ash). I feel that this information should be included, but i am not familiar enough with the referencing system to put it in without screwing it up, and i also dont want to tear apart someone elses text and possibly get a Good Article down graded

The full reference is; Heiken, G. & Wohletz, K. 1985. Volcanic Ash. University of California Press, Berkeley. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Russjass (talk • contribs) 19:23, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay put it in and references still look good Russjass (talk) 15:37, 18 May 2008 (UTC)