Wikipedia:WikiProject Caves
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This is a WikiProject, a collaboration area and open group of editors dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of a particular topic, or to organizing some internal Wikipedia process. Please see the Guide to WikiProjects and the Directory of WikiProjects for more information. |
This WikiProject aims primarily to improve articles related to caving and describe the Earth's caves in a consistent and complete fashion. The parent of this WikiProject is the Wikipedia:WikiProject Geography.
Important note. In spite of the vast quantity of caving literature lost in libraries, there are very few active Category:Wikipedian cavers. Your contribution is valuable. The information below is intended to encourage you with helpful suggestions. You should not feel obliged to follow them.
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[edit] Similar Wikiprojects
- By structure
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Mountains, Wikipedia:WikiProject Volcanoes, Wikipedia:WikiProject Rivers, Wikipedia:WikiProject Lakes, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Maps, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geology.
- By activity
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Backpacking, Wikipedia:WikiProject Kayaking, Wikipedia:WikiProject SCUBA.
[edit] Objectives
- To encourage stuff to happen!
- To put caves on the map.
- To archive surveys and photographs onto wikimedia where possible.
- To create a complete reference of where information can be found (eg for each cave, list of all guidebooks which write it up).
- To create the environment for wikibooks to get written (eg Cave Rescue OUCC and Cave Rescue CUCC could migrate into a single wikibook which would pull in related references on specialized topics of relevance like Terminal burrowing).
- To create common on-line IDs of so that outside systems can refer to them in a joinable manner (eg if the Yorkshire permitting system used WP URLs, it can automatically relate to an on-line caving club diary -- this does not mean editing the WP article each week to say who has the permit for the weekend - it's about having a common reference ID which makes it possible).
[edit] Participants
| User | Areas of interest | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| halidecyphon (talk · contribs) | cave exploration | |
| Goatchurch (talk · contribs) | Survey software | very occupied with Wikipedia:WikiProject United Nations, but has a lot of ideas for this one. |
| Martin.Speleo (talk · contribs) | Suveying, | |
| WTucker (talk · contribs) | Vertical, Surveying, Guads | Trying to categorize caving articles |
| Karstdiver (talk · contribs) | Exploring subsurface karst formations (wet or dry) | Cave_diving and Caving |
| Bearerofthecup (talk · contribs) | Speleology | Anything karst! |
| cavingliz (talk · contribs) | Malaysia & SE Asia |
Can also mark down as Category:Wikipedian cavers.
[edit] Templates
- {{Infobox Cave}} - used in a page for a cave. Will in future make it possible to auto-generate Lists of deepest caves
These ones need to be put through the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Proposals#Proposing_new_stubs_-_procedure.
- {{Caving-stub}} - for an article about caving
- {{CavesProject}} - for putting into talk pages about caving
[edit] Areas of work
[edit] Main articles
Bring the following articles up to good article standard:
- General articles
- Caving, Speleology (what's the difference?), Cave surveying, Cave diving, Cave rescue, and anything in Category:Cave geology, many of which need photographs.
- Notable caves
- Titan (cave), Lechuguilla Cave (which is a little heavy with its placenames), Wookey Hole Caves
- Notable cavers
- Édouard-Alfred Martel, Sheck Exley, Martyn Farr, Jim Eyre, Jochen Hasenmeyer
- British Caves
- Pen-y-ghent Cave, Juniper Gulf, Swinsto Hole, Simpson's Pot, Leck Fell, Lost John's Cave, Notts Pot, Ireby Fell Cavern, Rumbling Hole, Goatchurch Cavern, Cave Rescue Organisation
[edit] Categories
There's a frightening tree of categories below Category:Caves_by_country which exists in a dozen other languages. Perhaps it could drill down by region (Yorkshore, Mendip), and consider all other categories (caves with fatalities, caves prone to flooding).
[edit] Lists of caves
There are pages containing lists Caves_of_the_Mendip_Hills#List_of_caves. What is the policy between this and doing it as a category?
[edit] Other languages
The general articles have versions in other languages which might have a better structure. Some caves (eg Aillwee_Cave) are present in multiple languages and should always be linked up. Pictures and surveys can be borrowed across.
[edit] Survey software
Find and create pages for all established cave surveying software and make a category for them.
Page has been made for Survex.
Need pages for Therion (prob as Therion (software), check for standards), TunnelX. Compass Walls Toporobot and whatever other things are floating around.
Pages should have references to who's using them, when and where they were written, are they still being developed, what are they compatible with, and so on. Basic stuff. What you need to know to compare like to like. Check out Compass Points (Cave Survey Group publications) on-line since 1993 from which to extract the history.
There's a 2001 list by Wookey here.
Whenever a cave is listed in WP, we want to as best we can research and record the owner, availability and format (hence the pages for survey software) of the survey. 99% of the date is being lost, often due to carelessness.
[edit] Caving equipment
There are items of equipment at the heart of the sport which have evolved over time (not always for the better). What did they use to be like? What are they made of? Where do the standards of practice come from? What documented incidents have involved this equipment?
- Electron ladder, kermantle rope (links to properties of Nylon, date of invention), wetsuit (originally was no lining, made with geartape, and used talc to get it on, what year?), Petzl Stop (has anyone chemically analyzed the change in the composition of metal over time?), PVC oversuit, foot jammer, snoopy loop.
There's a category Category:Caving equipment but no article.
[edit] Hints on contributing to a cave page
- Important This section is for help only. You do not have to take any notice of it. Whenever you get stuck, use the Discussion page or write a note on the Talk page of a member of this project.
Hint 1: Look at other examples of pages for caves, for example Gaping Gill or anything from Category:Caves by country.
Hint 2: Use {{Infobox Cave}} to structure the vital statistics for the cave. Someone can later improve the layout and all cave pages will get better automatically.
Hint 3: Collect GPS locations and take photographs of the entrance or inside and contribute them to wikimedia. If you have more than several good ones to illustrate the article, use the Wikipedia:Gallery_tag feature.
Hint 4: Search the web for all high quality pages to the cave and make references to them. Many clubs maintain a database of a few caves in their area in great detail which most internet users don't know about, and which the search engines are not good at finding -- not all caves have distinct enough names. Wikipedia is a good tool for tying these sources in and forming a database of databases.
Hint 5: If you are a Wikipedian caver you probably have many caving books in your house. You can collect facts out of them and use {{Cite_book}} to refer to the information which you are showing. This not only shows that it's sourced, but it tells others exactly where they can read more. The rare newspaper or BBC article about a cave also makes a very good source that people often want to read but are guaranteed never to find.
Hint 6: Not every cave needs its own page. Whether there's any desire to make Wikipedia into an exhaustive resource, or to use it as the kernel for an exhaustive resource hosted elsewhere, should be a topic for discussion. A first goal would be to make a page for every cave which people who are not-cavers could have heard about, and then make it good. A really good article is more satisfying than hundreds of two-line stubs which readers will regret having clicked on. Therefore if you improve a good article by changing one word you should feel satisfied that you have done something worthwhile.
Hint 7: These hints can be edited, reworded, or deleted by anyone who feels they are not helping.
[edit] Survey overlays
If you have a cave survey (not just its location) it should be possible to overlay it onto a geo-viewing product such as googlemaps. This has been tested at http://seagrass.goatchurch.org.uk/~mjg/cgi-bin/map.py
Any cave infobox should contain GPS coordinates of the entrance, a link to a survey drawing (either on or off the wikipedia site), pixel coordinates of the corresponding entrance on the bitmap, scale of the survey (metres per pixel), north vector -- providing enough information to scrape and overlay onto any mapping system.
This will require an infobox map position, which will have a URL to bitmap, bitmapheight, bitmapwidth, feature, GPS coords of feature, pixel x of feature, pixel y of feature, metres per pixel, north vector in degrees.
Use this as an entry into the survey position in the infobox Cave
Here it is: Template:Located map to be input data for stuff like http://research.microsoft.com/mapcruncher/
An alternative is to save surveys into the GeoTIFF format, which is used for satellite photographs to located them against the surface of the earth.
This is similar to Template:Superimpose
See also Template:Geobox Mountain
[edit] Wikipedian stuff
Put caves you have visited on your user page. Nobody does this, so it's cool at the moment.
There's a Category:Wikipedian_cavers to go with Category:Wikipedian_hikers.
Design some userboxes for decoration.
