Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Chicxulub Crater

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 05:53, 4 December 2007.

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Chicxulub Crater

(previous FAC) - Having addressed the concerns from the Peer Review and last FAC, ready to take this back. David Fuchs ^(talk) 22:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

• Support Well written, well sourced, well formatted. Jay32183 01:17, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Support — It is a decent article, and I am close to supporting it. There are only a few minor concerns:
  • Per WP:MoS#Conversions, as this is a scientific article, could we agree to just use metric units without all of the km to mi conversions? They are distracting from the text.
  • Per WP:MoS#Non-breaking_spaces, you need to insert  's between numbers and units.
  • "After Hildebrand got in touch with Penfield in April 1990, the two men were able to locate two separate samples from the wells drilled by PEMEX in 1951 in New Orleans, Louisiana." Were the wells in Louisiana, the samples, or both? Ambiguity needs to be resolved.
  • "...releasing an estimated 500 zettajoules (5.0×1023 joules) of energy, approximately 100 teratons of TNT (1014 tons), on impact." It seems unlikely that the impact released TNT. If not, try inserting an "equivalent to".
  • Is it just me or does this article use an inordinate number of semi-colons within sentences? It seems as if some of those could simply be split into separate sentences.

  Thanks. — RJH (talk) 18:51, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Resolved the ambiguity, fixed the bizarre comparison, and added non-breaking spaces to all the units. As for the conversions, it says it's up to local consensus, and since I'm basically the only guy editing the article, I just feel it makes the article more accessible to us non-scientific chaps. I'll take another look at all the semicolons. :) David Fuchs ^(talk) 01:31, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Changed to support. Thank you for addressing my concerns. — RJH (talk) 21:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

• Question: That IPA isn't helping. Can you get someone to include a pronunciation soundfile? - Mgm|^(talk) 16:20, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Can you point me to an article with a sound file as pronounciation so I know exactly what you mean? David Fuchs ^(talk) 16:39, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. I won't have time to do a full review tonight, but what I have read so far (first few paragraphs) looks quite nice, David. While I was making WP:DASH fixes, I noticed one problem right away: you haven't included page numbers in most of your references. The Alverez, Bottke et al., Bralower et al., Keller et al., and Weinreb papers should have page numbers, if they appeared in peer-reviewed journals. I'll take a closer look at the article tomorrow. Thanks for your hard work. Firsfron of Ronchester 12:35, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Are you referring to the <ref> tags in 'Notes' or the full journals in 'References'? David Fuchs ^(talk) 16:06, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

The articles in the References section. Alvarez, Bottke, Bralower, Keller, and Weinreb need the page numbers of the journals they appeared in. You have the page numbers on the others. Let me know if you need help. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 16:27, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I've added in the page numbers to all except the Weinreb- it's a web site, and no pages are listed. David Fuchs ^(talk) 20:29, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Under Multiple Impact Theory, I would like a citation for the fourth sentence in the first paragraph ("This has led to the hypothesis that the Chicxulub impact may have been only one of several impacts that happened nearly at the same time."). Also, the Boltysh crater should get its own ref; otherwise, it looks like Ref 35 deals with both it and the Silverpit crater. You can probably steal one from the Boltysh crater article. The referencing method looks a bit unorthodox for a WP article, but all of the necessary information is present, so if someone wishes to make a big deal about it, he\she should personally take on the responsibility of conversion. Otherwise, I found it detailed and well-written. J. Spencer (talk) 23:18, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The referencing method is the same as that of Featured Article Mutual Broadcasting System, so I don't think it's actionable. That said, I prefer the referencing style seen in Dinosaur, etc (easier for the reader, because the notes and references are all kept together). Firsfron of Ronchester 08:25, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I usually use the regular {{reflist}} formatting, but I find it easier for scientific articles with lots of similar authors to keep it seperate. As for the citations, the statement in question is now sourced, and a new ref for the Boltysh crater was added. David Fuchs ^(talk) 19:32, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I threw one in too; I couldn't see the whole article, but the abstract had the size and age of the crater in question. J. Spencer (talk) 23:16, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

• Support - with my comments addressed. J. Spencer (talk) 23:16, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• [Strongly Oppose --Keerllston 15:24, 30 November 2007 (UTC)]Objections
  "Further studies have reinforced this consensusthese findings]" needs citation or integration. [
  "Discovery" should have subsections -suggestion:("Synopsis/Summary") "Glen Penfield" "Alan R. Hidlebrand" and "Further Development"
  The impact specifics compare only to power of man made devices but not to volcanos/earthquakes/hurricanes - this information would be useful for a would be reader.
  Discovery and Multiple impact theory should be merged under a "Research" heading
  --Keerllston 02:33, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to frankly have to decline. The 'Discovery' section is hardly long enough to need such subsections. As for the comparison to volcanoes, etc.- last time I checked, i think people would know about natural disasters. Finally, 'Discovery' and 'Multiple impact theory' are two very different ideas, and should not be merged. 12:44, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Objections not attempted to be understoodDo you understand why I asked this?
"does not need subsections", but it would improve the article.
"people would know about natural disasters" and would know about power of nuclear bombs - noting only the power of human made disasters makes for a misapprehension of the magnitude - volcanoes also explode with much greater magnitude compared to nuclear weapons
Multiple impact theory is part of the "Further Development on the ideas of what was the crater, and so on
If contributors "have to decline", I in turn have to oppose strongly.
--Keerllston 15:24, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm declining because I cannot see how the suggestions improve the article. Discovery is barely five paragraphs, there's not much point to making four sentences subsections. "Multiple Impact Theory" has nothing to do with discovery- the section deals with the theory that Chicxulub was only one of several impacts, and that these impacts might have been earlier than the K-T extinction. It's based on evidence including the crater, but nothing was 'discovered' in that sense- the theory predates Chicxulub. David Fuchs ^(talk) 21:01, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

The correct process is to ask for elaboration or disagree - not to "decline" since you are not the wikipedia community -I do not decline after all. I find "article ownership" uncivil.

- Discovery is one aspect of the Chronology of the knowledge/theories of the crater/enigma - the discovery was an instant, Discovery and Theoretical Work went is still going on and is a different topic than "Impact Specifics" and to have it split by "Impact Specifics" makes absolutely bad organization and shape.

- If the Multiple Impact theory is a larger predating theory then it should be duly noted. The organization is still in bad shape.Is this about how the dinasours died or about the crater anyway?

- Multiple Impact theory does have to do with "Discovery and Theoretical Work" doesn't it?

--Keerllston 13:34, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

• More comments: Overall, this is a high quality article, and I want to support. I did a few copyedits on this article; there was a lot of sentence fragmentation going on. If a sentence has five or six commas in it, and there is no list in it, it is probably fragmented. I removed a lot of fragmentation, but a few remain:

"In 1978, Glen Penfield, a geophysicist, had been working for the Mexican state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), as a staff member for an airborne magnetic survey of the Yucatán Peninsula, trying to find oil."

"In 1990, Carlos Byars, a reporter for the Houston Chronicle, contacted Hildebrand and told him that Penfield had discovered what might be the impact crater years earlier, buried under the northern Yucatán Peninsula."

Reference needed for: "It has been speculated that the impactor that produced the 85 km diameter lunar crater Tycho 108 million years ago was another member of the same group."

Redundant: "The crater was named for the eponymous town,"

"wrote up his findings" Too informal for a FA. Suggest "published his findings" if it appeared in print. I didn't change it because I didn't know.

"The size and damage that would have been wrought by the Chicxulub impact is in agreement with the theory postulated by the late physicist Luis Alvarez and his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, for the extinction of the dinosaurs." I feel this sentence needs a re-write; the proposed damage caused by the impact cannot be in "agreement" with the theory proposed by the Alvarezes, which was that the proposed damage killed the dinosaurs. (Circular logic).

Fix these and I think I can support. Firsfron of Ronchester 04:04, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I think I've fixed all of the above, Firsfron. David Fuchs ^(talk) 12:44, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

• Support Reads well, appears to cover the major points nicely, and is well-referenced. I'd like to see more DOIs or http links to papers, but this article has my support. Also: please do not add a bunch of short, one-paragraph subsections as suggested above. I understand why Kirlston suggested it, but per WP:MOS, "headings provide an overview in the table of contents and allow readers to navigate through the text more easily". Since the section is only six paragraphs long, there's no reason to think that a reader will become lost in six paragraphs. And having an article with many short sections is ugly. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 15:50, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.