Difference between revisions of "Talk:Geologic system"

Revision as of 01:41, May 4, 2007

Article name

Any opinions on which is the correct (or better) name?

• Google has 53,900 hits on English pages for "Geologic Column".
• Google has 24,600 hits on English pages for "Geological Column" (the present title).

Philip J. Rayment 05:44, 21 April 2007 (EDT)

Scratch that; I've decided on a different name altogether. Philip J. Rayment 05:48, 21 April 2007 (EDT)

Me too, but due to the Kommandments, I can't print it here. This article is just garbage. Although the hilarious, obligatory YEC (why isn't this called YECapedia?) "perspective" is, I guess, par for the course, where is the article? What do we learn when we read this? Almost nothing. Human 21:21, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

That's a very helpful comment, Human. Not. Rather than just mock and criticise, how about suggesting how it could be improved (with specifics), or point out precisely what is wrong with it. To just dismiss it as having a YEC perspective indicates that rather than there being anything factually wrong with it, you simply have an ideological issue with it. If so, that's your problem, not the article's. Philip J. Rayment 02:05, 29 April 2007 (EDT)

It's not the presentation of the YEC perspective that bothers me, I expect that, but I would expect to see more thorough detail about what the scientific consensus is about the column/system itself. Perhaps a listing of the major periods and which rocks represent them, and why this is claimed? I might have a book around here somewher that lists them, I'll see if I can cobble together a decent paragraph or two. Human 14:24, 29 April 2007 (EDT)

As I said, your comment was not very helpful. So unhelpful that it failed to convey to me what your actual issue with the article was. However, now that's been clarified, I agree that it could/should be expanded to actually document the periods, etc. Philip J. Rayment 23:10, 29 April 2007 (EDT)

Shouldn't the article name be geological system

• Google has 19,800,000 hits for geological system
• Google has 1,120,000 hits for geologic system

--AdrianP 02:21, 29 April 2007 (EDT)

Perhaps. I chose the name to be neutral, as some creationists question the reality of the geological column, and "geological timescale", another common one, presumes the reality of the uniformitarian dating system. I came across this name ("geologic system") as an alternative term, so went with it. Most of the early Google hits for both terms seem to be referring to something else, so whether geological system is used more than geologic system for this concept is still an unknown. I'm open to suggestions, though. Philip J. Rayment 11:01, 29 April 2007 (EDT)

"some creationists question the reality of the geological column"

I do hope not, as that would be on a par with believing the Earth is flat, i.e. in direct contradiction of obvious reality; It's real enough and directly observable in many places (the Grand Canyon for example). What creationists have is a different explanation for how it came about. --Jeremiah4-22 05:42, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

I'm not sure what the best wording would be, and they don't question that the rocks exist, but they are questioning more than just how it formed. I think they question that there really are common strata that can be identified world-wide, or something along those lines. Philip J. Rayment 06:55, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

Table

Nice job, I like it. Can there be consensus on whether a fourth column can be added labelled "uniformitarian system dates" or something like that? Human 13:39, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

Cenozoic/cainozoic

Cainozoic was ok by me in the quote, to keep it accurate. But the modern name for the period is Cenozoic, and the table should reflect this.

Just as, in the table, it should say Paleozoic, dropping the "a". Human 20:10, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

Crazy Superscripts

"Conservative," why do you think it's so important to litter the text with long strings of superscript numbers? Are you trying to adhere to hard science style? That's commendable, but not really appropriate for a general subject encyclopedia. Or a wiki. The brackets attached to the numbers make them more visually intrusive than they would be in print, and having multiple consecutive hyperlinks is bad form from a usability standpoint, especially if they have little or no semantic meaning. A sentence like, "These scientists believe that the earth is young and has multiple lines of evidence from the field of geology showing that the earth is young. [10][11][12][13][14]," would be very difficult to parse with a screen reader, for instance. It also looks very ugly in non-graphical browsers.

In any case, you didn't describe your decision to revert in the "Summary" line. I await your comments now.--All Fish Welcome 21:41, 3 May 2007 (EDT)