Talk:2018 Hawaii earthquake

Merge/delete?

Considering all the work everyone is putting into this: are you all aware the the discussion at Talk:2018 lower Puna eruption#Merge from earthquake is proceeding to a merge/delete of this article? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:08, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

During a merge the article 2018 Hawaii earthquake would not be deleted, but changed into a redirect. This would preserve all prior versions of the article 2018 Hawaii earthquake in the version history and of course all the work of authors. The merging procedure includes the citation and linking of the source article at the talk page of the destination page (see How to merge), which ensures the accessibility of the source page including the history of versions after the merge. --ThT (talk) 19:54, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Preserving previous versions is not the same as maintaining a current version. A redirect is a pointer (link) to somewhere else (like another article); it is not an article in itself. I think you have confused saving the material with saving the article. These are not the same! An article (with all its previous history) could exist even if it was empty; that material formerly in an article can be found elsewhere has nothing to do with continuance of the article. Look at as a box, and the stuff in the box. Just because the stuff formerly in Box A is now in Box B is independent of whether, or not, Box A has been broken up and burnt. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:50, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm afraid we're talking about different things here. If an article is deleted "only administrators, checkusers, and oversighters can view the content" (Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages), while the prior versions of an article which was changed into a redirect are still viewable for all users. The process of maintaining a current version produces previous versions with each edit, therefore the content of an article may change substantially while the article name stays the same. During a fusion of the article "2018 Hawaii earthquake" with the article "2018 lower Puna eruption" the content of "2018 Hawaii earthquake" would be incorporated into "2018 lower Puna eruption" and the content from both articles would be maintained and edited together from that time on. All previous versions of both articles would stay accessible, too. In contrast to this the content and all previous versions of the article "2018 Hawaii earthquake" would not be accessible for all users after a deletion of the article (Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages). --ThT (talk) 10:09, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Is this still "the 2018 earthquake"? There seem to have been a lot of others.[1] --Scott Davis ^Talk 11:24, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

There are ALWAYS earthquakes. Any statement as to the occurrence (or anticipation) of "earthquakes" is practically meaningless without the qualification of time, place, and magnitude. Note that these quakes you linked to (at the USGS Significant Earthquakes list; criteria last 30 days, mag. 4.5+) are all in the M 4.5 to 5.4 range, "Volcanic Eruption", and generally ~5 km WSW "of volcano". If you set the search criterion to M 2.5+ there's about ten times as many quakes, with another hotspot about 8m SW "of volcano".

The quake of the article is, precisely, the largest magnitude quake in Hawaii since 1975. It is "the quake of 2018 in Hawaii" (don't leave off the location!) only because of the convention of naming earthquake articles by year and place. If there should be another of similar or greater magnitude, or some other notable characteristic, then "2018 Hawaii" would have to be more specifically qualified. But aside from demonstrating volcanic activity these little M 5 quakes are not notable. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:07, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

The merge proposal has been withdrawn, so you can continue to improve this article without fear of your text being moved to the eruption article. --Scott Davis ^Talk 09:06, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

I have no "fear" of, nor objection to, "my" text being incorporated into any other article; please feel free to do so if that would be helpful. My objection is entirely on whether there should be some time to allow for improvements (or such). ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:43, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Named-refs

@ScottDavis: Please do not combine "references" that are NOT duplicate, and particularly are not (per WP:DUPCITE WP:DUPCITES) "precisely duplicated full citations". ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 17:46, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

My "misguided" edit combined references 2 and 8 which are both subsidiary citations to the same shakemap, with reference 2 including an accessdate but no access date on reference 8. I also combined Reference 1 as the primary reference to the ANSS database entry and reference 3 which refers to it, accessed on May 4. See also WP:DUPCITES. The page is cited as having been accessed on May 4 with the title "M 6.9 – 16km SW of Leilani Estates, Hawaii". The linked page now has a title of "M 6.9 - 19km SSW of Leilani Estates, Hawaii" which is what I changed the title of the citation to after I checked the reference, and updated the access date. I did not combine the shakemap citations with the head page citations. I am not getting in to an edit war over whether inclusion of an access date changes the reference to an earthquake shakemap.

I'd rather see the stuff that you raised in the merge proposal about why this earthquake was special get included in the article about it. Surely if it has occurred to you, it has been mentioned in some earthquake-related website that could be cited so the rest of us can understand? Even an earthquakes expert being quoted by a newspaper saying "we are going to investigate our theory that..."? --Scott Davis ^Talk 09:22, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

You misapprehend the situation. This is not about an accessdate, it is about combining citations ("references") using named-refs. Prior to your edit there was one full citation describing and linking to the ANSS event page, and three short-cites to that page, including two with a link to the ShakeMap subsection. There is no need, and no value, in combining any of those, and no need to change this citation style.

And it seems you may have misunderstood what I was saying at the other page: I was not saying why this earthquake is "special", I was describing an intriguing possibility of what might be happening, but which, at this point is just speculation. And, sorry, even if "some earthquake-related website" mentioned it would still be speculation. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 04:57, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

OK, I accept I don't understand why the earthquake cites should not be merged per WP:DUPCITES But any editor should feel free to combine them, and doing so is the best practice on Wikipedia.. I assume it relates to WP:CITESHORT which is rarely used in the articles I usually edit. I'm also not sure why you don't want to update the title of the reference which has changed where the estimated epicentre is. I'm primarily here as an interested reader, and am not an expert on earthquakes, Hawaii or volcanoes, so will defer to your experience.

On a possibly-related topic, is the Hilina Slump related to this earthquake or eruption event? That page has not received any non-trivial update in the last month and isn't linked from the 2018 articles, but is by the articles on the 1868 and 1975 earthquakes. The Preliminary Finite Fault Results possibly gives a cause or geological effect of the earthquake, but uses too much jargon for me. Thanks. --Scott Davis ^Talk 11:37, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

I allow that many editors do "feel free to combine" notes/cites, but I dispute that they should. The main thing is that full citations (whether "precisely duplicated" or not) should appear only once. But confusion on this point, and the availability of some mis-guided tools, encourages this mania to combine notes whenever possible, which leads to a number of problems. At the very least, introducing named-refs into an article where not previously present can be taken as violating WP:CITEVAR.

I am not opposed to updating the title from the ANSS page; it just got overlooked when I undid the rest of your edit (and then restored Mike's subsequent edit). (Feel free to fix that.)

The "jargon" at the Finite Fault page is basically highly technical stuff, most of it beyond my understanding. A few points can be extracted, such as the duration (~25 seconds), and a best-fit estimate of the location and dip of the rupture along with the distribution and amount of slip. The latter is probably of extreme interest to the public safety officials wondering if a major event is in the offing, but for us to infer that would be speculative.

The Hilina Slump article is not clear on where it is. But having just googled "Hilina slump" -- hmm, it seems definitely related. And a major event seems to be a distinct (and published) possibility. I think it is about time to develop that article, and update this article. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Work needed on Hilina Slump connection

ScottDavis has just brought to my attention (above) the Hilina Slump article. That article is quite underdeveloped, but a little Googling shows that what I thought was a speculative comment at the merge discussion is a distinct possibility. In short, there is a definite prospect of a cataclysmic event here, of which this earthquake could be just an initial harbinger. Now is a good time to do more work on that article and this. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:38, 14 May 2018 (UTC)