Talk:Destruction of ivory/Archive 1

Archive 1

big event in Kenya

@W.carter: Thanks for adding information about the big Kenyan burn. Beat me to it :) Question: Where does the 260 tons figure come from in the lead? Admittedly, 130 was, if I recall correctly, a little ORish in that it just came from me adding figures from the various events together. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:51, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: Hello! Long time no see! It's almost two years since you taught me to take my first steps here on the WP, and here we are. You taught me well. :) At first I just added the 106,35 to the already existing figure and ended up with 236 tons but as I searched for more info I came upon a new source (the one that is used as a ref at the end of the sentence there's a chart) and when I found it, it said 260 tons then. I see now that the article has been updated to 263 tons, so I'll just have to correct it again. I heard about this on the radio and I've also nominated it for ITN. They said the article needed further expanding, so that's what I was doing. Glad you are here to help. Cheers, w.carter-Talk 22:17, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

@W.carter: Ah! Bunge! :) Glad to see you stuck around (an understatement, given your many contributions). Yes I heard about this on the radio, too, and sat down to add it when I was pleasantly surprised to see it already done. I started this article a few months ago and have been meaning to come back to keep working on it to bring it up to GA. There's still a whole lot of work that would need to be done. If it's a subject that interests you, having someone else working on it might be the motivation I need to get back into it myself. :) Just a thought.

Side question: Why did you delink so many of the countries, etc.? I don't think (but could be wrong) that they were duplicates -- some MOS bit I'm not aware of? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:37, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: Yes, WP is one of my favorite hobbies now. I had not heard much about this subject before, but it has kind of grown on me, so maybe I'll stick around. Yep, it's a MOS thing. In MOS:OVERLINK it says: What generally should not be linked: ...The names of major geographic features and locations, languages, nationalities and religions, it's turned into one of my pet peeves (along with zapping the word "famous") I'm afraid. w.carter-Talk 22:47, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

So it does. Hm. Guess I never noticed that one. It seems like if we're talking about how different countries handle a particular problem, it seems logical a reader might want to read e.g. more about the government/economy of those countries for clues as to why they take different approaches -- or perhaps interested in the geography of each in relation to each other and the typical black market routes. Meh. I don't feel all that strongly about it, though :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:52, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: You do have a point there, and I've seen this practice in articles that have "sort of" lists about different practices in different countries, mainly food/drink articles like this one, where they serve as a sort of markers for the list, but I think that would be reducing your well-written article to a list. Working on other articles that have had many editors the "country" links always get removed rather pronto so I tend to avoid them as much as I can. Your call if you want to put them back, I just thought the article was so much more than a list. w.carter-Talk 23:10, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

@W.carter: BTW regarding ITN. I don't have any experience with that process, but it seems worth noting that this did appear on the main page somewhat recently (Template:Did you know nominations/Destruction of ivory). Not sure if that matters. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:23, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: I've done a few ITNs and they have absolutely noting to do with DYK or any other appearance on the main page. If an event occurs that is significant enough to be covered by media world-wide and the article is updated with enough information about the event, then it can be nominated for ITN. In this case it was very good that the article had been a DYK since it meant that it was already in good shape. I've seen a lot of hasty work done on small crappy articles just because something happened, and this way is preferable. As a result of the discussion at the article's entry at ITN Candidates (do read it), it has been found eligible. The only thing now is to wait for enough support votes plus an ITN editor who think it should be posted. w.carter-Talk 15:58, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Sounds good. Only asking because I know that the reverse is true -- if it has been featured on the main page in ITN, etc. then an article is ineligible for DYK. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:06, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites:That is only because most articles at ITN are created as a result of some major event and the ITN then "becomes" their DYK. I mean, you would probably have a hard time nominating one of the many articles made to cover terrorist attacks for DYK after everyone had already seen it on the main page for days. Remember when David Bowie died? That article was already an FA and had been on the main page a number of times before it ended up in ITN. The ITN editors were very pleased that the article already was in such good shape. And at this nomination one of the editor actually expressed a wishful thinking that the article should already have been a GA to make things easier. w.carter-Talk 16:16, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Removal of stats, and more sources

I note the recent removal of claims about Burundi and Singapore, with the edit summary that they were uncited. More sources may help:

• A System of Extinction: The African Elephant Disaster (1989) from the Environmental Investigation Agency. "A ground-breaking ivory trade report which scrutinised key markets in Asia, the rampant poaching in African countries and exposed some of the international criminals who oversaw the trade. The report played a key role in achieving the 1989 international ban on elephant ivory trade at CITES." [1]
• And for more recent overview, the 2016 CITES update on Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) [2].

Carbon Caryatid (talk) 09:58, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Ah. Worked on that section quite a bit before seeing this. Thanks. The first ref is the ref that was supposed to go there from the beginning, which I had found at the ivory trade article. Looks like I didn't do a good job of remembering to cite sources in that section (it was sort of an afterthought at first, and I frankly don't remember why I didn't do so as I was working on it originally). So now I did what I should've done then and actually verified its content, realized some of it was incorrect, fixed it, saw some of the sources at ivory trade are actually rather poor, replaced them, etc. Shouldn't be anymore unsourced statements. You're welcome, of course, to add that second source as you see fit. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:39, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Too many names in the text

I think quite a few names have been added lately, in a way that doesn't improve readability. Why does the person need mentioning? Their organisation may be more relevant, as a proxy for POV. Either a gloss should be added, with a nationality if that isn't apparent (Chinese anti-corruption police officer, Kenyan border guard, Korean art collector, French biologist), or - preferably - the name should be subsumed into the ref. "Economists suggest that..." Carbon Caryatid (talk) 20:50, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

tons vs. tonnes

I think we have a mix of tons vs. tonnes here. Ideas on the best way to handle? The typical way to handle variations in English/measurements is to pick one and/or go with the one that has already been chosen unless there's a compelling reason to change (e.g. the subject is a British person or American company), and then offer conversions where appropriate. In this case, there does not seem to be a compelling subject-driven reason to use one or the other, although the majority of the sources are American and thus would be using short tons. Hence, that's what I deferred to (as an American, I also tend to go with short tons by default). In the process, I may have failed to distinguish when I pulled a number from The Guardian. That much is easy to fix, but what do people think about the best way to format all of these? I started to go through and change every instance to "X tons (Y tonnes)", but there are so many it's getting tedious and, I think, negatively affecting readability. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:22, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: Checking with several sources it looks like the mass in Kenya event is metric tonnes, but the articles can't spell it the encyclopedic way 'tonnes' instaed it's spelled 'metric tons': Since 1989, "21 countries and territories have destroyed more than 263 metric tons of ivory", hence the confusion. w.carter-Talk 21:08, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

@W.carter: indeed, but what to do for all the other instances of ton/tonne in the article (at least some of which are certainly short/American tons). We could just be inconsistent and use whatever measurement the sources do, but I think there's a preference for consistency... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:53, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: This is tricky, but I think the correct way to do this could be to use metric tonnes throughout the article and when it's certain that the source speaks of short tons, convert those to metric tonnes but leave a note saying that the source is in short tons. I think this would be easier to read and less confusing than just a lot of {{convert}} in the text. Thoughts? w.carter-Talk 22:14, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

• Example: In May the authorities in X-land destroyed 1.4 tonnes or ivory by crushing them.

References

I don't think the note is really necessary. It seems the purpose would be just in case the source got it wrong, right? As in CNN saying "ton" but actually meaning "tonne"? Where we have conflicting information we would have to figure out which is right, like you did there, but otherwise the typical Wikiway is to operate under the assumption that reliable sources have it right. Perhaps an HTML comment instead?

Regardless, despite being an American I wouldn't object to just using tonne everywhere. :) I also don't have a big problem with using the convert template all over the place. It makes for ugly wikicode, but meh. Maybe tonnes (lbs)? The bigger aesthetic problem to me is that these publications tend to round or generalize, leaving clunky conversions if we don't use their measurement. For example "more than 1000 tons" would mean "more than 907.185 tonnes (2000 lbs.)" which is kind of awkward... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:52, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Ah. MOS:CONVERSIONS: "Converted quantity values should use a level of precision similar to that of the source quantity value, so the Moon is 380,000 kilometres (240,000 mi) from Earth, not (236,121 mi). Small numbers may need to be converted to a range where rounding would cause a significant distortion, so one mile (1–2 km), not one mile (2 km). Be careful especially when your source has already converted from the units you're now converting back to. This may be evidenced by multiples of common conversion factors in the data, such as 160 km (from 100 miles). See false precision." — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:58, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: If you want to go with the convert template, there is even an option for the kind of precision you want it to match. The |sigfig= (see Help:Convert#Rounding). With that the example "more than 1000 tons" could be written "more than {{convert|1000|MT|lb|sigfig=3|abbr=off}}" resulting in: "more than 1,000 metric tons (2,200,000 pounds)". That way you can always get the numbers right and avoid making calculation mistakes like the one you made above where you accidentally dropped some zeros. :) w.carter-Talk 14:23, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

@W.carter: I edited one section to see how obnoxious it does/doesn't look. The convert template is used everywhere except where it would be awkward (already in parentheses, hyphenated, etc.), and those were just converted to metric. Personally, I don't like it. I think all the big numbers and parentheses negatively affect both aesthetics and readability. So, assuming I'm not alone in thinking that, I guess we could just use tonne everywhere by default, and either add a note in the beginning explaining conversions won't be given, convert just the first instance of each unit (the first tonne, kg, and m), and/or wikilink the measurements rather than convert at all. The article on ton does a fine job of explaining. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:01, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: I agree with you, it looks horrible and definitely reduces readability. I'd vote for the second option and convert just the first instance and after that use whatever unit is in the source but make sure to spell out the name like "metric tonne" instead of just "t". I don't think links are necessary. I did look for some template similar to the {{use dmy dates}} but couldn't find anything about measurements. I think it would be appropriate to place a <!-- --> note at the top of the article about what system is used in the article. w.carter-Talk 15:26, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

@W.carter: Have a look now. I changed them all back or otherwise changed them to reflect what the cited sources use, leaving a convert template for the first instance of each measurement. Maybe not ideal to have a mix of tonnes and tons, but meh. It's the world we live in :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:19, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: Looks good to me. In an imperfect world that's about as much as you can do. I sure we have not seen the end of the ton/tonnes confusion since there will be new events and things added to the article and all we can hope for is that the sources for those will be cited correctly. w.carter-Talk 22:56, 8 May 2016 (UTC)