Talk:Lake Untersee

Lake Untersee has been listed as one of the Geography and places good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
April 24, 2011	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on November 28, 2010.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that NASA scientists have described Lake Untersee (pictured) in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, as one of the most unusual lakes on Earth with a pH like that of strong Clorox?

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How can Lake Untersee be the largest and deepest subglacial lake in East Antarctica when Lake Vostok is also in East Antarctica? 202.180.88.25 (talk) 15:18, 3 April 2008 (UTC) rugger2004[reply]

it can't be, someone should remove that "fact". I also wonder it really is considered a subglacial lake, considering the ice on top is only 3.0m? or maybe that's a misprint, because from the article on subglacial lakes, they typically require upwards of 30.0m of ice before they're considered anything but a frozen lake. I guess it could be a 3.0m thick glacier, but it seems more likely that at least one of these facts is incorrect (it being a subglacial lake or it having 3.0m of ice). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.7.17.3 (talk) 19:05, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clorox

Why is the lake described "As alkiline as Clorox" when clorox is the opposite of alkiline? Clorox is an acid. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.160.103.216 (talk) 07:09, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually Clorox is a corporation. Kind of ignorant of the person quoted to refer to it like that instead of saying "bleach". Avalyn (talk) 08:28, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

New research

New research at Lake Untersee: http://www.onorbit.com/node/3221 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.79.208.68 (talk) 08:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Lake Untersee/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Der yck C. 22:17, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

At first glance, the article is mostly up to good article standard. There are a few minor things, mostly regarding content sourcing, which I need to see improved before the article can completely qualify for GA, and a few other stylistic things unrelated to GA criteria which would be good to to. --Der yck C. 22:17, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sourcing

Infobox

{{harvnb}} may be a better option for the "references" part.

Lead section

also known as Lake Unter-See An inline citation for this will be useful, possibly from a scientific catalog listing?
"one of the most unusual lakes on earth with a pH like strong Clorox" Source has the sentence in a different version. Double quotation marks should only be used for direct quotes.
The lake is dammed by the Anuchin Glacier feeding the lake and has no outlet. Water is lost through sublimation and ablation of the ice cover. It'd be useful to have a citation for this line as well.

Addressed all.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:06, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Expedition

Inline citation #9 can be moved to the end of the paragraph to cover more text.
- Done.--Nvvchar. 11:39, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what you mean.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:06, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki-links

Infobox

Why Untersee Oasis? (Please forgive my ignorance in Antarctic natural history.)

Removed.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:55, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lead section

The {{Other uses}} template should probably point towards Untersee rather than the redirect page Untersee (disambiguation)
Otto-von-Gruber-Gebirge (Gruber Mountains) I personally think it's unnecessary to have the list the mountain range's name in two languages, especially given that there is an article on them. I'd suggest noting the German name of the mountain range in the Gruber Mountains article, and keep only one of the two names on this article.

Agreed. Removed German.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:49, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

History

Austral summer seems to be a better link than Southern hemisphere

That links to summer. We don't have an article on austral summer. I think southern hemisphere is appropriate unless we have a specific article..♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:48, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Not a great concern. --Der yck C. 12:53, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Geography

(not related to GA criteria) the phrase "evaporation and ablation" sounds somewhat logically confusing, given that vaporisation is a subset of ablation. Ignore this comment if "evaporation and ablation" is actually technically accurate in this context.

I think its OK.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:43, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Research studies

I'd suggest changing the 2nd "conductivity" link's text to "electrolytic conductivity", so distinguish it from "electrical conductivity" above.

Done, I think...♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:48, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think its a pretty comprehensive article even if relatively short, given what information there is currently available on it online..♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:51, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine. This article is long enough. There are featured articles on chemical elements that are shorter than this article. --Der yck C. 12:53, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Other things

Sectioning

The separation of History, Research studies and Expeditions seem rather arbitrary. Is there a better way of organising the content, possibly merging content and moving them around to give a Geography section and a subdivided History section which covers both the lake's discovery and the expeditions? (Not crucial, current structure of the article is largely clear and follows a rough chronological order)

Done.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:52, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

History

"mooted" carry strong legal and political connotations. Do you really mean it?

Changed to "given".♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:55, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Research studies

The introduction of the shorthand H₂S seems unnecessary to me, since that is the only place in the article where hydrogen sulphide is mentioned.

Written as word♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:48, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Expeditions

The indented part of this section would be better off being an inline bulleted list. A bit more rewriting of the text may be necessary to completely avoid possible accusations of plagiarism from the cited source.

Altered.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:48, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Final things...

One, possibly two, things that need to be done and this will become GA!

The inline list suffers from a few grammatical mistakes and typos. Also because the "heading" for the bulleted list ends with a colon, each bullet point must contain a phrase that will complete the sentence ending in the colon, or a complete sentence on its own if it's impossible to complete the sentence ending with the colon.
Lake Untersee lies in the interior of the Gruber Mountains of central Queen Maud Land in East Antarctica, which is roughly on the same longitude as the northern coast of Namibia. It is situated 90 kilometres (56 mi) to the southwest of the Schirmacher Oasis. A citation for this will be useful, possibly from an Atlas, as there is a (remote) chance that this will be challenged as original research. Nevertheless, I don't think anyone will dare to challenge its factual accuracy so it's not GA-crucial. --Der yck C. 13:03, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See my note below about Location relative to Schirmacher Oasis Philh-591 (talk) 19:55, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's sorted. OK?♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:41, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In the last bullet point, do you mean "In situ" (and possibly italicised)? And is "provided" meant to be a verb or adjective in the 3rd bullet point? --Der yck C. 13:57, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've altered it but I wasn't happy with the bulleted list. It looked untidy. I think its fine in prose.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:41, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted!

Well done. I have sometimes been picky beyond GA standard during the review, thanks for putting up with it! A few future improvements that editors of this article may consider:

The map has a blue edge near the bottom. Plus, I don't think it's appropriate to use Mercator projection for anything on Antarctica anyway.
There may be a better way to present the references using Harvard citation templates, especially for the ones that were cited repeatedly throughout the article. Der yck C. 21:08, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thankyou sir. I was thinking of also nominating Lake Burton, Antarctica. Needs a bit of copy editing I think.♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:04, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Location relative to Schirmacher Oasis

Lake Untersee is to the south-east, of the Schirmacher Oasis, not the south-west. The given reference states the distance from the Schirmacher Oasis, but not the direction. Per the coordinates from the article pages

Name	Coordinates
Schirmacher Oasis	70°45′30″S 11°38′40″E
Lake Untersee	71°20′S 13°27′E

As can be seen, Lake Untersee has a greater eastern longitude than the Schirmacher Oasis, so it is to the southeast of the oasis.

Fortunately I noticed this on OpenStreetMap from the warmth of my temperate latitude habitation. Philh-591 (talk) 19:53, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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