Wikipedia:Peer review/Coropuna/archive1

Coropuna

I've listed this article for peer review because I plan to send it to FAC soon-ish and I wanted to get some last-minute issues with the religious aspects dealth with before dispatching it.

Thanks, Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Copy-pasted comments by Iridescent

Moved from User talk:Iridescent

 – Transferred to this page to make it easier to reply, keep record and so that I don't have to keep hijacking that user talk page. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Here's a full top-to-tail nitpick. With your initial post about prepping this for FAC in mind, I'm commenting with the nitpicking turned up to maximum in terms of facts and comprehensibility, although I'm explicitly not commenting on minor grammatical issues since the exact wording will change between now and any FA candidacy. This is the version on which I'm commenting; as (I hope) you'll appreciate I have no particular inclination to read such things as "K-Ar geochronology of the late cenozoic volcanic rocks of the Cordillera Occidental, southernmost Peru" or "Trace element distribution in the cainozoic lavas of Nevado Coropuna and Andagua Valley, Central Andes of Southern Peru", let alone the French, Spanish, German, Italian or Arabic-language sources, so am taking it on trust that all sources say what you claim they say; I'm also assuming that all the technical terms are correct as I wouldn't know a lahar from an endorheic basin if my life depended on it.

Lead

• This is a personal preference rather than something that would tank a FA candidacy, but instead of just located 150 kilometres (93 miles) from Arequipa I'd be more specific and say something like "located 150km northwest of Arequipa and 500km southeast of Lima" or even "roughly halfway between Lima and La Paz". Realistically most readers aren't going to have the faintest idea where Arequipa is. (The location is clarified in the body text, but a lot of readers only read the lead.)

  I'll see for this, but I am not optimistic; the sources on this topic seldom mention Lima. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

  Don't take my word on this as gospel, but I'd think straightforward "distance between point A and point B" would be a legitimate piece of original research, given that anyone can verify it for themselves just by looking at a map. ‑ Iridescent 21:04, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

  Well, Google does show a distance of 612km - which probably requires rounding as neither Coropuna nor Lima are a point - but I am not certain if their distance measurements can be trusted; pinging @Ealdgyth and Brianboulton: in case they have seen such sourcing before. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:25, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

• The mountain was considered sacred by the Inca … The volcano also appears in mythology seems like a tautology to me.

  Changed to "legends" to emphasize that it's not a reference to religious practices. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Name

• The word puna means "plateau" and coro is a common component of toponyms…—in which language? (I can see by the underlying wikicode that this is Quechua, but there's no reason a reader would guess that given that most readers will know that Spanish is the main language of Peru.)

  Specified that. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Geography and geomorphology

• Should that long list of villages be wikilinked? It will create a sea of red, but longstanding consensus is that all populated places are notable.

  Done. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

• Mining takes place as well—is this actually on the volcano itself? Unless there's a kimberlite pipe or a sulphur deposit, I struggle to imagine what could be mined on an active volcano.

  Source isn't terribly detailed, but given how old the volcano is and based on the coordinates I figure it occurs in the older parts of the volcano. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

  Do we have any idea what's being mined? From my (admittedly limited) knowledge of geology, most volcanoes are just big chunks of basalt and don't contain any ore deposits. ‑ Iridescent 21:06, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

  Added two. Ore deposits are found underneath volcanoes at times, such as porphyry copper deposits; I suspect that Coropuna is old enough and incised enough for such deposits to be exposed, while at the same times the volcano is active enough to still look like a volcano. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:25, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

• Coropuna has a pear-shaped outline. This is a stupid question, but assume readers are stupid; does this mean it's shaped like a pear when viewed from above, or that it has the appearance of a pear when viewed from a distance on the ground?

  Added "viewed from above". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

• My previous comment about the gallery of large images at Coropuna#Surrounding terrain acting goofy when the page is viewed at different page widths; User:RexxS do you have any idea why it's doing this and how to put a stop to it?
• Also on the topic of the images, I note that one of them has a 1988 timestamp. The dates should probably be made explicit in the caption for every image, since glacial retreat is one of the key points here and what it looked like 30 years ago isn't necessarily what it looks like now.

  Added that timestamp - thankfully VE didn't blow up this time, like it often does with galleries. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

• There's a bit of hypercitation going on in the Coropuna#Elevation and size section. I don't have an issue with this—I think it makes sense to make it explicitly clear that multiple sources agree, if a topic is subject to dispute—but expect complaints at FAC since sentences like The most commonly cited maximum height for the volcano is 6,377 metres (20,922 ft),^{[36][52][34][62][56][1][11][42][63][10]} which refers to the northwestern dome of the mountain^{[33][52][34][1][31]} do look fairly weird.

  Yeah, that's an ugly fudge inspired by WP:BALANCE to resolve the problem that different sources mention different heights and there isn't really any meta-review to establish priority. I suspect part of the variance is because the mountain is glaciated so glacier changes result in height changes, but that's WP:OR. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Ice cap

• The Coropuna ice cap is larger than the ice cap at Quelccaya […] which was often considered to be the largest. needs clarification. As currently worded it makes it appear that the sizes of the two caps were previously mismeasured and that the error has now been corrected, but (according to NASA, anyway) what's actually happened is that Quelccaya was correctly measured as larger in the past but is melting at a faster rate owing to its lower altitude, allowing Coropuna to overtake it.

  Oh. I didn't notice that source; I've added it. Also, remind me that I should at some point try to get Quelccaya up to FA status, I think it can be done with sufficient stamina; based on what I've read Quelccaya's demise is only a question of time and nonwithstanding WP:NOTMEMORIAL it will thus be a topic of interest and of farewell messages soon. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

• On a similar note, the measurements of thickness and volume for the icecaps need to be dated. Remember that Wikipedia gets mirrored and forked; even if you come back to update the measurements on this page regularly, they'll rapidly go out of date on every other website that has copied this.

  Going to be difficult as AFAIK there is only a timeseries on its area. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

• I'm sure this does match what the sources say, but how come the sources give such wildly different numbers for how many glaciers there are?

  Good question. I suspect it's a matter of counting methods; if you are estimating the number of glaciers from aerial images (and some sources work on this) it is not always clear whether it's one glacier or two. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

• In the past, before the first human settlement of the area, the icecap on Coropuna was much larger than today, with its surface exceeding 500 square kilometres—when are we talking about here, and why was the icecap vastly larger then it was during the Last Glacial Maximum (365km²), given that that's when you'd expect the icecap to be largest?

  You've probably heard this a lot, but source does not specify that. About the second: That took a bit of digging, but it seems like pre-LGM there was an even larger icecap (mentioned under and at least two pre-LGM advances spread beyond the area that was covered with ice during the LGM) and that this mega-size was during the pre-LGM glacier advance. From Heine 2019 it seems like the whole chronology is a bit of a mess; I am a little unsure how to word this without distracting people with an essay on the chronology first. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

  The {{efn}} template is your friend. See William Etty#Footnotes for an extreme example of including explanatory background as footnotes to allow the curious to see detailed explanations without interrupting the flow for more casual readers. ‑ Iridescent 21:12, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

  Part of the problem is that the maximum extent is explained further in the second section below; this sentence is merely meant to be an introductory sentence. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:25, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

• Maybe a stupid question, but if this volcano was still erupting as recently as 700 years ago, how and why do the ice cores date back 20,000 years?

  I am guessing: It's a pretty large volcano and that lava is erupting in part "A" does not imply that ice in part "B" is necessarily affected. The Holocene eruptions did not affect many parts of the mountain. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Climate

• I note that Semihumid is a redlink—is this correct, or does Wikipedia use a different term for this?

  That's correct; we just don't have a page yet. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Vegetation, fauna and agriculture

• Peat bogs have been found especially on the southern and southwestern sides of the volcano—again I don't doubt this, but I'm struggling to see how that could work on an active volcano. Peat is extremely inflammable and notoriously difficult to extinguish once a fire starts—surely every time there was even the smallest eruption any peat deposits would burn away?

  Could be the same issue as with the ice cores; the eruptions may not have affected large parts of Coropuna. Also, is wet peat also flammable? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Eruption history

• No historical eruptions of Coropuna are known confuses me since the lead says the last eruption was 700 ± 200 years ago. Are you using "historical" here in the technical sense of "witnessed by someone who wrote down what they saw"? Either way it should probably be clarified.

  Tried a reword of this; "historical time" means pretty much the technical sense, since AFAIK the Inka are known for not having written records. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Archeology and religious importance

• The region around the volcano was settled over the last 4,000 years—I don't doubt this, but make sure it's meticulously sourced. There are confirmed human remains in Peru dating back 15,000 years, and while it's not as high-profile as some of the better-known "this was our land first" disputes, "who settled where and when in the pre-Columbian Americas?" is a long-running slow-burning dispute.

  Eh, to my understanding these disputes are mostly about the first settlements of larger regions, all of which took place long before 4,000 years ago. It seems like a good source. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

• A larger number of archeological sites arose during the 2nd Intermediate Period—I have no idea what this means.

  Ouch. I had forgotten about this sentence. Reworded it. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

• Coropuna played an important role in Inca religion and an important temple was situated there—is this temple Maucallacta (mentioned in the next paragraph) and if not, do any remains exist of this temple, and was it situated at the summit or just somewhere in the area?

  That source on p.145 considers the possibility but explicitly leaves the question open, and Tradwick 2003 also suggests that we don't know the site of the oracle yet. I've added a sentence to that effect. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

• The western summit known as "La Nina"—presumably the Incas didn't call it that, it needs a "now known as" unless that genuinely was the Incan name.

  Added a "today"; La Nina is a Spanish name and I've never seen any Quechua/Aymara name even vaguely resembling that. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Mythology and religion

This whole section is very confusing, and I can't really figure it out. Are we still talking about Incan religion in which case what is St Francis of Assisi doing in there, or are we talking about post-conquest Catholicism in which case how is the mountain the abode of the dead since presumably the dead have all been duly sent to heaven or hell? Regarding The mountain is still worshipped today, who's worshipping it—have some vestiges of pre-conquest religion survived the Inquisition, or is this by new-age-pagan types or a modern attempt to re-create the ancient religion? I know almost nothing about Peruvian religion but our Religion in Peru article gives no indication that there are any religions active in Peru that might still be worshipping mountains, and Wikipedia's religious articles tend to be fairly accurate since adherents see it as a duty to correct errors.

The section is supposed to be a general discussion of Coropuna's religious importance both Inka and recent - the Assisi bit is based off Noteworthy in this vein is the fact that the pious among today's Peruvian peasantry believe that Saint Francis has alighted on top of an active volcano, the sacred Mount Coropuna, where the Poverello of Assisi awaits the souls of dead Andeans to fly into his paternal arms in the source; I've reworded this a little but I am not sure if it's better now. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Water source

• The Peruvian government has assumed that the icecap will cease to be a source of water by 2025, although a more recent study concludes that the icecap will persist until about 2120—are these dates correct? 2025 is only 6 years away; surely if the glaciers were going to disappear over that sort of timescale it would be apparent by now.

  A bit of digging has led me to a third report from 2016 which does not mention Coropuna even once. Or maybe it's too long for Ctrl+F. From reading the second report (which the source is based off of) and the source it seems like the Peruvian government thinks in terms of meltwater supply, which will cease to be sufficient long before all ice is gone. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Climbing history

• The other summits of the mountain were ascended later, one of which was reached either 2003 or 2013—again, this confuses me. The source is equally confusing—unless there's clarity as to who climbed where and when, I'd be inclined to just leave it out.

  Agree and cut it out. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

• Are the people mentioned the only people who are known to have reached the summit, or does it now get regular climbers. (You presumably know more about mountains than me, but it seems to me that if a mountain has direct and paved connections to the main highway network, and has human settlements up to 4800m, it would by now be climbed quite regularly both by geologists and by recreational climbers.)

  None of the sources I read implied that Coropuna is a regularly climbed mountain. Unlike say Mount Kilimanjaro which is the tallest mountain in Africa Coropuna is a bit less record-breaking, I guess. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

I've intentionally posted this here rather than on the article talk page, so anyone else looking at the talkpage doesn't see what looks like a laundry list of complaints and get the mistaken impression that this is an article with major issues rather than just a batch of very minor quibbles. If you'd rather have it on Talk:Coropuna or Wikipedia:Peer review/Coropuna/archive1, feel free to cut-and-paste it to somewhere else. ‑ Iridescent 18:17, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Pinging @Brjuliano, Kenan323, and Mamayuco: as they have edited similar topics in the past. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:25, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

[1], made this edit, I hope it may bring some clarity on the issue of the ascents. Mamayuco (talk) 13:04, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

@Mamayuco:That looks better. I am also wondering if this article should be used. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:15, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Preferentially we should use the book on which the article is based, but if access is lacking the article could be used a bit. We should try to avoid to built up too much content on sources that are not the best. Mamayuco (talk) 20:32, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

@Mamayuco:Tried that, the snippets on Google Books were not that useful. I'll see if WP:RX has something on this. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:50, 20 September 2019 (UTC)