Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Archive 5

message: In an effort to improve the Hurricane Katrina family of articles, a new project has been proposed:
*Wikipedia:Wikiproject/List_of_proposed_projects#Hurricane_Katrina
*User:Lithogliff/Katrina
Evolauxia 11:52, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea. This should happen. I counted at least 30 related articles, and little discussion on Katrina occurrs on this page or the 2005 page. Why not have the Katrina articles together on a separate, daughter Wikiproject? Hurricanehink 00:48, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  H. Katrina 

message: I created a new Category at the Commons, [Category:Tropical cyclone impacts] (it is plural because tropical cyclones impact in more than one way) for damage photos, rainfall charts, etc. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 18:37, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting.  There are so many hurricane pictures (maybe 10,000 of them?), categorizing them will be a task beyond monumental. — jdorje (talk) 20:02, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, this will be worse than going through every last tropical cyclone article. I'll try to help over the 4-day weekend. Hurricanehink 21:51, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I'm concerned that's a project for the far future.  Just make sure to categorize new pictures somewhere under :commons:Category:Tropical cyclones so we'll be able to find them.  I have made a few categories for media for individual storms, like :commons:Category:1928 Okeechobee Hurricane or :commons:Category:Hurricane Dennis - probably all FA should get categories like this which can be referenced in the external links. — jdorje (talk) 22:22, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Before this would go any further, should it be subdivided? Like Jdorje said there are thousands of them. Maybe it would be better to go by decade, or even by season. All of 2005's would be all be apart in one huge glob of a category. If this is going to happen, it should go Basin, then decade, then season, then by storm if necessary (like the Okeechobee Hurricane or Dennis). Hurricanehink 16:13, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Should the non-commons images be categorized? There are a lot of images that are on this Wikipedia, and are pretty disorganized. Hurricanehink 02:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In case anyone cares, I categorized all pics from 2003-2005. I added categories like :Category:Category 3 hurricane images and :Category:2005 Atlantic hurricane season images. Hurricanehink (talk) 00:35, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commons Category 

message: When they were first started, they were met with some fierce resistance. Then, only certain users opposed them. Now, they are in use back to 1959, but for what? Numerous people in the past and present have questioned their usefulness, and I for one agree. They don't help for navigation. If you are on an article's page (say for example Hurricane Elena) and you want a link to Hurricane Kate because the article mentions it, there should simply be a link in the article for Kate. For anyone that supports them, what is the use of them? I propose all of them be deleted, mainly due to how little effort it takes to go to the season page and find the storm you want. Hurricanehink 21:02, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They are useful in certain occasions; it is useful to go from the first storm in a season to the next in order, especially when doing research for a complete season. However, in cases where the button bar points to a non-existent article or section, they just shouldn't be used. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 22:11, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

text: They are potentially useful, I'll agree.  But in their current form they are not useful because (as I said elsewhere) most links just go to the same (season) article.  You can't use the button bar to jump from storm to storm because they will quickly take you to somewhere the button bar is not shown.  Much more useful would be (if it is possible) to add to the navigation quicklinks or toolbox entries on the left of the page. — jdorje (talk) 00:58, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For some seasons, I guess I can see their point. 1985 (6 storms), 1995 (6 storms), 1996 (4 storms), 1998 (6 storms, though Earl and Charley will probably be merged), 1999 (5 storms), 2003 (5 storms), 2004 (6 storms), and 2005 (16 storms) could be useful, but for seasons with only a few storms (or none at all), there's really no point. Hurricanehink 02:45, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

text: The button bar is fine for 2005, but other seasons like 1997, which only have one article, don't really need it. What did you have in mind with the five seasons? Hurricanehink 15:22, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I meant imagine replacing on, say Katrina, "Part of the 2005 AHS" with "2005AHS: Jose, Katrina, Lee"; so giving the links to the previous/next storms in the infobox. It's an idea--Nilfanion 16:00, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But what if they want to go randomly through the season, like checking the Category 3 hurricanes only, or if they wanted to double check another storm? (Like on Katrina's you wanted to check Cindy). Hurricanehink 16:38, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was just a suggestion, personally I think the button bars are a good idea. The only niggle is the Greek letters, but we can't do much about that.--Nilfanion 17:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Good point. No idea how to fix it. Hurricanehink (talk) 01:13, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Button Bars 

message: These are the following statistics on article class for each basin (storm articles only):
Atlantic-
* 5 Featured articles
* 4 A-class articles
* 55 B-class articles
* 116 Start articles
* 2 Stub articles
Eastern Pacific-
* 1 featured article
* 0 A-class articles
* 4 B-class articles
* 13 Start articles
* 1 Stub articles
Western Pacific-
* 0 featured articles
* 0 A-class articles
* 1 B-class article
* 16 Start articles
* 4 Stub articles
Total-
* 7 Featured articles
* 4 A-class articles
* 62 B-class articles
* 154 Start articles
* 13 Stub articles
Retired Atlantic-
* 3 Featured articles
* 3 A-class articles
* 27 B-class articles
* 36 Start articles
* 1 Stub article
Retired EPAC-
* 1 Featured article
* 0 A-class articles
* 1 B-class article
* 4 Start articles
* 1 Stub article
Retired WPAC-
* 0 Featured articles
* A-class articles
* 1 B-class article
* 11 Start articles
* 0 Stub articles
I don't know about you, but I don't really like that ratio. Out of the 240 tropical cyclone articles, 69% are start class or lower. Something should be done about this. The number of start articles should be going down, not up. Fortunately, the retired hurricane articles aren't as bad, at least in the Atlantic. However, if we are really the overzealous masochists we say we are, we should do something about it and prove it! :) Hurricanehink 18:41, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the good thing is that we know what the ratio is, and that we know we have to fix it. Ideally, we can start with the retired storm articles, and perhaps look at some B-Class articles that have been edited recently and reassess them. Perhaps it is time to start the Cyclone Collaboration of the Fortnight already too, as we have very active editors, just all of them doing different things. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 20:24, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yea, the retired storms should be first. Good work starting the TCCOTF. Hurricanehink 01:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Unless we keep our rigid rules for creating new articles, the ratio is not going to improve.  However many articles we improve to FA-class, 20 times that many new articles will be created.  And the only thing we can do about it is to keep merging them. — jdorje (talk) 05:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For non-retired storms (becomes more important since in 2006 and beyond, I believe an article is automatically created for storms), B-Class should be the target. Any beyond that are bonus. CrazyC83 18:18, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Remember, storm articles only. Hurricanehink 18:34, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some statistics 

message: I archived the old discussion so we could start anew. What is the criteria for creating an article now? Every 2005 storm has one, and there are a lot of articles that didn't do much yet still have an article. Should we agree that, provided there is sufficient information, an article can be made? In this, the sufficient information is only relavent to impact, unless an other characteristic has enough information. This can allow for lower notable storms like Felix to stay- mainly due to information. This allows for the existence of Hurricane Epsilon which, prior to the every 2005 storm article, was kept on the basis of its difficulty for forecasters. Is this fine? Hurricanehink 00:48, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that Epsilon doesn't deserve a seperate article on notability. Yes it annoyed the NHC, but schadenfreude does not make it notable. When I upped Irene's quality, similar information was found, its just with Epsilon we were looking at the time. My opinion is 2005AHS says all (Atlantic) named storms are notable enough for an article. Notability isn't redundant, but I see its use as "Why does Lee have an article when Cindy doesn't have one? - merge it". In other words minor storms are allowed articles, but they shouldn't get one if more notable ones (of that season) don't. The "pure-information" rule (the season article should always be fleshed out before storm articles are added) isn't that big a change really, as before 2002ish online info dries up (on "unnotable" storms). It is possible someone could go and do hefty offline research and get good stuff for older minor storms, but thats not going to happen.--Nilfanion 11:03, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree, but that's for a different discussion. My plan would allow for, theoretically, all storms to have articles, provided there is sufficient information. Realistically, that doesn't go back to far. For my scenario, I believe Epsilon had the sufficient information. Hurricanehink 15:24, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think what you and I said are similar phrasings, both would allow all storms to have articles. I just phrased mine in the sense that acknowledged the net is our source, but if someone did do research offline they could get us way back. In both the scenarios we describe Epsilon would keep its article (and the other 2005AHS storms). What I meant is using the old-style notablilty rules Epsilon should have gone, its not that unusual for a long-lasting storm to be a pain for the NHC, and it did nothing apart from that.--Nilfanion 16:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article Criteria 

message: I don't know any graphs, tables or templates that I want to work on (other than the hurricane-produced tornado chart) that does not exist now. Since new features are added at times, I think that the early-season storms, before we start getting big, devastating storms, would be a good time to make experimental new features to evaluate. (Last year, it seemed that the big storms were when we did most of the experimental new features - which are all operational) CrazyC83 00:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The track maps are still evolving, we should get them to "finished". I think there are some slight issues with them at this time. If you look at the track maps of TS Lee and TS Gamma (for example), both storms which had a significant non-TD-or-stronger period, TD color triangles are used. IMO this is confusing, as if you just glanced at the track-map, the triangles look more impressive than the circles. IIRC it is circle for tropical, triangle for subtropical and square for extratropical, which would mean those are circles anyway. I think when the storm is below TD strength, we should use a smaller shape for the data points, that obviously expresses the weaker nature of the storm then, to someone who isn't aware of what the shape distinctions are.--Nilfanion 08:36, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The triangles, squares, and circles are all sized to be the same area.  You think the triangles and squares should be smaller? — jdorje (talk) 22:52, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That could work, IMO an eqilateral triangle looks bigger than a circle of the same area. How about making all 3 shapes smaller when the speed is below 35kts? --Nilfanion 22:59, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Good idea. Most of the big features seem to be done, so if anyone has any other ideas, shout them out. Hurricanehink 15:25, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Another idea would be to write current watches and warnings in Portal:Tropical cyclones/Active tropical cyclones. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 19:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Then we would have to change all of them, and I don't see if the cost-benefit analysis of doing that would warrant all 100-odd track maps to be changed. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 22:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is true, but I think we do need to update them. We don't need to attempt what I suggested here (and I'm not advocating we should), but the inconsistency between them and  should be fixed.--Nilfanion 22:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The minimum values you suggested are incorrect - the low ends for each color should be 0, 35, 65, 85, 100, 115 and 140 knots. CrazyC83 04:50, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Like I said, where the colors are fixed could be altered. This is more a question of if people like the concept. Note, with the new STS color, green is effectively taken out of the progression. Because of the potential difficulties in coding, I am not convinced this idea is worth the effort; though I like the idea. However, I strongly believe the track map colors should be updated to correspong to the storm colors, it is confusing and means some of the image tags like on Katrina's are flat wrong.--Nilfanion 13:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Green was effectively taken out of any progression since the kilometric discussion at Talk:2005 Atlantic hurricane season statistics that ended with the current scale being adopted. I do agree that the old track should be updated to the new scheme; I believe that was going to be done sometime, but it just went out the back burner, I guess. Jdorje, is there a way we could help in changing the track maps, or would you have to do all of them? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 19:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I meant that the addition of STS takes the green out of the continuous color scheme concept. Jdorje, how much effort would it take to change the track maps to use a different color for each windspeed? If it is easy enough, is it worth doing?-Nilfanion 19:42, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am against using continuous colors for individual windspeeds. This makes the map more confusing to the viewer by adding even more colors, removing the simple one-color-means-one-thing association that is intended.  Also, it doesn't really make it less US-centric since, for instance, the Australians don't use 1-minute windspeeds anyway. — jdorje (talk) 23:06, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Also, we will eventually have to update all of the track maps.  I have held off on doing this because it seems every couple of weeks the new color scheme enters a new phase of discussion.  But once we are agreed that the color scheme is stable I can upload new ones.  The way to do this is with a bot: since generation is entirely automated, this shouldn't be too hard.  However a bot would have to be approved (I think) and I'm not sure how to go about doing this.  Finally, it might be wise to get rid of the old versions of the track maps: with about 1,000 track maps at 500k each, that's 500 megabytes of images, which is reasonable; however, with 3 different copies of each track held on each server (because old copies of images are retained) we are looking at a sizeable amount of data. — jdorje (talk) 23:06, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  As you're going to be uploading images to commons, you need to request a bot flag at :Commons:Administrators. (If you need to get rid of the old versions, you may need to ask a Commons admin there, as I'm unable to do so with an enwiki sysop flag). Ironically enough, the last discussion of the color scheme was overwhelmingly opposed to any change to it. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 20:11, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I changed it to a very faint aqua, still discernible from the tropical storm color, but very similar to it. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 05:09, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It works really well, its a natural progression from TD and TS and is intermediate between TS and C1.--Nilfanion 13:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Experimenting with new features 

message: I am creating a new sup-page for the Hurricane Katrina article. For now it is called Notable Figures of Hurricane Katrina disaster (I was unable to give it a better name). I was about to start on it when I realized that this will take a LONG time if I did it all by myself. So far I only added a basic info and some sub-sections but thats how far I went. So if anyone is interested you can help me find and add infomation in this new article I am making. Storm05 17:26, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need Help with this 

message: As Madeline said above, we need an article on cyclone scales. We originally had Tropical cyclone classification schemes, which I merged into Tropical cyclone, but now the relevant section in the tropical cyclone article is huge. So, should I unmerge it? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 23:02, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Very good idea. That would help all around, as the tropical cyclone article is too long, and the classification schemes are important. Hurricanehink 23:14, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Unmerged. It would be nice to make this one quite comprehensive. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 23:29, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cyclone scale article 

message: Wouldn't it be useful to have an Article progress grading scheme for tropical cyclones? The list that is currently there might not be particularly useful for tropical cyclones. I was thinking Hurricane Floyd for FA, Hurricane Nora (1997) for A, Hurricane Andrew for GA, Hurricane Frances for B, Typhoon Chataan for Start, and Hurricane Inez for Stub. I personally don't agree with Andrew, but it's the lesser of two evils. There's no way Katrina is GA class. I think it is a solid A, especially with all of the subpages, but that's for a different discussion. What do you think? Hurricanehink 13:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What could work better is links into the histories of articles. Then we don't have to worry about constantly changing the reference points (I hope Inez can get better than a stub); and could use the same storm at different quality levels.--Nilfanion 13:53, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, interesting idea. That could work very well, but is there an FA that has gone semi-evenly from Stub to Start ...to FA? The three FA's I worked on, Floyd, Iniki, and Gloria, all went from Start to A class, so none of those could work. Tracy shouldn't be mentioned because that is B class, IMO, as it is. What about the others? Hurricanehink 20:43, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure what a good example to show all 5 classes is, but if we look carefully enough at the FA articles I'm sure we can find one with an even progression (they didn't get assessed at B-class but that's just because the work on them was so fast).  I don't think Andrew is a good A-class article because I don't think it's A-class; it's basically just a rehash of the TCR. — jdorje (talk) 04:30, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Tangentially related to this: WP:WVWP has now given us an Assessment log, which we may find useful to monitor for vandalism or changes. The best thing: no one has to do anything to update it!  Titoxd(?!? - help us) 04:43, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assessment examples 

message: Cyclone Tracy has been selected as the new Tropical Cyclone Collaboration of the Fortnight. Please help to improve that article!
Also, it would be nice for more people to go around there and voice their opinions, it feels a bit lonely in there at times. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 23:24, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Collaboration|Tropical Cyclone Collaboration of the Fortnight]] 

message: Cyclones, hurricanes etc are now listed in the root of the above category, whereas earthquakes and other types of natural disasters are located in subcategories.  Should wind-related disasters be moved to subcats as well??  --rxnd ( t | € | c ) 12:26, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It should as this is dealing with the same theme as earthquakes. --Siva1979Talk to me 15:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: After having looked around I realised that there already are quite a few cyclones under :Category:Weather events.  Another option is :Category:Tropical cyclones.  I am not sure where to put them.  --rxnd ( t | € | c ) 16:29, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

text:  Perhaps moving earthquakes to the root of the category instead? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 20:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Please put all cyclones in :Category:Tropical cyclones, or just ask on this talk page and we'll figure it out. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 20:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe no storm article should go under :Category:Tropical cyclones or :Category:Weather events or :Category:Natural disasters.  Every tropical cyclone fits into all three of these categories, and we cannot populate them with 200 storm articles and expect it to be useful.  But every storm is already categorized into several of the sub-categories of the Tropical cyclones category.  Thus it should be easy for someone to browse through :Category:Natural disasters, for instance, and find a storm they're looking for that hit Florida (Natural disasters->Tropical cyclones->by region->United States->Florida).  We do, however, need to make sure every storm article is categorized correctly by season, basin, region, and strength. — jdorje (talk) 02:30, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, in my opinion the same reasoning should apply to earthquakes, tornadoes, blizzards, floods, and all other specific-event articles that are in these categories.  If they fit into one of the subcategories, they should not be placed into the main category. — jdorje (talk) 02:39, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I fully agree.  Thanks for taking care of the storms.  There are only a couple of hard-to-classify articles left now. I will see what I can do with them. --rxnd ( t | € | c ) 06:57, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:Category:Natural disasters]] structure 

message: Apparently we now have both A-class and GA-class articles.  A is *above* GA, but GA gets the  tag while A has nothing.  This makes little sense to me, and I doubt we will use A much if at all.  Should we campaign for the merger of these two classes? — jdorje (talk) 15:50, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know. I personally wish there were more categories. For me, the ideal scale would be a numerical value from 1 to 10. 9 to 10 are FA's (some FA's are better than others, IMO Floyd is better than Iniki due to more information), 8 is A, 7 is GA, 5-6 is B, 4 is decent start, 3 is moderate start, 2 is bad start, and 1 is stub. Plus, the GA tag could still be on the A class articles, as used in Claudette, David, and Ivan. Assuming we are trying to get all articles to FA or GA class, as someone mentioned elsewhere, the GA tag could be like it passed the inspection. Any article without it means it still needs some work. Hurricanehink 16:29, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Makes sense. Also, David is an A class, while Irene or Andrew are GA classes. There's still a big quality difference in good articles. Hurricanehink 20:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks to me that GA-class is somewhere in between A and B classes; A-class articles which are also GAs retain  after all. That division seems reasonable; any Cyclone Wikiproject A-class would (almost) surely pass a GA nom, but I'm not sure if any article that can pass GA nomination would rate as an A - Irene springs to mind here.--Nilfanion 21:11, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, with the debate currently going on Template talk:Grading scheme, it might. I still think Irene can be an FA if polished up. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 21:21, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not going to argue against that possibility - its just why should we bother with getting such a minor storm to FA status at this time; it would be more useful to get other articles improved IMO. Anyone fancy Lee on the front page one day?--Nilfanion 21:30, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  If any effort is needed to improve a major storm, it is for Katrina... we only need to flesh out the Impact section, but no one does it. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 21:37, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A- and GA-class articles