Talk:2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami/Archive 6

message: Hi,
Can some of you click on the images within this article and then click on "watch" to add them to your watchlists?  For some reason, these are being regularly targeted by vandals (not the images themselves, just the accompanying text).
See for instance
* http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image_talk:2004_Indonesia_Tsunami.gif&curid=1334121&action=history
* http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image_talk:2004_Indonesia_Tsunami_Complete.gif&curid=1344000&action=history
-- Curps 21:59, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please add images to your watchlists 

message: I am very suprised that this is not in the article or let alone no discussion has taken place on the status of the many Indigenous Tribes located in or around the Indian Ocean.  
:AP article:
:Government officials and anthropologists believe that ancient knowledge of the movement of wind, sea and birds may have saved the five indigenous tribes on the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar islands from the tsunami
:...
:only about 400 to 1,000 members alive today from the Great Andamanese, Onges, Jarawas, Sentinelese and Shompens. Some anthropological DNA studies indicate the generations may have spanned back 70,000 years
Great place to begin | News Articles:
* Fate Of Indigenous Tribes Unknown CBS News | AP
* Stone-age tribes evacuated from Indian isles Reuters
* Ancient island tribe flees inland to avoid devastation  London Free Press | AP
* Islands in the Universe Tech Central Station 
I would like to contribute to this article but do to its high volume and complex edits I will sit this one out and let someone more manageable. PEACE ~ RoboAction 23:58, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indigenous Tribes 

message: One phrase in the "Signs and warnings" section might be misleading as it is being used to illustrate the rarity of tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. "...the last major one was caused by the Krakatoa eruption of 1883." There are several sources that mention tsunamis triggered in the last century in the Indian Ocean, some maybe as relevant as the Krakatoa one, and the subsection of this article "unfamiliarity with warning signs" itself mentions the 1907 tsunami event, which is confusing in relation to the earlier bit about the 1883 event being the last major one. More generally, this site  says "There have been 7 records of tsunamis set off by earthquakes near Indonesia, Pakistan and one at Bay of Bengal in the last century." This is still much rarer than the Pacific, but from a brief look through, it seems that the 1945 Pakistan event and 1941 Bay of Bengal event are at least deserving of mention.
What I really wanted to clarify was whether the "last major one was ... 1883" phrase was written with these other tsunamis in mind, and indeed what 'major' means in this context, or whether that phrase was intentionally written to imply that the other tsunamis were not 'major'.
:I think any previous tsunamis were all local ones caused by much smaller earthquakes.  A tsunami warning system is really needed for the tsunamis that cross oceans and devastate shores across an ocean, where the original earthquake was felt only slightly or not at all. -- Curps 03:08, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've just been reading a book about the Krakatoa eruption and its tsunami (Krakatoa - The Day the World Exploded - by Simon Winchester) and it seems to have only killed people (about 36,000) in the local vicinity (Java and Sumatra). Though the tsunami was visible on coastlines as far away as Sri Lanka and Africa (swells a few feet in height), it did not devastate those distant shores. If you call a tsunami "major" I guess you are either referring to the death toll and destruction, OR the distance it propagated over. The differences between the Krakatoa tsunami and this one are quite interesting, but I guess this isn't the place to go into detail. And I can't find out enough about the other earthquakes and tsunamis (in the Indian Ocean between 1883 and 2004) to really compare them properly, which is a pity. At least the Wikipedia tsunami page mentions the 1945 Pakistan tsunami. More here about the 1945 Pakistan tsunami Carcharoth 19:40, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The strength and directionality of a tsunami will depend on the circumstances that produced it.  In this latest tsunami, the main force was delivered east-west, while Bangladesh directly north was hardly affected.  In the case of Krakatoa, the island was located in the strait between Java and Sumatra, so those land masses probably shielded some other areas.  And Krakatoa being a volcano rather than an earthquake probably made the circumstances different. But I guess from our human-centric point of view, what makes a tsunami "major" is its death toll.  So that's probably the standard used here. -- Curps 23:33, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification of 'rarity' of Indian Ocean tsunamis 

message: This page seems to have settled down and is of quite a high standard. But the related impact pages for specific countries could really do with attention. Especially
* Impact_of_the_2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_on_Indonesia
* Impact_of_the_2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_on_India
* Impact_of_the_2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_on_Sri_Lanka
* Impact_of_the_2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_on_Thailand
These are large topics which deserve far greater effort and the sort of articles that Wikipedia really excels at. The media organisations are too busy reporting latest news to provide useful summaries. :ChrisG 19:08, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Related pages needing attention 

message: Yesterday vandals inserted geographic nonsense about Ethiopia and Solomon Islands and about the earthquake being felt in Mauritius rather than Singapore.  Be on the lookout for this sort of thing. -- Curps 21:37, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beware vandals inserting geographic nonsense 

message: Please remove the photo labeled "2004 Indian Ocean tsunami impacting Thailand shoreline". That is not correct. That is a photo from a previous Tsunami in China.
:It has already been removed by the person who added it. -- Curps 01:11, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Incorrect photo

message: Go to http://www.google.com/ There is a link Ways to help with tsunami relief On that page is in the section a link to this article  --Walter 17:51, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent! –– Constafrequent (talk page) 18:35, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  direct link from google to the article 

message: The 220,000 death toll has not been solidly confirmed yet (AFAIK).  Please see this article:(http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=658810).  The official estimate at this time seems to be 'between 158,000 and 225,000.'  -- Xaliqen 12:41, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Casualty Figures 

message: Official estimates have recently been broadcast (eg Radio New Zealand about 8 hours ago) of an Indonesian Government revised estimate. Not back up to the above-discussed "400,000"; but if the new figure becomes accepted, this disaster eclipses the Tangshan earthquake in terms of loss of life, and our current article should increase its upper limit (from "Anywhere from 165,000 to 234,000 people are thought to have died"). Robin Patterson 00:59, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Estimate: Over 200,000 dead in Indonesia alone

message: This information has been floating around from various AIM messages, profiles, etc.
----
For the last week New York's 97 has been running a hideously unfunny and offensive skit named the "Tsunami Song," that ridicules the victims of the Tsunami as "chinks" whose children will now be sold into child slavery. It's being played on the station's morning show, hosted by Miss Jones. Listen here now-> http://www.thesilent1.com/USA_For_Indonesia.mp3
Peep the link and spread it around to as many as you can...this is pathetic, insensitive and disgusting.
One of the Jocks in Miss Jones crew is an Asian female and she had verbal beef with her on air about playing this yet it played in rotation anyway.
The lyrics can be found here: http://www.clubzen.com/forum/forum_thread.php?id=216
References:
http://www.hiphopmusic.com/archives/000759.html
http://www.hiphopmusic.com/archives/000760.html
http://www.clubzen.com/forum/forum_thread.php?id=2164
----
If you like more information, you may ask me on my comment page.  Many people are outraged at the song, and it might be worth mentioning somewhere on the Wikipedia. -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:38, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The only bad publicity is no publicity. These people are professional trolls, and you're biting. Don't feed the trolls. -- Cyrius|✎ 14:42, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terrible: "Tsunami Song" 

message: See also /Archive 2#Magnitude clarification.
It appears that there is no official reading on the Richter scale for this earthquake; shouldn't the article say so if this is the case. It says that it was initially reported as 6.8 so I think people should be wondering what it is now. Brianjd 09:42, 2005 Jan 27 (UTC)
:I don't think so- Richter's a red herring.  The quake could be measured on Richter, but since the result would be misleading, what's the point? Mark1 04:35, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Magnitude clarification 

message: Am I the only one that finds this usage weird? It's redundant. It's like saying "tidal wave wave". A tsunami is a wave, although an unusually deep wave when it is in the open ocean. Most of the time the phrase "surface wave of the tsunami" should probably be substituted for "tsunami wave". BlankVerse 17:24, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: tsunami wave?

message: In Talk:Orders of magnitude (energy):
: 1.33 × 10^20 J — energy released by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
In this article:
: The total energy released ... has been estimated as 2.0 exajoules (2.0×10^18 joules). (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqinthenews/2004/usslav/neic_slav_faq.html)
I don't want to change it. There may be other numbers. -- Toytoy 17:12, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
:Both figures originally came from the USGS website (see earlier archived versions of this talk page).  The first figure came from a table at a USGS FAQ page, which gave "megatons of TNT" equivalent for earthquakes of various magnitudes, using the general rule that two magnitudes difference = 1000-fold increase in energy.  However, that table has now been removed from that USGS FAQ page.  The second estimate also came from the USGS website, and was specific to this particular earthquake.  So I think we can take it as reliable. -- Curps 18:59, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Orders of magnitude? 

message: The FAC notice at the top of the page links to the old nomination discussion from early January, rather than the new one.  I have no idea how to fix it.  - BanyanTree 02:11, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's been fixed now.  - BanyanTree 16:33, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  FAC link 

message: Added an external link which shows that seismogram in GIF format. That damn earthquake literally kicked the stylus off the tracking paper even on the opposite side of the globe!
-- 195.70.48.242 07:54, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added Earth's ECG. 

message: I just heard an NPR report saying that this earthquake is actually a 9.3 making the second biggest in recorded history. Once this is verified by another organization (research group) this should be added to the article. Renaissance Man 22:28, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, there is already  a section for this topic on this talk page, and the figure is already mentioned in the main article twice at least. It is old news — the research came out on Feb 9, 2005 or earlier. BBC, Science, New Scientist, Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, and apparently NPR are reporting it as a fact, but USGS, afaik, is repoting it as 9.0. Here's a page describing the research from one of the two researchers. I don't see how it needs to be or can be verified because it wasn't an experiment, but a measurment. --Tokek 01:07, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: No it's 3 times greater. The scale is basically logarithmic, but subtraction and division is also involved. Just read the link I provided above for details. --Tokek 23:15, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Larger?

message: Server problems have stopped me from dealing with a few things which I'll deal with soon if no-one else does:
* the impact on... pages for Thailand and Burma need to be updated with the latest figures (http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13713552).
*That source also mentions relief workers considering the Somalia figure to be inflated, so we may want to adjust our Somalian confirmed figure.
*The total of 217,000 in the source (which I've also seen elsewhere recently) is substantially larger than our confirmed, and substantially smaller than our confirmed+missing.  I don't know how to reconcile them.
Mark1 08:23, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Housekeeping