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This is a potentially vital new article. i added a small section, which was removed with a good faith, reasonable rationale, but as I am not sure what the parameters of this broad article are, im adding my section here in case others later decide it does belong.
In the current Anthropocene Era,agriculture has grown to utilize almost 40% of the land surface area of Earth.[1]
I think its an interesting fact about land use, but maybe we dont want land use facts here.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 16:57, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
Super-stubby Land mass would benefit from just being a section in this article. bd2412 T 15:42, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
I think it can be merged with and at land. I don't know what can be added here that shouldn't be/isn't at the land article. I don't see what's that different from land mass, landmass, and land. In 2007 one user reverted the redirect to land and commented that "Land mass is an area of land's mass". see Talk:Land_mass. Clearly the "mass" of the land is hardly ever spoken about. Even if they meant area not mass there is no reason why it is a separate term to just land. Carlwev (talk) 12:53, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I have looked reasonably hard to find a complete list of the "FAO Code" in the 1st column of the table in Land_cover#Types (table below the map).
The document pointed to as a reference on the 2nd column "Type" Land_cover#cite_note-8 of the table does provide a source/definition for the labels of each of the codes... but the codes provided in this document do not match the numbers in the FAO code column.
Can someone provide a source for the "FAO Code" and that these codes map to the labels from the reference for the type column? Thank-you --Aupward (talk) 18:37, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
Icebergs and glaciers constitute "solid surface(s) of the Earth" and are "not permanently covered by water." So, do they qualify as land under the Michael Allaby, Chris Park definition in the lead paragraph? I'll stay tuned. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 14:27, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
Difference between land and soil 2409:4064:4D18:664C:0:0:604B:770E (talk) 14:46, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
Lands bio Biography 2409:4060:21B:EC22:0:0:2971:D8B0 (talk) 18:44, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
Land 77.246.53.9 (talk) 11:25, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
Right, this is tough. What section should we expand first? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 05:49, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
I see nothing in Land cover that could not just be merged into that section of this article. The text is relatively short, and the concept is just a characteristic of land. BD2412 T 17:09, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
tc
21:24, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
How should the layout of the article be defined? See also above discussion. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 05:25, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
Good sources for the Climate section within Physical sciences:
I think some of the structure could be grouped into a "Physical science" section, for the same reasons as the Sea article. DFlhb (talk) 22:51, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Reading through this, I felt the "Air" and "Pollution" sections (and probably even the Biodiversity loss section) don't fit, as they have nothing to do with "Land" and more to do with "Earth" which is a separate concept (Earth = land+water+air+life). I believe we should either write out how air and water pollution (and biodiversity loss) relates to land degradation and other forms of "land pollution" specifically, or just take out these sections completely and only focus on land-related environmental issues e.g. the specified land degradation. LightProof1995 (talk) 17:34, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
land is defined as “a delineable area of the Earth’s terrestrial surface, encompassing all attributes of the biosphere immediately above or below this surface, including those of the near-surface climate, the soil and terrain forms, the surface hydrology (including shallow lakes, rivers, marshes, and swamps), the near-surface sedimentary layers and associated groundwater reserve, the plant and animal populations (biodiversity), the human settlement pattern and physical results of past and present human activity (terracing, water storage or drainage structures, roads, buildings, etc.).”
Water pollution is the contamination of lakes, rivers, aquifers, reservoirs and groundwater as a result of human activities. According to the Essentials of Geology textbook that I've cited before, lakes are 20% of "surface water and other freshwater". It also says:
I wonder if I made a mistake putting Biomes (and possibly Layers too, though that might be fine to leave in) in "Physical science". Seems like they could just as well be brought out than left in. I'm thinking we could dedicate "Physical science" to plate tectonics, the rock cycle, soils & weathering, erosion, volcanic activity,, topography, groundwater, and possibly shorelines. DFlhb (talk) 16:36, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Just quick notes on sections that probably need to be added, or areas that need to be elaborated on.
The following words aren't even in the text of this page (links at bottom don't count): mining (or mine), gemstone (or gem), earthquake, lithosphere, isostasy, orogeny, petrology, rock climbing, animal husbandry, grazing/overgrazing (can cause desertification), property, landlord, mud, earthworm, and the mentioned-above landfill and litter
The following may need entire sections:
Geomorphology with subsections Erosion, Plate tectonics, Volcanic activity.
Elevation, with subsection about Upland and lowlands.
Urban planning/Urban development with subsections on Sustainability, and maybe Zoning of land? I realize it mentions Land (economics), but even that article doesn't get get into zoning.
LightProof1995 (talk) 05:30, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
"Exploration" is basically the same thing as "travel". I think the sentence of how exploration has led to conquest and colonization should've been left in. If we made this section just "History", i.e. so it is the "History of humans and land", we can fit topics such as war in it easier. LightProof1995 (talk) 09:10, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
It seems this is a more general term, and could refer to not only desertification, but also biodiversity loss and ground pollution. If the headers are changed to reflect this, it could combine the entire "land degradation" section with the top paragraph of Environmental issues, but that might be too long. LightProof1995 (talk) 04:26, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
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Vital Barnstar | |
... for those that improved and expanded this article as a team. Let's make land a good article. |
P.S. I'm really sorry that I've not been able to dedicate a lot of time towards improving the article (hypocrisy!). From now on, I'll try to improve the sources and images a bit, and see what goes from there. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:44, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
@CactiStaccingCrane Hello, I was going to undo all of your edits and say I had to respectfully reverse all of your edits, but I see you are still editing. Please stop and discuss instead.
I feel you have missed some points in the discussion as you were out, which is fine, I will catch you up to speed.
In order to get this article to GA status, we decided the best article to mirror is the Featured Article Sea.
While I understand sometimes it is better to take stuff out to make an article more concise, I feel you may not have realized this article is going to have to be an exception to regular WP:SIZE standards, which state an article of >100 kb in size should almost certainly be divided. The Sea article is 183 kb in size but is still FA. Why? Because part of the criteria for GA/FA is scope. The Land and Sea articles have way, way more scope than most articles on Wikipedia.
Before your edits, Land was still a smaller article than Sea. Given the fact humans live on land, I wouldn't be surprised if in order for Land to be FA, it has to be even longer than Sea, but I feel we should aim for the same size as Sea.
Throughout the history of creating this page, we have had headers with even less text than the ones you combined. However, eventually they became larger. My point -- the headers need to be filled with more text, instead of combined to where editors don't feel as invited to add to them.
For example, next I was going to add more to the Agriculture and Urban Development sections, which are now gone.
Again, I understand where your edits are coming from, as I'm sure such edits are usually useful for articles with less scope. I'm just pointing out to you, you may not have realized, this article is an exception to the norm.
Furthermore, to help us achieve scope, I made a list above of terms to add, one of which you also took out -- Petrology. Not all terms have been added yet, and now even another one has been taken out. If I were trying to decide if an article met the scope requirement of GA, I'd list a bunch of terms I'd feel the article should mention, and currently, the lack of mention of mud or petrology would get a fail from me.
I'm not saying I disagree with all of your edits, but I do believe all the ones that take out text need to be reversed, and most of the headers need to be added back (I think what you did with the biomes is okay). The Landforms header certainly needs to be added back. LightProof1995 (talk) 16:59, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
Information from the sub-section "History" should be moved to the respective sections. Describing land's history with human is extremely complex and disorientating. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:51, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
I think the Bibliography section makes it inconvenient to quickly see citations when reading the article, since the link back to the relevant place in the article become two steps removed. Thoughts? DFlhb (talk) 19:30, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
The content is now mostly comprehensive (though editors are still encouraged to add relevant things). We should turn our attention to the last 2 steps: citations first, then once that's complete, copyediting. Then a few general reviews, and we can nominate. DFlhb (talk) 14:45, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
This article is an easy B-class IMO. Tagging User:LightProof1995 and User:Cdjp1 since they've changed this previously. The assessment criteria are all met; this isn't GA-class yet, but it's well-referenced with 200 citations, has a good structure, and is mostly comprehensive. ORES rates it as B-class with "94% probability", and I concur. DFlhb (talk) 20:37, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
It is now lol, I was gonna change it back LightProof1995 (talk) 20:42, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Sorry User:LightProof1995 but I just don't understand the changes you made in this diff. I've reverted them for now since I feel they make the lead less clear, but feel free to discuss them here.
The lead definition was from Allady (2013), which I just added back. I think we took it verbatim ("permanently submerged"), but I can't check right now. Tides are not relevant here since the coast is measured using its baseline (mentioned in 3rd paragraph of lead). This is a great book chapter on baselines, easy to read.
I was unclear in earlier discussions but "real" lakes don't count as land, only shallow lakes, so changing "water" to "ocean" doesn't quite work. I also think the UN definition of land is too complex to go in lead, and it's already covered in the Definition section. However, I agree both that definition, and the simpler "permanently submerged" one should be better explained in the Definition section. DFlhb (talk) 21:12, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
The solid, dry surface of the Earth, or any part of it.(in the Oxford Dictionary of Environment and Conservation). The Oxford Dictionary of English defines it as
the part of the earth's surface that is not covered by water. Removing "permanently" might better fit sources, though it would actually allow for less of the ambiguity of wetlands, shallow lakes, etc. to be included, which I feel would be a detriment since those definitely fit in this article. "Covered by ocean" doesn't feel grammatically correct to me, and would incorrectly include deep lakes as land (e.g. Lake Superior, Lake Victoria, etc.).
submerged by the ocean or another body of water
submerged by a body of water
I started editing the humans and land section a few hours ago, and one thing I noticed is that it seems to have a huge bias towards a Western perspective. In particular, the Culture section focuses a lot on tracing flat earth/round earth through Western history, the Law section is almost entirely written from a European perspective, and giving a whole paragraph to explaining Lebensraum seems like giving undue weight to a single state (also European) that only pursued this policy for a couple of decades. Surely there's a better way to talk about territorial disputes leading to war than to focus on Nazis.
As a Westerner myself I'm not an expert on non-Western perspectives, but I'm going to try to help refocus this section a bit and would appreciate any help/advice. I'm gonna see the best way to incorporate the idea of Indigenous land rights into the section more explicitly since that's a global issue these days (and since Indigenous peoples hardly get a mention in the article at the moment). OliveYouBean (talk) 07:35, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
There is a link to Crater in the article, which is a disambiguation page. However, I think that there is a clear primary topic of the term, and have created Draft:Crater as a primary topic page to usurp the current disambiguation page. If anyone would like to pitch it there, it should be fairly quick work to put something together that is of sufficient quality to move to mainspace and displace the current disambiguation page. BD2412 T 19:35, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
If anyone has edit access to the Wikidata for this page, please change the link to the French version of this article to point to fr:Terre émergée. The current link is incorrect.
I'll also reinstate the authority control that was removed. Please add , and to the wikidata. DFlhb (talk) 21:41, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
I propose we merge Landmass into this article, and turn it into a redirect to our Landmass section. I checked the links to Landmass in other languages; most of them refer to land, rather than "landmasses" specifically; so this would also solve the problem I note above, that the article isn't linked to other languages properly. DFlhb (talk) 22:45, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
I'm being entirely nitpicky here, but I realize I was letting the fact I added some of the "Also" articles, cloud my judgment of whether saying "Also" truly belongs, or if it should be "See also" to match what others are doing. Is "See also" the norm? I've also seen "also", and I might even have seen that the most on other articles. Here are my thoughts on this...
1. We should go for uniformity on this if we can, but it doesn't affect how the actual article looks, and it does not matter compared to other work that needs to be done. This is absolutely not worth edit warring over and discussion on it should be limited -- consider this a note with replies-optional if anything.
2. If there is an official source anywhere that specifies which is best or most-used, or if any editors with like 1 million edits have insights, they are appreciated.
3. My original thinking with using "Also" was that I felt it was cool to see "also" or "Also" code to "See also", and I prefer the capitalization.
4. Later as I thought about it more, I decided "Also" may actually be better than "See also" from a coding perspective -- less characters are needed to achieve the same result. LightProof1995 (talk) 16:35, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
I feel we are all essentially edit-warring over the section merges, splits, and headers -- unsurprising given this article's scope and the interest in getting this to GA. A concern with this is that, I know at least for FA status, the article is supposed to be so good, it hardly is ever changed -- including its structure and headers. If a single editor here decides a header isn't great, they might go ahead and change it, but that could be minority rule if all the other editors felt it looked best. For example, I just changed "Ecosystems" back to "Ecology" because I added Terrestrial ecosystems as its main article, and because ecology and ecosystems are referring to the same thing, to take out the redundancy of saying "ecosystem" too many times, but everyone else here could disagree, but also felt they can't couldn't change it back. We can discuss header changes here, to try to reach consensus.
I know I said earlier the Landforms header definitely needed to be added back, but when I went and only reversed some of Cacti's changes after their first major restructuring, I actually left the Landforms header out -- Landforms are technically a part of terrain. I am still conflicted on it, but I do know this: Coasts and islands are definitely landforms, and if there is a Landforms header, the Coasts and islands section needs to be under it. So I will go try to fix that, but others may disagree with whatever I decide.
I understand the need to have a clear and concise article. However, we can't take out too many headers, to where the prose doesn't even make sense. Here are some headers we may need to discuss to reach consensus:
Formation vs Chronology -- My vote is for Formation (I also changed it back already before I made this discussion topic, sorry haha)
Surface divisions vs Delineation -- I am neutral on this, but leaning towards Delineation, per what others say.
Terrain -- Should it have subheaders? I put "Elevation, altitude, and relief" and "Uplands and lowlands" as headers, at one point.
Should Landforms be a header under Terrain, its own header, or not a header at all?
Geomorphology vs Interactions -- My vote is for Interactions to reduce "Geomorphology" word redundancy, similar to me switching Ecosystems to Ecology with Main: Terrestrial ecosystems.
Geology header -- I had this with "Formation" and "Interactions/Geomorphology" -- maybe this was split again because Geology could also be seen as encompassing Terrains and Landforms?
History header -- I had the Exploration section and Conflicts section under this, and this was also split again. @DFlhbI admire your work on the Exploration section -- could we work to differentiate it from the Exploration article? I feel it matches that article better, so your work is best left there, and here I feel it needs more focus on "land" exploration specifically, but I'd appreciate your insights.
Territorial Disputes vs Conflicts -- My vote is for Conflicts.
I believe the Environmental issues header and all its sub-headers are great :) LightProof1995 (talk) 09:19, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
LightProof1995, DFlhb, and others, I have put together a section organisation over at my sandbox here. You will note several things:
I hope you will find this helpful. Of course, it is only a recommendation, but fewer section headers generally make it easier to add content (the main stumbling block at the moment) as there is less overlap, and consequentially less debate as to where a paragraph should go. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:41, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
I'm concerned about the amount of text lacking inline citations. On October 15, 2022, @LightProof1995: added the entire sub-section "Overuse of natural resources", now "Resource depletion" containing only a single inline citation. This lacks verifiability and is certainly not up to GA standard. LightProof1995, where did you get the information from? As Aza24 brought up above, we shouldn't be writing prose then finding sources to back it up, but rather, writing prose as a result of sources. — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 00:50, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
These sections were quickly written for citations to be added later :) Most of the time, when I did this, others were coming in to cite so quickly, with their sources formatted correctly, it felt better to leave it open for others to cite. However, these passages may not as be as easy to cite, and could come from my environmental science background, so I'll add citations to them sometime today. LightProof1995 (talk) 04:33, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
What was the reasoning behind taking out so many citations in the lead paragraphs? It doesn't look quite right. LightProof1995 (talk) 11:48, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
What's the particular relevance of the "exploration" section to land, besides the mention of world maps? LarstonMarston (talk) 16:59, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
Should "climate" be moved out of "layers" and into "physical science"? Is there any reason why it's there? LarstonMarston (talk) 16:50, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
“Climate” refers to the air and is not physical science. As stated in the section, it can be considered a layer of land. LightProof1995 (talk) 15:49, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
Edit: I was understanding “Physical” to mean tangible, like the solid ground, but apparently the phrase “Physical science” refers to anything inanimate as opposed to “Life science”. So I guess it could go in either header. LightProof1995 (talk) 17:42, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
What is the basis for dividing the Features section to "Coasts and islands", "Mountains and plateaus", "Plains and valleys", and "Caves and craters"? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 07:59, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
I've upgraded this article to B-Class for the Vital articles WikiProject. There are still a few citation needed tags but I think all necessary topics are covered in a well-written way. LarstonMarston (talk) 17:02, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
I believe that after citations are found for the missing statements, this might pass GA-criteria. Those are often interpreted very strictly, but under WP:GACN, I think we more than meet all criteria (save for the few citation needed tags). DFlhb (talk) 19:10, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
BTW; I should note: despite being opposed to {{sfn}}-style months ago (the change was made without discussion) I've now grown fond of it, so zero opposition whatsoever if anyone still thinks it would be an improvement. DFlhb (talk) 13:17, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
Many of these images seem to be decorative. See:
Feel free to tell me how they are related to the sections and are not just decorations.141Pr {contribs} 08:05, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Article seems fine, will pass if issues above are fixed. 141Pr {contribs} 20:17, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
@Cdjp1: All the issues raised are above, I will give you a while to work on these. As stated above, I will pass this if issues are fixed. 141Pr {contribs} 20:19, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
I'll put this article on hold, and will fail this article if the issues not fixed on 1st May. 141Pr {contribs} 07:32, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
Article has potential, but currently not up to GA standard, so I'll fail this article. 141Pr {contribs} 07:36, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
(There don't need to be two NYC images, I just placed a couple of choices.)
What should be the lead image of Land?
{{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:00, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
impossible to represent all of the earth with just one image, we should have none. There is clear benefit to having an image in the lead: It results in an image in page previews (i.e. what shows up when you hove over the wikilink to Land), invites the reader into the article by being an appealing visual element, and helps us fulfill our encyclopedic obligation to provide information on the subject at its article (which includes visual information). There are plenty of broad-scope articles that include a lead image — we can trust that readers are smart enough that, just as they don't assume the humans used at Human represent what all humans look like, they won't assume that the piece of land here represents all land. It's just a good example. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:00, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
those who oppose the gallery are concerned about accessibility, at a quick skim I believe you're the only editor who raised that concern. Ajpolino (talk) 12:46, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
Courtesy pinging those who have recently changed/removed the image, Castncoot and PerfectSoundWhatever, and the photographers of the two proposed images, Frank Schulenburg and FabianHorst. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:00, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
As background on the editing history, Option 1 was adopted by BD2412 in May 2019 following talk discussion. Castncoot changed it (with minimal edit summary) to an aerial photo of NYC a little over a month ago. CactiStaccingCrane reverted, and Castncoot then restored the change. PerfectSoundWhatever reverted it, at which point Castncoot again edited to switch to the Option 2 picture. At that point, it seems the page's watchers decided it wasn't worth it to keep fighting. When I noticed the change yesterday, I restored Option 1. Castncoot brought back Option 2, and then did so again after I reverted and warned them in my edit summary against edit warring. At that point, PerfectSoundWhatever changed to no image. We can take up user conduct issues in another forum if necessary (and hopefully it won't be), but I think any reasonable editor would conclude from those diffs that Option 1 has the stronger claim to being the status quo, and that to the extent Option 2 has any claim, it's due to edit warring (Castncoot has changed it now five times with zero talk discussion) that should not be rewarded. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:00, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
What would be the downside?A world map highlights water as much as land. In this case it highlights the different ways to think about continents, which is not the focus of this article. The country borders create infinite opportunities for disputes (the lead image of List of sovereign states is not a world map for a reason). It conveys nothing about the physical properties of land (e.g. it doesn't show what dirt is). It's less aesthetically pleasing than a natural image. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:17, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Better. BD2412 T 21:32, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
This is the lede photo on the Drought article. This montage sets a precedent and is an exemplary template for Land, which is actually more multidimensional than "drought". Castncoot (talk) 20:34, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
UTC)
Castncoot (talk) 16:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)BD2412 T 16:42, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
113.199.252.170 (talk) 11:36, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
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