Talk:Rockall

Taboo

Referring to: "Rockall", playing on the similarity of the word to a then taboo expression

I would suggest that either the expression is still taboo or it should be named in the interest of clarity. It looks quite hypocritical now. AlexFekken (talk) 07:05, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

in the interest of clarity - what do you mean? - please clarify! - ClemMcGann (talk) 09:02, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Rockall = Fuckall, colloquial, often used by British radio comedians, musicians, etc. in such shows as "At the Drop of a Hat", "The Navy Lark" &etc, and is sometimes still used colloquially. Dick Holman.Archolman 15:13, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

News to me. Lots of words end in "...all". - ClemMcGann (talk) 20:04, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

What I mean is that these words do not make it very clear what this is all about. But they do suggest that the "then taboo expression" is not a taboo anymore. So if it isn't then why not clarify the situation by naming the expression explicitly (as has apparently already been done in the meantime), otherwise remove the word "then" and call it "a taboo expression" to avoid the hypocrisy and justify the lack of clarity. Clear now? AlexFekken (talk) 09:04, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

This reads like just the sort of nonsense that WP:TRIVIA is designed to catch. --Red King (talk) 19:43, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

that military base on Hirta

I changed "certain points of time year-round" to "seasonally"; Red King replied, "'Seasonally' implies 'during the summer', Try 'intermittently'."

To me seasonally means 'only at certain times of year (every year)' (not necessarily summer!), while intermittently implies 'irregularly'. It would help to know what's really going on! —Tamfang (talk) 17:34, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I thought that base was only used in the summer months. Lugnad (talk) 19:48, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Rockall really formed from Laurasia split?

The article has this statement: Rockall was formed approximately 55 million years ago, when the ancient continent of Laurasia was split apart by plate tectonics. Greenland and Europe separated and the north-east Atlantic Ocean was formed between them.[27]

I'm not sure this is true. The Mid-Atlantic ridge is the dividing line between North America and Europe. You can see from the picture on its Article that this line runs through Iceland and is far to the west of Rockall (just compare to the picture at the top of the Rockall article).

thats where the current position of the ridge is. Most of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean was created at the mid-atlantic ridge, and then spread apart to the east and west as the ridge continued to separate and to create more sea-floor. So the fact that an island isn't on the ridge now, doesn't mean that it wasn't on the ridge when it was created.Eregli bob (talk) 01:31, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Secondly, the Rockall article also has this statement: "The islet of Rockall makes up the eroded core of an extinct volcano (a volcanic plug)." This directly contradicts the idea that it is a piece of Laurasia left in the middle when the continent split. Both of these statements can't be true, one must be false and needs to be removed from the article.

--IBrow1000 (talk) 01:30, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I've hopefully clarified the statement - the rocks that from Rockall are part of a deeply eroded volcano, the missing bit is that it was part of the North Atlantic Igneous Province, which was associated with the final break-up of Laurasia. Mikenorton (talk) 11:14, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikilinks

Just finished removing a ton of redundant wikilinks. Redundant as in repeated. The guidelines say only the first instance of a specific term should be wikilinked not every instance. There are no doubt more left but i'm annoyed now at how many the article had. Mabuska ^(talk) 22:14, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

The trick is to do it and not get annoyed ;-) Well done on the copy-edit, though. Scolaire (talk) 08:55, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

The annoyance came out of the fact i did it section by section as i found them rather than editing the whole article as a whole. My bad, but thanks anyways. Mabuska ^(talk) 10:55, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Repeated doesn't mean redundant, nor do the guidelines say this.

A link should not be repeated within the same section. If the link target is obscure and it's used in two sections some distance apart (frequently one is an infobox or image caption) then its reasonable to repeat the link. The point is to make the most readable article possible - an excess of links dilutes the prominence of the relevant links. However a term late in the article that could be linked, especially when a section is being read in isolation, often ought to be linked if it's a reasonable navigation link to a term that's otherwise unclear, and when the reader would otherwise have to search the article from the top to find the one and only linked instance of the term. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:07, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

That i did not know, however regardless there was still way too many repeated wikilinks, and i doubt the ones for countries would need to be repeated after first instance as they are pretty obvious. Mabuska ^(talk) 10:24, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Country names certainly. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) are obscure enough they might still be worth linking. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:28, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I was just thinking that those ones would possibly merit being wikilinked more than once in a long article. Though obviously not in every sub-section, but rather each main section? Mabuska ^(talk) 10:54, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Administration

No nation administers Rockall. The only administration on Rockall is the radio beacon. It was put there by Greenpeace. An earlier beacon was British, but it was washed away in a storm. Greenpeace claim that Rockall is an independent nation called Waveland. The ownership of the rock and surrounding seabed is disputed. There is an agreement between Ireland and the UK. There is an understanding between Iceland and Denmark. In their submission to the LoS Iceland and Denmark claim that the Rockall Trough is sufficiently deep as to mark the limit of the European continental shelf, so neither Britain nor Ireland are entitled to anything. In international law they have a good case. Ireland carried out a seismic survey of the area by RV Celtic Explorer and ILV Granuaile. An undersea mound in the Rockall trough was located. Ireland and Britain claim that this permits them to claim beyond the trough. The UK submission to the LoS acknowledges that the UK claim is based on Irish data. Iceland and Denmark now contend that this mound is just soft mud and therefore cannot be regarded as permanent and therefore can’t support the Irish and British extension of the continental shelf. So we are back to the UN and the LoS. To further complicate matters Iceland has proposed that the Rockall bank be divided into four parts by agreement between the four nations. Denmark has not agreed to this.

As for claims over the rock itself: The Danish claim is based on depth – not on distance. In Danish law, Rockall is Danish by the Royal Decree No. 259 of 7 June 1963. The UK claim is in the Island of Rockall Act 1972. Iceland and Norway recognise the Danish claim. Although Ireland and the UK have an agreement on the seabed, which places Rockall ten miles inside the British zone, Ireland has not withdrawn its claim to the rock. The difference depends on the status of the island of St Kilda, and whether “island hopping” is valid. If islands are ignored then Rockall is nearer to Donegal than to Scotland. Ireland has indicated that if the Irish and British claims over the seabed are accepted then Ireland would accept the British claim over the rock. But that has yet to happen.

So the rock itself is claimed by Waveland, Denmark, Ireland and the UK. The only actual administration is done by Waveland. In these circumstances ‘administration’ should be left blank. Lugnad (talk) 13:00, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

According to the UN Law of the Sea, the UK has control of the sea area that happens to include Rockall. Rockall itself has no status, it is an islet. It is for only for that reason that the 'Administered by' should be blank, and not for any of the reasons you give: it is because the question of administration is meaningless in the case of an intermittently submerged islet. Not however that the UK does not have control of the sea bed: the Faroes have a far more convincing argument of continuity of continental shelf (which is clearly broken wrt the UK – and wrt Ireland and Iceland for that matter). But as the UK has not agreed a sea-bed boundary with Iceland or Denmark, the question is still wide open. --Red King (talk) 19:18, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

OK Lugnad (talk) 20:13, 11 December 2011 (UTC)