Talk:2014 South Napa earthquake

Images

Do NOT add any images you have not taken yourself, or that were not posted on the internet with clearly identified free license. ANY photos from news agencies are copyrighted, and unless the SPECIFIC IMAGE ITSELF instantly becomes the subject of discussion, we cannot even use them for fair use. posting such an image on an active story like this is an act of copyright piracy, opening us up to a legal challenge from the author of the photo, and is not a trivial matter. As a Bay Arean, i could drive up there in about 2 hours and take a photo. this is not an old historic event with no further chance of image documentation. we will shortly have hundreds of photos of the damage from Wikipedians and other thoughtful posters. Any copyrighted images on this topic will be speedily deleted, here or at the Commons. the only debates on this will be if there is a question of whether a specific image is free use or not (an Associated Press copyright is a dead giveaway that its not), or the highly unlikely case that an iconic image is taken and becomes the "face" of the story.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 17:40, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Article move?

USGS is now calling it the "South Napa Earthquake" in one press release and some news articles have used that title as well. Should we rename this article? Sailsbystars (talk) 21:44, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Moved to South Napa per the USGS name for the event. -- Margl (talk) 23:55, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I disagree as this asserts that a primary source has more weight than WP:COMMONNAME.—John Cline (talk) 01:11, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Although most news sources are saying vague things like "the earthquake that hit Napa", those that give it a proper name seem to be favoring "South Napa Earthquake", as verified by a Google News search. By the way, I live in American Canyon near the epicenter, and have been inundated with news coverage yesterday and today. I think the name works because it hit southern Napa County hardest, and the epicenter was located south of the city of Napa. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:24, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Right now if you Google, California, "Northern California earthquake" is the top series of hits. "Northern California earthquake" has 1,220,000 hits whereas "South Napa earthquake" has 187,000 hits. Either way we should ultimately name our article per wp:commonname regardless of the name given by the primary source, in my opinion.—John Cline (talk) 02:44, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Those Google hits you mention could lead to coverage of the 1906 quake or the 1989 quake, or any of the many other quakes that have hit Northern California in the past few centuries. "South Napa earthquake" describes the area impacted concisely while "Northern California Earthquake" describes a vastly larger area, and it would be foolish to give that title to this article. Any reliable source describing the quake in any detail would use much more targeted descriptions, though they may include the phrase "Northern California" in their coverage if writing for an international audience. I challenge you to produce a single reliable source that calls this quake "The Northern California Earthquake" as if that is its accepted name. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:27, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

This coverage from ABC News, for example, uses "N. California Earthquake" generically in the headline but explicitly calls it the "South Napa Earthquake" (capitalized) in the body of the article. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:36, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

California Governor Jerry Brown called it the "South Napa Earthquake" in his official emergency declaration, widely reported in the press. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:47, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

This article in the San Jose Mercury News, published about 80 miles away, specifically mentions that "South Napa Earthquake" is emerging as the accepted name. And I am listening to KTVU TV News right now, where they discussed at great length that the damage was much worse in the south than in the northern Napa Valley, where damage was negligible. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:55, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Here's Canadian TV coverage, using "South Napa Earthquake" in its headline, and saying (and accepting) that's how it is "dubbed". Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:11, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I think you are correct and this title will probably be the common name used. My comment was not to advocate for another title, but to say we should choose our title by wp:commonname and not simply what the primary source calls it. Cheers.—John Cline (talk) 06:34, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

fire in mobile home park

As currently written, the article does not make it clear what caused the fire. Readers might want to know whether the earthquake caused the fire or simple impeded its suppression. —Stepheng3 (talk) 16:43, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Not ready for GA

This article suffers from the fact–source, fact–source style of writing. It's choppy and doesn't read well. The style applies to both the lead and the body, with no attempt to preview the body in the way that the lead is supposed to. It's also short on broad coverage and little information about the earthquake itself. Dawnseeker2000 23:46, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

The review was done and there were a number of areas listed for improvement. Several months ago I refined the lead, added the tectonic setting section, and made some minor changes to the remainder of the body, but I think that it needs a rewrite (from the earthquake section down) for it to be presentable. Balance needs to be considered. Why, for example, is the earthquake warning section disproportionately large? No need to answer; I'm just thinking out loud. I may continue working on it.Dawnseeker2000 20:40, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:2014 South Napa earthquake/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: David Eppstein (talk · contribs) 06:27, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

GA criteria

1a, good prose: yes.

1b, compliance with MOS and layout guidelines: mostly, but the lead could use some expansion to adequately summarize the article.

2a, reference formatting: needs significant revision.

2b, all material properly cited: mostly but there are a couple of minor lapses.

2c, no original research: yes.

2d, plagiarism: there are major problems with copied text that need more thorough checking and rewriting.

3a, covers all aspects of the topic: no, and I think major expansion is needed to cover the aftermath of the quake.

3b, no unnecessary detail: mostly, with a couple of minor exceptions. Unless you count the proliferation of very similar sources (news stories from around the date of the event) when fewer sources would do as well; that part seems unnecessary to me.

4, neutral: yes.

5, stable: yes.

6a, images are properly licensed: yes.

6b, images are relevant and well-captioned: mostly, but I think one caption could be improved.

Lead

The one-paragraph lead seems a bit short for an article of this length, although it's within the guidelines of WP:LEADLENGTH given the relatively short (7k characters) length of the overall article.

Everything in the lead is properly expanded elsewhere. The only part of the article that doesn't seem adequately summarized in the lead is the extensive "damage" subsection, which gets only half a sentence as summary.

The infobox is properly populated, sourced, and well illustrated. I'm surprised the infobox template doesn't have a parameter for the fault that caused the quake, but it doesn't. However, the footnotes in the infobox are separated from the text they source by spaces, violating MOS:PUNCTFOOT.

Tectonic setting

Nothing in here is specifically about the quake, but that's ok as it's important background material, mostly not treated in unnecessary detail (but see my point about slip rates below).

"runs nearly the length of California": really? The 250 miles between Point Arena and Crescent City don't count towards that length? In any case the single source used for this section doesn't say much about the San Andreas system outside of Napa, so the first sentence of this section needs another source.

The phrase "transfers slip" is copied from the source; it's not a long enough copy to be problematic from the copied text point of view, but it makes me worry that the source hasn't been fully digested in the editing process. Is there some way of explaining in a less-technical phrase what this means?

The two different slip rates looked on a quick reading to be contradicting each other, until I realized that one was for the whole shear zone and the other was for the specific fault. The article does already state this, but maybe it could be made more clear?

I think it would be appropriate to give the actual sources for the slip rate studies, to give credit to those authors rather than implying as you do that the rates were originally given in the source you cite. What I usually do for references like this is to copy them from the other source you're already using, but then (to indicate that the reference is a copied one rather than one I'm directly using to write the artcle) adding "As cited by [the reference you copied it from]" at the end.

Out of context, it's not obvious what those slip rates might mean. How does that translate into frequency of quakes of this magnitude? Or, put another way, what does including this number tell the reader about this quake?

The source mentions that the fault runs along the western edge of the Napa Valley. This seems worth mentioning in our article as well.

Earthquake

"15,000 people experienced severe shaking, 106,000 people felt very strong shaking, 176,000 felt strong shaking and 738,000 felt moderate shaking" is copied verbatim, without quote marks, from its source. This level of copying is close to an insta-fail, and would be one if part of a larger pattern.

"lasted 10 to 20 seconds, depending on" is also too long a phrase to be copied from its source.

Reference [9] (Rossmann) comes up blank for me, and archive.org is no help. It looks reliable enough anyway, but maybe the same fact can be given a more accessible replacement reference?

Damage

"has been red-tagged" the present perfect tense indicates that it is still red-tagged. Is this true? If not, "was red-tagged" may be a better choice.

"hundreds of storefront windows shattered" and "On Mare Island, water mains": two more phrases copied from their source.

"500 had been yellow-tagged": the source says "about 500", so this number should not be reported as exact.

"the economic costs to Napa County may go as high": this is reported as a projection of future costs, but what was future then is past now. Do we have a better number in retrospect? And if not, could we at least change the tense?

"downgraded to between $80 and $100 million": I don't know how to interpret this number, because it is a subset of the total damage and we didn't see what number that subset's estimate was downgraded from.

"At least six of the injuries were classified as critical": the source for this sentence contradicts this, giving the number as three.

"49 people were injured, including two who were hospitalized": closely paraphrased from the source.

Who died, and where were they injured?

Injuries

In the image, what does "CISN ShakeMap" mean? Is it necessary to open the image to find out what the colors indicate? And why is this image part of the "Injuries" section?

Earthquake warning

Brocher et al repeat the 10-second-warning-time estimate, and are subsequent to the source you give for the 5-second warning. So it might be more accurate to state that estimates of the warning time ranged from 5 to 10 seconds, rather than trying to choose one yourself as the more accurate estimate.

"commanded the bay doors to open": what is the source for this claim?

Missing topics

The main thing that seems missing to me from the article is any discussion of the long-term effects of the quake on the region. A quick search of a single local newspaper found several articles discussing this, that might be worth using as sources to expand the article: [1] [2] [3] [4].

In the physical effects of the earthquake, surface rupturing is not mentioned. Reference [6] (Brocher et al) give a map showing that this happened extensively on the west side of the valley (away from Highway 29 and the population centers).

Reference [6] also mentions how far away the earthquake was felt (Reno, McKinleyville, and Bakersfield); again, this seems like relevant and interesting information to include.

The declaration of a disaster by Obama should be included in the article, not relegated to a title in an external link.

References

[3] Stevens does not seem to be formatted in Citation Style 1, matching the other references (the date is in the wrong place). Using the {{cite news}} template would help. [4] Levs and [6] Brocher are formatted in Citation Style 2, not CS1. And [4] Levs and [7] Levs, despite both being from CNN, are not formatted consistently (compare the formatting of "CNN"). The same thing happens with [3] and [8] from the LA Times. I gave up checking on consistent formatting at this point, since it needs major cleanup.

There are a lot of separate news reports from within a few days of the event, used to source different details of the event. Many of these details appear in multiple sources. Would it be possible to consolidate by finding a smaller set of sources that together cover the same details?

[20] KGO-TV report fails WP:V. Who can check now what was broadcast at some time on some not-even-stated day?

All of the sources look appropriately reliable.

External links

Including even more at-the-time news coverage, not used as references, seems pointless to me.

Summary

Unfortunately, I think the copied text and major missing topics make this a quick fail. It can be nominated and reviewed again once those issues are fixed.

—David Eppstein (talk) 07:59, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: thanks for the outstanding review and action items. cc Dawnseeker2000, Stepheng3, Napa56, Cullen328, Rolf h nelson: can you all help? --DarTar (talk) 04:56, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I can continue to improve it here and there. The main thing with this GA nom is that it was probably done too soon after the event. Some of the the small improvements that I can continue to make are based on new papers. Dawnseeker2000 16:40, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Deprecated?

Which documentation?--193.163.223.192 (talk) 22:45, 19 April 2018 (UTC)