Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/2005 Qeshm earthquake/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Karanacs 02:59, 19 July 2011 [1].

2005 Qeshm earthquake[edit]

Nominator(s): ceranthor 07:52, 2 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I feel it is now a fully comprehensive and well-written account of a powerful earthquake. Fortunately, it was not responsible for many deaths, but the 2005 Qeshm earthquake allowed for analysis of both local and regional geology, including the enigmatic "buried faults" which I still don't fully understand. Thank you to Nikkimaria for offering commentary. ceranthor 07:52, 2 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:42, 2 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Be consistent in whether you include a period after "pg"
Bibliography and References formatting should be the same
Ref 15: you've got the newspaper and publisher names reversed
Ref 18: The Guardian should be italicized
Be consistent in whether television news sources are italicized
For sources published by NetNative or LiveScience, include work title
Need page numbers for multi-page PDFs
Page range for Nissen et al 2007? Nikkimaria (talk) 13:42, 2 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All fixed except for the formatting - I'm not sure how they can be the same. ceranthor 19:24, 2 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's just an issue of using a consistent author name order (first or last name first). Also, is Priestly's first initial deliberately lower-case? Nikkimaria (talk) 19:45, 2 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, and I've fixed those. ceranthor 15:46, 3 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment -

Intro:

Generally, if information in the intro will be repeated later on, one would not use citations. WP:LEAD
"Southern" in "southern Iran" should be capitalised if it is referring to a section of the country
"With 1 in 3,000 deaths in Iran attributable to earthquakes, one expert has suggested..." I assume this excerpt is referring to Roger Bilham, cited in source [28]? If so, the article does not give any information on Roger Bilham and why he is to be considered an expert. If not, to whom does it refer?

Background and geology:

Consider removing "according to Nissen et al. (2007) and the United States Geological Survey." -- I do not know if these two sources are notable enough to warrant a citation in both the references and the prose.
"Iran experiences at least one minor earthquake per day,[6]" Source states that on average, Iran experiences 1 earthquake per day. Not necessarily on a daily basis
"...which Nissen et al. (2007) confirms..." Once again, consider removing a citation in the actual text of the article
References the Simply Folded Belt before the phrase "Southern Iran's Zagros mountains lie in a highly active area of seismicity known as the Simply Folded Belt..." is stated for clarification. Consider rearranging article
"Earthquakes of this type are not considered destructive." By whom? The source appearing first after that statement (a sentence later) blatantly states "A powerful earthquake hit southern Iran today, causing major destruction in seven villages and..." with the only other source in that paragraph only coming as close as "Earthquakes with an epicenter closer to the surface generally are more violent and cause more damage." yet stating that this type of earthquake is still violent and still causes damage. The article even calls the earthquake "strong" in its title.
Though there is a citation needed tag later on in the paragraph, I feel the need to state that reference [16] does not state that mud and brick are poor earthquake-resistant materials. "The island, with a population of about 120,000 people, consists primarily of villages with a majority of mud-and-brick buildings that may not be quake-resistant." It just mentions the possibility that the materials are not quake-resistant.

Damage and casualties:

Many sources do state that the quake lasted 10 or more, yet only 1 is referenced. Sources that state that: [2], [6], [16], [17], [18], [21], [22], [23]

Relief efforts:

In the caption under the image in this section, the word "pulse" should be turned plural.

Future threat:

I do not believe source [28] ever states that anything is responsible for the statistic of 1 in 3,000 Iranians dying in an earthquake. The article does not state that he said anything was to be held accountable. Just that the statistic has remained unchanged since ~1900. "Iran is the worst offender, according to Bilham. One in 3,000 Iranians dies in an earthquake, he said, a statistic that has remained unchanged since 1900." Although this might imply heavily enough that the construction techniques are to blame that it is fine how it is, I am being nitpicky.
"The United Nations have prepared a Common Country Assessment" I think that the verb would have to be singular here because the U and the N are capitalised, making it the singular name of the organisation, rather than a plural noun. However, I might be wrong.

I did not check all in-line citations due to time constraints and the fact that I could only access online references. Micromann (talk) 19:12, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Should all be fixed! ceranthor 21:48, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Sorry, I didn't get your message until just now (I had gone to sleep shortly after making that comment). I made these comments after Graham Colm's edits. Second read through:

Intro:

"Thirteen [deaths]" is written out as a word. Later, in Damage and casualties, it is written as "13 [deaths]" -- You might consider changing one of the two for consistency's sake.
I'm just echoing Carcharoth with this one, but: Intro states 4 villages were devastated. List of destroyed villages in Damage and casualties contains 13 villages.
"Kilometres" is spelled as "res" in the intro. In Background and geology, kilometers, meters, centimeters, and millimeters are spelled "ers". Consider changing "res" to "ers" for consistency's sake.
"Because the earthquake occurred in a remote area during the middle of the day, it did not not cause many fatalities, and Iranian relief efforts in the aftermath were effective and largely sufficient" -- You might consider putting this in the relief section as well, rephrased and cited

Background and geology:

"...second noteworthy Iranian earthquake of the year, having been preceded by the 2005 Zarand earthquake on February 22.[4]" Not a flaw, but the "having been preceded by" sounds a bit odd to me. Maybe change it to just "preceded by" because it is a current fact (it's kind of like saying "North America had included Mexico").
You might consider breaking the following into 2 sentences to avoid having 2 citations and 3 hyperlinks on just one sentence: "The focal mechanism (which describes the orientation of the fault that slipped and its movement direction) of this earthquake suggests it was a result of thrusting (where older rock is pushed over younger rock),[5] which has been confirmed as reverse slip (faulting which shortens and thickens the crust).[9]"

Damage and casualties:

"Seven other villages experienced extensive damage.[1]" - Source states that at least 7 other villages were severely damaged. The way it currently is written, if only 8 villages total experienced extensive damage, how could 13 be destroyed by it? Maybe reword the quoted sentence and the next as something to the effect of "13 villages were destroyed (list the destroyed ones) with at least 7 others experiencing extensive damage."
"Mercalli scale Intensity III damage was reported in Bandar Abbas, Abu Zabi, Ajman, Dubayy, al-Fujayrah and Ras al Khaymah; Intensity IV damage (moderate) occurred at Sharjah.[b]" Where are these places located? In Iran? If you remove the image of the pulses (not suggesting to or not to), you might consider replacing it with a map showing where some of these places are and how far from Qeshm Island they are

Relief efforts:

The only thing I noticed in this section was the extra number of tents after reading Carcharoth's comment. Although "In total more than 2,000 people were affected.[20]" can mean it did in fact affect 4,000 people, it seems that the article would be more likely to state "Over 4,000 people were affected." You might have to leave out 1 of the 2 statistics or find a source stating that 4,000 were affected.

Future threat:

Though we now know who Roger Bilham is and why he is qualified to speak on this matter, we have no source to verify his information.
First time the Richter scale is mentioned in the article. Maybe hyperlink to it
Though I don't have access to reference [29], does it state all facts in the 2nd-to-last paragraph on page 59, or just the facts about the 1990 one?

Once again, I did not check all the citations to verify them. The article has a good amount of facts, gets fairly technical and is not overly long. I think it is a good article, just it could use a bit more work before I support its nomination. Micromann (talk) 09:16, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All are fixed, except for the locations, which I'm sorting out. And yes, all of that is mentioned on just one page (the source is available in the bibliography section). ceranthor 18:00, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - sorry. There are problems with the prose, which suffers from redundancy and lack of flow. I made a few edits but got stuck here, "Faults on Qeshm Island converge to create a complex structure in the center of the island, where most of the tension was positioned in the center of Qeshm Island, along a northwest-southeast trending fault where the most concentrated levels of shear and dilatancy (volume change associated with application of shear stress) were observed." The repetition of "in the center" is confusing, and there is too much information squashed into one sentence. The article needs copy-editing – I suspect throughout. Graham Colm (talk) 22:59, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense. Most of the geology section was added recently, so it hasn't been fine-tuned as well as it should have been. I'll try to enlist a copyeditor, but I think I can make a lot of progress by myself on this one. ceranthor 23:02, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Carcharoth (talk) 00:37, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I did this brief review following a request on my talk page.

"at 13:52 locally" - I think the usual phrasing would be "local time", not "locally".
You give previous context, by naming the previous powerful earthquake (Zagrand). Can you give future context by naming one of the powerful earthquakes in Iran that most immediately followed this one? I would have though you would at least need to mention 2006 Borujerd earthquake and 2008 Bandar Abbas earthquake, particularly the latter as it is in the same area (you have edited the latter article recently - it there a reason it is not mentioned in this article?).
More than four villages are said to have been damaged/destroyed in the main text - contradicts the lead.
The relief efforts and description of the injuries and damage in the main article make it sound much more destructive than the lead says. Compare "It killed thirteen people and devastated four villages" with "In total more than 2,000 people were affected." and "4,696 sets of relief tents". Was the relief effort over-pitched or is it normal to send more supplies than may be needed, or did it affect more than 2000 people?
The picture of pulses is jarring and the epitome of decorative.

Overall, I'm in two minds about this as it is clearly a powerful earthquake, but (fortunately) the deaths and destruction were relatively limited ("thirteen people [died] and devastated four villages"). This does mean that the amount out there about this will be less than for earthquakes that had more impact. But I think some of this article is padding, and I can't think of a politer way to put that. I'm referring to the 'Future threat' section. It feels like that material could be cut-and-pasted into article about any earthquake in Iran (I see that similar wording is present in 2008 Bandar Abbas earthquake). Also, the 'Future threat' section doesn't mention the '2005 Qeshm earthquake' earthquake at all, and also fails to mention the later earthquake in 2008. What is really needed here is stuff to make that section relevant to this article. Did the 2005 Qeshm earthquake change anything in terms of approaches to earthquakes in Iran? Carcharoth (talk) 00:37, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed all your minor comments and removed the image. I'm simply following the refs so I'd have to assume the efforts were over-pitched. As for the future threat, I can see how you think it's padding, but really my goal with that sort of information is to spread awareness. If an Iranian ever reads this sort of article, I'd want them to know of the risks and to be aware of the situation. I'm totally willing to add more information, though. ceranthor 18:00, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ceranthor, what's the status on the copyedit? Karanacs (talk) 02:59, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm copyediting the section on my own. I will do my absolute best to have the edits up tonight; sorry for the delay. (that includes more information for the future threats section as well) ceranthor 12:13, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And now tomorrow morning. ceranthor 22:09, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.