Talk:Uvs Lake

Merge Ubsunur Hollow

I don't quite understand why there are two seperate articles, since the information there is only an incomplete subset of the information here. If it turns out that the other article actually makes sense for some reason, then it should be renamed to Uvs Nuur Basin. --Latebird 21:25, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Merged. --Ghirla^-трёп- 17:48, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Type of basin - is it endorheic basin or rift valley?

I believe the Uvs Nuur is an Endorheic basin rather than a Rift valley, like the Sistan Basin is. We can check with the Rift valley people if we are not sure. But since it does not drain to an ocean but rather is an enclosed watershed, I think that makes it an endorheic basin -- unless you have read somewhere otherwise. Sincerely, Mattisse 00:09, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Theoretically, it might be both at the same time, but I agree that it doesn't look much like a rift valley to my non-expert eyes (in contrast to Lake Khövsgöl).--Latebird 08:10, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Rift valley is a genetic type, tectonics process result. Endorheic basin is a geographic type, genezis is not important in this case.Bogomolov.PL 05:22, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Article is about the lake not the basin

Why does the article have almost nothing about the lake in it and concentrates on the basin instead? If you are going to do that (ignore the lake and concentrate on the basin) should you not change the name of the article? It is very misleading the way it is now. The World Heritage Site referring to the basin, not the lake, is covered here. The World Heritage Site names the basin not the lake as the title of the site. When the lake is only one aspect of the over all basin, it seems like a strange way to name an article. Also, it is misleading to readers looking for the World Heritage Site to find it buried in the name of another article. Mattisse 20:27, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

The article used to be about the lake alone, until someone added all the information about the basin. I can't remember who that was, you might want to check the editing history... ;-)

Those additions resulted in redundancy with "Ubsunur Hollow" (now Uvs Nuur Basin), so the two got merged. Now that the other article has been reanimated, most of the details about the basin and the Unesco stuff should be moved over, leaving about a paragraph of summary pointing there. The remaining article will probably be rather short after that, so we'll have to look that we find more information about the lake itself, eg. its seasonal size changes and disappearances, fauna, etc. --Latebird (talk) 05:52, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Against merge

The Uvs Nuur has already been confused by making the article about the lake instead of the basin. Much of the relevant information has been removed or confused in the merge or copy/paste or whatever an editor did. The hollow, although lumped in with the World Heritage site is really about a different set of issues including nomadic peoples, archeology sites, enormous variation in terrain, endangered animals etc. The current article on Uvs Nuur seems to have missed all the relevant points on the geological aspects, plus the name of the article is different from the name given on World Heritage Site. Further, the editors have disregarded that almost all citations are about the basin; there is hardly anything in the article about the lake.

If you refuse to allow editors to write articles that they are interested in, and insist on an instant mindless merge, we can have an RFC, which I will abide by, unless you consent to a rewrite of the current article so it is accurate and not confusing. Why do you have such an investment in preventing other editors from writing articles about what they are interested in. It is against policy to #REDIRECT without a discussion which is what was done before. Please consider this, rather than instinctively merge everything. Many articles have been ruined by mindless merging. Mattisse 00:13, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I guess this is directed at me. I think I placed the merge tag before reading your discussions, and retracted it afterwards. However,I fail to see the difference between Ubsunur hollow and Uvs nuur basin, but maybe this is just ignorance on my part and you could enlighten me with a few words. I see the difference between a lake and a basin, though, and am perfectly OK (for now, anyway) with having two separate articles. Yaan (talk) 01:30, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Or naming the article after the basin and mentioning the lake - the lake is really mainly notable for its features stemming from its location at the bottom of an Endorheic basin. I don't mind them all being included in the same article, although the hollow has a somewhat different status. It became a protected biosphere in the 1950s, way earlier than 2003, and is valued for completely different reasons, cultural, archaeological and ecological, and also its location than the basin. Also, geographically they are adjacent and not the same. Mattisse 02:07, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

The whole merge/unmerge issue stems from translation and terminology problems, aggravated by internet being the greatest invention to propagate ignorance.Several different notions are mixed here. I will try to untangle these tomorrow. Stay cool. `'Míkka>t 04:40, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

P.S. To show you what's happening, I quickly created a disambig page. `'Míkka>t 05:08, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Ouch! The Unesco really has a talent to make things confusing, don't they? Btw: I don't think we should dedicate articles to individual sections of the Unesco web site (if I'm interepreting the two last entries correctly). --Latebird (talk) 06:32, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Hollow, Basin, Depression

Looking at the two newly (re)created articles Ubsunur Hollow and Uvs Nuur basin, I see the following definitions in each introduction:

Ubsunur Hollow (also spelled Ubsu-Nur) is a fragile mountain basin or depression located on the territorial border of Mongolia and the Republic of Tuva in the Russian Federation among the mountains - Tannu-Ola Mountains, and the Altay Mountains region - part of a combination of raised lands and depressions.

The Uvs Nuur Basin (also Ubsu-Nur spelling is seen) is a fragile mountain endorheic basin, named after lake Uvs Nuur,a large, shallow and very saline lake. It is located on the territorial border of Mongolia and the Republic of Tuva in the Russian Federation among the mountains - Tannu-Ola Mountains, and the Altay Mountains region - part of a combination of raised lands and depressions.

To my untrained eye, those two definitions seem to describe exactly the same thing. Can anyone enlighten me what the difference is, or if that is not possible, why we now have two seperate articles about it? If they are something different, and don't just describe different aspects of the same geographical feature, then the articles should spell out that difference with the greatest clarity possible. --Latebird (talk) 13:02, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

• I think "Ubsunur" is the Russian spelling, and "Uvs Nuur" the Mongolian. So I merged it. Ubsunur Hollow now redirects to Uvs Nuur Basin. -- P199 (talk) 13:22, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Ubsunur is Russian spelling.

About the basin. I think this term is possible use in two senses:

• An area where all rivers are running to the same lake (like with river basin - to the same river)
• A depression bordered with hills or mountains

In the first option source of river can be far out the depression (mentioned in the second option) and that expandes this basin area

In the second option is possible that in a depression are several lakes with own basins (like it is in Basin of Grate Lakes) Bogomolov.PL (talk) 14:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I also think both of these can be called basin. See here and here. Hollow seems to refer primarily to "small" depressions (not entirely sure here, though), see here and here. Maybe a native English speaker could sort this out? Yaan (talk) 16:02, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Basin term needs wider explanation: in Uvs (Uvs Nuur) basin (in "rivers sense") has smaller area inside - the Uvs (-Nuur) basin as depression. I think these two areas are not equal. The first one includes really a lot of mountains, second one - no Bogomolov.PL (talk) 17:07, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

A propos Hollow, here is said that Basin is in Mongolian part, but Russian part is Hollow Bogomolov.PL (talk) 17:21, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, judging from the adresses given at the end of the page, my interpretation is that Ubsunur Hollow is the english name of the nature reserve on the Russian side, and Uvs nuur basin is the english name of the nature reserve on the Russian side. But what they mean is essentially the same. So in this sense, it we could merge Ubsunur hollow and Uvs nuur basin, or, disambiguate to Uvs nuur drainage basin/watershed and Uvs nuur depression (and maybe Ubsunur hollow reserve, and Uvs nuur basin reserve)? Once the current confusion is overcome, anyway? Yaan (talk) 18:14, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

In Russian geography it is called Убсунурская котловина, where котловина root is kessel (in German, I don't know in English) and means depression surrounded with the hills or mountains. Бассейн (basin) is commonly used (in geography) as area with rivers coming to the same river or lake. That is why Russians avoided using basin term, Tes river is too long, its sources are close to Sangiin Dalai Nuur (in Khövsgöl aimag). In Russian sens is very precize and they didn't want confusion with basin.Bogomolov.PL (talk) 18:47, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

This argument over the various meanings of "basin" is so pointless, because in the end, any multiple articles on Uvs Nuur/Ubsunur basin/hollow/depression would all be very similar and merged anyway! -- P199 (talk) 19:08, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Please stop User:Latebird from redirecting & merging articles that are not the same, thereby preventing the addition of important archeological & other information to them

There are a cluster of related articles. One is primarily of geological interest, another is primarily of ethnic, ecological, and archaeological interest. User:Latebird demonstrated in his first run of merge/redirects that he does not understand the geology of the area. He also does not understand the historical importance of adjacent areas (which will become more important as the burial mounds and other archaeological sites are excavated). He seems unaware of the ethnic concerns. Ecologically, the lake is water. The other cluster contain glaciers, mountains unique combinations of steppe, tundra etc., unlike seen in any other places of the world. Also, there are endangered species here, like the snow leopard, which obviously do not live in the lake.User:Latebird has not given adequate thought or respect, in my opinion, to this unique area of the world and how best to present it. He has flung/merged/redirected pages that where carefully written and by combining them haphazardly, has made his ultimate page confusing and inaccurate. Mattisse 16:21, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Please show me evidence of ONE example where I've merged or redirected articles that you created or worked on. If you are unable to provide such evidence, then I'll consider the above (and several other such notices you posted elswehere) a personal attack, and it will be followed up with the appropriate sanctions. Before attacking people, the very least you could do is check your facts, don't you think? --Latebird (talk) 16:28, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

You merged Uvs Nuur basin with a #REDIRECT without discussion (against policy) with Uvs Nuur and incorrectly worded your merged article. After realizing your mistake, you again #REDIRECT Uvs Nuur to Uvs Nuur basin and set up a disambig page, Uvs Nuur (disambiguation) that violated the policies in Wikipedia:Disambiguation (after which I attempted to fix your mistakes on the disambig page). You twice now have #REDIRECT Ubsunur Hollow and merged it with another page without discussion which is against policy. Now you have changed its name (without discussion to Ubsunur Hollow Biosphere Reserve on the disambig page. I do not mind this change, but I do mind your taking over this series of article per WP:OWN and not consulting with the editors who created them, especially since you do not seem to know the subject matter well. Please do not do any further #REDIRECT, merging etc. without consultation and thought. What is your rush that you cannot take the time to consider these changes properly? Mattisse 17:50, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Repeating your unsubstantiated claims doesn't turn them into evidence. Evidence would be a diff proving any of that. You know how to check the edit history of an article, right? --Latebird (talk) 18:49, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

If you are not the one doing this, then I apologize. I assumed you were continuing what you started. Perhaps I jumped to the conclusion as I saw others were having problems with you on the Central Asia Project page. Sorry for blaming you for the continuing screw up of the pages. Mattisse 19:24, 8 February 2008 (UTC)