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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by DLuber1 (talk | contribs) at 19:12, 29 January 2009 (→‎Weak Map). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Merger suggestion

Continental Divide and continental divide should be merged.

No. I think one is about the general idea of continental divides and the other is about the Continental Divide, a specific one in North America. Do any other continents refer to their continental divides as the Continental Divide? Where are the others for that matter? Rmhermen 21:09, Oct 7, 2003 (UTC)
Where I'm from it's called a watershed (which is then used as a metaphor for the time after which a TV Channel is allowed to show (in)decent films). What you seem to be calling a watershed, I'd call a basin. 82.36.26.229 19:02, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Move suggestions

Should this be moved to North American continental divide? --SPUI (talk) 21:02, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I would support that proposal. Currently, the two articles have identical titles, apart from Divide being capitalised in one but not the other. This could make it confusing and difficult to tell them apart. Ygoloxelfer 17:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. This article is about a specific one and should be named more appropriately. --Appraiser 04:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
National Atlas deprecates the use of Continental Divide to refer to it, and suggests Great Divide instead.[1] Great Divide is in common usage as the name for this divide and would avoid the confusion (and possible chauvinism) of referring to one of many continental divides as the Continental Divide. Great Divide is also preferable to North American continental divide (which probably should be a WP:DAB page) as even under the most restrictive definition of continental divide there is more than one of them in North America, as waters flow to three oceans. Kablammo 10:55, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Map

The map that goes with this article, while colorful, could be replaced with something better. For one thing, the depiction of the Great Basin in the map contradicts the explanation in the article (and the article, I believe, is correct). Unschool 22:42, 1 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be confusing the Great Basin and Great Divide Basin. --SPUI (talk) 21:03, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


  • strange map... It appears Oak Park, IL is the only city in N. America worth noting? My family that lives there will be thrilled to find this out; all this time they thought their only claim to fame was the Frank Lloyd Wright homes.

Triple Point

As the "triple point" link goes to a discussion of the chemical sense of the word, and "Triple Point (Geography)" seems like a really silly additional article, I'm removing the link to "Triple Point." I think an uninitiated reader can get the sense of the word in context, and would be even more confused by an unrelated discussion of the chemistry application of "triple point." (see the discussion page for the "Triple Point" article) Yale2010 02:07, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Inconsistency

This article say the great basin divide is in/around Wyoming, but on the map it appears to be northern California and/or part of Utah... Super Jedi Droid 02:05, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Great Basin, which is shown on the map, is not the same as the Great Divide Basin, which is not shown on the map. Nationalparks 02:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed Move

I propose to move this article to Great Divide over redirect.

  1. There is another article entitled Continental divide, which differs from this one only in the capitalization of the second word. This could lead to confusion, yet the other article is clearly necessary as it refers to all continental divides.
  2. As mentioned above, the National Atlas deprecates the use of Continental Divide to refer to the cordilleran divide, and suggests Great Divide.[2] Great Divide is in common usage as the name for this divide.
  3. The move would avoid the confusion (and possible chauvinism) of referring to one of many continental divides as the Continental Divide.
  4. Great Divide is also preferable to North American continental divide (which probably should be a WP:DAB page) as even under the most restrictive definition of continental divide there is more than one of them in North America, as waters flow to three oceans.

If no objection is made to this proposal within 7 days I will implement the move. Please discuss below. Kablammo 22:09, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As there is no opposition, the redirect will be made. There are a large number of links which need to be changed. I will not be able to devote a lot of time to that right away. Kablammo 12:07, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I just noticed this discussion. "Great Divide" is not a good name, because there is another geographical feature with the same name which is referred to as often, or perhaps more often, by that name. Try the Google Scholar search ["great divide" drainage | catchment | watershed | river-system], and you'll see that the Australian Great Divide is more commonly mentioned than the North American one. Try the same search on Clusty and note that "Australia" comes up as one of the clusters. Given Wikipedia's policy of Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias, it seems that we should have Great Divide (North America) or Continental divide (North America) and Great Divide (Australia). --Macrakis —Preceding comment was added at 15:09, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. I'll refrain from making a move for a little while to give time for more comments. Kablammo 15:15, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A few more points:
  1. WP isn't supposed to correct arguably illogical terminology, but to report on it. Compare jellyfish, for example.
  2. WP is certainly not supposed to distort the names of things in order to disambiguate them; we use parenthetical categories for that.
  3. It appears that "Continental Divide" is far more common than "Great Divide". I used the query ["great divide" drainage | catchment | watershed | river-system -australia pacific atlantic] and the same with "continental divide" on Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books, and "continental" is much more common on all three, despite the possible confusion with the metaphorical term "great divide". WP policy generally prefers the most common name recognized by the general public, even if specialists may prefer another name.
  4. The article cited above as evidence that the National Atlas "deprecates" the term Continental Divide is an article with strongly stated personal opinions ("one of my favorite spots"; "the definition I have adopted herein"; etc.) and does not seem to reflect official National Atlas editorial policy. Indeed, the National Atlas's page on the topic has "Continental Divide" as the principal title, and only mentions "Great Divide" as an alternate name.
Hope this is useful.... --Macrakis 04:48, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Your points are of course useful. I took the liberty of numbering them so as to reply.
  1. Agreed. The problem here is one of distinguishing between uses of a generic term which some also use as a proper name of one member of the genus.
  2. The use of Great Divide would not a distortion; it is in common usage. (Google returns 200,000 hits for Rocky OR Rockies "Great Divide".[3])
  3. Is there a way for search engines to distinguish between the use of the term continental divide in a generic sense and a use as a proper name? I do not believe that Google searches distinguish between capitalized terms and uncapitalized terms. (The same number of results are returned by searches for Continental Divide as continental divide.) Often one only knows what divide is meant by context; as the cordilleran divide was more signficant in the development of the US it is not surprising that continental divide is a common term, but we do not know how often that term is used as a proper name. (And the presence of articles on Wikipedia itself influences the results of Google searches.)
  4. Thank you for delving further into the National Atlas page. It does not however resolve the issue of what name should be used here.
To most US residents (aside from a few folks in the northern woods and plains) continental divide means the Rockies. But it is not the only one. Kablammo 11:56, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sidebar: we have the same issue with twin cities and Twin Cities. In the U.S., Twin Cities overwhelmingly refers to Minneapolis-St. Paul, but the generic term (not-capitalized) has other uses, and world-wide "Twin Cities" has other uses too. My tactic has been to replace Twin Cities with Twin Cities so that the link doesn't rely on the the U.S.-centric view. I have been reprimanded for making that change (see User talk:Appraiser/Archive3#Avoiding redirects), but I still think it's a good idea. In this case, I would suggest Moving the article to Continental Divide (Rocky Mountains) and then changing all relevant occurrences of Continental Divide to Continental Divide. Then the generic "continental divide" works and the Australian and other divides can have their equivalent article names without interference.--Appraiser 13:15, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

2. It is a "distortion" in the sense that it is choosing a considerably less common term (about 2x more hits with [Rocky OR Rockies "continental divide"] as with your query), but as you point out (see 3) this includes the generic use (e.g. "there is a continental divide in the Rockies"), but eyeballing the results, this doesn't look very common. And in the case of "great divide", we have the generic, non-geographic sense ("the great divide between the urban and rural populations of India").
3. Every Web search engine I know ignores case, which is why you and I are both using terms like "watershed", "Rocky", etc.
4. Agreed that the National Atlas does not resolve the issue. That is up to us.
--Macrakis 14:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It appears we do not have a consensus on this proposal.--Appraiser (talk) 14:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New proposed move

I propose moving Continental Divide to Continental Divide (Rocky Mountains) with a goal of "piping" links to this article by replacing Continental Divide with [[Continental Divide (Rocky Mountains)|Continental Divide]]--Appraiser (talk) 14:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would prefer Continental Divide (North America); in particular, I don't think the mountains along which it runs are called the "Rocky Mountains" in Mexico. --Macrakis (talk) 17:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

TfD nomination of Template:Ft

Template:Ft has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — pete 14:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image needs replacement

Hello all...

An image used in the article, specifically Image:Continental Divide in Colorado - July 2005.jpg, has a little bit of a licensing issue. The image was uploaded back when the rules around image uploading were less restrictive. It is presumed that the uploader was willing to license the picture under the GFDL license but was not clear in that regard. As such, the image, while not at risk of deletion, is likely not clearly licensed to allow for free use in any future use of this article. If anyone has an image that can replace this, or can go take one and upload it, it would be best.

You have your mission, take your camera and start clicking.--Jordan 1972 (talk) 00:48, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hudson, James, and Ungava Bays not "Arctic Ocean"

This is such a common and entrenched mistake it seems almost impossible to correct, given the amount of curriculum (particularly US curriculum) and publications (particularly US publications) which employ it; I've changed it in this article but it continues to present itself a cross a host of other related articles, e.g. Triple Divide Peak. Can't anyone read maps anymore, or is everything north of the US "the Arctic"....'xcuse me, I have to go throw another block of ice on the igloo....Skookum1 (talk) 04:46, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) Special Publication S-23 3rd Edition 1953 Limits of Oceans and Seas defined Hudson Bay, James Bay, Hudson Strait, and Ungava Bay as extensions of the Arctic Ocean. The Natural Resources Canada Atlas of Canada confirms this definition in the Watersheds of Canada and the Drainage Basins of Canada. The U.S. CIA World Factbook also confirms this definition of the Arctic Ocean (see also the Cross-Reference List of Hydrographic Data Codes.) You may well disagree, but the international consensus seems long settled. --Buaidh (talk) 00:43, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, well, bad sources are bad sources, official or not. See similar/parallel discussion at Talk:Columbia River, and use some common sense, official soruces or not - if the Northwest Passage and Baffin Bay are not part of the Arctic Ocean, who can something on the far side of them from the main body of the Arctic Ocean be part of the Arctic Ocean? Naturual Sciences Canada/Geophysical Survey of Canada sources are more relevant and convincing for locations in Canadian waters anyway; the CIA Factbook has many errors in it about Canada, to me this is just another one; contributors at Talk:Columbia River have also found other materials and pls note Hydrographers and Oceanographers are two different kinds of -graphers, the former is land-based and concerned with watersheds; I'm Canadian and in all my life have never heard Hudson Bay referred to as "the Arctic Ocean", and James Bay is so far south it's barely Subarctic, much less Arctic; if you ask someone in Pangnirtung or Iqaluit (communities on Baffin Island where the Arctic Ocean is, I can guarantee you they won't point at Hudson Bay, much less at the Labrador Sea. Classifications produced by academics in the United States and France may be "official", but that doesn't make them correct for matters of Canadian geography.....Skookum1 (talk) 01:23, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are various interpretations of what these various divides are, and naturally the Canadian interpretation varies from the US interpretation. From the Canadian perspective, Hudson Bay is entirely sub-arctic (south of the Arctic Circle) and is a body of water of its own, not part of the Atlantic or Arctic Oceans. In fact, some oceanographers consider the Arctic Ocean to be a mere sea attached to the Atlantic Ocean. What is clear is that the major continental divide in North America is the Great Divide running along the height of the Rocky Mountains separating the Pacific watershed from the Atlantic/Hudson Bay/Gulf of Mexico watersheds. All the other continental divides are minor by comparison, although, just as a matter of interest, the Canadian triple divide point, Snow Dome, is 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) higher than Triple Divide Peak in Montana.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 02:16, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Buaidh, you say that IHO S.P. 23 3rd Edition 1953 "defined" Hudson Bay as an extension of the Arctic Ocean. Can you point out exactly where in that document the definition is made? I've been through it a few times now and I just can't find it. Wikipedia certainly claims in several places that it does. Thanks for the help! Franamax (talk) 02:06, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Interestingly, that document doesn't explicitly say that Hudson Bay is an extension of the Arctic Ocean. So, that appears to be only some peoples interpretation of what it says.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 02:16, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, interesting, isn't that? In fact, the document explicitly says "Oceans exclude the seas lying within each of them". Now one could further interpret by concluding that the adjoining sea must be part of the ocean. By this means, one could conclude that the Gulf of Mexico is part of the Atlantic Ocean, and the Beaufort Sea is part of the Arctic Ocean, even though the document doesn't actually say so. In the case of Hudson Bay though, it doesn't actually adjoin the Arctic Ocean at any single point, whereas it does adjoin the Atlantic. Additionally, it's quite plain that the actual water flowing from the land into Hudson Bay exits to the Atlantic. There's really no doubt of that, as a simple (WP:OR) glance at a map will confirm. I'm at a loss as to where the "definitive" positioning of Hudson Bay within the Arctic Ocean actually comes from. Franamax (talk) 05:14, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Buiadh, I just looked at the Atlas of Canada "Hudson Bay NT" page - which of its sublinks give its definition as being part of the Arctic Ocean? Like all CanGov sites, it can be hard to penetrate unless by those who programmed it....Skookum1 (talk) 05:52, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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