Talk:Wildfire

Wildfire has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 24, 2009	Peer review	Reviewed
March 27, 2009	Good article nominee	Listed
July 1, 2009	Peer review	Reviewed
July 28, 2009	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
February 9, 2010	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
July 6, 2011	Good article reassessment	Kept
Current status: Good article

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Firefighting GA‑class High‑importance

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Merge from Bushfire

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Merging Bushfire into this article has been a perennial proposal, but has usually fizzled for one reason or another. The main reasons for doing so are:

There is no substantial difference between a bushfire and a wildfire
The Wildfire article is far superior to the bushfire article in both content and style
A good proportion of the Bushfire article in fact deals with American wildfires
The Wildfire article already deals with much Australian-specific content, such as the links to Country Fire Service.

The main reason against is that bushfires in Australia have their own unique characteristics, and bushfires are part of Australian culture. In my mind this can be substantially addressed by creating a "regional differences" section, or even just mentioning the regions that use each word (eg forest fire for North America, bushfire in South Africa and Australia). There already exists an article called Bushfires in Australia, which should probably be linked to at the top of this article with a disambig along the lines of Any additional information in Bushfire, such as the incomplete list of Australian bushfires, should be forked to List of Australian bushfires. Please share your thoughts below.--Yeti Hunter (talk) 10:48, 27 October 2010 (UTC)\[reply]

Strongly against merging - they are quite different fire types, and fire fighting bodies, fire fighting methods, and terminology - at least the WP Trains accepts there are different worlds in relation to railway/railroad systems (ie British, US, european etc), and allows for separate terminology and systems. If it were to expand and develop beyond this - the Australian possible articles that could develop in time beyond what they are at the moment would become patently obviously different - from US versions.

Also another point is the predominately US centric fire fighting articles make little allowance for other methods, and other ways of looking at things Satu Suro 12:30, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly oppose taking Yeti Hunter's points one by one:

Australian bushfires are substantially different from other wildfires because, amongst other things, of the specific characteristics of the dry sclerophyl forest which predominates much of this country and poses such severe risks and causes particular fire behaviour.
The Wildfire article is different to the bushfire article, whether it is better is a matter of opinion, if the bushfire article needs improvement it is not a reason to merge it, rather to improve it.
So the bushfire article is a more rounded article. Good. Perhaps the Wildfire article could be similarly improved.
There is hardly any Australian content in the Wildfire article, it may well link to the various fire authorities but links are not content, you cannot get away from the fact that the Wildefire article is almost completely North American centric. That is fine, just don't pretend that it is a globally focussed article, it is blindingly obvious that it is focussed very tightly on what goes on in the good old US of A, oh, and a bit of Canada too (gotta keep the Kanacks happy, you know pal.) We don't need you to tell us how to do everything, the American perspective is not the only one. Leave the Bushfire article alone, if your idea of improvement is to swallow it up ~~in a lot of (to coin a phrase) US fire-cultural imperialism~~. - Nick Thorne ^talk 14:00, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nick please AGF. The merger proposal isn't unreasonable as there is a lot of overlap and despite past proposals the Aussie article is still a bit of a dog's breakfast. –Moondyne 04:10, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, struck inappropriate comments. - Nick Thorne ^talk 22:05, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A quick look at my contribs (or my spelling) would make it abundantly clear that I'm an Australian. Not that it matters; you can improve the encyclopaedia from anywhere in the world. Your points, one by one:

Australia is not unique in having flammable trees.
The wildfire article is GA class versus start class, to be precise.
By "more rounded" I assume you mean contains North American information too, in conflict with your first point.
Bushfire is a regional word for a global topic; as such you would expect specifically Australian content to be limited. I think your claims of the US-centricism of the article are misplaced - it offers a very wide range of regional examples and data. The term "wildfire" is not American - It was specifically chosen to be as region-neutral as possible. I'm trying to improve the Australian articles, not subsume them. "Leaving the bushfire article alone" is exactly what's been done every time in the past after merge was opposed. --Yeti Hunter (talk) 22:32, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Suggest instead merge Bushfire to Bushfires in Australia and make Bushfire a redirect to that article. I think that would better focus editors on what the article is about. Having both doesn't sit right IMO. –Moondyne 04:10, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd support that. Readers could be disambiguated to Wildfire, and it wouldn't provoke lamentations of Americanisation (or would that be Americanization?).--Yeti Hunter (talk) 22:32, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose While the Wildfire article is good, it doesn't focus on bushfires and the effects in Australia. Fire maybe fire, the forests, savannah and grassland in the US is totally different then Australia's forests, savannah and grassland, as is the geography, flora and climate. I'm with Moondyne, merging Bushfire to Bushfires in Australia. Bidgee (talk) 06:47, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I support "merge Bushfire to Bushfires in Australia and make Bushfire a redirect to that article" as proposed by Moondyne and endorse his "bit of a dog's breakfast" analysis.--Melburnian (talk) 07:13, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bushfire → Bushfires in Australia Done. I know I jumped the gun but I'm not gonna have time next week and it seemed like there was enough for a consensus. –Moondyne 13:26, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Globalize

9 out of 16 pictures are from Anglophone countries. Africa, Latin America and Asia are underepresented in the article. Dentren | ^Talk 17:14, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to add one.--Yeti Hunter (talk) 04:25, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have reverted your removal of the banner because it is needed as wikipedia articles are to be described from a wolrdwide view, not one just with examples from Australia, North America and Europe. Dentren | ^Talk 18:16, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed - the problem goes beyond just the use of images. Guettarda (talk) 19:01, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I just don't think you can back that statement up. A very prominent image of bushfires in Africa heads the opening chapter. There are examples from every continent except Antarctica in the Causes section. Examples from Sumatra, Japan and the Amazon in Fuel. References to Southeast Asia, southern Africa, Mediterranean Europe and the Amazon in Ecology, with a photo from Estonia. Examples from Malaysia, Indonesia and the Bahamas in Plant adaptation. Links to numerous Asian articles in Atmospheric effects, and an estimate of the CO2 release of indonesian fires. Germany, Italy, Spain, Native Americans, central America, the Baltic states and Finland all mentioned in Human involvement. Europe, Southeast Asia, Australian Aborigines and the Phillipines mentioned in Prevention, with a photo from Portugal. Detection is arguably too focused on US agencies and methods, but still includes examples from Europe and a sat photo of the Balkans. European damage costs and Thai extinguishment techniques mentioned in Suppression. The article needs a bit of work, but "world view" is not one of its problems.--Yeti Hunter (talk) 00:31, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think we all can agree on the (obvious) underrepresentation (or rather inexistent representation) of images from Africa, Latin America and Asia (or any that part of the world that is not Australia, Anglo-America and Europe). That's enought to justify the template. Dentren | ^Talk 19:32, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But it's not a problem with the whole article. Can I suggest that a request for picture template on the talk page might be a better option? -Yeti Hunter (talk) 23:32, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If the template is put on the article and not in the talk page it think its a better idea since it directly points out what the article is in need for. Dentren | ^Talk 16:41, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a good article with that template. I've sent it for re-assessement here. It should be fixed or delisted. Szzuk (talk) 08:57, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that all Dentren cares about is the lack of images from countries where most of our editors don't live and therefore can't easily get pictures. As of today, the list of images includes:

Africa (whole continent; satellite image)
North America: USA (six), Canada
Europe: Estonia, Portugal, Balkans (satellite image)
Oceania: Australia
Entire world (two maps)

I think that's one entire continent that is largely non-Anglophone, plus multiple European countries that are not even slightly Anglophone. There are already about 15 'location' type images, and nearly all have been chosen because they illustrate a particular concept. This is not an image gallery. It would be silly to replace, say, a clear image of a pyrocumulous cloud from the USA with a bit of smoke from Thailand merely because the useful picture was taken in the "wrong" country.

I do not think this tag is justifiable. I think it's being used as a badge of shame to embarrass other editors into doing what Dentren refuses to do himself (if he actually wanted pictures from other countries, he'd get them himself), and that does not actually need to be done. There is no rule on the English Wikipedia that the images considered in isolation must be geographically balanced. It's the whole article that matters, and the whole article certainly shows a reasonable amount of information about places for which we don't have clear, usable images.

IMO if Dentren wants to fight systemic bias, he would do more good at Talk:Pregnancy by trying to convince the single white males there that Wikipedia could legitimately include at least one image of a non-white pregnant woman, rather than solely light-skinned women in various states of undress. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:37, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please stay on topic, if WhatamIdoing want to discuss about the topic "Dentren" do so at another place, and avoid empty speeches like "do it your self" which obviously leads nowhere.

The are no "wrong" or "right" countries but there regions and forests that this article fails to represent adecuately. In that sence we are speaking about the whole article, if an article about forest fires in Thailand shows only pictures from that country there is no problem but here we have an article with global scope dominated in terms of ilustrations by the countries of the contributors, as WhatamIdoing pointed out. This is not surprise (see WP:BIAS) and it should be dumb to negate this. A problem is a problem no matter if the article has some other good aspecs which it obviouly have as reflected by tis GA status.Dentren | ^Talk 14:21, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hydro-Pyrogoegraphy

On May 5, 2011, Malachy McGreevy contributed a brief paragraph under the sub-category heading "Prevention", relating to the practice of the art of hydro-pyrogeography in wildfire prevention in the wildland-urban interface. Malachymcgreevy (talk) 22:45, 5 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]