Talk:2011–12 North American winter

References and structure

Here are my ideas for this structure and how the references should be used.

There should be a lead section broken up into a few parts. All lead sections should largely start out the same; outlining what the subject of the article is, describing the conventional boundaries of winter, and so on. After that, some broad details about winter as a whole should be included, with local details included where significant and with individual storms briefly mentioned where outstanding.

This is to be followed by a "Seasonal forecasts" section. This section will include both the precipitation and temperature outlook graphics for the United States NOAA outlook accompanied by details about the outlook. These will all come from the same NOAA News source and be cited appropriately.

Following the "Seasonal forecasts" section will be a "Seasonal summary" section. This section will be dedicated to describing each of the storms / other events of the season briefly followed by a short analysis of the season as a whole. Details about individual storms and other events in this section will be less-specific than the dedicated subsections within the yet-to-be-mentioned "Events" section. Where such an article exists most details may be sourced to the relevant Weather Prediction Center cold season summary article. In situations where a cold season summary article does 'not' exist, individual WPC event reviews may suffice instead. In both situations, National Weather Service information may be supplemented by information from other sources e.g. news articles, scientific publications, etc.

After the "Seasonal summary" section should be an "Events" section. The section may include a brief mention of what it will go over at the beginning, but no more than a couple sentences should be dedicated to this purpose. Following this "intro" to the section should be a dedicated subsection for every winter event of significance. Unlike the briefer event summaries in the "Seasonal summaries" section, these dedicated event sections should strive to fully cover their subjects to the extent expected of Wikipedia and the extent possible. If that extent is ultimately too long to practically work as a section of the seasonal article, then an independent article may be created and the event's section in the seasonal article summarized (although the event's dedicated section in the seasonal article should still be more-detailed than its summary in the "Seasonal summary" section). Dedicated event subsections of the "Events" section should adequately cover both the meteorological history of the storm as well as the impacts of the storm and notable records. The meteorological details may be covered with NWS sources for the most part while impacts and records may be sourced to a variety of different websites.

A "Records" section should follow the "Events" section, but the details of how this section should be organized have not been worked out yet.

The above details largely pertain to the United States in particular. The issue is that Mexico does not have as cold winters as areas to the north while Canada, with a lower population than that of California, does not have as many sources published about its winter, governmental and commercial alike. This is a problem in need of resolution, and whether that resolution lies with yet unknown sources (a more-detailed outcome) or with narrowing the article scope to solely the U.S. (the least-desirable outcome) remains to be seen. Dustin (talk) 21:55, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Plans

1. I will continue creating event sections until every event with an article or with a WPC event review is covered.
2. I will heavily trim the Seasonal summary section to have a lesser / more concise event material, and I will add information that applies to the season as a whole, including information in the "Seasonal Overview" section of the WPC's main seasonal article.
3. I will trim down some of the MH paragraphs from the individual event sections; I found that the MH paragraphs for the Halloween nor'easter and the Bering Sea cyclone are actually larger than the MH sections of their dedicated articles!
4. I will create a records section. The specifics of what records are inclusion-worthy are yet to be specifically outlined, but this standard will eventually be applied to all North American winter articles.
5. I will modify / add to the lead section to adequately summarize newly-added information below.
6. I will ultimately decide whether to rename this article "2011–12 United States winter" or whether there is a viable way of adding information pertaining to Canada.
7. Standards set in the final version of this article will then be applied across the board to all North American (or perhaps United States) winter articles.

If necessary, I will add to or otherwise modify the above points. Dustin (talk) 01:13, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

About number three, why not switch the two, putting the MH paragraphs here into the MH sections on the actual articles and vice versa?

New strategy (although I do not trust myself to actually follow through with it): Work on this article as quickly as possible when possible in order to follow above steps in sequence before any major changes are made. Master of Time (talk) 06:40, 27 December 2017 (UTC)