Talk:Hard coal

Bituminous Coal

Hello The_Banner I am not an expert on coal but you are right that bituminous coal is soft relative to anthracite. However it is hard relative to many other coals, which is presumably why it is described as "hard coal". If you have a better source than the "World Coal Association" it would be good if you could cite it. Chidgk1 (talk) 06:09, 27 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Onel5969 Thanks for reviewing this. Perhaps you could mediate and avert an edit war? Chidgk1 (talk) 06:33, 27 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So you are intending an edit war? Fact is also that you created I don't know how many links to disambiguation pages. Links that were correct when they were still redirecting to anthracite. The Banner talk 10:15, 27 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No I don't enjoy edit warring. From "what links here" on the left of this page and subtracting non-articles, if I counted right there are 37 articles linking here but I don't know how many of the linking articles are talking about anthracite, how many bituminous coal, and how many both. In some cases it may not be possible to tell, as the sources cited in the articles may themselves only say "hard coal". I suppose another alternative would be to write a sentence here: maybe something like "Most hard coal is bituminous coal, and some is even harder anthracite." I just checked another language Wikipedia and the redirect there goes to their "coal" article. Chidgk1 (talk) 11:53, 27 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've worked in the mining industry for almost 20 years. Not a single person refers to Bituminous as hard coal. I was in the middle of reviewing the page when The Banner restored the redirect before I could. Whenever hard coal is referred to, it always refers to anthracite. In the US bituminous is referred to as soft coal, although back in the home country, that term is more commonly used with the two lower classes of coal, lignite and sub-bituminous coal. In my estimation there is no issue with this redirect, rather, the redirect of soft coal to sub-bituminous coal should be turned into a dab, and contain sub-bituminous, bituminous coal, and lignite. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 12:48, 27 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

onel5969 For a long time I was confused about the meaning of "hard coal" in official documents. Perhaps English in the mining industry is different from the English used by the World Coal Association? Or perhaps usage of the term is different in different countries? Or maybe usage has changed since you started work in the industry? In my case I am mostly improving articles about Turkey. The government statistics only list quantities for lignite and "taş kömür" (literally "rock coal") which government websites translate as "hard coal". So I am citing them for how many million tonnes are mined in a particular year. From reading Zonguldak basin it is clear that the second figure includes bituminous coal. Perhaps government and industry marketing people think "hard coal" sounds better than "soft coal". So I will stop watching this page now and write a footnote (with cites) for the page I am working on to explain that the way the government here is using the term "hard coal" is the same as the way the World Coal Association defines it but different from the definition in Wikipedia. Chidgk1 (talk) 07:13, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]