Talk:Laurentian Divide

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Definition

I like simple. And the opening sentence, which is the definition of the term, is oblique. The opening sentence of a wiki article should have the form, "A foo is a bar, baz, quux.... Hence, "The Laurentian Divide is a hydrographic divide [or continental divide] in central North America that separates the Hudson Bay watershed to the north from the Gulf of Mexico watershed to the south and the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Watershed to the southeast." It doesn't matter where the water is or goes; we'll be told that later - it's implicit in the definition of the respective watersheds. The generic definition of divide is: "A water [or more precisely, hydrographic = geographic+hydrologic] divide separates two watersheds". Sbalfour (talk) 02:44, 13 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We can follow that up with a sentence: "Waters to the north of the divide flow to the Hudson Bay; waters south of the divide and west and south of the St. Lawrence Divide flow to the Gulf of Mexico; waters to the southeast of the divide and northeast of the St. Lawrence Divide flow to the Great Lakes or St. Lawrence Seaway thence to the Gulf of St. Lawrence." Sbalfour (talk) 03:10, 13 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Course

We usually consider a continental divide to originate at the high point and terminate at the low point, as we state the course in the lead. But the Course section reverses sense and starts at Cape Chidley. That's really awkward. Someone not paying attention. Sbalfour (talk) 00:31, 14 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My focus on the description of the course was to enable someone who reads the description but doesn't have the map of the divide, to plausibly reconstruct that line using familiar landmarks like the boundaries of states or provinces, major lakes or rivers, well known mountains or other places, though sometimes I had to use nearby landmarks like Lake Abitibi rather than familiar ones because there were no recognizable landmarks within possibly a hundred miles or more where the divide takes a turn. Sbalfour (talk) 23:07, 21 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The map in the article was constructed by a homegrown cartographer from USGS and other data, so it's a kind of original research. I mostly transliterated the diagram into words. I don't think I've ever seen a segment-by-segment accurate textual desc ription of the divide, only very concise and vague ones, a couple of sentences, or else a paper-length description of the geology nd hydrology which is not only daunting to read but darn useless as an introductory description of the divide. What I didn isn't in any sense scholarly, but merely perfunctory. What else is there? How does this get sourced ... go back and cite the USGS data? That doesn't give the place names or describe the twists and turns. Sbalfour (talk) 23:41, 21 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Restructure article

The Course section is little more than what's already in the lead. I think it should be reversed in sense, because starts at the end instead of the beginning, and merged into the lead along with a statement summarizing the hydrology section, and the history section deleted. Then the whole article becomes the lead, because there's not enough text to have article sections separate from the lead. Sbalfour (talk) 23:05, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Sbalfour (talk) 01:49, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

However, some yahoo might undo me, and attempt to split the lead, especially the paragraph describing course, to a text section. The article is lean, just 4 paragraphs besides the definition opening sentence. It's just not there yet. If it were 50% longer, I'd say, yes, split and summarize. But not today. Sbalfour (talk) 01:52, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]