Talk:Iranian plateau

references

I've come across references to the Iranian plateau countless times, so I've decided to do some research on it. Gringo300 23:23, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Geological activity?

Isn't the frequency of earthquakes unusually large in this region? It has been said that Tehran and other cities such as the recently quake hit Bam are at great risk for catastrophe. It might be good to mention this if it is true. – M0llusk 01:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Tectonic status

What is the Iranian Plateau in Plate Techtonics? Is it part of the Eurasian plate, or a smaller plate that impacted Eurasia, causing the uplift of neighboring mountains? Please add a section on this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.32.163.3 (talk) 20:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC).

Kurdistan

According to the map provided in the external link of this article [1], Kurdistan is not part of the Iranian plateau.Heja Helweda 02:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Iranian plateau

The Iranian plateau is not a geological formation, but rather a set of tectonostratigraphic terranes accreted onto the Eurasian platform before the subduction, I think, of the Arabian plate. It's incredibly complex, as accretionary terranes tend to be. The Persian Gulf does not bound it to the south as the plateau is only the region north of the Zagros fault. Do you have some reference which actually puts "Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and small parts of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan" in the Iranian plateau? Geologically they're part of a very different geophysical regime. Also, I believe the Main Zagros Thrust is bounded by the Straits of Hormuz in the east, the point separating the MZT and the Makran transfer zone, but I'm not sure about this--but this would exclude anything outside of Iran. The term is used also in the broader sense to refer to region of Southern Asia north of the Zagros/Markan, however, I believe that geophysical studies done in the past decade have shown clearly these regimes should be differentiated. I deleted much of the article, because of difficulties, like placing the Zagros mountains north and/or northwest of the Iranian plateau, when geologically they are the primary boundary to the south defined by motion of the Arabian plate--if you look at a geophysical map of Iran you can distinctly see the Zagros and the plateau to the north. Also do you have a source for the size of the area? I do have some references for the geology of the region, if you're interested, e-mail me, and I will be glad to forward some major pdfs that discuss the seismicity of the MZT. KP Botany 02:50, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

• is the Iranian plateau a part of the "Arabian plate"? can you provide some sources?

It doesn't say that the Iranian Plateau is part of the Arabian plate, as it isn't part of the Arabian Plate. KP Botany 19:58, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Geology and Geography

As stated on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Iran this article is about both the Iranian Plateau in a geological sense and in a geographical sense. That is what the introductory sentence was for, to alert the reader that both are covered in this article. Geography is not the same thing as geology, so please don't edit out geology, to replace it with geology. In geology, mountainous regions are not generally called plateaus, and the geographical and geological plateaus don't coincide. The Iranian plateau is extremely important geologically, and well studied as the Iranians are some of the world's leading geologists.

Also, someone added a non-neutral POV tag. If this has to do with geographical pursuits, please put the information on the talk page that this is what it is about and be explicit. Otherwise I will remove the tag. KP Botany 03:48, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Disputed

I don't believe the numbers given are correct, my understanding is that the Iranian plateau covers a much larger area than what the article suggests. I'm not however an expert on this issue, so I'm requesting other Wikipedians to check the article for accuracy. --Mardavich 06:51, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

If you dispute something, usually you have some idea of what is correct. The article states 1.4 million square miles. Guesstimate how much larger you think it is, 3 million square miles? 10 million?Is there anything else in the article you question? This is a simple fact check, not a call for an expert. The line can just be removed, also, if you're more comfortable with that. Please do be specific with the sentence you disagree with and what you think is correct and why, rather than a tag above a whole article when {{fact}} can be used simply and directly to point to the specific fact in question. KP Botany 22:55, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Peaks

What do these peaks have to do with the Iranian Plateau? KP Botany 23:10, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I am deleting the peaks as this question has been ignored. Please tie them directly in to the Iranian Plateau before reinserting them, and please don't use a site that is self-proclaimed not within the scope of Wikipedia references, "An informal online resource for summit-focused hikers, climbers, and mountain lovers," "The material presented here can have many factual errors and is often purely subjective opinion," "This personal, unprofessional, non-commercial website ...." Emphasis mine.

Please use resources in accordance with Wikipedia:Attribution:

"This page in a nutshell: All material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source." A source that defines itself as "subjective opinion" does not meet the criteria in WP:A. KP Botany 04:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

This tag calls for an explanation on the talk page, please provide that explanation

Again, when you post a tag part of it is to post on the talk page to explain exactly what you are calling for. An expert in what? Where does the expertise need to be applied?

This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject.

Please help recruit one or improve this article yourself. See the talk page for details.

Please consider using {{Expert-subject}} to associate this request with a WikiProject

Notice that this tag says you have posted the details on the talk page--you haven't.

If you want an expert to attend to this article please let them know why. If you don't know why, maybe it needs something else besides expertise, like expansion.

KP Botany 20:53, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Needs some additional work

The article is not very clear. The Iranian plateau is based in central Iran and is surrounded by several major mountain ranges including the Zagros. It does not include the province of Kurdistan, as it is a mountainous region, and the Iranian plateau, obviously, is flat. Atashparast 01:51, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Good catch. This is unfortunately the problem with editor relying upon other encyclopedias for information for Wikipedia-- Britannica uses "plateau" incorrectly, stating that Kurdistan is part of the "mountainous region of the Iranian Plateau," while the other resource, Old Iranian Online, clearly indicates that the Plateau does not extend into the mountains. I seriously doubt that Iranian historians and geologists, as literate in history and the earth sciences as they tend to be, consider the mountain ranges of Kurdistan to be plateau. You can feel free to edit by removing it, and asking for a more subject-specific reference besides Britannica. KP Botany 03:13, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Taggin the page

It is the job of the editors of the article, to add references when they add material. Adding a tag to notify the reader and editors that an article is unsourced does not require that the person placing the tag add sources. Please read this about "Tagging unsourced material:"

If an article has no or very few references, but you are unable to find them yourself, you can tag the article with the template {{Unreferenced}}.

If a particular claim in an article lacks citation and is doubtful, consider placing {{fact}} after the sentence or removing the claim. Consider the following in deciding which action to take:

1. If it is doubtful but not harmful to the whole article, use the {{fact}} tag to ask for source verification, but remember to go back and remove the claim if no source is produced within a reasonable time.
   
2. If it is doubtful and harmful, you should remove it from the article; you may want to move it to the talk page and ask for a source, unless you regard it is as very harmful or absurd, in which case it should not be posted to a talk page either. Use your common sense. Do not be inappropriately cautious about removing unsourced material; it is better for Wikipedia to say nothing on an issue than to present false or misleading material.
   

I have reverted your edit for this reason, to have the tag catch the attention of people inserting unsourced, poorly sourced, or not definitively sources material in the article.

However, when this particular issue is dealt with, you should remove the tag, as this is the sole issue you have brought up on the talk page, the fact that Kurdistan is mountaineous, not a flat highland or plateau.

KP Botany 03:44, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Caspian Sea Missing

One of the maps, the blue and green one, is missing a graphic representation of the Caspian Sea. The area is shown green rather than blue. Bhammerstrom (talk) 19:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Protected

Protected due to long-running edit warring. I see no one is discussing here or providing references relevant to the disputed west/central Asia bit. Have at it. Vsmith (talk) 17:12, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

It seems like the protection is needed given the edit warring, but you’re right, without a discussion here or solid references, the back-and-forth will just keep happening. For anything on the “west/central Asia” topic, reliable sources should definitely be the priority. If anyone has sources that clarify the matter or context from previous versions, now’s the time to share them here. Let’s focus on gathering verifiable information that all sides can agree on so we can move forward constructively. Thanks, Vsmith, for stepping in. Hajpo (talk) 19:35, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 11 February 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:28, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

---

Iranian Plateau → Iranian plateau – "Plateau" is not consistently capitalised in a substantial majority of independent reliable sources (per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. It isn't even consistently capitalised in the article. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:09, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Please see this n-gram evidence. "Plateau" is lowercase in about 60% of sources. My move was contested (hence this RM). In this version it was not consistently capitalised in the article.

• Support (as nom) per evidence and applicable guidelines. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:15, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose Geographic features are proper names. For proper names, we need to capitalise the first letter of every word. Here are some examples: Tibetan Plateau, Deccan Plateau, Mexican Plateau, Arabian Peninsula, Malay Archipelago, Eurasian Plate, Kalahari Desert, and Australian Shield etc.

As for the reliable sources, they are considered reliable because they come from reputable media, which means their information is likely to be genuine and correct, but that doesn't mean every word they have written is perfect. Some of the authors or editors from these media aren't native English speakers themselves. If you collect 200 articles from these sources, 60% of them might use Iranian plateau, but that doesn't mean they are grammatically correct. Vic Park (talk) 15:28, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Comment: As per WP:NCPLACE § Names of classes, the class name (here Plateau) is to be capitalised only if it is conventionally capitalised, and otherwise it is NOT capitalised. To determine what is conventionally capitalised, we should usually look at the sources. ---CX Zoom(^he/_him) (^{let's talk}|_contribs) 07:40, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Response The policy you've quoted states that:

"If a place belongs to a class, and the class is conventionally capitalized as part of the proper name of the place, then Wikipedia capitalizes that class name (conversely, lowercase otherwise) whether the name appears in a sentence or a heading or a title; e.g. Buenos Aires Province and not "Buenos Aires province", Mississippi River not "Mississippi river".

Some class names are not considered parts of proper names, but rather descriptors, as in districts of India; e.g. Bongaigaon district, not Bongaigaon District. As usual, we look to sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized."

The policy clearly states that if the class (in this case, plateau) is conventionally capitalized as part of the proper name of the place, then Wikipedia capitalizes that class name. The overwhelming precedents in Wikipedia indicate that plateau is capitalised as part of the proper name. Here are more examples: Anatolian Plateau, Colorado Plateau, Columbia Plateau, Katanga Plateau, Loess Plateau, and Pothohar Plateau etc. (I haven't seen a single plateau not capitalised in Wikipedia yet).

The policy also states that we should look to sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized when the class names are not considered parts of proper names. In our case, the word plateau obviously forms a part of the proper names. Without the word plateau, words like Tibetan, Anatolian, Colorado, Loess, and Mexican would have completely different meanings. Vic Park (talk) 10:34, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Vic Park, you would read WP:NCPLACE § Names of classes in a way that, if "plateau" is generally capitalised, then it is always capitalised. However, it states: If a place belongs to a class, and the class is conventionally capitalized as part of the proper name of the place, then Wikipedia capitalizes that class name ... [emphasis added]. The guideline refers to capitalisation in a specific instance. We rely on sources to determine the capitalisation of an article. The guidance is telling us that. The sources are telling us to lowercase "plateau" in this case.

We rely on sources to determine capitalisation in any particular instance. Hence, you will find titles with "District" (capitalised) and "province" (lowercase) - depending upon usage in sources for the particular cases. Despite your comment, you will even find quite a quite a few cases where "plateau" is lowercase if you look for them.

Not every name phrase is a proper name. "Iranian P|plateau" describes a plateau (an elevated flat region) in or about Iran - it is descriptive. Whether this rises to being considered a "proper" noun|name largely depends on usage - and the usage does not support that it is. Considering your analogy, we don't say: "the English Language". You would argue from the "rules" of English but any rule in English has near as many exceptions as there is conformity. That is why all of the WP guidance cited defers to usage in sources to determine capitalisation. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:10, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support per clear evidence in books n-grams and guidelines MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 06:38, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  Please see my response above, thank you. Vic Park (talk) 10:34, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  Usage evidence is pretty compelling for the Iranian and many other plateaus (but certainly not all):

  • Iranian plateau
  • Anatolian plateau
  • Katanga plateau aka Shaba plateau
  • East African plateau
  • South African plateau
  • Mongolian plateau
  • Chota Nagpur plateau
  • Swiss plateau
  • Antarctic plateau
  • Mexican plateau
  • Deccan plateau
  • Mysore plateau
  • Karst plateau
  • Glières plateau
  • Transylvanian plateau

  I'm sure there are plenty more. Thanks for pointing out this mass of over-capitalization. We can fix. Dicklyon (talk) 19:27, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support—yeah, I don't see sufficient capping in sources to warrant it here. Tony (talk) 07:29, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  Please see my response above, thank you. Vic Park (talk) 10:34, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  Stop WP:BLUDGEONing, please. We've already seen your response, and Dicklyon's ngram evidence soundly refutes it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:59, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support per WP:NCCAPS, MOS:CAPS. This is frequently lower-cased in sources, so it should be here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:58, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

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.