Template talk:POTD/2023-04-13

Re: move to later date to allow for more sourcing

@Amakuru: Would appreciate if you could indicate what is the "more sourcing" expected? Tagooty (talk) 15:33, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

@Tagooty: thanks for the query. I was looking through the text and it seemed like some of it wasn't in the article. For example "It is above the tree line", doesn't seem to be mentioned. Then the next bit, "vegetation is sparse", I suspect is not sourced. The article says "The mountains are barren and largely devoid of vegetative cover, with no citation, and then in the next paragraph, "as vegetation is sparse", and I don't have access to the Thomson source at the end of that one, but I'm suspicious it doesn't cover the sparse vegetation aspect. Maybe you have that book though? Then we have "Here, the braided river meanders along the bed several hundred metres wide. With the lack of rainfall and vegetation, the rock strata are exposed for hundreds of metres on the mountain slopes" which isn't in the article, and although it's in the image description, I don't think there's a source covering those facts. Finally, the last two sentences "The variegated strata have a stark beauty and are a treat to geologists" and "This majestic picture is best viewed on a large screen" are subjective opinions rather than sourced facts....

Don't get me wrong, I personally think it's a beautiful picture and I'm very jealous of you for having gone to that amazing landscape - thank you for contributing it to Wikipedia... but I just thought with the above issues it needed a bit more time to sort out before next week, and I wasn't able to immediately deal with it myself. If you're able to deal with sourcing the above bits of text then I'll be happy to put it back in the original date. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 16:03, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

@Amakuru: Thanks for the clarifications, I'll work on the issues and ping you when done. I have read Thomson's book and a number of other fascinating travelogues and reports by British-India officers. BTW, many of these are out of copyright with softcopy available for download. Tagooty (talk) 05:02, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Revised the Spiti article Geography section to include a new reference Srivastava et al. 2013 (ref. 11 in the article). Added page numbers in refs for some of the material. In particular for "above tree line" (Sec. Flora and fauna) and "braided river" (Sec. Geography). Rewrote the POTD blurb to conform to the facts in the article. --Tagooty (talk) 10:51, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

@Amakuru: Could you take a look at the revised blurb? Let me know if any further revision is needed. If the blurb is acceptable, I would appreciate if you could advance the POTD to a suitable date in Jan or Feb. --Tagooty (talk) 09:40, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

@Amakuru: A gentle reminder Tagooty (talk) 05:06, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

@Tagooty: thanks for the reminder, and good work on the updates. A few bits in the blurb still seem to need citations:

• "flows in narrow channels in a river bed that is up to 2.4 km (1.5 mi) wide" (I can't see a reference to this in the Late Pleistocene-Holocene morphosedimentary architecture article)
• The pioneering work of several geologists has made Spiti known as a classical geological area in the Himalayas
• Spiti is known for adventure tourism, trekking and mountaineering

Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 11:28, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

@Amakuru: I'm impressed by how meticulous you are! Responses:

• "flows in narrow channels in a river bed that is up to 2.4 km (1.5 mi) wide" -- this is from Harcourt 1871, I've added the citation in the article. I've removed the specific distance in the article and the blurbb, as I've not seen any other reference for this. In Google Maps, it is about 1 km wide near Kaza and 2 km wide at a confluence above Losar.
• "The pioneering work of several geologists has made Spiti known as a classical geological area in the Himalayas" -- the Geology sec of Spiti refers to Mud_village,_Spiti#Geology. This statement is based on Fuchs 1982 Ref [1] in the Mud Geology section.
• "Spiti is known for adventure tourism, trekking and mountaineering" -- There are a large number of citations in the Sports sec. This sentence summarises the section.

Hope this addresses the issues. If tweaking is needed, please edit or suggest changes to the blurb. Tagooty (talk) 04:09, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

@Tagooty: thanks again, I've made a couple of tweaks - mainly on the geology, which seemed slightly problematic as (a) the text didn't come from this article, and (b) it was a direct quote, so needed rewriting for copyright reasons (or putting in quotes). I've simply described the discovery of the geological formation as per what the article says. It all seems OK to me now, and would be good to go on 13 April if you're happy with that. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 10:18, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

@Amakuru: Thank you, this is perfect! Tagooty (talk) 03:16, 28 March 2023 (UTC)