1 Lucky Texan

Hello 1 Lucky Texan

Hello there, I just saw your comment about the sangay volcano Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Volcanoes#Possible_sighting_of_Sangay_eruption_1859. That seems in itself quite plausible but (and basically this is a lesson it took me about a month of messing about on wikipedia to get my hed around properly):

Wikipedia has a bunch of (broadly agreed but still sometimes debated) conventions which aim to make wikipedia into an accurate encyclopedia, without lots of very reasonable but unproven speculation. Basically speaking you can edit any article to say pretty much what ever you want (assuming it's not infringing copyright) but you need to phrase it like an encyclopedia and say where you saw the information you are adding was said by a 'reliable source' - there is an article on that here wikipedia:citing_sources.

So in this particular case I couldn't use the information you provided to alter the Sangay volcano article (or at least not at this stage). Discussing the possible sighting whilst interesting is not something will probably happen 'on' wikipedia - or at least not in the main pages. If some reliable source were to take a look at the logbook you linked to and wrote a speculation that it was the eruption of sangay - then possibly the sangay article might be able to use that as a citation to say that the eruption in 1859 was ongoing on the first of september. However someone else might then reasonably dispute that by citing the logbook which also says

The 3rd mate strangely enough said it was nothing but the breakers dashing on Dead Mans Island

. However the Logbook and a link to it might be a useful resource for people updating the article on deadman's island. So I've mentioned it on the talk page there.

Hope that makes sense and was helpful, here's a big bunch of links that I kidnapped from the page where I was first welcomed to wikipedia - it sounds a bit formal but saves a bunch of typing, hope it might be useful too.

EdwardLane (talk) 08:45, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

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