Talk:Exploding whale

What??

"Don't write about Exploding Whales, because we already have." EvErMoReNeVeRmOrE 23:56, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Exploding organisms

Template:Exploding organisms has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Watch page

Just out of interest, exactly how many people have this on their watch list? - Ta bu shi da yu 13:55, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

• Well I do, but AFAIK there is no easy way to find out who else is watching. Andreww 17:16, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
• It would be an interesting feature; to see who's watching who. —M (talk • contribs) 18:19, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

"killing" wrong word choice!

The section "other incidents" (which is a vague section heading to beign with) refers to the whales as being killed by explosives several times. This is not accurate. The whales were already dead so having their bodies destroyed by explosives could not kill them again... This section needs heavy editing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Forcefieldmaker87 (talk • contribs) 01:32, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Redirect :-S

Why The F**k does Exploding Wales redirect here? Wales != Whales. Exploding Wales should redirect to an article or article section about explosions in Wales. M0ffx 22:30, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Ah... I see that you have detected one of our infamous pranks on Jimbo! Way back in the day, somebody (I forget who) created an article called Exploding Wales - and article about what happens if you make Jimbo mad enough :-) In honour of the humour of it all, we decided to keep the article, but setup a redirect to this article. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:53, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Dam this article is hilarious, whales arn't meant to explode! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.39.132.218 (talk) 00:24, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to remove date-autoformatting

Dear fellow contributors

MOSNUM no longer encourages date autoformatting, having evolved over the past year or so from the mandatory to the optional after much discussion there and elsewhere of the disadvantages of the system. Related to this, MOSNUM prescribes rules for the raw formatting, irrespective of whether or not dates are autoformatted. MOSLINK and CONTEXT are consistent with this.

There are at least six disadvantages in using date-autoformatting, which I've capped here:

Disadvantages of date-autoformatting

• (1) In-house only

• (a) It works only for the WP "elite".
• (b) To our readers out there, it displays all-too-common inconsistencies in raw formatting in bright-blue underlined text, yet conceals them from WPians who are logged in and have chosen preferences.
• (c) It causes visitors to query why dates are bright-blue and underlined.

• (2) Avoids what are merely trivial differences

• (a) It is trivial whether the order is day–month or month–day. It is more trivial than color/colour and realise/realize, yet our consistency-within-article policy on spelling (WP:ENGVAR) has worked very well. English-speakers readily recognise both date formats; all dates after our signatures are international, and no one objects.

• (3) Colour-clutter: the bright-blue underlining of all dates

• (a) It dilutes the impact of high-value links.
• (b) It makes the text slightly harder to read.
• (c) It doesn't improve the appearance of the page.

• (4) Typos and misunderstood coding

• (a) There's a disappointing error-rate in keying in the auto-function; not bracketing the year, and enclosing the whole date in one set of brackets, are examples.
• (b) Once autoformatting is removed, mixtures of US and international formats are revealed in display mode, where they are much easier for WPians to pick up than in edit mode; so is the use of the wrong format in country-related articles.
• (c) Many WPians don't understand date-autoformatting—in particular, how if differs from ordinary linking; often it's applied simply because it's part of the furniture.

• (5) Edit-mode clutter

• (a) It's more work to enter an autoformatted date, and it doesn't make the edit-mode text any easier to read for subsequent editors.

• (6) Limited application

• (a) It's incompatible with date ranges ("January 3–9, 1998", or "3–9 January 1998", and "February–April 2006") and slashed dates ("the night of May 21/22", or "... 21/22 May").
• (b) By policy, we avoid date autoformatting in such places as quotations; the removal of autoformatting avoids this inconsistency.

Removal has generally been met with positive responses by editors. I'm seeking feedback about this proposal to remove it from the main text (using a script) in about a week's time on a trial basis/ The original input formatting would be seen by all WPians, not just the huge number of visitors; it would be plain, unobtrusive text, which would give greater prominence to the high-value links. Tony (talk) 09:05, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Inconsistent masses of sperm whales

Florence, Oregon, USA: ... a 14 m (45 ft 11 in), eight-ton sperm whale ...

Tainan, Taiwan: ... a ... sperm whale, measuring 17 m (55 ft 9 in) long and weighing 50 tons ...

These two masses are inconsistent. There is no way that two sperm whales of a similar length can have such disparity in the masses. Both masses are probably incorrect, because the sperm whale article suggests that sperm whales have masses between 14 and 41 tons. -- B.D.Mills  (T, C) 02:24, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, it is. A 45 ft (13.7 m) sperm whale would weigh between 25 and 30 metric tons (Ellis, The Book of Whales, 1980, pp 102-103). And the estimated weight (that's all it could be) for the 56 ft (17 m) individual is about right. News reports are usually way off when it comes to estimating weight (recently a 43-ft fin whale was "estimated" at only FIVE tons). SHFW70 (talk) 22:05, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Paul Cooper's opinion

Paul Cooper, the explosives expert, mentioned in one of his short courses on explosives engineering that blowing up carcasses into tiny morsels for scavengers is a fine way to get rid of them, but the rule of thumb is that you need a mass of explosives equal to the mass of the carcass. Half a ton of dynamite for an eight-ton whale is grossly inadequate. On the other hand, eight tons of TNT would be a bit tough on the local glazing.

Since I can't verifiably link Cooper's comments, I don't think that they belong in the article. But I thought this might be of interest for the talk page. 192.12.184.2 (talk) 17:37, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

New section needed

New section ("In popular culture") needed.

Items for this section:

1) Fallout 2

2) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

etc.

Can somebody make it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Masterius (talk • contribs) 16:24, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

None of those examples add enlightenment to the topic, and tend to attract drive-by useless trivia. See WP:TRIVIA. —EncMstr (talk) 18:36, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Hoax?

I think this is either a hoax or a very bad joke. --75.10.49.208 (talk) 01:55, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

It's probably a copyright violation so Wikipedia shouldn't link to it, but you can easily find the 1970 television clip with a Google search on exploding whale video. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:51, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

It's neither. - Tbsdy lives (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 13:25, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Copyedits ... and more

I don't really know how some articles get FA. Be that as it may, I've copyedited the carp outta this article -- trimmed some of the blubber, you might say. Or not. ;^D The only real change I made to the semantics was to remove the dimensions given for the whale in Tianan City, since those dimensions were not cited (I think... I was not rigorous in checking), and (as noted above) they are suspect. I also rearranged the order of stuff somewhat.

Oh, ok. I made a major change to the lede, if you must know. (lol) Controversy, anyone? As far as I'm concerned, the phrase "exploding whale" refers to the internet meme event in Oregon. The fact that other incidents also fall under this rubric is certainly notable, interesting, and encyclopedic, but this article (I think) should say what it says now: that 'exploding whale' most often refers to the Oregon incident. BRD if you disagree, but I'd also appreciate a comment here if you do so. Eaglizard (talk) 04:51, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

You really should check when that was made FA. It was like 2 or 3 years ago, and since then it's changed hugely, and the standard of course has risen. - Tbsdy lives (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 14:01, 5 November 2009 (UTC) (the original author)

I think it remains featured because it's now an indelible part of Wikipedia culture. Tisane ^talk/_stalk 03:49, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Featured quality?

I know this article has sentimental value, but is it really up to today's featured article standards? Tisane (talk) 07:32, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Quite frankly, in my opinion, it's not. This article achieved featured status in 2004, when Wikipedia was much smaller. This article is not even comparable to other featured articles such as Cougar and American Airlines Flight 77. -xwingsx- (talk) 20:42, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

this is a classic case of changes to the a reticle making it degrade over time. Much worse than it was before. - 114.76.227.0 (talk) 08:42, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Time discrepancy

1970 is not "approximately twenty-five years earlier" than 1990. - Elmarco 15:41, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Guts?

Not exactly the most scientific term available.

"The explosion threw guts and chunks of whale flesh over 800 ft..." How about "The explosion threw chunks of whale flesh over 800 ft?" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Slipdigit (talk • contribs) 14:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

"Others" section

As pointed out in the FAR, none of the sources tie the other exploding-whale incidents to the 1970 one. As a result, the entire "others" section is synthesis and should be removed. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 00:25, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Although the article says that "The term exploding whale most often refers to an event at Florence, Oregon, in 1970", there is no reason why the article shouldn't also mention other examples. It is not necessary to "tie the other exploding-whale incidents to the 1970 one". JamesBWatson (talk) 11:18, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

About the www.offbeatoregon.com citation:

One of the citations on this page leads to a newspaper article I wrote. I've been advised to declare this connection so it won't look like a conflict of interest, or as if I'm trying to pull a fast one for some free publicity. FWIW I make no money on my articles and the archives are licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. For more info, please see my Talk page. Finn-jd-john (talk) 17:58, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

“In popular culture” section

On August 8 of 2008 the whole section was deleted with a comment about how it's “not because it's trivia, but because it's unsourced”. So several questions arise about it:

• shouldn't there be source-request tags first, before deletion?
• if the problem is only with sources, would it be ok to recover the section (or its parts) with additional source refs where needed?
• higher on this page there was already a little talk on similar issue, where as an argument was used the Wikipedia:TRIVIA style guideline. I guess it was meant to be linked to this page, so I'll ask about the latter one. It says, that in case of passing mentions there should be included refs of significance, so at least in cases with poetry, song and children's book the whale mention is not a passing one.

So, I need help with sorting this all out. Thanks. DaemonDice (talk) 02:09, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

A new incident in Faroe Islands

http://kvf.fo/netvarp/sv/2013/11/26/video-her-brestur-hvalurin — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.78.142.203 (talk) 21:21, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I added the KVF footage via the "External Media" template to the bottom of the article, along with the same footage from the Huffington Post. The HP footage is easier to download, has English text in the story, and has a title that warns those with queasy stomachs 2 times. Hopefully this won't surprise anybody who has read to the bottom of the article. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:22, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Why is there no link to the Oregon Video?

Just curious... there is a whole paragraph about it and yet when links are added to the video we have people delete the links. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.226.213.17 (talk) 23:09, 26 July 2014 (UTC)