Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geology

WikiProject Geology was featured in a WikiProject Report in the Signpost on 6 May 2013.

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Blake Nose

Is this article properly part of this project? Bearian (talk) 02:49, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article is currently only in WikiProject Oceans. My opinion is: yes, this article should be in WikiProject Geology (and some other projects). GeoWriter (talk) 16:26, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Bearian (talk) 17:43, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I added it to projects Geology and Geography. Bearian (talk) 17:45, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Heinrich event

Heinrich event has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 13:45, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FAR for Bryce Canyon National Park

I have nominated Bryce Canyon National Park for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 16:33, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Suspected citation spam

Hi all,

The Project Mathematics has recently stumbled upon a somewhat-large-scale case of citation spam, where several IPs and accounts were spamming articles by Vincenzo Guerriero in maths articles, accross many languages. See the corresponding discussion at Project Mathematics (non-permanent link) and the (successful) sockpuppet investigation that followed.

Most of those uncalled for citations have been removed from the math articles. However, it looks like the same strategy had been used more than a decade ago to spam articles by the same author in geology articles:

first all all, unless I'm mistaken some of those citations were added by sockpuppets of the recently banned account;
the pattern is similar: at the time when they were added, those articles had just been published, and therefore were not notable in any sense of the term.

The problem is that, now, some of these articles have a somewhat significant number of citations — nothing surprising, given that they have been on Wikipedia for more than a decade; but that makes it tricky for me to remove them from Wikipedia.

Would anyone from the geology project be willing to look into citations of articles by V. Guerriero in geology article, and read the actual articles to see if those citations are adequate references? More specifically, I'm thinking about the following articles:

Also, as mentioned above the more recent cases of citation spam had happened across several languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian...). So if some of you are contributing in those languages, you might want to relay these information to the relevant people.

Cheers, Malparti (talk) 15:58, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the head up, I'll take a look. Mikenorton (talk) 20:59, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Mikenorton Bump. :) Malparti (talk) 14:58, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed 2/3 clear cut ones, Structural geology requires more study. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:08, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Great — thanks a lot for your work! Malparti (talk) 22:35, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello,
Please note that Economics of climate change mitigation, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing!
_{Delivered by — MusikBot ^talk 00:10, 15 September 2025 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team}[reply]

Do Tectonic plates meet MOS:GEO?

Awhile back all of the plate names (African Plate etc.) were lowercased in a Requested move. I would like to readdress that at some point, but first bringing the topic here to get more voices on if tectoni plates, as major geological features of Earth, automatically qualify under MOS:GEO. Sources like Britannica, Encyclopedia.com, and The Free Dictionary uppercase. To me it seems logical that named tectonic plates, the largest geographical forms on Earth, would be uppercased under place names, so checking if others also hold this opinion. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:18, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I never agreed with lowercasing all of the plate names so I would support moving the article titles back to how they were before the requested moves. But there is a problem; tectonic plates are geological features, not geographical features. Volcanoguy 15:49, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also support a return to uppercase. From a scan of USGS and BGS web pages the plate names are almost exclusively uppercase. Silica Cat (talk) 08:51, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As Volcanoguy mentioned, the named plates are defined as geological formations and may not fit MOS:GEO. But yes Silica Cat, it is important to note that USGS and BGS casing has great weight in choosing names. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:44, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Purely out of interest, what's the difference between a geographical and geological feature, if the geological feature is present at the Earth's surface so to speak? Silica Cat (talk) 12:02, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Geography: The science dealing with the areal differentiation of the earth's surface, as shown in the character, arrangement, and interrelations over the world of such elements as climate, elevation, soil, vegetation, population, land use, industries, or states, and of the unit areas formed by the complex of these individual elements.

Geology: The science that deals with the dynamics and physical history of the earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the physical, chemical, and biological changes that the earth has undergone or is undergoing. Volcanoguy 18:52, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Issues with the status of certain Chinese Formations

I've been looking into a formation, the Falang Formation, due to it being mentioned on a page a was working though according to a source, the formation was split into 3 based in 1987 though was not elevated to group level. In this case, the most important of the three to me is the Zhuganpo Formation. This is in contrast to a number of publications that treat the formation as still being a thing. Even when searching on google scholar, almost four times as many results come up when searching to the older same since the split happened. This is sort of a weird case due to the fact that is seems like, in at least in most of the publications on the formation that I can find, the 1987 split has been ignored. Any advice of if certain pages need to be restructured or if this information should just be added to a history section of these pages. SeismicShrimp (talk) 18:17, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, the best idea is to follow the consensus of the geological (rather than paleontological) literature on the topic, and/or on national stratigraphic databases if they exist. For example, some authors decided to raise the Wealden Group to being the Wealden Supergroup, and while if you read paleontological literature, you might get the impression that the Wealden Supergroup is widely accepted, the use of "supergroup" for this stratigraphic unit is largely confined to paleontologists and has not been accepted by the British Geological Survey or by most geologists more broadly. On a more specific note, it seems best to have a single article on the "Falang Formation" and then have Zhuganpo Formation as a redirect to explain in the text. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:29, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dispute over the age of the Nemegt Formation

See Talk:Nemegt_Formation. Would be nice to someone with geological expertise take a look at this dispute. Many thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:16, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Help on new article for Tsugaruite

Hi. I'm in no way a chemist nor geologist, but I started a sandbox version of a new article on the mineral Tsugaruite here: User talk:MisawaSakura/Sandbox2. I could use some help beefing it up before moving to mainspace. Feel free to directly edit my sandbox. I only have access to a few sources. And FYI Vsmith who I saw edit some geology articles. Thanks! MisawaSakura (talk) 16:21, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I will take a detailed look at it when I can. At first glance, it needs Template:Infobox mineral and some copyediting. Also the space group is Pnn2, not P2nn, and that's space group 34 according to this list (you have the wrong category). mindat.org is always a good source: [1] I₂Overcome ^talk 09:43, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Attention to the geological period's subdivisions

Hey, I was looking on the Geology's Period Task Force page, and I feel like the watch over the other subdivisions of the geological timeline are left out. I mean, what about working on the Epoch/Series pages, or the Age/Stage, Era, or Eon pages? Also, regarding which specific sections need improvement from that chart, what about adding an etymology section for the pages? I mean, I guess not all the subdivisions need such a section (specifically those named as a prefix of its superdivision, such as Neoproterozoic, Early Devonian, etc.), but I feel like it will help the article a lot, or at least to an extent. I mean, look at the Paleocene article; it's a clear-cut example of what can be improved. — Alex26337 (talk) 03:30, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please make improvements to Paleocene if you can but it looks to be in pretty good shape to me. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:24, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was just using the Paleocene as an example, or rather, a blueprint, for what can be added to other articles spanning the geological timeline, with more focus on the series and stage subdivisions. I don’t want to repeat myself, but I guess I just want to see some sign on this WikiProject’s pages that shows that these subdivision articles are a focus too, and that they need love and improvements from editors as well. — Alex26337 (talk) 14:52, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience the best way to draw attention to articles is to make improvements to them or to suggest good sources in the Talk pages. ToDo lists may be helpful to you but I don't think the motivate editors as much as specific problems and opportunities for improvements on specific pages. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:59, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Help needed on fixing footnotes for List of possible impact structures on Earth

Help, strating with opinions and ideas, is needed on fixing citations and footnotes for List of possible impact structures on Earth. A defunct database, The Complete Catalog of the Earth's Impact Structures is cited four different ways, which involves well over a hundred footnotes with broken links. Ideas for how this mess should fixed are needed at Talk:List of possible impact structures on Earth#Footnotes to Anna Mikheeva's database is a Mess. The topics include whether this database is even worth keeping and should be removed. I feel this is a fix that needs to be done only with the consultation other editors. Paul H. (talk) 20:18, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]