Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Weather

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2024–25 WikiProject Weather Good Article Reassessment[edit]

I would like to announce that a new task force has been created to re-examine the status of every GA in the project. Many good articles have not been reviewed in quite a while (15+ years for some) and notability requirements have changed quite a bit over the years. The goal of this task force is to save as many articles as possible. Anyone not reviewing an article may jump in to help get it up to par if it does not meet the GA requirements. The process will start officially on February 1 and will continue until every article has been checked and either kept or delisted. The task force may be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Weather/2024–25 Good Article Reassessment. Noah, AATalk 15:22, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Articles under review

Unifying monsoon page names[edit]

While I looked at Monsoon#Global monsoon, I noticed that all articles used in Template:Main are inconsistently named.

There is:

There might be more pages about regional monsoon than just these 4 which also need to be accounted for.

Every page there is named differently. What should the preferred main article name be?

"Reposted" from Old revision of Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) as apparently this should be the right place. NetSysFire (talk) 10:58, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As "monsoon" is not part of a proper noun, I think the appropriate way to title these is to use the Australian page as a model. I would name these "North American monsoon", "South Asian monsoon", "East Asian monsoon", and "Australian monsoon". DJ Cane (he/him) (Talk) 21:31, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Computer simulation#Requested move 2 April 2024[edit]

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Computer simulation#Requested move 2 April 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. RodRabelo7 (talk) 01:54, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Project newsletter?[edit]

There used to be a newsletter for the tropical cyclone project. I still think it's useful to have something to let people know about what's going on. Have editorials, notices about newly improved articles, discussions, that kind of stuff. Maybe call it the Wiki Weather Weekly (and put it out however often we want). I think it could be cool to have a weather event of the week, which can highlight various types of weather. Maybe a blizzard happens one week in one part of the world, and there's a wildfire that happens over an entire month. Having some degree of newsletter across all of the projects could foster a bit of project unity and coordination. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 23:04, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

New Proposed Criteria for U.S.-inclusion on Tornadoes of XXXX articles[edit]

TornadoInformation12 has proposed new criteria for the current inclusion criteria for Tornadoes of XXXX articles (ex. Tornadoes of 2024). You can see and participate in the proposal discussion here! The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 18:12, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RFC on Food and Health at Climate change[edit]

There is an RFC requesting that editors choose between one of two draft sections on Food and Health in the article on Climate change. Please take part in the RFC. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:27, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RFC for Additional Proposed Criteria for WP:TornadoCriteria[edit]

There is an RFC requested that editors choose whether or not two additional criteria should be formally added to WP:TornadoCriteria. You can participate in the RFC here. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 19:13, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox storm replacement and footers[edit]

Hopefully this ia a good place to bring this up. There seems to be an effort underfoot to replace {{infobox storm}} with {{infobox weather event}}, and since I'm doing my bit in cleaning up lint errors, I've come across cases where people have done this replacement, but didn't know they needed to include a footer (which {{infobox storm}} apparently didn't need), resulting in lint errors and issues with infobox display. I'm pretty sure there have been any number of similar cases that someone else has taken care of.

So, in order to minimize extra cleanup, it seems like it'd be useful to put up a notice about needing to add a footer - somewhere the people participating in this infobox conversion project would be most likely to see it, and I'm not sure where that would be. Gamapamani (talk) 07:38, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Although the template {{infobox weather event}} is currently semi-protected, if you need to put a notice before your account gets verified, you can discuss your suggestion on the template's talk page.
Once your account is verified, you would be able to add a larger notice to the template page directly (instead of the brief mention within the inline text). 2601:2C1:8B80:349F:4A93:1681:C693:D291 (talk) 05:57, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your suggestions. This is kind of funny, because I actually added this comment to the template's talk page at first, but then moved it over here instead after reading the suggestions there about the page not being read much, as opposed to here. Anyway, I went ahead and changed the template doc to show the header requirement more prominently. I guess I should have that in the first place, but I was thinking about some project page somewhere where people would be able to see the notice even if they didn't read the docs carefully. Gamapamani (talk) 09:16, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WebCite Archives: Imminent Danger Warning[edit]

The service webcitation.org is used frequently in weather articles particularly tropical typhoons and cyclones.

We believe it will go completely dark at some point in the future: All webcitation.org URLs should be assumed to no longer work in the future.

WebCite went completely offline for a year and half. Then it was restored, but in shaky condition.

Bots can not help for technical reasons. It will require manual intervention. After WebCite disappears, the citations will no longer be accessible, and there is a possibility the entire citation and the material that cites it could be deleted per WP:V. This situation could be devastating for all of these articles due to the scale of WebCite usage.

There is no immediate need to panic because we have no information of an imminent WebCite failure. However, preparations for failure should begin now before it is too late.

Please note that attempting to save WebCite links at Archive.org might give the appearance of working, but actually does not work, there is in insidious technical snare built into WebCite to prevent the Wayback Machine from saving their links (correctly). It is recommended to use archive.today if you choose. Even better is find the original link and find an archive for it at Wayback or Today. -- GreenC 17:01, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@GreenC: Thanks for the heads up and this has been something I have been worried about for a few years, and I am disappointed that the internet archive, despite appearing to work, will not save the links properly. Is there any way of getting a list together of all articles that have links to Webcite in them?Jason Rees (talk) 20:04, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:Jason Rees thank you for your interest. I will generate a list of pages and URLs and post where to retrieve it. The impression count on enwiki is 37,148 as of April 24 (column H). This is non-unique count. As can be seen, there are still over 1.2 million elsewhere. It's unfortunate about Wayback, but creating copies on Archive.today should be possible. If they are saved on Archive.today, once there, my bot can do the work of replacing on wiki. The bot will find the webcite link in the article, look it up at archive.today, retrieve a new URL, and replace. Are you programmer or script writer? There might be some tools for mass saving a list of links at archive.today -- GreenC 21:26, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not a programmer or a scriptwriter, but we have a few lurking in the project. @Chlod: for instance. Anyway, Webcite is something that I and other project members have been worried about as a lot of our articles are impacted, as some of the links contain decent information about how a system formed, dissipated, its intensity etc. Some of these links can be found again or superseded by others or dropped as the sections are reworked, but first things first we need to get a list of articles impacted together on wiki so that we can work out how badly we are impacted and maybe even clean the sections up.Jason Rees (talk) 22:28, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Before I generate a final list, I want to cleanup the links. Edits like this Special:Diff/1210676215/1221876846 which prior to yesterday was impossible due to the WebCite API being broken. Or giving that appearance. I got it to work, they have bogus SSL so it required a hack. I am doing this as fast as possible while the hack is working. After this I'll try to convert these to archive.org links. -- GreenC 14:46, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:Jason Rees Update: I'm converting the links, in about 20,000 pages. The rate might be as high as 50%, mostly to archive.today - it will take a week or two because it's slow for the bot to process, and I manually verify every link, due to the high rate of soft-404s at archive.today -- GreenC 02:41, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WebCite is now down, probably for [days/weeks/years/ever] - but that's OK I got the data I needed. I can continue with the conversions to archive.today - and WebCite being down makes that easier because no one can complain about converting from a dead/unreliable site. -- GreenC 16:12, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tornadoes of XXXX - Article format of 2022 and earlier[edit]

Not sure if this has already been brought up before, but thought I'd add this suggestion here.

Seeing how the format of 2023 and 2024 dedicate tornado sections beyond the US and differ from earlier lists (2022 and earlier), should the prior list format be updated to parallel 2023 and 2024? As it stands, the differences create 2 distinct formats for these lists, whereas there should (ideally) only be 1 format.

I understand that there are numerous template and format inconsistencies that are gradually being resolved regarding tornado articles, but the yearly tornado lists serve as the backbone for tornado articles overall. 2601:2C1:8B80:349F:4A93:1681:C693:D291 (talk) 05:48, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct. The older articles need to be updated to how the newer years look like. Of course, we can't force a mandate to change things, but there was a discussion about how best to present the yearly articles, with a consensus that organization by area, rather than month, is appropriate. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 16:07, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the consensus was to finish out 2024 to get the kinks out and reach a good standard before starting work on bringing former years to the new standard. Pinging @ChessEric, @WeatherWriter, and @TheAustinMan who IIRC were involved in that discussion to confirm my understanding is accurate. DJ Cane (he/him) (Talk) 21:27, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm honestly starting to not be a fan of this. I like the events to be organized by month, especially since most events are in the U.S. We should finish out 2024 first before changing the older years so that we can get all the kinks out and come to a final decision. ChessEric 22:25, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of greater importance, in my opinion, is to fix the refs on the tornado list pages. ChessEric 22:29, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am actually with ChessEric on this. I honestly would say we should go back to the old format for the articles and to compensate for less-U.S. centric: (1) Continue to not include US-only stuff in the infobox at the top and (2) add "(United States)" next to the subheaders like we do in this format. That would fix the format (which is really annoying to me now) and keep it less-U.S. centric. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 23:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I pitched a different format so it wouldn't be so biased towards the US. They are commonplace in the United States, and there are already monthly articles covering every US tornado. Comparing it to tropical cyclones, it's like the tropical cyclones by year organizing the information (and the season articles) by basin (2024 Atlantic hurricane season, etc.) The same principle for tornadoes going by continent, which provides a much more global perspective than having the US info alongside the rest of the world. I say that because there are a disproportionate number of US editors, so naturally they are going to be a lot of editors writing about US events. What I want to make sure is that the currently biased yearly tornado articles (2022 and previous) should have a decent bit of coverage for other areas. Changing it to being organized by continent will reveal the articles that are missing any coverage from a given area. I strongly believe that is a better approach, since (due to their short-lived and isolated nature) there isn't likely to be a proper listing of every single tornado, everywhere around the world, in a given year. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 23:43, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nice discussion. For now, I shall hold off on applying the 2023–2024 format on pre-2010 lists until we confirm a consensus on the format. By the time I got to 2011, I realized that there were several international tornado reports that were barely elaborated on.
In the meantime, refer to the (preliminary) formatting changes made for 2011–2022 to gauge whether the new changes are favorable or not. Sorry about applying the change to this many articles... changes have been made to 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011.
(reverted because of a misclick)
2601:2C1:8B80:349F:4A93:1681:C693:D291 (talk) 03:31, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm honestly more of a fan of TWEW's suggestion. ChessEric 04:51, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Going back to the older format, and thus having it biased towards the US? I'm not sure the advantage here. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 18:02, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I’m also in support of reverting to the original format. The new format is actually worse. United States Man (talk) 02:47, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could you give specifics? ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 03:10, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to Portal:Tornadoes[edit]

The recent outbreaks section at Portal:Tornadoes has been changed into a section featuring the tornado content of the current year and will automatically transclude from a list of specified articles. This should make it easier to update since only links need to be added. This change has been made in part since this portal section has not been maintained since the MfD. Noah, AATalk 13:55, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Severe weather: Description of random radar images and loops as "public domain"[edit]

I figure that even though this discussion pertains to WikiProject Severe weather, since it involves radar, which has many non-tornado/thunderstorm-related contexts, it should also be mentioned here. Thanks. Master of Time (talk) 16:49, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion -- New Proposal for layout of Tornadoes of YYYY articles[edit]

Since there is two discussions (on two separate talk pages) regarding this topic at the same time, I wanted to make this discussion and ping all users involved: (courtesy pings: @ChessEric:, United States Man, HamiltonthesixXmusic, TornadoInformation12, DJ Cane, Hurricanehink).

Recently, from the two discussions (one a few sections above this one and the other on Talk:Tornadoes of 2024), I have a proposal for the new layout, taking in feedback from those involved in those two discussions.

  1. Change (revert) the layout from the currently used By Continent, to the original By Month.
  2. "(United States)" will be added to U.S.-based events, which was not done in pre-2023 layouts.
  3. U.S.-only things will be left out of the infobox at the top of the yearly page. However, monthly U.S. totals can (and should) be mentioned at the beginning of each months section. Information regarding other countries or regions (example: number of European tornadoes or number of China tornadoes) during the month should also receive a sentence at the beginning of each months section.
In short, a small "monthly global summary" opens the section.

Based on the feedback, two things were clear: The old layout (By Month) is definitely the preferred layout to most editors. However, the reasoning for the layout change to begin with involved fighting U.S.-centeredness in articles, that is where point 2 and 3 come in. In pre-2023 layouts (before any changes), U.S. monthly totals were mentioned as the opening to each month, however, no other countries were mentioned. Also, "(United States)} was never used in pre-2023 layouts as well. To me, this proposal for a layout seems to solve issues brought up in past discussions, while also being the layout the majority of the community wants. Thoughts? Supports? Opposes? The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 06:19, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

  • Support – As proposer. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 06:19, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Support — Glad to see a reasonable solution to our grievances with this current layout. Thanks for your good work! HamiltonthesixXmusic (talk) 22:05, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – I like that better. ChessEric 06:29, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – In agreement with proposal. United States Man (talk) 12:23, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I like this idea. I can't stand the new layout, and we pretty much got pushed into it by one single user. If a majority of editors want to get rid of this current, clunky format, then lets get rid of it. Majority opinion matters here.

TornadoInformation12 (talk) 12:24, 7 May 2024 (UTC)TornadoInformation12[reply]

  • Support Dont see any issues with this. Noah, BSBATalk 13:44, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can see I’m going to be shouted down here but appreciate @WeatherWriter trying to find a common ground. I am a weak support for 1 and 2 but am an oppose for 3. On global articles, US data should be presented the same as global data. Thus, if other totals aren’t included in the box, having a US totals box is something I can’t support. DJ Cane (he/him) (Talk) 15:50, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment: Posting my reply in another thread here because I think most of the content is relevant for this discussion. Note that it is a direct reply to someone and references comments from that discussion.
    Please review previous discussions here and here for a primer on why I originally recommended we change to this model and what steps and compromises occurred to get here.
    I fail to see how splitting by region first then date makes it clunky. I would argue that not doing so is worse from a readability standpoint. The target audience of Wikipedia is not weather nerds or experts in the field, but everyone. Jumping around from continent to continent mixes vastly different events and climatological regimes unnecessarily and waters down the differences between different events/outbreaks.
    What exactly about splitting by region makes it more clunky and decreases navigation quality? What specifically are you looking for that isn’t presented? You mention a nice summary of events. That’s here, and not only is it here but it is presented in a more intelligent form by grouping by region. The original system wasn’t working well for international coverage, and nothing in this or other discussions points toward the page having been made worse.
    Finally, not only are US tornadoes given appropriate coverage here relative to global frequency (the amount of coverage hasn’t changed), they are at the top of the page and are not mixed in with foreign events. It’s surprising to me that editors find this to be undesirable. This is, notably, against Wikipedia precedent for other global lists which are typically sorted alphabetically. I don’t think it’s wrong to put North America and the United States at the top (due to climatology and data availability), but it is worth noting. DJ Cane (he/him) (Talk) 15:55, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) — @DJ Cane: US total’s box? I think you misread what the third point was suppose to be. If you look at Tornadoes of 2008 (perfect example of the old format), you can see how the very top infobox has “Tornadoes in U.S.: 1,692”, “Damage (U.S.)”, and “Fatalities (U.S.)”, while if you look at Tornadoes of 2023’s top infobox, it only has “Fatalities (worldwide): 116”. That is part one of the third point: i.e. no U.S. stuff in the top infobox. (Matching the Tornadoes of 2023 infobox).
The second part is to have global monthly summaries. Going back to Tornadoes of 2008 example, take a look at Tornadoes of 2008#April. The entire section starts out There were 189 tornadoes reported in the United States in the month of April, all of which were confirmed. Basically, the second part of the third point is to keep those, but expand them to include other countries. Hopefully that makes a little more sense as to what the third point is. Since you were one of the main editors on board for less-U.S. centerness, I am thinking you just misread it, since the third point is an actual “less-U.S. centric” point. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 15:59, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You’re right, I did misinterpret it and as such switch to weak support. Not because I think this method is better, but because I think this is a reasonable compromise. Thanks for the reword. DJ Cane (he/him) (Talk) 17:16, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tentative support – these three points seem like a reasonable compromise, and top-level ordering by month remains a decent manner of organization. However, I'm a little confused by the degree of consternation caused by the current format. It's not all that drastically different from the previous format, all considered; the events occurring in the U.S., for instance, are essentially still all together, presented in chronological order, and labeled by their date of occurrence, as was the case previously. I'm not seeing the clunky and difficult-to-navigate nature of the current format that have been brought up over the past few months – can someone enlighten me as to what the particular issues here are? —TheAustinMan(Talk ⬩ Edits) 16:12, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I figure that I'm in the minority, but I want to echo what DJ Cane (talk · contribs) said. My main issue is that most yearly tornado articles are overwhelmingly biased towards the US, which makes sense considering the number of editors from English-speaking countries (including the US). Using Tornadoes of 2008 as an example, the amount of information dominated by the US is obvious. The synopsis has three paragraphs covering the US, as if that was a proper synopsis of worldwide tornadoes in 2008. Under events, it only lists US tornadoes in the first section. I compared the amount of information about the US vs the rest of the world. There is more than ten times the amount of information about the US than the rest of the world - 7,761 words versus 642. That means the US is more than 93% of the yearly worldwide coverage. And that's already with having US monthly articles. Now, one might say, "but the US has more tornadoes than anywhere else." OK, but does it really have 10 times more tornadoes than the rest of the world? And even if it did, in the interest of balanced coverage, is that fair to have 93% of the content? ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 16:50, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I may propose a counter point: Articles overwhelmingly biased towards the U.S. is not from the number of English speaking countries. In fact, it shouldn’t even be from the fact the U.S. gets 10x more tornadoes than any other country (also that is from WMO). Based on the strong community consensus which decided WP:TornadoCriteria, if there is more U.S. info on an article, that is because more notable events occurred in the U.S. than other countries. The only way to reduce that is to restrict the U.S. inclusion criteria even more. However, I do not think that would happen, given the discussions to create the criteria in the first place. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 17:02, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What are the number of tornadoes for non-US countries though? Is there even anyone going out of the way researching tornadoes outside of the US? Yes, the US has 1,200 a year, but Europe has 300, Canada has 230, China has 100, Australia has 30, Japan has 20, South America and Asia get some. Even though the US gets more, there are already tons more articles focusing on US tornadoes. What I think we need to is to provide a better global perspective in the yearly articles, but just listing the summaries by month isn't going to make things better from a global perspective. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 21:27, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think we will have to respectfully agree to disagree on that, which is perfectly fine. Currently, there is eight editors in support of going back to the "By Month" layout over the "By Continent" layout and you (so far) are the only editor in opposition to that. If I may ask though, why would a "By Month" layout be U.S.-centric over a "By Continent" layout, since the same number of U.S. sections vs Non-U.S. sections would be present in both layouts as dictated by WP:TornadoCriteria? To me, the "By Continent" layout would seem actually more U.S. centric than the "By Month" layout, as it specifically lists all U.S. tornadoes first (as North America is listed first) rather than all the other countries or in chronological order. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 21:34, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because if we just go by month, no one will notice if there's nothing included for any non-US areas. Organizing by continent will at least have a section, even if it's blank, identifying a major part of the article that is missing. Right now, we could have a fairly full yearly article that is almost all US. That's unacceptable to me, and I'm American XD ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 21:39, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – I agree with the ideas proposed, the monthly layout of the page was easier to navigate and much more convenient to easily access the more detailed monthly tornado lists for the US, and by adding a sentence for how many tornadoes were confirmed in other continents/major countries, if there were any, as well as adding "(United States)" to the end of the different US tornado events, it sufficiently makes it less US-centered, giving some attention to the other parts of the world that have experienced tornado activity, while not entirely changing the layout to an unstable one that editors have been having problems with (e.g., formatting errors for the North America events). ChrisWx 🌀 (talk - contribs) 21:23, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose #2 Maybe it's just me, but it feels like every tornado section having (United States) added is a lot of extra clutter to fight US-centeredness in an article that will always naturally have a lot more US content than anywhere else in the world. I'd rather have the specific states or the region of the US listed if something needs to be listed in parenthesis, because just "United States" doesn't give any additional info on where the storms are located compared to the previous format (where no country in parenthesis indicated USA). It doesn't quite feel like slapping a bandaid over the problem, but I'm not sure how better to describe it. Support #1 and #3, because those are good changes in my opinion (#3 does a good job of tackling US-centeredness, imo). Skarmory (talk • contribs) 03:19, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The arguments all seem to be WP:IDONTLIKEIT without concrete arguments. I mostly agree with Hurricanehink here.--Jasper Deng (talk) 07:58, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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