Wikipedia:Peer review/Mono-Inyo Craters/archive1

Mono-Inyo Craters

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I created this article six years ago and have recently massively expanded it with the intention of nominating at FAC soon. Seems to conform to other mountain-volcano-related FAs such as Mount St. Helens but I need somebody else to take a look to make sure I haven't missed anything (especially those technical MOS nitpicks that torpedo so many FACs early on). Thanks, mav (talk) 02:03, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is quite good, broad but perhaps not quite comprehensive, well-written, very nicely illustrated, stable, neutral, and verifiable. I have suggestions related to prose and Manual of Style issues, and a couple of suggestions for expansion.

• I'd suggest eliminating all of the bolding from the lead except the first three words, per MOS:BOLD. The other bolded phrases are not title synonyms.
• The lead image needs alt text. I see that you've done the others but that the geobox had no alt parameter yet. I added the one that I think will work, but it still needs the text.

Geobox

• Add county or counties in California?

Lead

• "Uplift of Paoha Island about 250 years ago is the most recent activity." - Add location of the island? It's in the main text, but I think it should be added here as well.
• Since the lead should be a summary of the whole article, you should probably add at least a mention of the "Activities" section.

Setting

• "Mono Craters is a 10.5-mile (16.9 km)-long chain... " - Delete "-long"? "Chain" suggests length.
• Add county or counties? Add distance from nearest city?
• "South of Inyo Craters proper are other features related to the dike system... " - Wikilink dike?
• "These fissures can not technically be called faults due to the fact that little or no vertical or horizontal movement... " - Replace "due to the fact that" with "because"?

Typical evolution

• "Devil's Punch Bowl. located south of the main dome complex, stopped forming at an earlier stage of development. It is a 1,200-foot (370 m)-wide and 140-foot (43 m)-deep explosion pit with a much smaller glass dome on its floor." - I don't believe you need that second hyphen. It's misplaced in any case, and I'd just erase it. Ditto for similar instances throughout.
• "and have talus piles along their base... " - Wikilink to scree or add (scree) in parentheses?
• "and has a volume of 0.1 cubic miles (0.42 km3)" - Round to 0.4?

Exploitation

• "Various gold rush-related boomtowns sprung up near and in Mono Basin... " - "Sprang" rather than "sprung". Also, tighten by deleting "various"?
• "Excavation of an 11.5-mile (18.5 km)-long tunnel under the... " - Delete "-long"? "Tunnel" already implies length.
• "The company markets the pumice in slabs for use in commercial scouring and in large irregular chucks sold as yard decoration." - Should that be "chunks" rather than "chucks"?
• "The wells did not show promising results, so the effort was abandoned until the 1980s." - This implies that efforts resumed in the 1980s. Did they? If so, what happened?

Protection and monitoring

• "Four magnitude 6 earthquakes struck the southern margin of Long Valley Caldera... " - You might add something about the Richter scale and wikilink it.
• "Persistent earthquake swarms in 1982 prompted the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to issue a 'potential volcanic hazard' notice... " - Double quotes are preferred to single in simple (not nested) situations.
• "The hazard notice was lifted in 1984 with the conclusion that magma was injected into fissures below Mammoth Mountain but had congealed underground." - "had been injected"? Also, maybe "after experts concluded that" rather then "with the conclusion that"?
• "From 1990 to 1996, 150 acres (61 ha) of trees had been killed... - "were killed"?
• "Most notably, in 1994 the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power accepted a decision by the state government to cut back its water diversions from Mono Lake." - Has the lake level risen any since then? Has anyone projected how long it might take for the lake to reach its pre-tunnel level?

Mono Craters formed

• "A vertical sheet-like mass of magma called a dike caused groundwater to explosively flash to steam, creating a line of vents 4 miles (6.4 km) long.[41] A mix of ash and pulverized rock called tephra... " - Dike and tephra should be wikilinked on first use rather than here.

Activities

• "visitor information center in Lee Vining" - Wikilink Lee Vining?
• Any fishing in Mono Lake? If not, why not?

References

• The date formatting in the citations needs to be consistent. I see a mixture of d-m-y and yyyy-mm-dd. You can use either in the reference section but not both.
• Citation 1 is remarkably like one I used to use until it did not get through FAC in that form. The fix is to list the United States Geological Survey as the author and TopoQuest as the publisher. I use the form you can see in citation 3 of Wilson River (Oregon). This makes clear that the source is reliable (RS). It helps to add the specific map quad as well.
• Linking things like Smithsonian Institution multiple times is a form of overlinking.
• Be careful that the sources support the specific claims. For example, it's doubtful that a link to Google maps is an RS for "Most notable among the access roads is Mammoth Scenic Loop (also called Dry Creek Road), which provides access to the Inyo craters and some of its domes." The "most notable" may be challenged. The statement "Access roads from these highways lead to most features described in this article" has a kind of circularity that can't be supported by an RS. It's the "in this article" phrase that is troublesome.

Possible expansion

• The thought of fish in Mono Lake reminded me that the article says nothing about flora or fauna. What lives here in the lake and in or around the other features? I see flora in some of the photos. Any protected species? Any unusual species?
• Would it be useful to add something about climate, especially rainfall? This seems relevant because of the lake's dependence on inflow.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 23:11, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the review! All copyediting suggestions enacted except for the bolding part; each of those other bolded terms are redirects to this article. We have traditionally bolded such terms but I'm not sure what the current consensus is on that. Will work on references and minor expansion later. This article is pattered on mountain-related FAs, which do not give much, if any, info on ecology or climate (that is for larger geographic articles). But since Mono-Inyo Craters is a range, I can see a valid need for some info in that regard in the geography section. But the main sources for that info should be Eastern California, Long Valley Caldera and Mono Basin. --mav

Everything now fixed except for the expansion (I'm still looking for RSs for that info). Thanks again! --mav 01:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

A subsection on Ecology and Climate added. Thanks again for your suggestions for improvement! --mav 22:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

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Overall, this is great. I don't know what it takes to be an FA in 2009-10, but this seems like a great article to me. I did notice a few things:

• "Lee Vinning" should be "Lee Vining"
• If you want an RS that talks about the Inyo Craters being next to the Mammoth Scenic Loop, you can cite
• Are you sure that the phreatic activity on Mammoth and the Red Cones are definitionally part of the Mono-Inyo Craters? I don't see a citation for Note 1 in the article. Also note that the map at [1] shows Mammoth and Red Cones to be distinct from M-I Craters. I'm not sure that the USGS has a consistent definition.
  • Part of the reason why I bring this up is that the "Activities" section causes me some cognitive dissonance. I don't think of Mammoth Lakes as being "near" the Mono-Inyo craters, nor do I think of activities around the town or the mountain being M-I crater activities. Red Cones are a bit of a hike away from Devils Postpile, and Devils Postpile wasn't formed from the same volcanic source, so it's odd to talk about that. Bodie and Yosemite are even further away.
  • Activities that I think of when I think of the chain include hiking around Panum Crater, Obsidian Dome, Inyo Craters. Mountain biking near the Inyo Craters, and there's some ORV areas too.
• I'm also not sure that the 1980-2 earthquakes were related to the M-I craters, geologically speaking. I thought that geologists were worried about the "south moat", a magma chamber under the south side of the caldera, not the M-I craters. This is from memory, however.

—hike395 (talk) 06:48, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for the suggestions! First two points enacted.
• Third point: Yes, this is perhaps less well-defined than indicated by the article. But the text in the link you provide says "Over the past 35,000 years, volcanic eruptions in the the Long Valley area has been confined to the Mono-Inyo Craters volcanic chain." And the image backs that up. This includes the Red Cones, fumarole activity on Mammoth Mountain, the Mono Lake volcanoes and Black Point.
  • Mammoth Lakes sits on ash from the Inyo eruptions and Earthquake Fault, IIRC very close to town, has been linked to the dike system responsible for the Mono-Inyo volcanic chain. Mention of Devils Postpile and Yosemite removed.
  • Activity comments noted and hopefully fixed.
• I think this is a case of overlapping volcanic systems. Yes, the uplift was related to magma movement within the caldera but the USGS has said many times that it expects that future eruptions in the region are likely to be similar to if not on the Mono-Inyo chain. So we could easily have magma injection into the Mono-Inyo dike/fissure system.

--mav 01:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

References

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

• You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC.
  • What makes the following reliable sources?
    • http://www.topoquest.com/map.php?lat=37.877778&lon=-119.006944&datum=nad83&zoom=4
  • Please spell out abbreviations in the notes

Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 17:08, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Topoquest is simply a host of USGS data. Reference now indicates the USGS as author and Topoquest as publisher. I'll have to take a look at the abbreviations later. --mav 22:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to everybody above for the great feedback. I will be working on those points today, but first I need to address some issues at the Technetium FAR. --mav 14:46, 6 December 2009 (UTC)