Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/October 31, 2021

Text added, late, from archived discussion of featured article request page

• Support warming stripes image Simpler and more eye catching than the globe Chidgk1 (talk) 06:25, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Reforestation vs protecting forests

RCraig09, I think "protecting forests" is more worth mentioning than reforestation, because from what I understand, it's more effective at mitigating overall emissions.[1] Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:44, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Clayoquot: I understand the point of the Science News article. However the descriptive term "protecting forests" involves refraining from performing a step of destroying forests—rather than actively performing an affirmative step. I propose the broader term forestation (covering both reforestation and afforestation). Both "protecting forests" and "(xx)forestation" limit climate change. Both reforestation and afforestation involve performing an affirmative step. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:39, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd say designating a wilderness area as a park or nature reserve is an affirmative step. Anyone who's tried to get this done will tell you it takes a lot of work and money. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:31, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Without a doubt there is much human political maneuvering involved in designating a park or preserve. However the designation itself, and the politicking leading to it, have no inherent effect on climate change. "Protecting forests" may be the proverbial "step in the right direction", but it does not have an inherent effect on climate change. It's reforestation/afforestation per se that actually limit physical-world climate change within the meaning of this sentence in the blurb. —(talk) 20:26, 29 September 2021 (UTC) Correction added in red. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:26, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Quick question to make sure I understand you: Where you wrote " it does have an inherent effect on climate change", did you mean to say " it doesn't have an inherent effect on climate change."? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:56, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

You are correct. I have clarified above, in red. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:25, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Here's what the IPCC's 2019 Special Report on Climate Change and Land says: "B.5.3. Reducing deforestation and forest degradation lowers GHG emissions (high confidence)." I'm also open to compromising with a more comprehensive term. "Forestation" is jargon, though - how about "sustainable forest management"? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:04, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

There's no argument about what is substantively important; the issue is how to express it concisely in a blurb. Since "deforestation" is already in the blurb, "forestation" seems abundantly clear non-jargon for lay readers (and is wiki-linked in case it's not clear). "Sustainable forest management" is vague and abstract and human-procedural (not to mention verbose in context), and does not intrinsically limit climate change in the context of that blurb sentence. —RCraig09 (talk) 22:25, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

The word "forestation" to me is not only jargon, it's also by many definitions limited to reforestation/afforestation/proforestation and doesn't include the concept of avoiding deforestation.[2] Currently the blurb implies that the solution to deforestation is to plant more trees; it doesn't include the important POV that the best solution is to not cut down the trees in the first place.

Let's get some more thoughts on this issue. The term "forestation" is not used in the Climate change article and it could use some discussion from the editors there. I'll post a note on the Talk page. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:12, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Not a complete response, but I agree we should avoid the word forestation. I had not heard of it before this discussion. FemkeMilene (talk) 19:39, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Since the blurb already recites that deforestation is a cause of climate change, it should not even be necessary to recite that "not deforesting" will limit it. While the term forestation is not commonly used, its meaning is obvious, especially in context here (after mention of deforestation). Forestation broadly encompasses what is already recited in the current CC article ("reforestation" in article text, and "afforestation" in a reference's title). —RCraig09 (talk) 22:04, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

I just looked at Afforestation#Benefits and it is very poorly cited. So I prefer reforestation to forestation as more accurate. But I prefer "protecting forests" to "reforestation" as more important. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:14, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Attempt at readability improvements

I have just made some bold changes in an attempt to improve the readability of this paragraph. I used the Hemmingway App to guide me to the difficult to read sentences. (I also made a couple of changes that go beyond mere readability, like my suggestions of adding "significant" for the other processes, like cement and steel production.) After my readability changes, the Hemmingway App still shows 3 out of 11 sentences as very hard to read. But better than before. Dtetta EMsmile (talk) 12:08, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Brilliant. I made some further changes to improve accuracy and readability. We're at grade 13 (age 19?) now. 2/10 very hard to read. Femke (talk) 13:22, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Loving your changes, they're great. I had also wondered if we should use wording from the main article, which you have already done now (regarding cement and steel production), thanks! EMsmile (talk) 13:47, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

(The Hemmingway App points out that the last 2 sentence are still very hard to read but I couldn't yet come up with an easier sentence structure for those.) EMsmile (talk) 13:48, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Here is a readabie.com analysis of the text. The second and last two sentences have readability issues in terms of being overly long. The words contributions, desertification, deforestation and irreversible also score poorly in terms of readability. Suggest we consider using the current second sentence of the first lead paragraph in the article to replace the second sentence in this notice. Not sure that the additional detail of agriculture, deforestation, and manufacturing is needed. For the latter part of the paragraph, suggest: “Climate change can be limited with low-carbon energy such as wind and solar, along with forest preservation and improvements in agriculture. Adapting to climate change will involve actions such as coastline protection and better disaster management. However, these measures alone cannot avert the risk of severe, permanent impacts. Limiting global warming in line with recent international agreements will require reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.” Realize I'm jumping into a hornet's nest with my forest preservation suggestion, but from what I've read reforestation gets mixed reviews as a mitigation technique. Dtetta (talk) 14:39, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

There aren't any apps yet that write better than humans, but I don't think it's my call. On the 29th (if I can remember), I'll make a post in the TFA section at WP:ERRORS asking what people there think of the changes that were made by the app. - Dank (push to talk) 15:00, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

The app just highlights long sentences and long/difficult words. We're doing the rewriting :) Femke (talk) 15:11, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

The app's advice was generally wrong; splitting the sentences introduced problems that weren't there before. I can make an edit if you like, and you can decide which you like better. - Dank (push to talk) 15:58, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Is the problem still there? If so, feel free to make the edit.

Just for context, we've been going over the entire article recently, using various readability apps. Overall, I think it's greatly improving prose quality, but I do see a few pitfalls. For example, the tendency to write sentences just below the "very long" threshold, rather than varying sentence length. I'm contemplating a Signpost article. Femke (talk) 17:13, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, done. I'm not familiar with the Hemingway app, but I know that similar apps give terrible advice. I restructured as "X comes mostly from Y and also from Z" ... feel free to reword that, but let's avoid the format "X comes from Y. X also comes from Z". My other edit (reverting "It" back to "and") was mainly to deal with the link "effects of climate change" that follows ... I think it will be easier for readers to understand that that refers to all of the effects, not just the ones most recently mentioned, if we keep all of the effects in one sentence. But I don't feel strongly about this. (I do feel strongly that some language apps are dumb :) - Dank (push to talk) 17:29, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@Dank: - not sure how much of my post you actually read, but those words are my own, not artificially generated text. And so far the responses to the changes made in the main article lead, which were prompted by readability apps, have been very positive overall. These scores are not the sole criteria to use when deciding on readability. But they are pretty good indicators. Dtetta (talk) 21:51, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

And, of course, these are just suggestions. Curious as to what you think of the actual suggested language.Dtetta (talk) 22:11, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

The folks at WP:ERRORS are likely to have opinions on these things; the problem is that, to keep their workload manageable, they prefer not to tackle this stuff until a couple of days before the Main Page appearance. If it works for you to put off the discussion until the 29th, that's what I'd recommend (because they occasionally have strong opinions on anything that's going to show up on the Main Page ... sometimes I find out that what I want is moot, or that there's some previous discussion I didn't know about.) If you'd prefer not to wait, we can ping people for opinions. But I'm not sure that we've got any actual disagreement ... I'm happy with the current version if you are. - Dank (push to talk) 22:16, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

EMsmile, Femke, and Dtetta, would it improve readability if "in line with the Paris Agreement ambitions requires" was replaced with "in line with the ambitions of the Paris Agreement requires"? when parsing the former, i initially thought that the paris agreement was a noun (and the end of the noun phrase), so i may have tried parsing "ambitions" as a verb, which made no sense. then, i saw "requires", and i think at that point, i couldn't figure out what was a verb and what was the plural form of a noun anymore and just went back to the start of the sentence to give it another try. to be clear, i think the sentence is unambiguous. i simply thought it was more difficult to parse than was necessary. however, since this change would admittedly lengthen the sentence, i am not sure what readability apps would think of it. dying (talk) 13:53, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

That makes sense, no matter what the app says. Femke (talk) 14:13, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I boldly changed text to "GOALS of the Paris Agreement" because "ambitions" is ~meaningless to almost all readers. Should "2015" be inserted before "Paris Agreement", for context? —RCraig09 (talk) 19:03, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I think the changes you all have made look good. Don’t have a strong opinion about adding 2015. Dtetta (talk) 14:54, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

thanks, RCraig09; i think your edit is better than my suggestion was. regarding "2015", i would hesitate to add it since, although it does provide additional context, i feel that the sentence is already complicated enough as it is. dying (talk) 23:49, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

The sentence about mitigation (can be limited by...)

I am a bit worried about this sentence which I have just edited but am still not convinced about: "Climate change can be limited by using low-carbon energy sources such as wind and solar energy, forestation, and shifts in agriculture." The way the sentence is currently structured it may seem that the listing of examples all belong to examples of low-carbon energy sources because it all comes after "such as". Also, is the wikilink behind "low-carbon energy" correct? It goes to sustainable energy but that's not the same thing? Also I am a bit concerned about the wording "shifts in agriculture". Could we be a bit more specific there? Really it's about changes in people's diet (less meat) and changing crops and techniques, I guess. Also, could we mention something about birth control, family planning, etc. without saying something that is regarded as controversial (this has probably already been discussed to death somewhere else). EMsmile (talk) 23:49, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

with regards to the low-carbon energy, shouldn't we perhaps rather wikilink to here?: Low-carbon economy. It's more than just energy, it's the whole economy? EMsmile (talk) 23:51, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I think low-carbon energy may be jargon. What about clean energy?

I agree that agriculture is a bit vague, but not sure I want to boil down the changes to diet as I'm wary off putting blame on individuals.

We should not mention family planning. There is too much racist baggage with this solution to mention it without context. It's not usually mentioned by overview sources. Femke (talk) 06:25, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

How explicitly to express human causation

This blurb currently (29 Oct) gives a light touch to human causation. Human causation is not implied in the opening sentence, is vaguely implied in the second sentence, and is not even implicit until the third sentence. Human causation is never explicitly asserted. In contrast, the opening sentence of the main Climate change article explicitly states:

Contemporary climate change includes both human-induced global warming and its impacts on Earth's weather patterns. (emphasis added). (outdated)

Contemporary climate change includes both global warming caused by humans, and its impacts on Earth's weather patterns. (emphasis added)

I'm not sure if this disparity is intentional or accidental, or if there is a consensus to be more explicit and bold about expressing human causation. In any event, if changes are desired... time is short! Please discuss! —RCraig09 (talk) 15:33, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Who else is burning those fossil fuels and doing agriculture :P? I think it's sufficiently clear, and putting human-induced in there makes the prose slightly worse. Femke (talk) 15:51, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Analytically, yes, human causation is clear—after reading and appreciating what is implicit. My point was that, for the casual Wikipedia reader reading with fresh eyes, human causation is not even implicit until the third sentence. (Lightning-caused forest fires add greenhouse gases; agriculture isn't mentioned until that third sentence.) The section heading's question is "How explicitly to express human causation". (PS-I prefer human-caused to human-induced.) —RCraig09 (talk) 16:14, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

How about "Climate change is the Earth getting hotter with different weather, because of humans."? Chidgk1 (talk) 16:39, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

That sounds childish to my ears. Femke (talk) 16:43, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Femke's 16:43, 29 Oct post. I prefer the first sentence in the Climate change article now, except I prefer "human-caused GW" over "GW caused by humans". (A single hyphenated phrase is OK!) —RCraig09 (talk) 20:46, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Either fine by me Chidgk1 (talk) 16:32, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

FYI: Archive of front page 2021-10-31

• https://web.archive.org/web/20211031000101/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page