Template talk:Earthquake magnitude

Earthquakes Template‑class

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Archive 1

More scales! And usage

Dawnseeker2000 I have added some more scales: M_R, M_I, and even M_uk. This was prompted on noticing that several scales I had reckoned as too obscure or obsolete are retained in several sources, and have made it into articles. I think nearly all (99.99%?) of cases are now covered. Let me know if you notice any problems. (There are several more scales I still reckon too obscure to bother with; we'll see.)

I had an instructive look at 1783 New Jersey earthquake. It caught my attention for being a pre-instrumental quake specifying M_L , well before there were instruments for measuring M_L . The source (New Jersey Geological Survey web page) did not specify a magnitude, but I noticed they did cite our friends Stover and Coffman. Checking there I found the scale specified, which is M_fa, a scale of estimated Local magnitude based on the reported felt-area. This kind of error, where the original editor assumed ML or Mw without checking, I suspect is fairly common, and something we should watch out for. Hopefully the template will encourage editors to be more careful. Of course, in the long-run we should have all magnitudes verified at the ISC, but for now it is probably enough of a task to get the scales right. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:29, 16 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I've been aware of the misuse of magnitude scales for some time and have done quite a bit of work across the encyclopedia to root out some of these instances, some of which have been egregious. So first, I should say that the potential level of accuracy and detail that this template will be able to provide can't be understated. It's interesting to see this unfold at this stage in WP's development, so thanks for that. It was overdue and I think you were the right person to make it happen. I haven't yet begun to imagine the possibilities for improvement, though I have gone through and essentially reversed DePiep's changes by unifying the and simplifying the use of the template throughout the encyclopedia to a 0.0 {{m|w|link=y}} format rather than a {{M|w|0.0}} format. I would prefer that we use a standard style across the articles and that's fine if there needs to be a discussion about that, but it doesn't have to be right now.

Now that I've been able to sit down and actually start looking at this, I do appreciate the new options, especially and . Those are going to be really helpful in de-obfuscating some articles and lists. By the way, where do you think M_La fits in? Its use in WP is very limited, probably just on the California list. It's described on page 3 of Stover & Coffman's insightful 1993 publication. One other thing: Thanks for the idea of consolidating the magnitude and magnitude type columns. That solved the problem of having a column without a header and that should come in handy if I ever submit the California list for featured content, which should be possible after another block of text on tsunamis is added. Dawnseeker2000 19:19, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, well now I have to admit that I hadn't actually looked at the template options all that closely yet. I'd asked about the use of , but now I see that it's defined with the rest of the entries, and I just put it to use on the California list. It almost intimidating with so many options and definitions, most of which I have not heard of, but I'm telling you, I'm loving this; just haven't had the opportunity to really get going with it yet. There are many opportunities to unify the presentation across lots of articles. The articles that use the math tags are one place to start, but I'm certain there's many EQ articles that do not define magnitude as clearly as they could. Dawnseeker2000 00:30, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I've wondered if it could get too intimidating. I wasn't going to include so many obscure scales, but then I find them in some source someone is using, so I reckon there's a likely use. But adding them is not hard; the hard part is documenting them. Like, there's one the USGS web site says they use, but so far I can't find anyone that knows anything about it. And trying finish up the M_e  scale and its relation with M_w  led me to an interesting insight. You recall all those students who take geology because it has (essentially) no math? I know where the math went: seismology sucked it all up.

Anyway, yes, the benefit of having a decent tool is that it encourages use. Hopefully we can set a new standard for identifying magnitudes, and perhaps thereby encourage a little more rigor.

A point of ordering to resolve: is "0.0 M" or "M 0.0" to be preferred? You prefer the first, perhaps following Stover & Coffman. However (and I just spent two hours surveying the literature), the predominately preferred practice does seem to be the latter. I take that as a strong case. Do you have any particular argument for the former? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:34, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Dawnseeker2000: Any comments re the order? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:51, 11 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't feel strongly about the order and I can help out with the work if we make the switch. So the number (#) field updates automagically? Dawnseeker2000 23:48, 11 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I take it you are referring to the "#" column in the table. Yes, the PAGESINCAT variable is automagical.

I think before any mass conversions we might raise the matter at, say, ~~Talk:Earthquakes~~ [see below] to see if anyone else has anything to say on it, and to get buy-in so no one complains of run-amok-editors. This could be the start of developing some general guidelines for lists of earthquakes, which I think we should be thinking about. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 07:56, 12 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Possible venues for discussing these kinds of matters:

~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:04, 12 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Big "S" and small "s" now distinguished

@Dawnseeker2000 and Mikenorton, and anyone else interested (possibly in the future): the template now distinguishes between big "S" and little "s" as used with "M_s" label for surface-wave magnitudes. This was not implemented initially because in the older sources there is a widespread indifference to the case of the "s". But newer sources are distinguishing between "M_s" and "M_S", using the latter as a synonym for Ms_BB. Therefore the distinction now is made. And I have added a comment in Category:M_S explaining the ambiguity. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:17, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

White space removed

Per a request at WP:VPT, I have removed some excess white space from this template after testing in the sandbox and on the testcases page. If I have removed too much of the white space, let me know. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:20, 8 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

At first glance the diff of your edit appears to be adding whitespace.

I had to see Jo-Jo's request to figure out what you did.

The way you did the comments is what people do to avoid outputting newlines. But that is what the outer "replace" takes care of. So I wonder: was the extra space coming from the extra line between comments (or something similar), and could a fix be applied that doesn't change the commenting style? ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:37, 8 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you revert my changes to the sandbox and look at the testcases or use Special:ExpandTemplates to expand "{M/sandbox|l|3} foo" (add your own braces), you'll see multiple extra space characters in the resulting wikicode and HTML. You can place some dummy text where the newlines are to see which part of the code is adding the spaces. The final nbsp was also redundant. If you can experiment in the sandbox and write the comments (or use the replace template) in a way that preserves the previous style, be my guest. I do not claim to be an expert in any of this; I just copy things that other people do that seem to work. I often see commenting in templates that starts on one line and ends on the next line in order to remove white space while keeping the code readable, so I attempted to implement that method. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:15, 8 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that might be interesting to look at. If I ever get 30 minutes to spare with nothing else more pressing. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:31, 8 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 27 April 2020

The request to rename this article to Template:Earthquake magnitude has been carried out.

If the page title has consensus, be sure to close this discussion using {{subst:RM top|'''page moved'''.}} and {{subst:RM bottom}} and remove the {{Requested move/dated|…}} tag, or replace it with the {{subst:Requested move/end|…}} tag.

Template:M → Template:Earthquake magnitude – Clarify name * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 14:56, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support - per WP:TMPG: "Template function should be clear from the template name" which is not the case currently. I'd also support Template:Moment magnitude scale per moment magnitude scale, the name of the specific scale being used, which would allow a very natural shortcut redirect of Template:MMS to replace the single-letter shortcut (Template:M) currently used which may be a bit too obscure. -- Netoholic @ 18:04, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That name would be fine with me too. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:41, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]