Talk:Shield (geology)

Article title

Articles title should be "Shield (geology)". It's geological, not geographical term. Definition is also bad. It's absolutely not important whether the shield is in the middle of the continent or not. Important is that shield is extended area, where crystalline rocks of continental plates basement are outcropping. Siim 17:57, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I've just picked up my copy of "The New Penguin Dictionary of Geology" 2nd ed (2001) and it defines a shield as "An extensive area of exposed bedrock with long-term tectonic stability, generally of Precambrian age and forming the central core of a continent". I'm going to go ahead and add it as a reference for the first sentence, but I'll leave it as it otherwise.Therizinosaurian (talk) 00:31, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Basement

I noticed that Zyzzy removed word "basement", but it was important in this article. It should be replaced with something else if this term is not preferred (I don't know exactly because English isn't my native language). Shield is large area of exposed crystalline rocks but these crystalline rocks have to be the layer of continental crust which is usually under sedimentary cover (mainly metamorphic with igneous plutons). It can't be rocks of large igneous provinces or volcanic rocks or something else. So please put this word back or replace it with something appropriate to make sure that for instance volcanic field is not a shield. Siim 19:59, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Although basement rock may be a craton, it does not have to be. (SEWilco 20:14, 8 August 2005 (UTC))

It just means that we have to add word "craton" to the definition. According to current definition, even mountain ranges are shields. Isn't it so? Siim 20:33, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Definition

One more thing. I separated definition from rest of the article, but Zyzzy changed it and put everything together again. Why shouldn't definition be separated? Siim 08:15, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Move to Shield (geology)

A move to the more correct name "Shield (geology)" is under way. There will be a brief delay while the remains of an improper cut-and-paste move are cleaned up. (SEWilco 18:59, 20 October 2005 (UTC))

List of Shields?

Shouldn't we have a list of shields? I feel we're missing some here, namely the Guiana shield, since we're only naming "the Canadian Shield, Baltic Shield, and the Arabian-Nubian Shield." I know it is just a stub right now, but we need to start somewhere, don't you think?
On a related note, what exactly is the differance between a shield and a Canton?--Once in a Blue Moon 22:02, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I think a shield is exposed bedrock which is part of a craton. Most cratons are buried, but have been exposed in some places. (SEWilco 02:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC))

Would you please put some references in this articles?Tranletuhan (talk) 14:08, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Category:Geology_terminology

Since this article is about a specific geological term, i.e. "Shield" and contains relevant information about why/how this term came about e.g.

The term shield, used to describe this type of geographic region, appears in the 1901 English translation of Eduard Suess's Face of Earth by H. B. C. Sollas, and comes from the shape "not unlike a flat shield" of the Canadian Shield which has an outline that "suggests the shape of the shields carried by soldiers in the days of hand-to-hand combat."

imo, belong in the Category:Geology_terminology. --IPeditor (talk) 03:46, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

References

24.246.23.7, as I said in my edit summary, Category:Geology terminology is meant to apply only to articles that are about words themselves, or where there is an extensive discussion about the subject of the article as a word. This article is not about the term "shield". It is about what a shield is, how it was formed, what it is made of, etc. How it was named is a minor aspect of the subject.

I used to think, well, this is a geological "term", so the "terminology" category applies. But to extend this logic would mean that every article in geology would be put into this category, and it would become useless. It took me a while to wrap my head around what articles should be in a "terminology" category and which ones shouldn't. Two principles have helped me keep it straight:

1. From WP:CATDEF: "A central concept used in categorising articles is that of the defining characteristics of a subject of the article. A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having."
2. At the parent Category:Terminology, it says, "Articles belonging to this category and its subcategories are devoted in whole or in large part to a discussion of terminology, usually terminology related to a specific topic. It should not be used as a category for articles about those topics in general".

When an article has a short description of the etymology of the article title, as in this case, it still shouldn't be put into a "terminology" category, because the article is not devoted "in large part" to the discussion of the term, nor is the background of the word a "defining characteristic" of the subject.

I see many, many editors, both new and veteran, that make this mistake with the hundreds of "terminology" categories. Glossary of geology belongs in category:geology terminology, but upper mantle body does not. Glück auf belongs in category:mining terms, but Chat (mining) does not.

All of that said, there are definitely borderline cases that still make me throw up my hands in frustration. But this article isn't one of them. — Gorthian (talk) 05:17, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

--

@Gorthian: Thank you for taking the time to contribute here!! While, after reading your comment I feel my opinion has been slightly swayed, but I still think that this article, maybe a grey area, is still ok(but maybe not best) for the category of geology terminology.

1. A defining characteristic of this article is that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject (Shield (Geology)) as having the characteristic of being Geology Terminology. So,imo, ok there.
2. Is this article devoted in whole or in large part to a discussion of terminology (i.e. the word "Shield" [and it's use as geology terminology]) or is it an article about the subject (Geology) itself (including geological shields)? Imo, I'm not sure.

It seems clear (and we seem to agree) that a glossary of X(aka a dictionary of terms related to X) is suitable for the category X terminology. I would even go so far as to say that a glossary is wholly about terminology, so a subset of a glossary (i.e. a single entry) would also be wholly about terminology. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a dictionary, but still many articles are stubs and may be no more than a detailed definition of a term. For these articles, it seems like the category terminology would apply.

This article is relatively short and seems to contain a brief description of what the geological term 'Shield' means, a brief statement on the etymology of the term and some examples. In my opinion, this might be barren enough for a long dictionary entry (and therefore should be included in the geology:terminology category). If this article is significantly expanded and it becomes a comprehensive article about the Geology of Shields(geology) then it would transcended being an article about terminology.

I admit, it is confusing because all encyclopedia articles are about some terminology(i.e. about a word or phrase and like you said every article about geology would be included...), but someone thought it would be good to have a separate category for geology:terminology instead of just a category for geology in general, so when trying to apply the definition standard of "wholly or largely about terminology" you get a subjective measure that amounts to "is the article more a good glossary/dictionary entry or does it rise to the standard of a detailed encyclopedia article or chapter in a textbook about the topic?"

When it comes to categorization in general, populating a category based on a definition works best for easy to evaluate well defined definition (easy e.g. hypothetical category:"even integers" = integers divisible by two without remainder), but an alternative is to categorize similar objects and then try to create a definition that best describes their commonality. Maybe an example could be speciation categorization. For this way of category creation, it might be possible to measure the appropriateness of an inclusion by a objective measure of how many similar traits the object has to other objects in the category.

In this specific case, the category contents wasn't(/isn't) great; there were disambiguous pages included in the category and a hodgepodge of geology related articles, with varying content with regard to terminology of geology and content about geology with regard to the term in general.

I am going to (immediately) remove the category geology:terminology from this article(again), but my rational is a little convoluted; Most simply, I think there are more articles that should belong to the category (i.e. all articles that are listed in the glossary). I don't think there's consensus yet, and personally, I'm on the fence when looking at other articles in this category.

I would support the deleting of the category, or either the category redirecting to the glossary, or all articles listed in the glossary made member of the category and all members of the category listed in the glossary. But, as is, I really don't know if this article should belong to the category or not. I don't think it matters much. --IPeditor (talk) 22:19, 20 September 2016 (UTC)