Talk:Soil/Archive 2

Band

For the band of the same name, see Soil (band).

Shouldn't this band reference be placed in a seperate new soil dismbiguation? Doesn't relate to topic Gaudete 1/4/07 hio hio — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.241.77.144 (talk) 09:20, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

What is it about soil that attracts the vandals?

Why does this page attract so much vandalism? For the first time in my Wikipedia times, I am beginning to feel a little frustrated about all this. I have removed the dirt joke for the third time in 5 days... HolgerK 19:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Preferred version of English needs to be established

Whilst I tend to use the American version of the English language, I do indeed sometimes slip into the British English version in my spelling and manner of expression. Blame it on my reading of The Economist. The vast majority of the article was written in the American English version and I propose we stick with that. Obviously it requires a consensus and that will take some time to establish as these pages are not heavily perused. Your thoughts are appreciated and even more your contributions. Zedshort (talk) 16:36, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

• It doesn't matter which version is used, unless the topic is about the country its from. The dialects can switch back and forth in the same article. I read somewhere on the help pages, (I can't find it anymore) that who ever writes it in that dialect, just leave it as is.

this is partial Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English . Sidelight12 ^Talk 00:07, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

• • I agree. It does not bother me one bit to hear things expressed in what I call Brit-Speak but I noticed what I hope is a playful switching back and forth of the spelling of meter to metre and centimeters to centrimeters. So long as people don't get carried away and cause real trouble I tend to laugh at such behavior. Zedshort (talk) 01:37, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Actually I just came from Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English and found this: "Although Wikipedia favors no national variety of English, within a given article the conventions of one particular variety should be followed consistently." WP:consistency which suggests it should be one or the other. Zedshort (talk) 01:47, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

• • • Yes, it doesn't matter which variety is used (Canadian and Australian are other possibilities) but unless there's some compelling reason to use a particular variety (which isn't the case here), it should be the type first established in the history of the article. I think I've been assuming US in my copyediting (which is what I basically do here), but I suspect what may be happening is the conversion template is imposing a particular set of spellings; it has to have a parameter set to use the other spelling, although I forget whether it's programmed with (centi)metre or (centi)meter. --Yngvadottir (talk) 12:13, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

• • • • While there is "no compelling reason" to select one variety of English over another it seems inappropriate for one person to take it upon himself to make the decision to change the writing from one form to another. You went through the article and added many valuable improvements but your unilateral decision to change the manner of spelling from US English to British English seems wrong. We few interested in this subject have not yet come to a conclusion. I wish you might consider that the article was written originally in US English, and used "US units". If you hope to make this a good article you are only delaying things. I would appreciate it if you were to change it back to the original so we don't have to go back and forth in some silly tit for tat manner. There is much more to be done to make this a good article. Zedshort (talk) 15:27, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't matter to me which it's in, but I found the lede established British English, so I made it consistent. I'm assuming you guys who are working on taking it to Good Article standard will be editing it quite a bit more; if you decide you'd rather have US, go ahead and change it that way as you go. I have no idea which it was originally in. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:33, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

• If someone contributes in Australian English leave it as is, if someone uses American or British English, it should be left as is. Its a worldwide community. The units are all that need to be established: {{Template:Convert}}. The dialect can switch back and forth between sentences or paragraphs. I don't think conformity is meant for a minor topic like dialect, and it wont make a difference to make it a good article. The article's dialect can be left how it is, so lets please drop the discussion. Lets instead focus on adding this behind every un-sourced fact, {{Citation needed|reason}}, and using existing references to put behind every mention made. Sidelight12 ^Talk 05:40, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I suppose it really doesn't matter. I'll switch to British English spelling to increase the consistency and spend the effort on providing references to the parts I wrote...eventually. Zedshort (talk) 15:42, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

No, no, no, no, no!

The first sentence of this article is terrible. I don't just mean really, really, bad, I mean it's the worst opening sentence in a wikipedia article I have ever read (out of several thousand) by miles and miles and miles and miles and MILES. Nothing else comes close. I read it twice, and went back to the title of the article, and I still didn't know what the article was about. Please, somebody write a better one-sentence definition, the one we have is jargon-laden and incomprehensible. I'm not even going to attempt the rest of the paragraph. Edit: Does anybody know if the Bulmer-Lytton prize accepts encyclopedia opening sentences? Macguba 17:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I tried a while back and broke it up a little since I agree the original was tortured. Realizing it still ain't the best I hope the new first paragraph removed it from your no, no, no, no, no! category to merely no, no, no! Drillerguy 18:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

New Subheading

I know this might be too soil scientistish, so I thought I'd put it out there before I made a new subheading. An extremely important part of agriculture and soil science is knowing what kind of soils are what. Perhaps a mention that there are different kinds of soils, then link it to a whole new article elucidating soil structures such as black vertosols, rudosols, tenosols etc. This is extremely important as this could help in the decision making process for soil management. This could link in directly with the soil horizons link. That needs better representation, not a little link under a figure in the characteristics section. Sippawitz (talk) 23:44, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Contentious paragraph?

"A serious and long-running water erosion problem is in China, on the middle reaches of the Yellow River and the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. From the Yellow River, over 1.6 billion tons of sediment flow each year into the ocean. The sediment originates primarily from water erosion in the Loess Plateau region of northwest China."

I didn't know naturally occurring events were problems. Sediment flowing into the ocean is quite normal, it has occurred in all times at all places, and as such is an important feature of fisheries. If environmental outflows are stopped fisheries collapse. That is of course unless the erosion is anthropogenic, but that is another problem altogether and should be addressed as such. Sippawitz (talk) 23:29, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Sol

In the first paragraph is the following sentence:

The solid phase occupies about half of the soil volume.

I'm not a soil or agricultural scientist, but surely this is too precise a value? I believe I've experienced soil that could be compressed by a factor of two; if the former were 35% solid, the latter would have been 70% solid. Is there an external reference to back this up?

I'm also not all that happy about the surrounding sentences on soil being composed of solid, liquid and gas. This doesn't match my (perhaps personal) definition of soil as not including the mixed-in air. The section is also self-contradictory; if indeed

soil has three components: solid, liquid, and gas

then it makes no sense to say

soil particles pack loosely, forming a soil structure filled with voids

because those "voids" between the soil particles are gas and have thus been defined as part of the soil. In other words, you have soil particles interspersed with soil.

Perhaps all but the first and last sentences of the first paragraph should be deleted; I don't see the rest adding much except confusion. Dan Griscom (talk) 03:29, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree on the "half" and have reworded the intro in response to the rest of your comments. Not sure how tongue-in-cheek you were being about the reader being mislead into thinking that soil pores must be not-soil if they aren't particulate in character, but I have taken it very seriously in response. Some background. Multiple concepts are invoked by the terms "soil" and "void". In the materials science context of category:granular materials, narrowly adhered to, soil voids can be considered not-soil. In the natural sciences context of category:natural resources, the term soil is used to embrace the whole soil mass, including the soil solution and the soil air which occupies the void. Reconciling both material and natural resource perspectives within the soil article has been an ongoing challenge, but not impossible: Consider and compare McCarthy, David. 1982. Essentials of Soil Mechanics and Foundations (page 1) with Taylor, Sterling and G. Ashcroft. 1972. Physical Edaphology (page 7):

Soil is a particulate material, which means that a soil mass consists of an accumulation of individual particles that are bonded together by mechanical or attractive means, though not as strongly as for rock. In soil (and in most rock), voids exist between the particles, and the voids may be filled with a liquid, usually water, or gas, usually air. As a result soils are often referred to as a three phase material or system (solids plus liquid plus gas). (McCarthy)

Soil is composed of solid particles of many different shapes and sizes, interspersed with pore spaces that can be filled, depending on the water supply, with reciprocally varying amounts of soil solution and air. (Taylor)

-- Paleorthid (talk) 15:32, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

This is a vast improvement: thank you. My only concern now would be the term "soil solution" without other reference. It's indeed a real term, but it's used nowhere else in the article, and although it occurs a dozen times elsewhere in Wikipedia it's never fully defined. I'd suggest adding a stub article (although I don't have the expertise to write it); failing that, I'd remove the term and just change that pair of sentences to

These pores contain water with various dissolved substances (liquid) and air (gas); accordingly, soils are often treated as three state systems.

Dan Griscom (talk) 22:28, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Now I'm wondering about my own wording, especially as regards my use of "water"; soil with gasoline mixed into it is still soil (right?). Perhaps flipping the XXX/liquid and YYY/gas phrases as follows:

These pores contain liquid (generally water with various dissolved substances) and gas (air); accordingly, soils are often treated as three state systems.

Find a better word than "substances" and I'd be happy. Dan Griscom (talk) 19:29, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

The article currently says: "These pores contain [[Solution|sol]] solution (liquid) and air (gas)."

Why the piped wikilink to "solution". That is confusing. Does soil science use a term "sol"? Geo Swan (talk) 19:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Would you rather have "The pores contain soloutions of colloidal solids" - if no one else wants to add some details about soil solutions I can do so in a few days. Hardyplants (talk) 19:51, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Formation section needs information about soil formation

This para says that soil can be formed but not how.

Weathering Leaching etc need to mentioned here even if they are described in better detail elsewhere.

RAtes of formation would also be useful.

--Avram Primack (talk) 16:29, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Characeristics paragraph

Part of this reads:

Soil texture refers to sand, silt and clay composition. Sand and silt are the product of physical weathering while soil is the product of chemical weathering. Soil content is particularly influential on soil behavior due to a high retention capacity for nutrients and water

The bold words Im assuming were meant to refer to clay instead of soil, but Im unsure if this was the intention

Sjb956 (talk) 06:50, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

uses of soil is a very good method to know about soil —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.95.103.108 (talk) 13:44, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Expanding article scope

I have placed the article in the new Category:Soil, a sub-category of both Category:Natural materials and Category:Natural resources. I see expanding the scope of the article under a "Material" section, to address the engineering and technical uses of soil, and under a "Resource" section to address the biological, environmental and ecological role of soil. Content from soil mechanics could be summarized for the opening of the material section. -- Paleorthid 20:43, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

one-sentence definition

Soil is a tightly interconnected system of mineral and rock particles of various size; water; gases; dissolved, colloidal and insoluble organic and inorganic ions and substances; bacteria, fungi, plants and animals that forms the utmost layer of the Earth's lithosphere and provides the basis for all plant life.

not the best definition one could want, just a base for future development. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.43.56.64 (talk) 23:13, 14 December 2009 (UTC)