Talk:Stream/Archive 1

Archive 1

Conflation of the two "brook" homonyms

that crosses between two other bodies of water. This may be US usage but it certainly is not of the UK. (thus "brooking" them) The stream brook derives from Anglo-Saxon broc. The acceptance verb derives from AS brucan. There seems to be little connection. Also the Scottish term for a creek. It is not particularly Scottish. And has to do with creek only in the US usage. (RJP 08:43, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC))

RJP was correct that the two brook homonyms were being conflated. AHD4 says that brook the transitive verb ("To put up with; tolerate") comes from Middle English brouken, from Old English brūcan, "to use, enjoy". (BTW, that's interesting, because today's German verb brauchen can mean "to use". Clearly cognate.)

Meanwhile, brook the noun ("stream") is a homonymous word coming from a different root, via Middle English, from Old English brōc.

— Lumbercutter 14:45, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Section was missing

is part of the article missing? the last section is empty. thalweg says "see below" but there is nothing there. [alex]

Changes to the article

I propose that the "Types of water streams" section be changed. I have been unable to corroborate the brook definition given. The definition I found most often is a stream smaller in size than a creek. It is also used when the water source is a spring or seep. When "stream" is not used in the generic sense, I've found various definitions. Some have it as being the smallest of all and some have it as just below a river. I guess we can continue only giving the generic definition. -- Kjkolb 06:05, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Better image was wanted

I feel that the first image, of a "running stream," is not very accurate, given we see water still enough for duckweed to accumulate in large amounts. I don't doubt that it could be a flowing system, but it is hardly what I picture when I close my eyes and think "running stream." Nitpicky, yes. 129.74.132.227 20:37, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the current version of the article, this appears to have been fixed. — Lumbercutter 14:52, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Categories suggestions

Suggestion: Make a category about Daylighting (streams) for neighborhoods (plese see article also—the list is already getting long), sections # Some neighborhoods with daylighting projects and # Other places. A child article or something will eventually need be spun off.

Since each daylighted stream exists only as an intimate component of the neighborhoods of the watershed, linking the streams and neighborhoods in a category could be very useful. Various daylighting projects exist all over the world, though so far we have Seattle, San Francisco, and Berkeley. There exist similar projects restoring natural areas in urban settings, distinct from parks. One is Union Bay Natural Area, another is a marsh north of San Francisco or in northern California (Eureka?) that is also providing habitat and tertiary sewage treatment, rather than having been drained. (The most-recognized level is conventional secondary treatment.)

Suggestion: Make a category of natural areas in urban settings. This is tangentially related to the Georgia Basin Ecosystem Initiative at Salish Sea.

Comments, discussion? How to tie into existing, relevant articles?

The Daylighting (streams) article could use more diverse examples

--GoDot 19:16, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Stream is limited to Southern England?

I'm sorry, but the quote 'Stream is limited to Southern England,' in reference to the word 'stream' itself is total nonsense.Only the broadest of Yorkshiremen, for example, use only the word 'beck.' I am not adversed to words like these being mentioned in the stream article, but can people please try to avoid making such sweeping statements about them? 81.96.252.46 13:13, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Beck was one used in London as in Tooting bec near Wandsworth and a few Burns in Scotland are also officaly known as Streems or Brooks. --86.29.241.101 (talk) 10:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually The Bec in Tooting Bec has nothing to do with the nam0e of a stream but is named after the Abbey of Bec in France Penrithguy (talk) 18:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Mutually exclusive?

What does it mean to say that brook and stream are mutually exclusive but to define a brook as a type of stream in the previous sentence? There is something very wrong with this description. 24.137.126.62 01:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Some of the differentiations made between the various names are essentially one particular editor's notion. Some of them are probably idiolectal or ecolectal, although the editor himself/herself may believe that they are dialectal. In the case of the sentence that you point out, I think that "mutually exclusive" is the wrong term. It should be something more like "brook and stream are sometimes differentiated by blah-blah-blah." — Lumbercutter 01:56, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

They're stinkin' doublets, man. Oncet upon a time, these things either meant different things or came from different languages. Then English, as is her wont, ate the doublets, sometimes preserving distinction and sometimes not. Then technology and time and intercourse messed it all together some more. Weirder yet is what happens when emigrant English speakers land in new continents and apply their favorite dialect terms or preserve their regional meanings. Hence the Cavaliers who settled the southern U.S. used "creek" for small rivers and never used "stream," which leads to people today living next to Nancy Creek or Sope Creek and getting flooded out every year because they expect a bit of a trickle.

No one but a blockhead or someone who doesn't know what an etymology is would say "exclusive" of the various terms. Whatever the terms meant once, they're now all mushed together, except in connotation. People "feel" that a stream is small, a river big, a creek shallow, a run short, a rill on rocks, etc. The people who gave place names may not have agreed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.243.104.66 (talk) 21:12, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Typically biased

As of july 1 2007, the article had all pictures only from Anglo-Saxon countries, and much of the examples given are typicall geo limited to USA. Don't you think it's silly? Creek and streams do not exist in other countries? Why people do not inform themselves aside from the usual English-speaking milieu? --Attilios 23:15, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I see pictures of a stream in Italy and another in Sweden. The text could be much better in many ways, but there are mentions of streams in Italy, Latin America, and the "Arabic-speaking world". As for regional differences in the terms used for streams, well, these are all English words. Are you suggesting the article list the words for stream in other languages? Pfly 01:20, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

The Italy & Sweden images were added by Attilios himself/herself to try to globalize the article. A very good idea. However, Attilios, the fact that the article lacked non-anglophone-country examples doesn't show that the previous contributors were arrogant or culturally biased—it only shows that they were regular people in anglophone countries contributing what they knew from their own experience. This principle can be seen throughout the English Wikipedia, and it is only natural, given how many fluent English-speakers are regular people living in the UK, Commonwealth, and US. It's not sinister or arrogant. If you can help globalize, all the better. — Lumbercutter 02:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with most of this—of course we Anglophones are (mostly) not sinister or arrogant. Nevertheless we do, by and large, display unconscious cultural bias and it behoves us to realise that, and to make a mental note to ‘think global’ when picking examples. —Ian Spackman 03:57, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

You're totally correct; my point is just that a WP-EN contributor on "Streams" could be, for example, a farmer in Iowa writing something based on the streams he grew up around. This hypothetical contributor has never been to Malaysia, and he's not a stream-science researcher, so he's not going to say anything on WP about the streams of Malaysia. He's, quite naturally, going to say something based on the streams of Iowa. And that's perfectly OK. Anyone who does know something about Malaysia's streams is welcome to add it. I'm not encouraging ignorance of the world at all—I'm just being realistic about average people (average people make up a large bit of WP's contributorship). — Lumbercutter 01:13, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Adding a link

Can someone higher up add a link to Kill (body of water) in the first paragraph, since there is an article for it now? Thanks. Alternatevil (talk) 20:20, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

 Done ResMar 21:18, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Creek

A lot of articles refer to 'creeks', indeed most things smaller than a river are just called a creek in real life. Why then does the creek article redirect to 'stream', which lists various types of streams most of which have their own article, such as river. Whereas less commonly used (related concepts) like Arroyo, Gulch, Gully, Wadi, all have their own articles? I'd like to see some discussion on this. Additionally, most creeks I know do not contain water (and hence I would not call them a stream), this is even reflected in government legislation regarding definitions of creeks. 60.242.247.168 (talk) 09:19, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Lets get this right . "Most things smaller than a river are just called creeks in real life" 'in the USA- not the rest of world. I am not arguing that there shouldn't be an article called Creek but lets keep a world-wide view going.  Velela  ^{Velela Talk}   22:23, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Please provide a reference for the "government legislation" defining creeks. The USGS glossary does not define the term. Indeed, the glossary's introduction explains, "Excluded from the list are such terms as 'river,' 'lake,' 'creek,' and other names for surface-water features, for which hydrologists have not devised better definitions than are in the dictionaries." Moreau1 (talk) 02:18, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

...and in fact the article already exists at Creek (tidal). The Creek article doesn't re-direct to Stream, it is a disambig page with both stream and creek(tidal) listed.  Velela  ^{Velela Talk}   09:44, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to take out that size comment, in the U.S. USGS uses stream for all natural watercourses regardless of size - feel free to add it back if a reference is found. Kmusser (talk) 22:49, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Stream types

Can the "Intermittent and ephemeral streams" section be renamed to Stream types or Classification? The addition of Perennial to be inclusive of the USGS types makes the heading non-inclusive. See: http://water.usgs.gov/wsc/glossary.html#Stream Note that the current section heading is redirected from Intermittent stream. There may be other redirects that need to be fixed.

• Should Ephemeral's Geographical examples be moved to here which would more clearly allow Ephemeral to be a disambigulation page? If so the Ephemeral stream redirect should be changed to here.
• Should Perennial stream also be merged into this section and that page changed to a redirect?

SBaker43 (talk) 10:07, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Circular definition

The definition of 'gradient' in the article at present (here) is:

The gradient of a stream [...] is entirely determined by its base level of erosion. The base level of erosion is the point at which the stream either enters the ocean, a lake or pond, or enters a stretch in which it has a much lower gradient [...]

This is circular: gradient is determined by base level of erosion; base level of erosion is determined, in part, by gradient. Dricherby (talk) 20:51, 9 November 2010 (UTC)