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Technical geography is currently a Geography good article nominee. Nominated by GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) at 17:24, 14 March 2024 (UTC) An editor has indicated a willingness to review the article in accordance with the good article criteria. Further reviews are welcome from any editor who has not contributed significantly to this article (or nominated it), and can be added to the review page, but the decision whether or not to list the article as a good article should be left to the first reviewer. Short description: Study of using and creating tools to manage spatial information |
Technical geography (final version) received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which on 11 February 2024 was archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article. |
Related terms
editMy impression, based on the number of publications, was that geographers were converging to "GIScience" as a preferred term. Non-geographers -- such as surveyors and geodesists and hydrographers --, seem to have their all preferences for umbrella term: geomatics, geoinformatics, etc. I don't think there's a clear winner yet. fgnievinski (talk) 05:18, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
- Hello,
- GIScience is certainly a term that is widely used in the literature. I have listed various other terms for are listed within the article and the debate around terminology is in the controversy section. Technical geography as a term predates most of the others being bounced around by a few centuries, and is used to divide the discipline by a few authoritative sources listed within the article. As stated in the article to address this
- "The benefit of this wording is that it is consistent with the other two branches and clearly places the discipline within geography."
- Semantically, the issue of terms is far from new, and there is no reason that multiple highly related terms can't coexist. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 05:34, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
Geography
editgeography means to learn about the earth 2405:D000:A117:C066:69A4:2A4F:58E9:46CD (talk) 14:28, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
- Geography is a discipline that focuses on studying and describing spatial phenomena on the Earth, yes. How is this related to this page? GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 19:33, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
GA Review
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- This review is transcluded from Talk:Technical geography/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: The Blue Rider (talk · contribs) 21:18, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
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General comments
edit@GeogSage:, sorry for taking so long to do the review but I am quite busy these weeks. Eitherway, with so many adittional text that needed to be introduced, I will unfortunately will have to read everything again to see if everything is in order. I still have some main concerns if this article is of GA quality, namely the prose and broadness criteria, I got the feeling that, even though it is a lengthy article, I didn't actually learned that much about technical geography itself, but as I said, I will read the article again and see if that holds. I still need to do the source check as well. Again, sorry for the slow-pace of the review. The Blue Rider 22:41, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
- I forgot, I also need to check the lead and now that I have read it I see that technical geography is using and creating tools for the other two branches, in that case it makes more sense the article. I am no expert, so I don't know, but what would you say it is the most glaring omission of this article? Or do you think as of now it gives a good picture of what is technical geography? The Blue Rider 22:59, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
- @The Blue Rider, reminder ping. (I'm just checking up on the old holds list.) -- asilvering (talk) 00:39, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
- I am aware of this review, I still need to re-read everything again because so much content was changed and just don't have the time right now. I don't think the GeogSage minds if I take just some more weeks/one month per the bellow comment. The Blue Rider 19:30, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
- Take all the time you need. I am honestly swamped in my personal life and am just coming back from a break from editing. It's not a race. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 17:50, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- I am aware of this review, I still need to re-read everything again because so much content was changed and just don't have the time right now. I don't think the GeogSage minds if I take just some more weeks/one month per the bellow comment. The Blue Rider 19:30, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
- Don't worry about taking a long time, it is not a race. I'm currently working on my dissertation with a final defense coming up in a few weeks, so I don't have a lot of free time myself. You make a great point about needing to go into more detail about what technical geography is, as I focused mostly on the history after the lead. I'm currently throwing together a "fundamentals" section in my sandbox inspired by what I put together on the main geography page, with a sub-section for core concepts that should address this. It should be done in a day or two though. Addressing what technical geography is today and has been historically is complicated, but you are right that when it is applied, it uses datasets from human/physical geography.GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔)
- @The Blue Rider, reminder ping. (I'm just checking up on the old holds list.) -- asilvering (talk) 00:39, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
- @The Blue Rider:: I created a section for "Fundamentals" that might help address this problem. It includes a section on core concepts.
Stability
edit- Last edit today (17th March), no edit wars in place; overall stable, pass!
Images
edit- All images are properly licensed, though [1] has no attribution so I can't verify. Some images while having a suitable caption, they are missing a citation since the text is not in the body of the article, specifically the tusk and the globe.
- Fixed I changed the image for photogrammetry to one that is in Wikimedia Commons. I added citations to both the tusk and globe from the History of cartography page, where I originally lifted those images from.
Copyvio
edit- Earwig's Copyvio Detector points to 3,8% due to a paper's title.
- FixedGeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 05:20, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
- There was no need to fix, it is reasonable to have the titles of works.
- FixedGeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 05:20, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
History
editEarly history and etymology
edit- Two "meaning" in a row, maybe try to change one of them.
- Fixed. Reworded section to eliminate the duplicate words, and added Wiktionary links to words being defined.GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 19:54, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
- from Greek → from the Greek
- Not sure why is etymology paired in the history section.
- Comment: etymology is defined on Wikipedia as "the scientific study of the origin and evolution of a word's semantic meaning across time" and the "across time" part is why I combined them. The two sections were separated initially, but I combined them because they had become redundant. Please see version here before the sections were merged. Information relevant to the original term and the early history were essentially the same thing. Perhaps the content should be either split again, or renamed?GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 19:30, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
- No need to say the paper title, just say who published it instead.
- they state they chose → they chose
- What is practical geography? Can we add a wikilink to that?
- Comment: practical geography is mentioned in the text from the 1700s I traced the term "technical geography" to. This is not to say this is the first use of the term technical geography, but that I struggle to find older books. The author states that they chose technical geography over the term practical "...as it is called by others, to avoid confusing the terms; for this branch of geography has its theory and practice..." You can read the quote here on page 48. To my knowledge, practical geography has fallen out of use as a term and is fairly close to what we call "applied geography." Wikipedia has no page for either of these terms.GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 19:30, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
- Add wikilink to remote sensing.
- Done
- I feel like this is unnecessary and not encyclopedical: "Going back to the Greeks..."
- Commas before and after "Geographia".
- Done
- Remove the Ya'qubi book from the wikilink.
- Done (I think)
- Is this quote, "Mathematical Geography, Geodesy, Topography and Cartography, Instruments, Projection, The Universal Hour, A Prime Meridian, Orthography of Geographical Names, etc." really needed? It is too big.
20th century
editEarly 20th century
edit- Add wikilink to geodesy.
- Done but in earlier mention of geodesy.
- Add wikilink to regional geography and physical geography.
- Done
- Remove the "Here...".
- Done (I think)
- Why is the S in Scientific capitalized?
- Why are the fields' first letters also capitalized? Maybe it is normal, but I personally find it odd.
- comment' older convention was to capitalize important words like scientific terms in publications. I changed to lower case to be more in line wiht modern conventions.
- Per MOS:PARA, one sentence paragraphs are too be avoided.
- This section could be more complete. Geographers trying to make technical geography close to natural sciences seems like a big deal! How exactly did they do it? Is such approximation obsolute now?
- Comment Citations between 1900 and 1950 are particuarlly hard to find unfortunatly. Will work on a bit more to flush out.
Quantitative revolution
edit- Add wikilink to spatial information.
- Done
- Does the source describe Jekns as influential? If not, remove the MOS:WEASEL wording.
- "While how best" is confusing.
- Change "across the country" to "across United States".
- Done
- Both this section and the previous one are too american-centric, if this continues the broadness criteria might not pass.
- Comment: The quantitative revolution was a paradigm shift that started after WWII, mostly in the United States and, to a lesser degree, Great Britain. The reality is that the technology of the 20th century (remote sensing, GPS, and computers) that drove the rapid development during this time is largely American in origin. In later sections, British geographer Stan Openshire is quoted, and Geomatics and Geoinformatics are discussed to bring in French and Swedish perspectives. The publication Geographia Technica is published by the University of Lorraine, and the editor Ionel Haidu is heavily cited. Dutch cartographer Ferjan Ormeling Jr. is also cited heavily because of his work on the UNESCO Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. I've tried to bring in literature from outside the US, but during the time frame between 1900 and the current day, the US has dominated this field. I will continue to look for more sources from outside the US.
20th century technologies
edit- "These technologies rapidly changed how geographers operated" how?
- "and significant effort went into considering how best to incorporate them into the discipline" how?
- "With these technologies came new disciplines and terms" such as?
- "These terms often compete and overlap with each other, and often originate in separate countries" explain further.
Remote sensing
edit- Add wikilink to GIS.
- Done
- Comment: GIS is included in the section following Remote Sensing and linked there as well as one of the "main" pages. I included the link here following the comment, but I wanted to point out that it is linked redundantly. I'm not sure what the best approach is here, as GIS is chronologically after remote sensing as a technology.
- If it is already linked then there's no need to link again, my bad. The Blue Rider 22:17, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
- Add wikilink to remote sensing.
Computer cartography and GIS
edit- "Computers were no exception" doesn't sound encyclopedical, I think this sentence can be removed eitherway.
- "the first true(?) geographic..." why true? What others GIS were not true?
- Add wikilink to positivist.
- Done
- In the last paragraph it is worthy to clarify that the own science is reffering to computer cartography.
- Done
- Throughout these sections you should specifically mention on how computer cartography, remote sensing, etc relate to techinical geography, in cases where you are indirectly relating one to the other, you should use the word, techinical geography to be more clear.
Global Positioning System
edit- Comma after, "In 1978".
- Done
- Remove "prohibitively".
- Done
- Use the acronym GPS so people know what is Global Positioning System.
- Done
New subdisciplines
edit- I find the first sentence confusing, what are you trying to say?
- What are these said terms?!
- What rush? Who rushed? Not encyclopedical in my opinion, maybe try "The proliferation of new terms..."
- What researchers were these? And who is saying that they were careless or hasty?
- Comment:, Primary source for this section is a paper titled "Proposal of Redefinition of the Terms Geomatics and Geoinformatics on the Basis of Terminological Postulates." In it, the author, Artur Krawczyk, says: "It should be emphasised that the hasty, often careless defining of a new term results from the willingness of a scientist to distinguish, only to, as fast as possible, announce the origination of a new science. Ultimately, such a hurry is more harmful to this term, than actually affecting its popularisation."
Quantitative geography
edit- These? These what? Clarify.
- Done
Geomatics
edit- Do you think Bernard Dubuisson warrants a red link?
- Done
- A couple of words explaining what is ISO/TC 211 would be a good addition.
- Done
- Surely the content of the big quote, "discipline concerned..." can be said without quoting.
- "In English in Canada" Canadian English you mean? Or "in the English-world, specifically Canada"?
- Add wikilink to UNESCO.
- Done
- What's EOLSS?
Geoinformatics
edit- What's the first name of Samuelson?
- Fixed, added link to his Wikipedia page.
- Comment:, source for statement cites him as "Samuelson" only. I hunted down the cited source, and the author is given as "K. Samuelson." Had to dig to find out that the professors name is "Kjell Samuelson"
- Rephrase the quote expalining what is geoinformatics.
- The same goes for the Michael DeMers quote.
Geographic Information Science
edit- Don't quote when you can write it with your own words.
- The sense I am getting from these sections is that they are explaining what is the field instead of its relations with techinical geography.
- Comment:, this is an interesting problem that is reflected in the literature and the reason I started writing this page actually. Essentially, in my personal opinion, every one of these terms is essentially a synonym that was created by researchers to stand out and get citations. Many of these researchers were unaware of all of the other terms, even if they were aware of some of them. Later research/literature has explicitly brought them into or under the technical geography branch, which I cite. Unfortunately, most of these "new terms" are basically just a rehash of technical geography, in my professional opinion. The quote I gave above is what I base this opinion on: "With the appearance of the next new technologies, immediately, new proposals of new sciences, new subdisciplines, appear. Many authors with great ease announce the origination of a new science, frequently not caring for the proper justification of its name definition. The old definitions, developed in the context of previous technological conditions, remain in the shadow of new technologies, and are not modernised. The lack of specific terminological conditions, determined boundaries, or scopes of such definition use, encourages one to define the next terms, and the next science and research disciplines." However, researchers are insistent that each term is unique and distinct from all others, therefore I endeavored to give the history of the terms origin, its definition, and literature linking it directly to technical geography, such as one article that states, "Geoinformatics has been grouped broadly under technical geography, along with fields like geographic information science."
Emergence of critical geography
edit- "In the same 1749 publication in which Cave discussed technical geography" Which is?
- Since radical geography doesn't have an article, do explain in a word or two what it is.
- Done
- "...theoretical criticisms of the methods and ideas of technical geographers" What critics are these?
- Other geographers? WP:AWW wording; who in concrete?
21st century
edit- Specify that the quantitative, technical, etc methods are within technical geography and not just geography
Geographic information science and technology body of knowledge
edit- Comma after, "In response to this" and also after "in 2006".
- Done
- Which of the sources says this "While the book does not...academic institutions"?
- What is GIS&T?
- Not really seeing the revelancy of the following sentence: "Today, while..."Department of Physical and Techinical Geography""
UNESCO Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems
editSub-branches
edit- Citations for the sub-branches?
- Why are there sub-branches, like time-geography, that were completely ignored in the article?
Controversy and criticism
edit- "Subdividing geography is challenging..." doesn't sound encyclopedical, maybe try "Attempts at subdiving geography have been a challenge for geographers and often met with criticism " or something along the line.
- "may vary" isn't encyclopedical, just "vary" is fine.
- A big portion of this section isn't really controverse nor criticism.
- How did techinical geography introduced gender bias??