Talk:Augie Auer

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This article was nominated for deletion on 28 April 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

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Contents 1 Notable 2 "Leading" 3 EPA and WP:OR 4 Full professors 5 A couple of comments on late additions: 6 The "keen to leave augie ..." link is broken 7 Date format - internationalized or only NZ'd format.

[edit] Notable

Nothing obviously notable here. Please flesh out, or I'll suspect its just been created for listing, in which case I will AFD it William M. Connolley 18:03, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Leading"

Can you provide contrary references to show that Auer is not considered "leading" in New Zealand? --Africangenesis 14:18, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry guv, wiki is not filled with things merely because there is no evidence to the contrary... articles about the fascinating habits of the elephants that live on alpha centauri are not encouraged. You need good evidence to justify WP:PEACOCK terms like "leading". In fact, I don't even think he is a climatologist - based on his papers, he looks more like a meteorologist, though I admit the border isn't firm.

Nor is there any obvious evidence that NZCSC is run by climate scientists, leading or otherwise... in fact, I'd be grateful if you could find a list of who they *are* run by William M. Connolley 19:45, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] EPA and WP:OR

The text in the reference states:

EPA guidance provides two procedures to determine whether the character of an area is predominantly urban or rural. One procedure is based on land-use typing and the other is based on population density. Both procedures require an evaluation of characteristics within a 3-kilometre radius from a source. The land-use typing method is based on the work of August Auer (Auer, 1978) and is preferred because it is more directly related to the surface characteristics of the evaluated area that affect dispersion rates.

This is apparently used to document that:

A land use typing method to classify land as urban or rural, based on work he published in 1978, is used by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.[1] As an atmospheric scientist, he has worked on ice crystals in clouds.

But that isn't what the text is saying. It merely states that the EPA requires one of two methods: 1) based on land-type 2) based on population. The Document then states that it will use #1 - and specifically it will use Auer's method to comply with #1. So: No where is there a reference to the EPA using Auer's method. I've changed the text so that it references reality - and removes the WP:OR --Kim D. Petersen 21:49, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok - this seems to have been corrected with a direct quote to the EPA. --Kim D. Petersen 22:55, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

The direct quote is not to the EPA, but to a Jamaican agency. The article as it stood some time earlier today claimed usage by the EPA but used the Jamaican report as a source for that usage. KimDabelsteinPetersen noticed the problem and corrected it, keeping the source but correctly naming the agency it came from as Jamaican rather than the EPA. I found several sources indicating usage by the EPA and added the EPA claim back in with what I felt to be the clearest of those sources, the Federal Register article. I don't see what you mean about this failing to document the claim: the claim is that the EPA uses his methods, and the article is an EPA document saying to use his methods. One can also find EPA documents on specific projects that actually do use his methods, rather than just saying that his methods should be used, but they are less general. At some point William M. Connolley reverted the article to an old state with the badly-sourced EPA claim, which I then un-reverted – is his reversion what you mean when you say "this seems to have been corrected"?. —David Eppstein 23:33, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I meant correct - in that it now has a link to an EPA guideline suggesting its use. So now the text is correct in asserting that the EPA uses this. --Kim D. Petersen 00:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Full professors

I notice that full professors are almost always held to be notable at AfD, so this certainly is not in the least incontestably NN, and therefore not appropriate for a speedy. There are undoubtedly sources to be found for his publications etc. As I am not the author, i can remove the tag, and I have just done so. DGG 22:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. I didnt realize this was at AfD, not speedy, so I will defend it there. Apologies for any confusion DGG 22:07, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. That was indeed very confusing William M. Connolley 22:10, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A couple of comments on late additions:

1. The text:

Auer has been frequently quoted in the New Zealand press regarding weather and climate issues,

1. Is he really? Is 67 really "frequent"? Lets check two other NZ meteorologists "Bob McDavitt"[1] (619) and "Jim Sallinger"[2] (293). --Kim D. Petersen 23:02, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

2. A couple of references are not linked - for instance for the blanket statement: 'is regarded in New Zealand as a "well-known and colourful meteorologist"' --Kim D. Petersen 23:02, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

In general its best to keep away from such statements (as per WP:WEASEL and WP:PEACOCK) --Kim D. Petersen 23:04, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:WEASEL and WP:PEACOCK would apply if those phrases were written as text in the article, but instead the "well-known and colourful meteorologist" line is a direct quote from the news article in the reference immediately following it. Which is why it is in quotation marks. It's not linked because it doesn't seem to be available in full online for free, but the snippet provided by Google news was enough to find the quote. —David Eppstein 23:22, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

"frequent" is sourced where? How do other meteorologists compare to him? Or is it rather your own opinion?

"well-known and colourful meteorologist" Who is saying this? In what context? Do you have the article yourself? Or is it rather some "snippet" from Google news that you included without checking the context? etc. --Kim D. Petersen 00:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC) Can you point us to the "snippet"? --Kim D. Petersen 00:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

"frequent": no source other than the 67 hits on Google news archive This web page uses that word. But if you don't think that's enough to justify it as being more than a subjective opinion, please reword, but I think the existence of his quotes in these NZ news sources is notable enough to mention somehow and I didn't want to list many of them individually. As for being a snippet that I included without checking the context: yes, but I don't see how more context would invalidate that quote. Here's a longer snippet from this search page:

Climate-change debate taking a new direction

Pay-Per-View - Hawke's Bay Today - Factiva, from Dow Jones - May 11, 2006

Augie Auer, the well-known and colourful meteorologist, has gone into bat in a big way for the ‘‘no worries’’ school of science on this issue. ...

Related web pages

—David Eppstein 02:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The "keen to leave augie ..." link is broken

It is number 7 at the bottom. I'm curious about the article. Such a measure, surely shows this person is notable.--Africangenesis 04:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I found this link, but I am not quite sure how bottom notes are supposed to work [3], please assist.--Africangenesis 04:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I added the link before seeing your note. The short answer to your how-to question is: surround the story title in the brackets you would use for a link, then put the link itself inside the brackets before the title, separated by a space. Like [htp://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=10416137 Metservice keen...], but with http spelled correctly. It can go where the unlinked title is, inside the <ref> tags earlier in the article. —David Eppstein 04:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

It is the ref and reflist part I did not understand, but I have learned from your example. I had no idea the links were in the text and the reflist was formed automatically -- thanx.--Africangenesis 04:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Date format - internationalized or only NZ'd format.

There seems to be alot of confusion over the dateformat [[YYYY-MM-DD]]. This format is actually for internationalized dates - and can be configured via Special:Preferences. This makes it render as DD MM, YYYY for those who prefer that format, and MM DD, YYYY for those that prefer this.

The Auer article is not limited to views by people from NZ, but has a larger audience, not the least because he has been mentioned on US Senator Inhofes blog, because of his climate scepticism.

Try playing devils advocate here, if the default date format irritates you that much, then consider the other side, which must be just as irritated. So please keep it internationalized - instead of only catering to a specific range of people. --Kim D. Petersen 21:40, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Most readers of Wikipedia don't log in and don't have prefs set up. They will see the date as typed, not according to their preferences.

Most people find all-numeric dates confusing when they are not in the preferred format. Very few have trouble understanding "June 10 2007" even if they would normally write "10 June 2007" and vice versa. While 2007-06-10 is unambiguous, people who are used to the formats 10-06-2007 or 06-10-2007 have to stop and think when encountering it. The manual of style does not express a preference. However, I see you have now changed the date format to your preferred version five times, and several editors have changed it back. Perhaps you should consider yourself outvoted.-gadfium 22:18, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

My apologies. I am wrong about the Manual of Style. See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#ISO_date_formats. The ISO format is discouraged.-gadfium 22:25, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

No, its me who has to apologize. I had no notion that the unpreferenced view was raw ISO format. Which i most certainly agree is unacceptable. My belief was that it rendered according to the American default (ie. June 10, 2007). I should have logged out, and checked the view (which i've now done). Good find in the MoS - which i've somehow overlooked.

As for why i didn't consider myself "outvoted" is that most of the changes where from anon's (who quite rightly disagreed i can now see).

Sorry to have caused this disturbance. --Kim D. Petersen 23:21, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone btw. explain to me why the unpreferenced view is ISO? That seems rather foolish. --Kim D. Petersen 23:23, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

The view when logged out is to see the dates as whatever was typed in wiki source. I agree that it would make sense to use a default "preference", but that raises the issue of whether the default should be big, little or middle-endian. It would certainly be possible to make a selection between these options based on a reader's IP address location, but that would have possibly-dire results on the aggressive caching of pages that Wikipedia uses for users who don't have preferences set.-gadfium 00:31, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

A simple decision on format would be enough, for instance the US MM DD, YYYY (or what ever corresponds to the most common user) - the default as ISO is worse. This wouldn't impact caching at all - since all would see the same default. --Kim D. Petersen 01:27, 13 June 2007 (UTC)