Talk:Sea

I have just changed the hatnote of the article as per my proposal above on 3 August. It now reads

The purpose of this is, like I said above, to guide future editors to know what the difference is between the ocean and sea article, and therefore to avoid that people think they need to add the same content in both places, e.g. content about how climate change and oceans, or how marine pollution affects the ocean (this should in future go primarily into the ocean article, not the sea article). EMsmile (talk) 03:54, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you so much for this hatnote EMsmile!! I agree with this 100%: Ocean should have emphasis on science, with only some history and culture. Sea should focus on history and culture, with only some science (for now, we'll have to see where the other discussions about this take us). :) LightProof1995 (talk) 20:10, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

There seem to be a lot of edits since the beginning of the year that had to be reverted. Should we apply to increase the protection level for this article? Just wondering. EMsmile (talk) 11:36, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Should this article be merged with ocean? See also prior discussion: § How to reduce overlap with ocean? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 08:00, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment - Pbsouthwood above in 2021 stated, it would help to try to define the logical scope of each of these articles before attempting any major changes. I think it's impossible to determine if they should be merged without first outlining this. As they stand now, the articles appear to contain significant duplication. The English language further complicates things, as sea and ocean are frequently used interchangeably in conversation. BeReasonabl (talk) 23:29, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Well according to the International Hydrographic Organization, an ocean is continental-sized body of water, while a sea is smaller than that. Even in our definition, there are 5 oceans on Earth while there is countless number of seas. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:06, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

They should not be merged. The Sea and the Ocean are not the same, the terms are just often incorrectly interchanged. (See source here) Dobblestein 🎲 🎲 talk 16:47, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Don't merge. (invited by the bot) Per rationales described by CactiStaccingCrane the are not synonyms. North8000 (talk) 14:37, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

• This is not an RfC matter, please see WP:MERGE. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:08, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
• Yes, not an Rfc matter at all. See also the failed proposal in 2019; I think there may have been others before that. What a proposed move needs is a carefully considered and argued proposal. Frankly, I'm not sure this is your style CactiStaccingCrane. Equally arguers against the proposal should try to better define the scopes. Johnbod (talk) 17:25, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

  I agree with what you've said. I should have approached the problem with more tact. Though, currently I have way too much stuff on my hands; I think it would be wise for me not to be involved in further discussion about this. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 23:35, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

I have a problem with the section on environmental issues. It currently has two sub-headings: ocean acidification and marine pollution. This seems arbitrary to me as it should either have a comprehensive list of sub-headings or none at all and rather link across to Ocean where all this is covered in detail in the section on "threats from human activities". If we agree that "Ocean should have emphasis on science, with only some history and culture. Sea should focus on history and culture, with only some science" (wording by LightProof1995 above on 8 March 23), then I think this section on environmental issues needs to be condensed and the reader referred to Ocean for more details very clearly.

In addition, the content about ocean acidification is now quite outdated here, using refs from around 2011 until 2019. I recently did some work on updating the ocean acidification article. I am not motivated though to update the same content here as well as I think it's inefficient to have content about ocean acidification in all sorts of articles and having to update it everywhere. For that reason I tend to use excerpts when it comes to fast changing topics such as ocean acidification, ocean temperature, ocean heat content and so forth. (I know that not everyone likes excerpts.) So my suggestion is to condense the section on environmental issues here and ensure readers know that there are plenty of issues but that the details can be found at Ocean; rather than building up this section here. EMsmile (talk) 09:33, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

See also previous discussion about this section two years ago here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sea/Archive_2#Environmental_issues EMsmile (talk) 09:36, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Sigh. Not at you, but at the mess that once more results from the wholesale utter rescoping of this article without discussion from those years ago. The material belongs at ocean, which was the sole article covering the entire worldwide marine environment before the hijacking if this article. Bluntly, this article was rescoped from a proper scientific use of the term because the hijacker couldn't be bothered to actually look and see what the scope of this article was in relation to other articles and just assumed that his colloquial use, peculiar to a single dialect, was the proper one. Worst was when more numerous people objected (myself included) they were bulldozed and dismissed, with outright loss saying the scope was extensively discussed. No, it wasn't.

All of these scope issues are going to continue to exist as long as this article and ocean are separate. Because they're describing the exact same thing. Wikipedia articles are about concepts, not words (it's not Wiktionary) so insisting we needed a separate article because the term "sea" and the term "ocean" are both used to describe the entire marine environment, as has been done, is against Wikipedia policy and has essentially created a content fork.

The attempt to make one oceanographic and the other cultural was a good thought, but is unworkable under this title. What needs to be done is this article needs to be split between the sea in culture, which is quite clear is scope (though should have the "the" in its title to be idiomatic, as the distinctive article is always used when referring to the whole) and the bare title "sea" made into a redirect to ocean, where the terminology section can cover the details, as it already does. The hatnote should be totally reworked to say "Sea redirects here. For a list of particular seas, see List of seas." As it stands, the ocean article already includes "the sea" as a boldface synonym in the lead, though it is linked to this article, which is itself a problem because links aren't supposed to be bolded.

No matter what, though, these redundant articles are unacceptable. The only reason there are two articles in the first place is because some people couldn't accept that usage varies by dialect, and in direct contravention of WP:ENGVAR created a redundant article fork. That needs to be fixed, at long last. oknazevad (talk) 13:13, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with both of you! Thanks so much for bringing up the Environmental issues section problems EMsmile, and thanks so much for bringing up The sea in culture article oknazevad! :)

Does this mean we are leaning toward merging the human/cultural aspects of this article with Sea in culture, and the science aspects of this article with Ocean? What if we had Sea split into an article called Humans and the sea to go along with the Sea in culture article, and then moved the science stuff at Sea to Ocean? LightProof1995 (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, something like that would also be my preference. The existing repetition of physical properties at Sea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea#Physical_science) with the equivalent section at Ocean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean#Physical_properties) is hard to swallow. However, I suspect that such a proposal will get exactly the same fierce opposition that it got when I raised it about 2 years ago. I can understand it from an emotional level: there are some editors (mainly two, I think) who have worked hard at getting the Sea article to featured article status. I get that they don't want to see it ripped apart now. So that's how we ended up with this peculiar situation that we have now. EMsmile (talk) 11:26, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

As a baby step for improvement, I am suggesting to shrink the "environmental issues" at Sea down to a minimum and refer the readers across to the same content at Ocean. EMsmile (talk) 11:26, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

As an interesting aside: the pageviews for Ocean are always two to three times higher than for Sea and have a slight trend up, whereas those for Sea have a slight trend down: https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&range=all-time&pages=Ocean%7CSea (when comparing the average of the last two years with the average of 2015 to 2020). EMsmile (talk) 11:26, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

"Humans and the sea" would be redundant to the sea in culture, as culture is by definition the collective experience of humans. And we really need to get that moved to add the definite article. The omission really grates, as it's so unidiomatic. oknazevad (talk) 12:40, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, where does that leave us in practical terms now? Can we take any baby steps? Consensus? EMsmile (talk) 14:38, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I agree it doesn't make sense to have an "Acidification" header here but not at Ocean#Threats from human activities. So I'd just move that entire section over, and then condense the Environmental section here down to a single, general paragraph, with no sub-headers (neither Acidification nor Marine pollution). LightProof1995 (talk) 05:22, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with your suggestion to remove the sub-headings and to just have a general paragraph that summarises this content. But we probably don't have to move the section about acidification to ocean as over there at ocean, we already have a summary section on the effects of climate change which is actually an excerpt from effects of climate change on oceans. That article uses an excerpt from ocean acidification. The content at ocean acidification is good and up to date (I recently worked on this article together with some experts from NOAA). So if anything, any useful content about ocean acidification that is at Sea could be merged into ocean acidification but I doubt that there is additional content that is not already at ocean acidification and hence it would likely jut introduce repetition (but worth checking). - Do you have time/energy to carry out these edits? EMsmile (talk) 08:56, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm currently embroiled in an WP:ANI dispute, unfortunately :( They are accusing me of not being WP:CIR. If this wasn't the case, I would say, "For you, @EMsmile? Absolutely!! :)" LightProof1995 (talk) 01:23, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I am sorry to hear! I hope you come out unscathed. If it's any consolation, I am currently the subject of a WP:CCI (here). - I can gently make those changes at Sea but I wonder if consensus has been reached; I guess people will speak up when they see my changes... EMsmile (talk) 09:29, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I've made a start at re-arranging this. I've added a short bullet point list for an overview. Have moved content about pH (current and future) to above in the section about seawater properties. I am undecided if the section about marine pollution should stay how it is or if it should be merged into marine pollution. EMsmile (talk) 09:53, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

First paragraph of the lede has

Particular seas are either marginal seas, second-order sections of the oceanic sea (e.g. the Mediterranean Sea), or certain large, nearly or completely landlocked (e.g. the Caspian Sea).

I believe that the Caspian Sea is generally, or at least sometimes considered a lake. Our article Caspian Sea opens with

The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea.

and refs are given.

I personally consider the Caspian Sea a sea, but so what, it's the sources that matter. One reason it's considered a sea is that it has "sea" in its name, but so do Salton Sea, Sea of Galilee, etc, but they are not seas. Whither or no, it's contested at least, so we shouldn't flat-out state that it is a sea, anywhere but particularly in the lede. Thus I have removed that passage.

Oh and also we address the subject lower down where we do indeed note that it's debatable.

In fact, are there any "nearly landlocked" bodies of water that are considered to be seas? Lake Maracaibo is nearly landlocked, but our article describes it as a lake -- possibly because of the name, but that's not my call -- but, it is debated also. Since Lake Maracaibo is not incontrovertibly a sea, are there any nearly landlocked bodies of water that are so considered? If not (I haven't checked) we should also remove "nearly...landlocked from the lede also. Herostratus (talk) 18:48, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi User:CactiStaccingCrane I see you have made some big bold changes to this article but you have not said anything on the talk page. Can you please explain here your reasoning for making these changes? I am not disagreeing with them (I have long tried to reduce overlap between the sea and the ocean article, see talk page above). But I know there is a bunch of others who were favouring keeping the article as it is (it's a featured article after all) so I expect some pushback. Therefore, it would be good to know if we have a broad consensus for these big changes. The new article size is 32 kB, down from 68 kB on 3 December. A change this big ought to be accompanied with a talk page entry. EMsmile (talk) 09:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I think I might have been too bold and reverted my edits at Sea. Thinking about it again it does not make sense at all to only put cultural aspect of the ocean in the article titled "Sea", and having another discussion and a clearer consensus is better IMO. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 10:34, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, nobody actually complained about your edits so perhaps they could have stayed? My advice would have been to make the changes more incrementally (i.e. not all in the space of just a few hours), and perhaps with more explanations in the edit summaries and talk page. But overall, I personally think you were pretty much on the right track, and I hope you don't just give up on the idea. The overlap between sea and ocean ought to be reduced. EMsmile (talk) 12:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)