Talk:Delaware Basin

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Proposed merge[edit]

Resolved
 – No consensus for or even any interest in discussing, such a merge in over 4 years.

Note: It may make sense to expand this article to be about the whole Permian Basin and merge both articles. --mav 23:54, 23 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I (and apparently no one else) see any reason that this would make sense. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:58, 27 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who grew up in the area, I can personally state that Permian and Delaware Basins are quite distinct, and, to be honest, the difference is shown by comparison of the article content, not the physical area they cover. The Permian basin is a much larger, oil-producing area, and though it as a whole dates from the same period, it was basically a shallow ocean. It's significance is that because of the oil, it's basically become a distinct 'cultural' area, and it's commonly used that way.
Nobody talks about the Delaware Basin but geologists, and as it covers a smaller area it 'seems' like a subtopic. It's not though, as it's notable for a quite distinct reason, and has a very different history. Delaware was a much shallower area, not continually inundated, and developed extremely large coral reefs. Due to later uplift, these reefs became exposed, and this is unique to the area. What's more it's extremely notable, both because geologists study the hell out of the area, and because of the two national parks, which are both truly unique within the national park system, only exist because of the unique geography of the area. Unless I'm mistaken, and I'm not a geologist but it is what I learned in school, the Delaware Basin is considered to be a 'uniquely complex' area.
The problem is, this article looks like it was written by a geologist, and doesn't explain that, at least not in a way the general reader can understand. What is said in the lead is actually a quite good synopsis...it just doesn't explain why you care. Then, you read 'By earliest Permian time', cringe, and go read something else.
An example is the mentions of 'karst topography'. The article itself is linked, but this article doesn't define what it 'means' in this context, and it needs to. It's a 'correct' wikilink, but it's not 'helpful'. A quick example of that is the row of images down the side of that page....they are a good assortment of types of karst, but none looks even slightly like the terrain in the region, which is hundreds of square miles of flat aridness, full of random assorted 'crevices' in the bedrock that just appear as sinkholes and cenotes on the surface, but lead to extensive, mostly flooded and unexplored, cave systems. Then, surrounding this, you have the exposed reefs, which are coral, not limestone, and upthrust above the surface. This might all sound trivial, in a way, only of interest to a very specialized audience. It's not.
The easiest way I can think of to illustrate this is to point you, in sequence, at the series of articles Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Guadalupe Mountains, Delaware Basin, Permian Basin, and compare article length and how they use each other.

Name[edit]

Many, maybe even most, readers are going to want to know quickly (i.e., in the lead) why it is called the Delaware Basin, when it is no where near Delaware. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:58, 27 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Citation cleanup[edit]

The citations in here need to be converted to use <ref...> to specify the source once, then cite it repeatedly in shorthand, as described at WP:CITE, with page numbers specified with {{Rp}} (forget section numbers; not important), so that there is only one entry for the same work in the References section, instead of a long stream of redundant ones. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:58, 27 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Insane number of red links[edit]

I count 26 red links inside the current article text. This is ridiculous; half the article is red. You can't easily read it. While it's probable that some of these are links that should exist, just misdirected, there are probably just as many duplicate blue links. I'm not going to plow through them now to figure it out, unless I suddenly change my mind once I see it 'not-red', which is going to be RSN. :) Revent (talk) 04:14, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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