Talk:Lists of earthquakes

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Conflicting Dates/Links?

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This page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_earthquakes has the Aleppo earthquake occurring 11 October 1138... ???

Also, the Header Link on this page says "Deadliest earthquakes" but links to a page of Historical Famines? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.243.63.16 (talk) 03:23, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The date of the 1138 Aleppo earthquake is consistent on this page, the historical earthquakes page and the specific article on the earthquake - all show 11 October 1138. The header is linked as "List of natural disasters by death toll#Deadliest_earthquakes", talking you directly to that section of the article. I don't see any issues here. Mikenorton (talk) 08:42, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Orphaned references in Lists of earthquakes

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I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Lists of earthquakes's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "PAGER-CAT":

  • From 1970 Tonghai earthquake: USGS (4 September 2009), PAGER-CAT Earthquake Catalog, Version 2008_06.1, United States Geological Survey
  • From 1978 Tabas earthquake: USGS (September 4, 2009), PAGER-CAT Earthquake Catalog, Version 2008_06.1, United States Geological Survey
  • From 1967 Caracas earthquake: USGS (4 September 2009), PAGER-CAT Earthquake Catalog, Version 2008_06.1, United States Geological Survey
  • From Great Hanshin earthquake: USGS (September 4, 2009), PAGER-CAT Earthquake Catalog, Version 2008_06.1, United States Geological Survey

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 15:00, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Kazakhstan

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No mention is made of Kazakhstan, but thee Almaty wik page lists significant quakes. Kdammers (talk) 03:45, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tunisia

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A larger earthquake might have occurred in 859: [1]

Just leaving it here for now, won't add it due to its magnitude not being given. Alpha Piscis Austrini (talk) 12:29, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Chile 9.5 magnitude 18 century B.C.

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A new earthquake which could be added to the list

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm2996

1983 earthquake in Poland

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In Largest earthquakes by country/territory, the event for Poland was a mb  5.8 on August 6, 1983, referencing the USGS catalog. The only corresponding event in the ISC Bulletin: event catalogue search was a ML  2.8/3.5 quake in the same area and time. Quick searches in English and Polish couldn't fork up anything about this event. I now suspect this is a misreported event by the USGS that shouldn't be included.--Dora the Axe-plorer (explore the morgue) 14:17, 15 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it - I checked with the SHARE European Earthquake Catalogue (SHEEC) 1900-2006 and the NOAA/NCEI database but found nothing. Mikenorton (talk) 15:20, 15 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

2003 Boumerdès earthquake in Algeria

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This event that happen in May of 2003 is not mentioned in the article. For reference there is a wikipedia page on the same 2003 Boumerdès earthquake Please consider updating the main page. Sbliecer (talk) 11:01, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Flags

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The flags in (at least some of) the lists are not period-accurate, and instead are the modern flags of the countries listed. 69.116.147.54 (talk) 03:54, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

1960 deadliest

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The entry for 1960 obviously should be https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_Valdivia_earthquake 109.144.21.212 (talk) 15:38, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

1960 deadliest - my mistake, please delete

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I stupidly mistook biggest for deadliest. Please remove my Talk entries. 109.144.21.212 (talk) 17:08, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Map centered on the Pacific Ring of Fire?

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The present map seems centered on Europe/Altantic (a Euro-centric perspective is no surprise). But it would make more geological sense to have it centered on the Pacific Ocean. That way, the five largest dots would make a near-complete ring delineating the "Pacific Ring of Fire". Anybody have the means to create such a map? Titus III (talk) 18:58, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Map mistake

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On the earthquakes 1900-2017 map,the ashgabat earthquake 1948october 6 at 1:17 in the morning is missing UnsungHistory (talk) 19:59, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Number of earthquakes m > 4 per country by year (suitability for inclusion)

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Is this new section encyclopedic? Why or why not? Dawnseeker2000 17:31, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This section does not seem encyclopedic. It’s an arbitrary slice of a huge database. Personally, I could make an argument for putting the threshold at M 5, while others might say M 3. The raw numbers each year don’t mean much, either. Why list those years? Why only those years? Are readers supposed to infer trends? That seems like a bad idea.
I believe the goal of the section is to show where earthquakes are most frequent, which is a somewhat different picture than one gets from the list of largest earthquake by country. Perhaps a table of *average* number of earthquakes per year would be more appropriate. (In fact, the stat could be added to the table with largest EQ by country rather than requiring a separate table.) An average rate would give a more comprehensive picture than raw data, and would also need to be updated much less frequently. Elriana (talk) 09:09, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The map of Indonesia in this section is also awful. There are too many points for the icons to be so large and the iconography is highly impractical for rendering this information. I am particularly annoyed by this lack of readability because people have been making maps of exactly this kind of data in a wide variety of easily-readable icon/label schemes for decades. I appreciate the coolness of having a dataset one can click through on a map, but this is not an appropriate place for a map with clickable links to the USGS data page for every earthquake in Indonesia since 1900. Elriana (talk) 09:21, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your thoughts. Dawnseeker2000 17:10, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reordering?

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It seems odd that the Largest EQ by Year and the Deadliest EQ by Year sections come before the overall largest and deadliest EQ sections. Is there a reason the ‘by year’ tables wouldn’t be subsections of the Largest and Deadliest sections themselves? Elriana (talk) 10:26, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I’m also not convinced the ‘by year’ lists are necessary here. Any comments for and against their inclusion and positioning? Why aren’t they separate lists that are linked from this list of lists? Particularly since every year’s list page already includes the largest earthquakes from that year. Elriana (talk) 10:29, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Note there is a user, Applaused, that's adding what I feel is a very unnecessary list citing a source I'm less familiar with. Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 11:42, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where is October 17th, 1989

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San Francisco was struck with a 6.9 magnitude earthquake where 63 people died and 3,800 were injured. How is it not on the list of biggest earthquakes since 1920 when you have a lot of earthquakes weaker on the list? 2603:7080:2002:62F3:7027:4844:2FA1:7505 (talk) 15:03, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Costliest" section is kind of poor

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The "Costliest Earthquakes" section doesn't match up with the List of costliest earthquakes page. At least to a large extent, this is due to this page (as opposed to the other) seeming to not take inflation into account (or to do so inconsistently), which frankly seems silly. But also, this page gives exact numbers, which also seems kind of silly. The other page often has very large ranges, which could in some cases move items up and down significantly, or even onto or off of this page entirely. Plus, of course, maintaining the two lists separately probably leads, just in and of itself, to divergence.

I don't have a really well-thought-out suggestion for how to deal with this; my gut says the list in the section should just be removed entirely and the text of it should just be something barely if at all beyond "see the other page". But at the very least, for now, I'm going to mark it with some sort of "section has issues" template. -Rwv37 (talk) 23:35, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]


How rankings work

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Yes, 7th "disappears" because there is a tie. Again, if there are two people tied for first, the next person isn't second, he's still third because there are two people are ahead of him. Very simple. And its wikipedia consensus, so please stop disruptively undo these edits. @Dora the Axe-plorer:

Nobreadsticks (talk) 23:45, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is not detailed in MOS:LIST and you do not get to impose your edits on the rank order which has been like this for many years until a proper concensus is reached. So your edits ARE disruptive. Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 00:20, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, but you haven't put forth any arguments why the status quo on this one page is better or the proper way to do it, as opposed to the countless counter examples. Saying that the status quo is okay as is without any reasoning and not discussing further is WP:STONEWALLING. Nobreadsticks (talk) 00:47, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are no arguments because you did not discuss it, you just imposed the changes without notice before opening this topic. Now that another editor has reverted your bold edits, open a discussion and get a concensus for this specific page or WP:RFC to find out Wikipedia's position on the matter Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 01:13, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's embarrassing that this would even need explanation, but, indeed, if there are at least 10 items that are strictly above an item in the sequence, it cannot be ranked with an ordinal lower than 11th. Often, for clarity, a whole range is specified — after the five largest, perhaps there's a three-way tie for 6th through 8th — and perhaps that's worth adopting here. (Note that if further research is able to break the tie, determining which is 6th, which is 7th, and which is 8th, that won't affect the rank of the one that is 11th, at least not if you don't try to do "rank" in a mathematically incoherent way.)2600:1700:1900:8A70:9411:E5C8:C07B:5860 (talk) 17:05, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]