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Former good articleGlacier was one of the good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
October 27, 2005Featured article candidateNot promoted
December 20, 2005Good article nomineeListed
February 14, 2008Good article reassessmentDelisted
Current status: Delisted good article

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 September 2020 and 4 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): WendyCisneros.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:25, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No need for matter of fact language

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Not only is anthropogenic climate change not a fact, it is not necessary to state it as one. In this case, a simple addition of “Climate scientists believe” or “It is thought” or “Increased co2 levels suggest” to the below listed entry solves the issue. This is not a debate or discussion about Climate Change, just the terms used when stating it. I would prefer someone edit it who worked on the article. Thank you. David

Under the CLIMATE CHANGE section;

“Human activity has caused an increase in greenhouse gases creating a global warming trend,[58] causing these valuable glaciers to melt.” WaveGuidedFunction (talk) 14:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry but, anthropogenic climate change has been quite well established as "fact" by the scientists working in the field. Yes, the oil company execs and their buddies are in denial about it - because they might lose a buck or two and $$$ is all they care about. Cheers, Vsmith (talk) 19:18, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comment: Glaciers are rocks

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How should the Glacier article describe the relationship between rocks and glaciers? Lordgilman (talk) 14:14, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The current text is "A glacier is a persistent body of dense ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight." I don't think this is a particularly clear way to phrase it and I wasn't sure it was entirely grammatical at first. I don't have any opinion on "comprised of" other than there's probably a way to avoid it but my prose skills aren't as imaginative.

But I want to call out Giraffedata's edit comment: "correct to conform to source: glacier ice (a substance) is rock (a substance), which is different from a glacier (an object) being a rock (an object). The source never mentions a rock." I think this is a distinction without a difference and is responsible for the confusing phrasing. The rest of the article refers to glaciers and glacier ice interchangeably. I think without a question the article is poorer and more confusing with Giraffedata's edit so I'd like to see it reverted. However, I admit that I'm not the greatest writer so maybe there is a better way to phrase the whole thing and incorporate "glaciers are rocks" into the article. Lordgilman (talk) 14:23, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

p.s. the USGS source also mentions the metamorphic processes that create glaciers explicitly. I didn't put "metamorphic rock" in my original edit but I probably should have done so and the agreed-upon phrasing should also call them metamorphic rocks and probably link to metamorphic rock. Lordgilman (talk) 14:30, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Lordgilman -- I have a few academic sources on glaciology that I can look at to see how this sort of statement is phrased; I may have time this morning to go through them but if not it'll be some time next week. If I understand Giraffedata's edit correctly, he was mainly concerned about the usage of "comprised of" so he may not get involved in this RfC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:00, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do you perceive a difference between "rock" and "a rock" in general? If I said "the sidewalk is rock" or "the sidewalk is made of rock", would you think that's the same as "the sidewalk is a rock?" I haven't read the whole article, but I really doubt it uses "a glacier" to refer to glacial ice, since they're quite different things. Many sentences would work referring to either a glacier or a glacial ice, but many would not.
I actually think mentioning rock at all in the lead sentence is going to be confusing for most readers, since they don't use the word "rock" that way in their everyday lives. I think it's more of an interesting trivia point to put deep inside the article. But I'm not a geologist; I'm just a copy editor concerned about things like the proper use of indefinite articles. Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 18:23, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]