Glacier 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.
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Text and/or other creative content from this version of Ogive (glacier) was copied or moved into Glacier#Ogives with this edit on 21:30, 2 April 2012. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.
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.
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
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]
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]
To the average person, rock is a large solid stony mass, but a glacier is a mass of ice; and ice is frozen water, not stone. A geologist will tell you that a heavy mass of ice on an inclined surface will scrape the ground as it moves, wearing it down, breaking bits off, picking up pieces of whatever it passes over. Seen from below, a glacier may well be stony or even rocky: but it is still predominantly ice. In short: glaciers contain rocks, but are not themselves rocks. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:44, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's kind of beside the point, though, because on Wikipedia we go by reliable sources even if we don't believe them, and what we have here is a reliable source saying that glacial ice -- the H2O itself -- is rock. If there are other reliable sources indicating glacial ice isn't rock, we could have that conversation. Otherwise, we're either talking about 1) whether the source says a glacier is a rock; and 2) whether the idea that a glacier is made of rock belongs in the lead sentence.
By the way, it occurs to me that maybe not everyone here agrees that a glacier is not one chunk of ice, but lots of them. If the entire glacier were one chunk of ice, "a glacier is a rock" would be entirely correct, following the cited source. Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 02:27, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) that most readers would find it surprising to have glacier ice referred to as rock. That information could be moved further down in the article, or maybe reworded as something like "Geologists consider glacier ice to be a form of rock." Also, because it's surprising to the general reader, I'd like to see a second source added, maybe one that's attributed to a specific geologist, or a widely used textbook, for example. —Anne Delong (talk) 23:50, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ASTONISH applies here: When the principle of least astonishment is successfully employed, information is understood by the reader without struggle. The average reader should not be shocked, surprised, or confused by what they readKowal2701 (talk) 00:35, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
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.
