Category talk:Seamounts of New Zealand

Rename of category might create a classification issue

I have just discovered that parties who may have poor geology knowledge have renamed the former category very recently without considering it contained articles that referred to undersea volcanoes that are not seamounts but rather craters. Frankly these tend not to be important enough to warrant mention in Wikipedia (one could become important if it erupted today however as it would be rather destructive locally and perhaps elsewhere through Tsunami) . Presumably who ever did it thought every sea bed volcano will be a seamount but they can be maars or calderas especially if the eruption takes place in shallow water so may not have any effective projection above the sea floor after the eruption.

see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2022 October 17#Category:Volcanoes of the New Zealand seabed

Perhaps this should be a subcategory of former category Category:Volcanoes of the New Zealand seabed and there should be a general category Category:Volcanoes of the seabed so you can capture what is happening with basaltic ooze from mid oceanic ridges. ChaseKiwi (talk) 21:34, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

@ChaseKiwi, I closed the discussion, and yes, I saw this issue. The solution would seem to be just remove the pages from the category. If a new category is created, it needs enough members (WP:SMALLCAT). — Qwerfjkltalk 21:58, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Totally appreciate that Seamount isn't necessarily a catch-all term, but the category doesn't need to be either. At the time the discussion was launched, the entire category consisted of solely seamounts and the two islands which I identified in the original discussion. The only outlier that I can see on there which isn't a seamount is the Maahunui volcanic field, which didn't exist until a couple days ago. There are also other categories for seamounts which this one is now consistent with. As you said, the non-seamount features tend not to be important enough to warrant mention, so there's not really a reason to rename the category to be a catch-all. If there are enough features eventually to mean that they could warrant a category, there's no reason we couldn't have another category - but I think having a distinct category for seamounts is perfectly fine, and given this category is (until recently) entirely seamounts there's no reason for that to double up. Turnagra (talk) 04:09, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I still think there are points to ponder by those that created this category and removed the volcano seabed one as not all seamounts are volcanoes. I have just added the existing articles Joseph Gilbert Seamount and Bollons Seamount to this category and have removed someones inaccurate categorisation of seamounts as volcanoes. I will check all volcanic seamounts are still in Category:Volcanoes of New Zealand -see also NZ continental shelf survey 2001. ChaseKiwi (talk) 18:53, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I think the rename from Category:Volcanoes of the New Zealand seabed to Category:Seamounts of New Zealand should be reconsidered. I propose the category be renamed to Category:Submarine volcanoes of New Zealand, similar to Category:Submarine volcanoes of Indonesia, with Joseph Gilbert Seamount and Bollons Seamount (which were not in the original category or its concept) being taken back out. Nurg (talk) 23:44, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

From what I can tell, Category:Submarine volcanoes of Indonesia is the only category with that naming convention, compared with several that are "Seamounts of x". I'd go back to my earlier point, in asking what we'd gain by making that change. As mentioned above, there's only one page so far that is an underwater volcanic feature but not a seamount, while there seem to be two seamounts which are non-volcanic. I don't see any reason to make that change, given that Seamount is a fairly well known term and almost all of the features in the category are known as the "x Seamount". Turnagra (talk) 05:14, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

All the "Seamounts of x" are "Seamounts of <ocean/sea>". There are no other "Seamounts of <country>". Nurg (talk) 06:00, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Is that relevant though? It's still a more consistent category with a more accurate title. Turnagra (talk) 06:47, 3 November 2022 (UTC)