Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/ Mono Lake

Tufa formations of Mono Lake

Reason: These are good images of unusual rocks. The images have educational and encyclopedic values. I hope that an image as a FP would "make the viewer want to know more" about tufa of Mono Lake , as well as tufa in general;

Proposed caption:Tufa towers like in the Mono Lake are calcium-carbonate spires and knobs formed by interaction of freshwater springs and alkaline lake water. Tufa can reach heights of 30 ft. (9.1m). Mono Lake is located is Eastern Sierra and covers about 65 square miles. Throughout the lake's existence of over 1 million years, the steady evaporation of freshwater originally coming from Eastern Sierra streams has left the salts and minerals behind so that the lake is now about 2 1/2 times as salty and 80 times as alkaline as the ocean. Mono Lake tufa is now California state reserve.

Articles this image appears in: Mono Lake; Tufa
Creator: Mbz1

Support as nominator Mbz1 13:30, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I like the lighting, I'm not sure ho informative the composition is. I feel like a better one could have been chosen to highlight the lake as well. -Fcb981^{(talk:contribs)} 00:45, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Original 2, neutral on Original (which also seems a little tilted?). I really like the colors and the prettiness of both pictures, but for an image of a lake, the angle is too low. I also feel that the proposed caption does not sufficiently explain the concept of tufa at the first mention, and so the encyclopedicness of the first image is somewhat lost to me as a layman. (What I mean is it reads like "what you see is a tufa, which was formed like this and that" instead of maybe better(?) "a tufa is whatever and works like this and that; if you want to see one, look at the picture".) :-) – sgeureka ^t•c 01:39, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I've changed the caption. Is it any better now? Thank you.--Mbz1 01:58, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Better but not perfect. I really do think that this FPC gains from putting Tufa over Mono Lake. So I offer a revised caption: Tufa towers like in the Mono Lake are calcium-carbonate spires and knobs formed by interaction of freshwater springs and alkaline lake water. Mono Lake is located is Eastern Sierra and covers about 65 square miles. Throughout the lake's existence of over 1 million years, the steady evaporation of freshwater originally coming from Eastern Sierra streams has left the salts and minerals behind so that the lake is now about 2 1/2 times as salty and 80 times as alkaline as the ocean. Mono Lake tufa is now California state reserve. – sgeureka ^t•c 11:37, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - I like your caption much better. Thank you very much for helping me out.--Mbz1 01:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
weak support original 2 Aesthetically and technically good (but is the right side of the tufa overexposed?), but IMO this picture has very little encyclopedic value regarding Mono Lake, because from this perspective, the body of water can be anything with tufa and hills. Also, a valid reason is needed; right now, the reason does not really address the picture itself. --Malachirality 02:11, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I guess you and Fcb981 are right, when you say that the images have little encyclopedic value regarding Mono Lake. The images are more about Tufa formations of Mono Lake and maybe even tufa in general. The image is featured in tufa article. Tufa could be and is in other places too. On the other hand the tufa in my images is at Mono lake. It is tufa of Mono Lake, which is California state reserve, not the lake itself,but, if there were no this very special lake, there would not have been tufa either. I tried to addresse this issue by changing the title of the image to "Tufa formations of Mono Lake". Do you believe it is OK now or should I change it just to Tufa? Thank you.--Mbz1 03:07, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support either with revised caption. These are attractive images, and illustrative of tufa. I had never heard of tufa before looking at this nom; now I know what it is. Perhaps the caption could be improved a little more (by Mila) by indicating how large the structures are that we're looking at-- less than a meter high? Several meters high? It's difficult to get a sense of scale. Spikebrennan 16:01, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Thank you. I added the information about the height of the tufa to the caption. It is also interesting to know that altough tufa could grow only in the water, now some tufa towers are completely out of the water, because the water that used to be there has evaporated. One could walk between these towers without getting feet wet.--Mbz1 17:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose with regret. I very much like Original 2: it's a much better image than the original candidate (scanned film , yes? nice...) despite the small horizontal tilt, which somehow works here. It's just that enc problem again. It really doesn't belong at Limestone at all and should be removed. IMO it should appear at both Tufa and Mono Lake in place of your original candidate – but it isn't there! How can we promote an image which isn't (properly) in the encyclopedia yet? Please, do the pic a favour: delist it, sort out proper placement, and then nominate it. I'd happily support it then, and I think many others would too! --mikaul^talk 18:30, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, sgeureka, for helping me out with the caption and thank you, everybody, for votes and comments.~~I withdraw my nomination~~--Mbz1 18:40, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I took the Original 2 from Limestone (btw tufa is limestone). I will put to Tufa and Mono Lake whatever image will pass the nomination. If none is to pass, I'll put to Tufa and Mono Lake whatever image gets more votes. IMO it is common practice to nominate few images. Of course they cannot be in the articles all together at the time of the nomination, but it is understandable that whatever image is to get FP status will be posted in the articles as soon as the nomination process is over. I wanted to withdraw the nomination, but I believe it would not have been fair to the people, who spent their time voting and helping me with the caption. Thank you.--Mbz1 03:26, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment At this point the nomination is almost over, and looks like more people prefer Original 2 to Original, so I've put Original 2 in both Tufa and Mono Lake. Mick, do you believe your oppose is still valid at this point? Thank you.--Mbz1 14:41, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:Mono lake tufa.JPG MER-C 11:57, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]