Talk:Exploding whale

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“In popular culture” section

On August 8 of 2008 the whole section was deleted with a comment about how it's “not because it's trivia, but because it's unsourced”. So several questions arise about it:

• shouldn't there be source-request tags first, before deletion?
• if the problem is only with sources, would it be ok to recover the section (or its parts) with additional source refs where needed?
• higher on this page there was already a little talk on similar issue, where as an argument was used the Wikipedia:TRIVIA style guideline. I guess it was meant to be linked to this page, so I'll ask about the latter one. It says, that in case of passing mentions there should be included refs of significance, so at least in cases with poetry, song and children's book the whale mention is not a passing one.

So, I need help with sorting this all out. Thanks. DaemonDice (talk) 02:09, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I re added this, but will need help finding citations. AceTankCommander (talk) 21:12, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

A new incident in Faroe Islands

http://kvf.fo/netvarp/sv/2013/11/26/video-her-brestur-hvalurin — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.78.142.203 (talk) 21:21, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I added the KVF footage via the "External Media" template to the bottom of the article, along with the same footage from the Huffington Post. The HP footage is easier to download, has English text in the story, and has a title that warns those with queasy stomachs 2 times. Hopefully this won't surprise anybody who has read to the bottom of the article. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:22, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Why is there no link to the Oregon Video?

Just curious... there is a whole paragraph about it and yet when links are added to the video we have people delete the links. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.226.213.17 (talk) 23:09, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Exploding whale/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ribbet32 (talk · contribs) 22:49, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

This article is an old favourite of mine, a classic of the great User:Ta bu shi da yu, hence a former WP:FA. Unfortunately, I feel it necessary to make this a Wikipedia:Quickfail for two reasons:

1. Wikipedia:Quickfail #3: "It has, or needs, cleanup banners that are unquestionably still valid". In addition to a "when?" tag unresolved since January 2011, there is no indication any serious attempt has been made to resolve the issues that led to its de-featuring in Wikipedia:Featured article review/Exploding whale/archive3: "The problem is that the article doesn't cite any reliable sources that tie together all these disparate events under the rubric of 'Exploding whales'. " It is not intuitively obvious how "Tainan City" and "Others" relate to the famous Dave Barry story, raising OR concerns for those sections. Before the article is nominated for GA again, at least some effort should be made to address the last featured article review.

2. Per Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Instructions, "it is highly preferable that they [the nominator] have contributed significantly and are familiar with the subject". The nominator in this case, User:FriyMan, has not contributed significantly- [1] it is good he attempted to add to the footnotes, but what is xpatmatt, and is it a WP:RS? Neither XPATMATT or its author, Matt Gibson, appear to have articles. Ribbet32 (talk) 22:49, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Overall:

Whale mass

The reported mass for the whale seems extremely low. Is there a specific source on that number? The reported length of 14 meters makes sense based on the picture, it's a rough cylinder, its radius appears to be around a meter, and its density is about the same as that of water, ~1000 kg/m^3, so its mass should be on the order of 44,000 kg.

According to the article on sperm whales, females are about 11 meters long and 14,000 kg, so the whale being 14 m long and only ~8,000 kg seems unlikely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.152.44.203 (talk) 00:06, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes indeed, of course. This article was first written in the glory days of Wikipedia and it is entirely anecdotal in nature. None of it should be taken seriously. However, if any zoologist or physicist would like to do more calculations it could be borne in mind that being filled with methane might reduce the weight of the carcass since methane is less dense than air. Thincat (talk) 12:17, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Not a preview; I hope.

There is a potential exploding whale beached up in Iceland. No further commentary. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 10:56, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

And another one now in sweden. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 18:15, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Date issue

In Others/20th century section, the event is said to have taken place in 2011

Split proposal

Having read through the FAR and subsequent comments, I agree that there doesn't appear to be any reliable sourcing tying these incidents together as one concept - they were even different methods of 'detonation', one using chemical explosives and one caused by decomp gas build-up.

I therefore suggest that the 1970 Florence incident be split out to a separate article, and perhaps the Tainan incident to another if sufficient sourcing can be found. This article could then be turned into a disambiguation page. I doubt the other incidents listed are either truly notable, or actually part of some 'exploding whale' topic - as said above, I can't seem to find any sourcing tying them together.

Thoughts? firefly ( t · c ) 13:45, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I disagree. In a quick search, I found an article (from The Atlantic, a major magazine) that covers instances of whale explosions of both types, including the Oregon incident (dynamite) and several decomposition-related explosions: "A Brief History of Exploding Whales". Here's another one (Live Science) that discusses both explosives and decomposition: https://www.livescience.com/humpback-beached-staten-island - So it is regarded as a single concept. 73.223.72.104 (talk)

References

I don't think this is a very good page at all. Spontaneous explosion and assisted explosion seem very different to me yet they're all mixed in here. You could say the same about factories - Factory accidents may lead to explosions, but some factories explode because they're detonated or attacked. As a page, it makes no sense to me. Too incoherent. Spiny Norman (talk) 10:29, 10 January 2023 (UTC)