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For the moment I've restored what I think is a bit of a hasty deletion, of a list of watersheds. The summary for the deletion (by User:Avenue) read: "Remove list of watersheds - these should be linked from the corresponding article (water divide or drainage basin), or combined in a list of their own".
I think there is some merit to moving many of these: the links for individual drainage basins. They do crowd this page, and although that is not necessarily reason enough to move them, it would certainly be tidier without them. Also, I suspect that there are a good many more which might get added to the list in the future.
It is not appropriate to link them only from Drainage basin. That's not where people are when they are looking for something called a watershed – they will come here, and then there needs to be a straightforward route from here to where they want to be. Anyway, we'd end up with that article acting as the disambig for the list – if anywhere should be crowded by a disambig list it ought to be a disambig page, not an article, especially not one with a different headword.
I think the second suggestion is better – these links could go on a subsidiary disambig page, linked from here. It could be called List of watersheds – except that currently redirects to List of drainage basins by area. So perhaps something else..?
I don't think two of the deleted items ought to be moved at all: List of drainage basins by area and European Watershed. Neither are part of the list of watersheds discussed above. The list of drainage basins is sensibly linked from here. The other is a list of one, so there is no need to move it – if lots of other drainage-divide watersheds turn up, then fine, treat them as described above for drainage-basin watersheds and make a subsidiary disambig for them. I susupect that's unlikely though, because drainage divides are less likely to need articles.
Finally, whatever we do, I think we need to decide first before deleting anything here – deleting the list now just leaves those pages orphaned altogether. -- Richard New Forest ( talk) 23:00, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
In North America, the word "watershed" is used primarily to mean a drainage basin as, for example, in " Dugway Brook Watershed". Elsewhere in the English-speaking world its primary meaning is a drainage divide, as in " European watershed". This latter sense is its original meaning; the German word from which "watershed" is derived, " Wasserscheide", still means this exclusively.
This is a source of ongoing confusion, because most English speakers are unaware of the regional difference in the word's primary meaning. The result can be seen in this article, which is a mishmash of topics about drainage basins and drainage divides.
The distinction is mentioned briefly as the last item in the " Terms – different uses" section. It should be highlighted as the first item in this section, since a reader won't get far without understanding what a watershed is, and almost all readers are unfamiliar with either one meaning or the other. TypoBoy ( talk) 16:01, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated List-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
For the moment I've restored what I think is a bit of a hasty deletion, of a list of watersheds. The summary for the deletion (by User:Avenue) read: "Remove list of watersheds - these should be linked from the corresponding article (water divide or drainage basin), or combined in a list of their own".
I think there is some merit to moving many of these: the links for individual drainage basins. They do crowd this page, and although that is not necessarily reason enough to move them, it would certainly be tidier without them. Also, I suspect that there are a good many more which might get added to the list in the future.
It is not appropriate to link them only from Drainage basin. That's not where people are when they are looking for something called a watershed – they will come here, and then there needs to be a straightforward route from here to where they want to be. Anyway, we'd end up with that article acting as the disambig for the list – if anywhere should be crowded by a disambig list it ought to be a disambig page, not an article, especially not one with a different headword.
I think the second suggestion is better – these links could go on a subsidiary disambig page, linked from here. It could be called List of watersheds – except that currently redirects to List of drainage basins by area. So perhaps something else..?
I don't think two of the deleted items ought to be moved at all: List of drainage basins by area and European Watershed. Neither are part of the list of watersheds discussed above. The list of drainage basins is sensibly linked from here. The other is a list of one, so there is no need to move it – if lots of other drainage-divide watersheds turn up, then fine, treat them as described above for drainage-basin watersheds and make a subsidiary disambig for them. I susupect that's unlikely though, because drainage divides are less likely to need articles.
Finally, whatever we do, I think we need to decide first before deleting anything here – deleting the list now just leaves those pages orphaned altogether. -- Richard New Forest ( talk) 23:00, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
In North America, the word "watershed" is used primarily to mean a drainage basin as, for example, in " Dugway Brook Watershed". Elsewhere in the English-speaking world its primary meaning is a drainage divide, as in " European watershed". This latter sense is its original meaning; the German word from which "watershed" is derived, " Wasserscheide", still means this exclusively.
This is a source of ongoing confusion, because most English speakers are unaware of the regional difference in the word's primary meaning. The result can be seen in this article, which is a mishmash of topics about drainage basins and drainage divides.
The distinction is mentioned briefly as the last item in the " Terms – different uses" section. It should be highlighted as the first item in this section, since a reader won't get far without understanding what a watershed is, and almost all readers are unfamiliar with either one meaning or the other. TypoBoy ( talk) 16:01, 21 March 2020 (UTC)