Talk:List of Australian bushfire seasons

Scope of the page

I think it would be good to expand this beyond a simple dot-point list of articles. A brief set of the key statistics and major events for each season would be useful for readers, either in table format or with a few dot points indented after each main entry. If this is to happen (and perhaps even if it doesn't), then I think the first sentence should be shortened to "This is a list of specific seasons of bushfires in Australia." - the current wording is unnecessarily self-referential. Dendrite1 (talk) 08:38, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for being interested! The table you mention already exists, I think, in the main article Bushfires in Australia. Besides fact no one is allowed to claim ownership, I'm eager to see your bold edits suggesting better wording. Fire away, so to speak... NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 08:41, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm aware of the table in Bushfires in Australia, but if every event of even moderate significance was included there it would probably become rather unwieldy (imagine if all fires equivalent to the Pulletop bushfire - which is on that list - were included in the table). Ideally that page would have the most major and historically significant fires, with a link to another page (such as this one) for moderate fires involving loss of life, houses, or large areas burnt, which the individual bushfire season articles can list the minor events. I'll get going on the edits soon. Dendrite1 (talk) 09:34, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm game. Happy editing!NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 09:57, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

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Proposal to change order: lives lost before property

Hi, I noticed we have property lost listed before lives lost. Would anyone be upset if I reversed that? Perhaps it's a result of some policy or guideline?--Philologia 19:33, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

RfC on article template details: season begin/end dates

In new Australian bushfire season articles, how do we indicate end dates?

• By Season As per longstanding practice in articles from 2002/03 to 20018/19. eg. "Winter (June) 2015 – Autumn (May) 2016" or slight variations.
• By Dates As per previous practice to list the beginning and end of significant fires, such as 1974–75 Australian bushfire season eg. "October 1974 – February 1975"

Sourcing for bushfire season is as per Bureau of Meteorology. Sourcing for dates is per RS pertinent to that year. More information and many sources may be found at Bushfires_in_Australia#Seasonality RfC relisted by Cunard (talk) at 00:01, 3 May 2020 (UTC). --Pete (talk) 18:53, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Survey

• Season This has worked well for the past 17 years, and has the benefit of an Australia-wide official source. We also avoid any wrangling over whether a particular bushfire is in the season or not, and how do we find a reliable source for that anyway? --Pete (talk) 19:06, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
• Season. The "major fires" approach can only be done after the fact, which doesn't make sense considering that these articles are usually written (and more comprehensive when they are) written during the fact - e.g. there could be a major bushfire tomorrow and it would still be in this season, so defining it as having ended doesn't make sense. The Drover's Wife (talk) 19:59, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
• By Dates Since there is no single "bush fire season" defined by Australia or any political body.Idealigic (talk) 20:58, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
• By Dates per Idealigic ~ HAL333 16:14, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
• By Dates. This is the English Wikipedia, not Aussiepedia, as such seasons are widely varied around the globe, and seasons do not match so communicating the information is best done with date method. Gleeanon409 (talk) 08:19, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

The current (or possibly now ended) Black Summer season is listed as "June 2019 - ongoing", which is a bit wishy-washy. Obviously the major hugely destructive bushfires of December to February have ended, and if we say that the season is ongoing it either introduces an element of crystal-balling ("OMG, Wikipedia says there is more to come!") or merely restates that we haven't reached the end of the official season yet, in which case why not just say what the official season is? --Pete (talk) 19:06, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

A classical Sydney/NSW bias on display there. The is NO universally recognised, nation-wide, official season!!!!!!!! Why are you so obsessed with this? It's one of the least significant issues with Wikipedia right now. HiLo48 (talk) 21:28, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Fire danger ratings are still being issued for the whole of WA and SA, with the latter stating "Fire Danger Ratings are routinely issued by 5pm daily during the fire season". Bidgee (talk) 12:32, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Well, what is the fire season? I don't mind if we have different articles for different areas. Do you think it is a useful way of structuring our encyclopaedia to help readers find information? --Pete (talk) 18:44, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

• Comment: It seems rather odd that input is suddenly sought without providing any context of previous discussion. Sounds like a certain direction is being by casting a wide net for a vote from a new batch of uninformed contributors. Some more information would be helpful. --Merbabu (talk) 22:55, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
  • See Talk:2019–20 Australian bushfire season for discussion there. Most of it probably archived by now. DR was suggested and the article protected to avoid edit-warring. Looking for guidance on future articles in the annual series so as to avoid any repetition. This looked like the most appropriate venue to discuss articles not yet created, such as 2020–21 Australian bushfire season. I've sought input from all the projects linked from this article and the 19/20 article. I don't particularly care about whether we go by season or date, but I do think that reducing heat on what is now a spirited topic area is helpful. Chewing over an RfC and picking a direction while the actual fires aren't raging saves effort for when the next round of bushfires begin. I wasn't intending to cut anybody out. I'll take up your implicit suggestion and put a notification on the 19/20 talk page. Thanks! --Pete (talk) 03:07, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Clarify: The examples for the infobox options are the same. Month Year – Month Year. GoodDay (talk) 15:35, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Validity of RFC

I really did not want to get involved in this because it is chewing up too much time over something relatively trivial. So might I suggest some things for people to consider:

• There is no single "bushfire season" in Australia defined by any academic or any staturatory or any political body.
• There are multiple "broad seasons" defined in different ways by Australian Governments and their agencies.
• "Bush fire danger periods", under various names, and degrees of danger, are typically/often defined down to local government areas.
• The term "yyyy-yy bush fire season" typically just appears in various mass media publications after some "significant" fires from any time around/after mid/early winter, and is typically accepted as the colloquil de jour definition from that time, to the point mass media starts to refer to the "yyyy+1-yy+1 bush fire season".

Hopefully the above are accepted as "facts".

So to the point of the RFC, how do we in WP define an Australian "bushfire season"?

I suggest that the whole underlying premis of the RFC is invalid on the basis of WP:OR. For us in WP to "define" a single season on the basis of start and end dates by definition has to be OR because there is no Australian definition for such, or for which any IRS can ever be found, hence we would have to construct a definition for the purposes of WP.

So what do we call our articles for annual cycles of Australian bushfires?

May be we just have to refer to them as "Australian bush fires yyyy-yy". And, yes, they all go for 12 months.

This still begs the question of what goes into which year.

I suggest we do not try to define a "single" "season". Instead for the purposes of collating material we switch from one cycle to the next at the end of May. Why, because the end of May is typically the minimum of any fire activity. (There are references available for this.) But, note that fires can and will burn from 31 May over into 1 June!

This may be a subtle change in approach, but I think it is an important one.

We can redirect from "yyyy-yy Australian bushfire season" to "Australian bush fires yyyy-yy", but we must lead readers to seasonality of bushfires in Australia.

Regards. Aoziwe (talk) 11:40, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that section demonstrates the impossibility of the task of neatly packaging up the eternal bushfires into yearly articles. There's always a fire burning somewhere. And anything we can do is always going to involve placing an artificial marker in the natural cycle. We pick an arbitrary length for our seasons of summer and autumn and so on. Other lands have different dates involving the solstice and equinox.

And the overwhelming refrain of the climate changers this summer has been that the bushfire season has been getting longer. Very true. It's a bit like asking how long is a piece of string. It can only be a maximum of twelve months per year, but the real question is when does it begin and end, and as you note, that depends on where you are standing. For someone in Darwin, bushfires don't happen in The Wet, but that's exactly when people in Melbourne are sniffing the smoke.

It is quite possible that if we went by serious fires - and how would we define them? - we could have a season one year that went from (say) May 2023 to July 2024. It's not a question easily answered.

Anyway, I'm not a meteorologist or a firefighter or whoever gets paid to do that stuff. I'm a Wikipedia editor, and my concern is how we should package up the information we get from reliable sources ao as to inform rather than puzzle or readers. And to do it in a way that doesn't involve editors yelling at each other, break out the popcorn and read the talk page not the article.

If this RfC leads to wider things and a discussion on different article names or different articles for different regions or whatever, great. But in the meantime, I'd like to get this little detail settled before the fires begin in the next season and we have to wrtite about them. --Pete (talk) 16:43, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

"I'd like to get this little detail settled..." The fact that your multiply repeated attempts to discuss this are gaining so little response now should tell you that most of the rest of us don't really care. HiLo48 (talk) 23:01, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

In regards to the NT, not all wet seasons are the same! NT had the potential for bushfire (or as Territorians call scrub fires) in December 2019! Bidgee (talk) 12:49, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

That's the very philosophical question we are discussing. In 1816, which was called the Year Without a Summer, is summer the period of time, or the warm season? This past year has seen a lot of discussion about fire seasons getting longer, which implies actual events rather than a fixed season, but we are required to use sources, and I'm not sure we have too many good ones on this.

As a matter of editing convenience, I favour using the BoM source, which has the advantage of using the national minimum as a convenient dividing line between annual seasons in May/June. If we tie the Australian bushfire season to actual events, we just set ourselves up for a continuing game of chase the source. If a Darwin source says the season is over, and a Melbourne source says it has not yet begun, then who do we believe? It's just going to be an endless round of talk page discussions with editors picking entrenched positions and arguing from ego rather than reality. --Pete (talk) 17:30, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

"...then who do we believe?" Assuming the sources are reasonable, we must believe them both. Which highlights the silliness of trying to fix a bushfire season for the whole country. Apart from the fact that somebody back in history decided to create an article with years and "Australia" in it, there really is no sensible reason. HiLo48 (talk) 00:10, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

"...with editors picking entrenched positions and arguing from ego rather than reality" Only one with the ego and keeps harping on about it is you. Oh BTW bushfire season is over? Well not near Perth!. Bidgee (talk) 09:55, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

It will be a surprise to some that I have an entrenched position! To be honest, I don't see it as a big deal. Either date or season is fine by me, so long as we dont spend every year fighting over which way to swing! A swallow doesnt make a summer, and a bushfire doesn't make a season; there is always a bushfire burning somewhere on the continent. To my mind, the only reasonable way of listing bushfires in Australia - at least for readers looking for information - is to group them in year-long chunks centred on summer. Perhaps the word "season" is a misnomer; what we are really doing is grouping extended bushfire events together for convenience. We have an annual article in this list of seasons, which surely suggests a twelve-month cycle? --Pete (talk) 18:33, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

"To be honest, I don't see it as a big deal." You're kidding, right? The ONLY person keeping this discussion alive is you. "...group them in year-long chunks centred on summer". We must not use a word that isn't used north of the Tropic of Capricorn. HiLo48 (talk) 22:31, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

"It will be a surprise to some that I have an entrenched position!" More like it would be a surprise that you didn't have an entrenched position, since it is you and only you that had an issue regarding the "end date" and now you want to shift the goal posts again! To be honest you have a I didn't hear that problem and it is getting to the point that it is disruptive to the project. Bidgee (talk) 04:42, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

It seems to me that one could just look at the historical average of fire extent over the course of one year long periods and determine where the nadir is. My guess would be that it happens somewhere around mid-winter, but wherever it is, we can say that a fire "season" (albeit a 12 month long one) starts and stops on that date each year. It's not perfect (some individual fires will cross seasons on that date), but it's not arbitrary. Icowrich (talk) 19:29, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Need a source, that's my point

In the 1800s section, Skyring has removed the words "European-recorded" so that the Black Thursday bushfires are now described as the "second largest...in history". That is, ALL of history. This is obviously nonsensical, so I reverted, asking him to come to the Talk page to discuss it. He simply re-reverted, with a pointless Edit summary, and DID NOT come here. So I have. Now, somewhere else, around a month ago, this user tried to start a campaign to say that, because it wasn't recorded in a written history at the time, Aboriginal history effectively didn't happen from a Wikipedia perspective. That campaign naturally went nowhere. I suspect this misbehaviour is coming from the same strange obsession. Does anyone else agree that the Black Thursday bushfires were the second largest in all of history? And what do we do with Skyring? HiLo48 (talk) 06:58, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm just asking for a source. If it's not recorded, then it's not a source. I trust you agree? --Pete (talk) 07:52, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Well, that would be the same source as for the statement directly above it: The 'Black Thursday' fires of 6 February 1851 in Victoria, burnt the largest area (approximately 5 million ha) in European-recorded history and killed more than one million sheep and thousands of cattle as well as taking the lives of 12 people (CFA 2003a; DSE 2003b). On 'Red Tuesday', 1 February 1898 in Victoria 260,000 ha were burnt, 12 people were killed and 2000 buildings were destroyed (DSE 2003b) from the ABS. I don't know why the Australian Bureau of Statistics feels the need to clarify "European-recorded", cause it's either recorded or it ain't and who cares who did the recording, but there you have it. Mr rnddude (talk) 08:14, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

How about we use the phrase "Australian history"? I think that Europeans recorded bushfires in other lands - like, well, Europe - before they got to Australia. --Pete (talk) 08:17, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

I'll respond properly tomorrow. I'm going to bed, and yes, I know it's only half past 6. Briefly, unless in my deliriously tired state I'm misreading the source, I think it is including all European records, including those outside Australia. So it means literal largest fire ever recorded by Europeans. There's also a disparity between the source and the article. The article reads second largest, but the source says largest. Has there been an even larger fire in the past 15 years? Mr rnddude (talk) 08:31, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

So, essentially in all history? 5 000 000 hectares is a lot. I make that an area the equivalent of a square with sides about 250 km. Looking at List of wildfires I'm not seeing anything larger earlier anywhere. A few larger later: 1987 Black Dragon fire with 18 000 000 acres, though the areas given in the article are contradictory. And of course the recently concluded fires here. --Pete (talk) 10:48, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

That's how I read it. If that's not what was intended, then it is poorly worded. I cannot understand why government sources need to be written so confusingly. Are there no copy-editors to employ? Mr rnddude (talk) 13:13, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

In our article, there is in fact a more recent and larger fire. The units given for areas are inconsistent, so it's hard to tell without a calculator, but there is a bigger one. But if the fire in question was at that time the biggest in *all* of history, then we should use appropriate wording. Consistent with sources, of course. --Pete (talk) 17:19, 5 April 2020 (UTC)