Talk: Nile

From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.

As requested, I am discussing my changes here. My changes are limited to the opening paragraph of the page.

First, I am changing "The Nile, in Africa, is generally accepted to be the longest rivers on Earth."

I am changing this because (clearly) it is not generally accepted to be the longest, otherwise there wouldn't have been this edit war in the first place.

I am changing it to "The Nile, in Africa, is one of the two longest rivers on Earth, with the Amazon River of South America being the other."

I believe that this is a factual statement and NPOV.

Second, I am changing "The length of Amazon and Nile have been reason of much debate."

I am changing this mostly for grammatical reasons.

I am changing it to "Which is longer has long been the subject of much debate."

Third, I am removing the sentence "The Amazon River, in South America, is the greatest river in the world."

I am removing this for several reasons. First, no mention is made of what "greatest" means. Second, a claim that the Amazon River is "the greatest" river, in some unspecified way, has no place in an article on the Nile River. Third, it certainly has no place in the middle of a paragraph about the length of the Nile.

If someone wants to put such a statement back in, I strongly suggest being specific about what you mean instead of relying on the subjective term "greatest", and mentioning it in a subordinate fashion (for example, "Which is longer has been the subject of much debate (although the Amazon unquestionably has a greater volume of flow).").

Fourth, I am changing the sentence "Length of rivers vary over time especially in the plains (where rivers change course) besides the point from which river length is measured is not always agreed upon, hence most sources disagree on the length of the rivers."

I am changing this mostly for grammatical purposes and purposes of clarification.

I am changing it to "This is, for the most part, due to two reasons: First, the lengths of rivers vary over time (especially in plains, where rivers often change course). Second, the point from which the length of a river is measured is not always agreed upon."

-Rwv37 01:27, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)

All seems generally uncontroversial. Do we have a scientific citation or two that addresses the competing claims? Presumably this issue is not something made up by amateurs... Stan 05:05, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your effort to clearly specify why and what changes you made. Please now, can you point to a resource which says that Nile is not generally accepted to be longer than Amazon. From all the google searches I could carry out, I could not find a single resource that said the Nile was not the longest.

Try these if you may

• longest river
• Amazon longest river (ofcoz - google does a keyword search not a logic search)
• nile second longest river

• "Amazon is the longest river" 28 Results and not all of them talk about Amazon being the longest.

• "Nile is the longest river" 589 Results and most of them talk about Nile being longest.

• Encyclopædia Britannica Article Nile
• Encyclopædia Britannica Article on Amazon

• Article from Encarta - Nile
• Article from Encarta - Amazon

If the links do not work please do a search yourself.

Well if this does not define generally accepted what does? I must correct myself now -- I am not saying (anymore) that I could not find a single webpage that claimed Amazon is the longest river but none of them were credible enough - in fact quite a few were wikipedia articles. I even did a Google news search to see if there was something new - well I could not find anything. Still, if there is some new discovery that I do not know about - sorry to waste your time.

most sources disagree on the length of the rivers should be added. Finally, the problem in the case of Nile (I think) has more to do with the point to which the length is measured rather than from. Not sure tho. -AY 09:32, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Regarding "Please now, can you point to a resource which says that Nile is not generally accepted to be longer than Amazon.": Sure. Try [1]], from which I quote:

"The Amazon is known everywhere as the largest (volume and area) basin of fresh water on Earth. Ongoing research undertaken at the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE) indicates that the Amazon is also proving to be the longest river. Brand new features extracted from LANDSAT temporal data are showing new routes for the Amazon main stream, mostly in the flooding season. (...)"

"Besides those longer meanders and channels a new birthsite of the Amazon headwaters was mapped following the Ucayalli and the Apurimac waters. The new site liess deep in the snowed cliffs (nevados) of the Chila Mountains part of the Andean Range in the vicinity of Arequipa, south of Peru. The new first slope of the Amazon was depicted through LANDSAT images. (...)"

"Following just the longer channels/meanders and measuring the new segment in the Chila Mountains the standing length of the Amazon (6,550km) is increased by more than 300 kilometres. The figures are still partial because the whole River is being geo-referenced in order to have a GIS support to proceed with the measurements. The current length of the Amazon (6,850km) is slightly longer than the Nile (6,670km) (...)"

Would you like more than one resource? I'll find them if you want. Right now, though, I have to go to work. -Rwv37 12:35, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)

Interesting - I think this and the Amazon page should reference the issue, and it would be good to have a two-paragraph section in River talking about this in some more depth - first para to explain concept of length measurement and touch on the complexities, and second summarizing the question of longest. Readers interested solely in the Nile just want to know that "longest" is unsettled, if the unsettledness piques interest, they'll click on the link. Stan 16:17, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That sounds like a good plan to me. -Rwv37 22:13, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)

Since I'm back from work now, I figured I would give a few more sources:

1. [Encarta's "River" entry] says, in the "Measuring Rivers" section: "Scientists have traditionally considered the Nile River to be the longest river in the world, although in the 1990s some debate arose as to whether the Amazon River is longer, as new satellite maps revealed a small tributary in the Andes Mountains." Note two things about this: (1) "have traditionally", past tense, and not "do generally"; (2) No refutation of the claim is given.
2. [EcoWorld] says, "the Nile and the Amazon can both be called the longest river in the world depending on how you define longest. With several mouths, the exact point at which the Amazon ends continues to be uncertain. Counting the Para? estuary (the most distant mouth), the Amazon?s length is approximately 4,190 miles. Once officially recorded as having a length of 4,145 miles, the Nile has since lost a few miles due to the formation of Lake Nasser behind the Aswan High Dam."
3. [RadioPrague] says, "A joint Czech-Peruvian expedition has confirmed that the Amazon is the longest river in the world, ending years of dispute on the subject. Scientists from Lima's San Carlos University and Prague's Charles University announced after months of research in South America that the remotest source of the Amazon river was a stream in the Peruvian region of Arequipa. Quoted by Russia's Itar-Tass news agency, they said the Amazon was 7,062 kilometres in length, 500 kilometres longer than its nearest rival, the Nile. Their findings now have to be confirmed by satellite."
4. [The European Working Group on Amazonia] says, "The main axis, along the Amazonas, Solimões, and Ucayali Rivers, is 6,672 kilometres in length, longer, in fact, than the Nile (6,671 kilometres)."

If you would like more than the four I've listed here plus the one I listed this morning, please let me know and I'll post more. -Rwv37 22:13, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply I was away. I am happy with whatever links you have listed, thanks. Again, sorry to waste your time. AY 13:22, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

No need to apologize. It wasn't a waste of time. On the contrary, it was interesting, and I learned a bunch of stuff that I wouldn't have otherwise. -Rwv37 22:21, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

"Nelios"?

Contributed by the august 209.233.19.9, the claim is made that "The word Nile comes from the word Nelios, which is Greek for river valley." I have some doubts on this and would like to see a source, as as far as I can tell:

• The word Nile comes to us by way of Latin from Greek "Neilos" (Νειλος), not "Nelios"
• (This may be an ordinary typo, as there doesn't seem to be a Greek word "nelios", either with epsilon or eta.)
• This word only appears to mean "Nile", not "river valley". (Perhaps it meant "river valley" in the language the Greeks borrowed it from?)

Can anyone shed some light on this? If not, "Nelios" should be respelled and the information on meaning removed. —Muke Tever 23:21, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

At some point, I'd like to see added the fact that the source of the Nile was a mystery to which explorers as ancient as Heroditus and as modern as David Livingstone devoted a good portion of their lives to no avail. I don't know when the real source was discovered, but suffice it to say that the debate still caused quite a row even up to the 1880s, especially in places like the Royal Geographical Society. Debates on the subject attracted crowds of Londoners and incited other explorations.

DAS