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Category:Types of planets

The category redirect Category:Types of planets (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion. 65.93.15.213 (talk) 04:20, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Astrology?

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Algol#astrology.3F. MakeSense64 (talk) 09:32, 7 July 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Someone else care to comment on this? The Astrology section in Algol was just significantly expanded, with what I could call some rather questionable statements. - Parejkoj (talk) 16:31, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I just reverted the changes and made a new section on the Talk page. It is a questionable development when astrologers start taking over astronomy pages with GA status, so more editor comments will be welcome. MakeSense64 (talk) 16:51, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

1999 LE31

It's my first asteroid article. Could someone please give it a quick look-see? Many thanks if you can. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 17:53, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Planet GANs

Looks like there are a number of planet articles queued up at WP:GAN#ASTRO, if you have an interest in performing a GA review. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:40, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Did a quick scan for spurious alternative designations and tagged as appropriate... personally am not really up for doing full GA reviews at the moment. Icalanise (talk) 17:03, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Barnard's Star

"So this star is notable for moving 10 arcseconds per year. And this article gives its position to an accuracy of an arcsecond, but based on a 1997 reference. This is clearly useless. The position data needs to specify the date to which it applies." Bulwersator (talk) 20:49, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I just updated the infobox coordinates to the J2000 epoch, per the listed cite and as noted in the header. As for whether that information is useless, well then you must have exceptionally sharp eyes.... Regards, RJH (talk) 22:13, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

That problem is shared by all stars with high proper motion. I can't see as there would be a solution, except to add a year to the coordinates. 65.94.77.96 (talk) 06:44, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Not useless at all, so long as the epoch is given along with the position and proper motion. It is then a straightforward task to calculate the position at any given time (at least over a time scale of a few decades to a century, depending on how high the proper motion is and how accurately you need the position). RJH, note that there is no such thing as 'the J2000 epoch', as J2000 is an equinox. See Epoch (astronomy) for an (admittedly poor) explanation of the difference. Published coordinates should always use (and specify) the epoch when the observations were obtained. Modest Genius ^talk 19:49, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thanks MG. Do you know then what 'ep' means on the SIMBAD lookup pages? Are we in error for using 'epoch' as the infobox parameter for templates like {{Infobox galaxy}}? Regards, RJH (talk) 22:06, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, that is confusing, since SIMBAD returns things like 'FK5 coord. (ep=J2000 eq=2000)', which makes no sense. The equinox of FK5 is J2000, and those coordinates have an epoch' 2000.0. But the coordinate system itself cannot have an epoch, whilst they list 'ep=J2000' for IRCS. Hidden in their help is the cryptic statement 'Note that ICRS system is only sensitive to epoch, not to equinox'. Funnily enough this is something that astronomers themselves often confuse. Maybe the definitions have been transposed in SIMBAD? I'd have to find something with a non-standard epoch to check.

As for the infobox, epoch is pretty much irrelevant for galaxies, because I don't think anyone has ever detected the proper motion of a galaxy. It won't hurt though, but the equinox should also be given. Epoch is relevant for things like {{Starbox short}}, which already lists both epoch and equinox (though erroneously lists the epoch as J2000.0, which confuses the epoch of 2000.0 with the equinox of J2000). Modest Genius ^talk 19:24, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

{{Sky}} & {{need sky}}

This brings up a related issue. The coordinates template {{sky}} uses Jupiter as its icon, but Jupiter clearly cannot use such a template, it moves much too rapidly, needing to be updated daily. (This also applies to {{Need sky}}) 65.94.77.96 (talk) 06:48, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, perhaps a sextant image would serve? RJH (talk) 22:02, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

^Good idea. Better than a star, which could be confused with the FA star. And a galaxy might imply galactic coordinates. Modest Genius ^talk 19:26, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

List of well-studied minor planets

Because of the proliferation of minor planet pages and the extensive list by which they are categorized, I've been thinking that it may make sense to build a shorter list of just those bodies that have been more extensively studied. In particular, a compact summary table showing some key parameters in a common format. Here is an example:

The following list of well-studied minor planets consists of asteroids that have been the target of extended astronomical studies, allowing their orbital elements and physical properties to be well established. The mean dimensions, rotation period, geometric albedo and spectral type are all known for these objects. A few of these bodies have been observed in more detail by unmanned spacecraft.

Designation	Year Found	Orbital Elements				Rotation Period (hours)	Maximum Size	Albedo (geometric)	Spectral Type	Notes
		a (AU)	e	i (Ecliptic)	P (years)
2 Pallas	1802	2.772	0.231	34.838°	4.62	7.81	544 km	0.159	B
3 Juno	1804	2.672	0.256	12.968°	4.37	7.21	320 km	0.238	S
4 Vesta	1807	2.361	0.089	7.135°	3.63	5.34	529 km	0.423	V
5 Astraea	1845	2.573	0.193	5.369°	4.13	16.80	167 km	0.227	S
243 Ida	1884	2.862	0.045	1.138°	4.84	4.63	53.6 km	0.238	S
253 Mathilde	1885	2.647	0.266	6.738°	4.31	417.74	52.8 km	0.044	Cb
433 Eros	1898	1.458	0.223	10.829°	1.76	5.27	34.4 km	0.25	S

Would this make sense? Does this violate any of the WP principles for what articles should be kept? Is there a better name?

Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:38, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

What classifies as "Well studied"? E.g, to what level of accuracy must parameters be known to be considered "well-studied"? Do sources define such a thing? To me it seems a bit of a fuzzy definition for an article, and that often leads to disputes and disruption.

Also, what happened to 21 Lutetia, 25143 Itokawa, 951 Gaspra etc? ChiZeroOne (talk) 20:14, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Bleargh what's the point, we'd just end up with people quoting WP:PAPER and going on about how everything has intrinsic notability and who are we to judge anyway... Icalanise (talk) 21:48, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

The introduction defines "well-studied" by the requirement that it supply all of the requisite data. We can always add some type of accuracy criteria to further cull the list, or the requirement that the object have X number of published scholarly papers. We could also use the limiting criteria that the asteroids have been radar detected. Perhaps: List of radar-detected asteroids?

Note that this table is just an example, so it doesn't include everything. (I.e. I didn't want to fill it out more fully only to have it get deleted.) RJH (talk) 14:47, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

"well-studied" sounds odd. Why not "List of minor planets by size" ? Is more likely to be kept as there are similar list articles already. e.g. List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size. MakeSense64 (talk) 18:16, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I was going to go with "List of radar-detected asteroids", because the list is well defined, limited, and includes many well-studied asteroids. However, perhaps surprisingly, the resulting list would not include 243 Ida. But I don't want to go with size either because that would not justify the orbital elements. Hmm, perhaps "List of instrument-resolved minor planets" then. RJH (talk) 20:44, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Naming it "List of minor planets by size" doesn't mean you cannot set additional criteria for inclusion on the list. So besides a minimum size, the lede can state "orbital elements being well-studied and established" as a requirement to make the list. Then you pretty much get what you propose here, which I think is a good idea because the list of all minor planets runs in the thousands.

Using a common name just means your list article is more likely to go unchallenged. It doesn't limit you in the possible choices of criteria for the list. You could for example include a 2nd list in the same article that lists the minor planets that were observed by unmanned spacecraft. Check out WP:STANDALONE. MakeSense64 (talk) 05:00, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

At this point I think I'm finding enough reference material to make at least a decently notable article on the topic of image resolution of minor planets. It's useful, for example, in the search for asteroid companions. Hence, I think I'm going to go with that theme for now. In the worst case, I can always rename it to match your suggestion. Thank you for your useful feedback. Regards, RJH (talk) 20:00, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Inspiral

It seems a little odd to make an astronomical article out of a verb like this. RJH (talk) 21:33, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

It's a correct technical term, and I can't think of any other situation where it might be used. If necessary for disambiguation it could be renamed 'binary inspiral'. Modest Genius ^talk 14:29, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Use of {{val}} for values

I've created and introduced the {{val}} template for making it easy to create a uniform representation of scientific values that includes uncertainty, exponents and units. It's already used in many pages, both by editors manually replacing values and automatically through the use of wrapper templates. I've noticed that pages related to this project do not yet seem to use it and I'm hoping to change this. The benefits of using this template are many:

1. Easy of use; no need for inserting characters such as ±, ×, − (minus) or html manually.
2. Correct formatting of values according to the MoS: spacing, uncertainty, exponent, etc...
3. Handles scientific notation
4. Uses {{nowrap}} to prevent line-wrapping in the middle of a value.
5. Less prone to typos, as some sanity checks are done on the values.
6. Uniform layout for all values on all Wikipedia pages.
7. Easy to maintain; future modifications to the MOS for values do not require editing all pages that contain values: only the template needs to be adjust.
8. Potential for automatic conversion between values to different units (not implemented).

I've started to introduce this template in pages I visit (see for instance GSC 03549-02811 and TrES-2b). I noticed that you have templates for displaying information in boxes, including automatic formatting of value errors. I am hoping that it's possible to modify these to use {{val}}. I'm also hoping that you'll join me in replacing existing values with {{val}}.

    — SkyLined (talk) 19:04, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

discussion on comet names

Please see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#comet_names, regarding the usage of hyphens or dashes in comet names. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:56, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Future of Earth FAC

Future of Earth is up for featured article candidacy. Please add a review if you have an interest. Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:38, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

The article was not promoted as there was no support. Thanks to those who contributed comments; I'll work on getting those implemented. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:51, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Hercules Superclusters or Hercules Supercluster

I added the content. I'm not sure if the sources refer to supercluster or superclusters. Maybe the page even needs moving. Please take a look if you have time. Many thanks. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:33, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

By the way, there are lots of redlinks to Hercules Supercluster, but is listed as Hercules Superclusters at Supercluster. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 13:04, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Probably the plural is the best option (there isn't enough content to merit two articles on the individual superclusters), but the singular should be a redirect to there. Modest Genius ^talk 20:27, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Done. Many thanks. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 07:45, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Huge raft of articles need vetting.

Per this thread at WT:AST, a well-intentioned very prolific editor has created a huge number of articles that could really use vetting from people who can tell what components are notable, verifiable, synthesis, original research, and so forth. The list in that thread contains astronomy and celestial object articles (I'm not going to sort through the other topics tonight). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 00:25, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Dwarf planets - what is the standard for Wikipedia labelling an object as a DP?

I would really appreciate as much input as possible at Talk:Dwarf planet to help resolve a dispute over what objects we are labelling as dwarf planets. Wikipedia has generally used the IAU as the guide, saying that there are five objects (Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, and Ceres) currently categorized as dwarf planets with numerous others as likely candidates. Kwamikagami has been repeatedly changing this to add four other bodies (Sedna, Quaoar, Orcus, and 2007 OR10) based on astronomer Mike Brown's web posts. There is an active discussion on the DP talk page, but Kwamikagami is continuing to change articles to his version even while the discussion is under way. (I have been reverting back to the existing consensus version repeatedly, but cannot see this as a viable long-term solution and thus would like to get as wide a consensus as possible to resolve this.) Thanks in advance. --Ckatz^chat_spy 16:57, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

User:Kwami is not an astronomy editor, he is a linguistics editor. The IAU is the sole arbiter of what is and is not a dwarf planet, or a planet of the solar system for that matter. 70.24.247.40 (talk) 02:05, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Good article nomination backlog

There's a five week backlog of astronomy articles at WP:GAN#ASTRO. Please take a look if you have an interest in the process. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:25, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It looks like these have been addressed. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:58, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Suggested names for exoplanets by professional astronomer

Whilst researching naming conventions for exoplanets I came across an opinion essay Naming the extrasolar planets on the arXiv site, which suggested names for 403 exoplanets. As these suggestions came from a professional exoplanet astronomer working at a respected astronomical institution, I thought these would be useful additions to the relevant exoplanet articles - most of which are stubs and go do with a bit more info! I proposed to make the edits in batches and did about 20 of them in the first batch. I have since discovered that Aldaron has rv them all saying: "There's no end to "suggested names" none of which are official." I considered rv them all back, but thought I'd raise the matter here first.

I don't agree that there's 'no end' to suggested names, especially suggestions made by professional astronomers. And there are no 'official' names at all, not excluding the catalogue names used as titles on Wikipedia! The IAU not only doesn't give exoplanets proper names, but it also hasn't approved any naming scheme for exoplanets. All such names come from suggestions by professional astronomers. Granted, these are usally, but not always, from the discoverers, which could be argued gives them a bit more weight, but such an argument is POV. It is not for us to adjudicate between which suggestions are the most worthy, but I took account of the fact that these were secondary suggestions in the form of my edits, which all read: 'Wladimir Lyra of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy suggested the name '(as given in the essay)' for this planet.' I also note that the 'unofficial' names Osiris, Bellerophon and Methusaleh appear in the text relating to those exoplanet articles on Wikipedia.

This is information from a reliable source, and I see no reason why it cannot be included in the relevant articles. To allay concerns, I would suggest alternative wording: 'The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has no plans to assign actual names to exoplanets. However, Wladimir Lyra of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy considered the IAU's logic flawed, and suggested names for the 403 extrasolar planet candidates known at October 2009. The name he suggested for this planet is '(as given in essay)'. Cuddlyopedia (talk) 08:29, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

This has been discussed before. The conclusion was NOT to add the names. One astronomer does not have the right to make this decision. Planets are like stars, there are so many of them that catalog names are just fine. -- Kheider (talk) 14:47, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Can you point me to this discussion (for interest, not to dispute)? I did check the 21 archives for this page and found nothing pertinent before making my edits, and it's always handy to be aware of consensus before editing; though often not easy to become so aware! Cuddlyopedia (talk) 12:46, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

In addition I'd argue it gives undue weight to these names for the objects, comparison with other names in other articles is misplaced. If the names here were popularly used then I could agree, (even though badly applied - rant) Kepler-16b is known to a lot of people (including professionals) as "Tatooine" due to NASA's press-releases, and indeed the page does mention this connection. But no matter how reliable the source for the names here are, it is just one source and we well know these names will almost exclusively be used by just that source for the time being. They may eventually catch on, but they haven't yet.

This is a point many editors on here forget, just because a statement can be reliably sourced does not mean it's appropriate for Wikipedia. ChiZeroOne (talk) 16:09, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, I see the force in that argument, and won't press my edits further. Cuddlyopedia (talk) 12:46, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Red Link Recovery Live

Howdy. For a while now, the Red Link Recovery Project has been using a tool (named Red Link Recovery Live) to find and correct unnecessarily red links in Wikipedia articles. For example, for the red link Asiago Observatory, Cima Eckar on the article 7847 Mattiaorsi it might suggest that the link be changed to Asiago Observatory, Cima Ekar.

The tool currently has around 500 suggestions for corrections to red links on articles relevant to this project (those in Category:Astronomical_objects_articles_by_quality). Each time you visit this link, you'll be shown two or three of these suggested fixes. I'll be delighted if anyone with a few minutes to spare would care to do so and help improve the quality of this project's articles. -TB (talk) 18:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

User is factory creating articles for un-notable objects

There is a discussion taking place at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy#User is factory creating articles for un-notable objects regarding the notability of, in particular, minor planet articles. They are debating a notability threshold. If you have an interest, you may want to participate. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:59, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Template:Starbox character

I added the parameter "type" in the Template:Starbox character. so other types of stars beside those in the MS could be classified.

Gark (talk) 11:34, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

By "type", do you mean the luminosity class derived from the spectral class field? It seems too vague to me. Perhaps "Evolutionary stage"? RJH (talk) 14:25, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Two systems named Mu Cas?

There seems to be two star systems designated Mu Cassiopeiae with no apparent means to tell them apart by their name. The first is a binary star system at 7.5 pc;[1] the second is an eclipsing binary at 1.7 kpc.[2] RJH (talk) 22:27, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Both papers come up at SIMBAD for Mu Cas [3] 70.24.251.158 (talk) 05:05, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

They must have fixed up the Mu Cas lookup. When I searched SIMBAD the other day, I was getting the more distant star; now I get the 30 Cas entry. Interesting. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:17, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

List of instrument-resolved minor planets

Okay, it's been released into the wilds. This is my attempt to create an alternate list of notable minor planets based on the criteria that they have been individually resolved by some means. It's not complete, of course. Regards, RJH (talk) 01:20, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Draft of guideline for astronomical object notability

A draft proposal for a guideline of notability for astronomical objects is being discussed before a request for comment is put out to the general WP community. Editors at the main talk page for WikiProject Astronomy have reached the consensus that a guideline is warranted, and this proposal has been written in the spirit of similar notability guidelines, and also addresses many suggestions and concerns from editors. The community-wide discussion will be the next step before formal guideline adoption. Please read the proposed draft and contribute to the final discussion before RfC. AstroCog (talk) 02:41, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Epsilon Eridani 2nd FAC nomination

Following reviews and further edits, I've nominated Epsilon Eridani for the second time as a Featured Article candidate. Please take a look if you have an interest. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:37, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

The article has been promoted. Thank you for your comments and contributions. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:08, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Huzzah! Good work, RJH. AstroCog (talk) 17:44, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you kindly. It does seem to be getting more and more difficult to get articles through FAC these days. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:55, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

User generated exoplanet articles

This is just a head's up that user Starkiller88 has recently been constructing stub exoplanet articles, rather than merging them into the star articles per what I believe is prior consensus. He or she has also reverted attempts to change those articles to redirects. The user's talk page (User talk:Starkiller88) is awash with AfD warnings, and he or she doesn't reply to messages. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:21, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Rename: Gas giant -> Giant planet

I have proposed that gas giant be renamed to giant planet, since there has been a shift in usage in scientific and general press and research publications since the article was originally written. This shift has been particularly pronounced in the last half-decade. Please lodge your opinion on whether the request is a good idea at talk:gas giant.

70.24.248.23 (talk) 13:58, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

RfC for proposal to promote Notability (astronomical objects) to notability guideline

Please join the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(astronomical_objects). Many editors here weighed in during a long discussion. I would like to see as many astronomy editors as possible adding comments to the discussion. AstroCog (talk) 01:24, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

An administrator has indicated that they will close the RfC (when prompted) on December 3rd (this Saturday). If anyone from this community hasn't left comments there, now is the time to do it. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 13:54, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Most Earth-like

I have suggested that the section on "most Earth-like" be moved from Terrestrial planet to Earth analog, since the latter article is more appropriate. Please discuss this proposal at Talk:Terrestrial planet.

70.24.248.23 (talk) 23:28, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Saturn for TFA

In my naîveté I nominated Saturn for Todays Featured Article. This seems to turn into a kind of Reassessment of FA worthiness. I am certainly not able to do FA level editing in Astronomy. But I imagine that this is a high priority task for this project. Right? --Ettrig (talk) 07:21, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Saturn

The Saturn article is about to get the front page treatment. Unfortunately the article, as it stands, may be a little weak compared to the current FA criteria. For example it doesn't seem sufficiently comprehensive and a number of the citations seem tertiary. I tried to enhance it, but the article may need further attention. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:56, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Categories for object designations

At CfD, Category:Kepler has been proposed for renaming. In my opinion, all of Category:Astronomical catalogues should be considered, as category names like Category:Wolf objects are rather ambiguous. We would appreciate knowledgeable suggestions as to a suitable scheme.- choster (talk) 16:49, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

With regards to the Category:Wolf objects, I'm not sure what to suggest other than renaming it to Category:Wolf catalogue objects. However, I seem to recall that the "catalogue" part of those category names had previously been removed.

Unlike the Wolf or Ross catalogues, having categories for non-specialized catalogues doesn't seem especially useful since they contain so many objects. (HD contains 225,300 stars, while HIP contains over 100,000 and BD has 324,188.) But that's just my opinion. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:41, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Moon

Portal:Moon is up for peer review. Please comment here. Thanks. JJ98 (Talk / Contributions) 21:16, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

KOI category

I thought I'd check here first before setting up a new category. The number of Kepler-related star articles has been steadily increasing, so I think we'll need a corresponding category under Category:Astronomical catalogues of stars. Would Category:Kepler Object of Interest make sense? Regards, RJH (talk) 23:29, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Sure, why not? 76.65.128.198 (talk) 06:46, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I'll wait a little bit more and see if anyone objects. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:21, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

How is this different from the regular Kepler category, being discussed [Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_December_5#Category:Kepler here]? Is it just that one is stars and the other is planets? Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 00:50, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this would be for the stars. Category:Kepler is under Category:Astronomical catalogues of planets. Regards, RJH (talk) 01:31, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

AM Canum Venaticorum

Hello. I've tried to expand this article to include an explanation of the variability. If you wouldn't mind, please could you take a look and see if I got the details correct? I'm sure the article can be further improved, but I'm hoping to at least make the overall picture accurate per the sources. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:52, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The article should probably say something about helium flashes that AM CVn systems can experience. Some of them may qualify as faint supernova. Ruslik_Zero 18:36, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I'll see what I can dig up. Thank you! Regards, RJH (talk) 20:24, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Rename NSTED --> Exoplanet Archive for Astronomy Starbox reference infoboxes

Currently the Starbox_reference infobox template refers to the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database, which is no longer in operation as of December 2011. It has been replaced with the NASA Exoplanet Archive. Thus, all references to NStED in roughly 139 articles for individual exoplanets (e.g. HD_63765, HD_24496) must be updated, but to do this, the template must be updated.

Here is the article on the Starbox reference template: Template:Starbox_reference

I am new to this process but I am posting here because I wish to follow the appropriate process for updating the template, and the article asked that I post to this Talk page. Could someone please let me know how else I can get the template updated so it reflects the new archive?

Thank you, Mharbut (talk) 19:18, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Hello Mharbut. It looks like we'll need a new search path from the new site, but that looks to be easy enough. Do you know if the standard abbreviation is 'NStEA' now? Regards, RJH (talk) 19:50, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I went ahead and implemented a change to the template. It seems to work okay, although I adopted the old field parameter name. Hope that works for everybody. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:24, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Hello RJH. Thanks for your help with the template. The old search path will work, but ideally it should say:

http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/Sieve/nph-sieve?&objstr=

with the object name appended at the end. So, a search for HAT-P-35b would look like:

http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/Sieve/nph-sieve?&objstr=HAT-P-35b

There isn't really a new acronym for the Exoplanet Archive, but many people have taken to abbreviating the name to "ExoArchive." I hope this helps. Thanks again! Mharbut (talk) 18:25, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Since nobody raised an objection, I did implement the changes to the template. Hopefully it will work okay on other articles. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:51, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Mass redirects/renames

A new editor named "Article editor" has been making mass redirects and moves of planet articles, particularly for Kepler-based topics. If you have an interest in that area, you might want to check Special:Contributions/Article editor. I don't know if that is a sock puppet account, but I suspect it might be. Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 00:24, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Wow, 6 years of almost only redirect creation... 76.65.128.132 (talk) 12:56, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Now there's someone on a mission! Regards, RJH (talk) 16:13, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, many of these are hard to argue against. AstroCog (talk) 16:46, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes you're right. There have been some cases of mass edits of astronomy articles in the past that weren't particularly beneficial, so I guess I tend to post a notice when another mass edit pops up. Sorry. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:13, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

No need to apologize. This stuff should be pointed out. I just couldn't find anything objectionable this time when I looked at it. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 21:23, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

'absolute_magnitude' template?

In many of the star articles, I noticed editors have taken it upon themselves to compute a value for absolute magnitude. As nothing is done to properly cite these results, I think it might make sense to have a standard template that can be used in references. Here's the output of a draft {{absolute_magnitude}} template with parameters 'app_mag', 'dist_pc', 'log_dist_pc' and 'abs_mag':

For a star with a negligible extinction value, its absolute visual magnitude M_v is determined as follows:

Mv	= m – 5(log10( D ) – 1)
	= {{app_mag}} – 5(log10({{dist_pc}) – 1)
	= {{app_mag}} – 5({{log_dist_pc}} – 1) = {{abs_mag}}

where m is the apparent visual magnitude, D is the distance in parsecs and log₁₀ is the base-10 logarithm. See:
Lang, Kenneth R. (2006), Astrophysical Formulae, Astronomy and Astrophysics Library, vol. 1 (3 ed.), Birkhäuser, p. 31, ISBN 3540296921

Does this seem reasonable? Regards, RJH (talk) 02:46, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, in thinking about it, perhaps the template should include an optional 'extinction' parameter and some accompanying logic that would modify the wording and formula accordingly. There would need to be a matching parameter for the starbox template. RJH (talk)

Template looks fine to me, with the exception that it doesn't propagate uncertainty in m and D. Personally, though, I don't think editors should be computing values themselves. I've seen it in articles, and it strikes me as OR. Distances are pretty tough to come by and there could be more than one published distance for a particular object, not to mention the uncertainty involved. If an object is notable enough for an article, I would imagine there is at least an estimate for M in a published source. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 03:43, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

True, although some computation is permitted via a liberal interpretation of WP:CALC. Thus far, I've been remove the absolute magnitude estimate whenever I update the parallax, since it is based on an obsolete value. However, a problem with using cited sources for the absolute magnitude is that, when you find them, they too are usually based on older parallax estimates.

I have been looking around for a good citation for the formula to generate an approximation to the error range after applying a logarithm (or exponentiation in the case of log( L/L_☉ ) = value + Δvalue), but haven't had much luck. (I've been told it's called a transfer function.) Regards, RJH (talk) 15:45, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Looks like that topic is covered by the Propagation of uncertainty article. RJH (talk)

How is this better than just linking to absolute magnitude when one is first quoted? As you point out, there are all sorts of extra subtleties that can't be covered in a succinct footnote. Modest Genius ^talk 21:51, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

The benefit would be that it shows the values being used for the computation. If the infobox values are later modified, then the discrepancy will be evident. Other than that, well Wikipedia isn't considered a reliable source, per WP:CIRCULAR. :-) Regards, RJH (talk) 01:53, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't sound like there is much enthusiasm for this, so I'll let it pass. Thank you for the feedback. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:52, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Notability (astronomical objects) promoted to guideline

I just saw that an admin has promoted the essay to guideline. Huzzah! Thanks to all involved, especially those who assisted in its developed here at the WikiProject. Thanks also to those who commented at the RfC, both in support and opposition, because both kinds of comments helped to strengthen the guideline.

Please "watch" the astronomy article alerts for any new PRODs and AfDs. If and when WP:NASTRO is used during one of these processes, we should be there to make sure it is used properly and not abused. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 03:38, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations and Huzzah! Thanks to all involved, especially those such as Astrocog who stepped up to lead. According to an adminstrator named Carl, this is what must be done so that they may be implemented:

Notablity Guideline Implementation To Do List

1. Wait for the new notability guideline to become a guideline, so that it can be referred to in the discussion.  Done
2. Make a list of all the articles affected and which page they ought to redirect to.
3. Start a discussion on the WikiProject page to get documented consensus that the list is right.
4. Get a bot operator to go through and make the redirects (you can ask at WP:BOTREQ).

Step TWO

What does it entail? I'm not qualified to sort the guideline violators from the notable ones and would need help, if I should be involved at all. Chrisrus (talk) 16:36, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, step #2 may be a massive job potentially consisting of thousands of articles. Not every poorly sourced minor planet article is going to fail WP:NASTRO. A certain level of caution is called for, I think. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:40, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I suggest you start with the numerous small (<20km in size; H>12; There are 5078 objects in the solar system with H<12) main-belt asteroids that never leave the main belt, and do not do anything special like outgas as a comet, pass near a major body, etc. I also suggest only picking on the articles that are one line sub-stubs. I think any article currently using multiple inline references and sentences should be left alone for now. I do not think this guideline should be used as a license to kill every asteroid that has not had a peer-reviewed paper published. -- Kheider (talk) 17:01, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Why wouldn't this work:

1. Give the bot this List of minor planets
2. Give the bot this List of notable minor planets
3. Tell the bot to redirect all those which are on List One that are not also on List Two.

Would that work? Chrisrus (talk) 06:55, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think so and here's an example of why not: 6489 Golevka can readily satisfy the notability criteria based on publications, but at present the article does not do so. It is not on the List of notable minor planets, yet contains enough information to be worth retaining. Regards, RJH (talk) 07:54, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand. Why isn't 6489 Golevka on List Two? Just no one has gotten around to adding it to List Two? Maybe the first step is to make sure List Two is reasonably complete, and then do as suggested? Chrisrus (talk) 08:07, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Chrisrus, those lists are generally updated by human users, not bots, so they are bound to be incomplete. I really don't think now is the time to set bots at work on this stuff. Kheider's suggestion is the way to go. WP:NASTRO is clear what the steps should be: examine the article and make a good faith effort to determine if the object can meet the notability criteria, even if the article doesn't have all the information (yet). RJH gave a good example of that. I know that when I was developing and arguing for WP:NASTRO, my main intent was to prevent future creation of astronomy-cruft stubs. I wholly acknowledge that cleanup of existing stubs will take a long time, and will require careful application of WP:NASTRO on individual articles. At best, I think a bot could TAG stubs to be examined by a human, but I don't think the bot should be deciding what to redirect or delete. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 13:44, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes I was thinking along those lines as well. A bot to apply a {{notability|Astro}} tag to the top of brief, insufficiently-sourced minor planet articles may be helpful, once the 'Astro' option is approved. That would time stamp their lack of notability and hopefully encourage some expansion (although I'm not optimistic about that). Regards, RJH (talk) 16:52, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Most notable minor planets are not on the List of notable minor planets. Creating such a bot would be nothing more than an attempted mass murder of many articles that are developed well beyond sub-stub status and even I would fight it. This is why I feared such a policy being written, there is always someone that wants to take it to an extreme. -- Kheider (talk) 14:18, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

@Astro, Ok, I understand. What is the necessary next step? Chrisrus (talk) 16:23, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Frankly, I think the necessary next step is to let us astronomy editors handle it. We have the kind of expertise in this area which will allow us to evaluate particular situations. I appreciate your enthusiasm on this topic, but it looks like you were led here more from a housekeeping viewpoint than an astronomy viewpoint. There is no hurry to clean up previously created stubs. Just as it took years to accumulate them, it may take years to sift through them. I am fine with that. Don't take the fact that we haven't started a task force immediately upon WP:NASTRO-adoption as a sign that we're slow or don't care; we'll get to it. AstroCog (talk) 16:55, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

A bot-updated list (at somewhere like WP:ASTRO/Stubs to be examined) might be handy. This would be generated using a variant of Kheider's criteria at the top of this thread (one- or two-sentence stubs, one or zero references, etc). Work-lists like this have been used at WP:PHYS in the past, and help quite a lot when grinding through an assessment of large numbers of articles. Any change to the articles themselves (redirecting, templating for improvement, etc) would be done manually; automation would only be used for list generation. There would still be important details to sort out (tagging articles, either in the list or in-article, as having been evaluated; agreeing on an "I've looked at this and done X" reporting format on the list; deciding whether to alter the list or create a new list with subsequent bot-passes), but even an imperfect implementation would still be likely to be useful. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 23:13, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

@Kheider, don't worry. No one is going to do anything extreme or without due discussion and such. Chrisrus (talk) 16:23, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

@Astro: Agreed. I will rest assured that you all are taking care of things. That is, unless and until it becomes clear to me that this is not the case. Merry Christmas; Happy New Year; The War is Over! Chrisrus (talk) 19:10, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

For the record, regarding Chrisrus statement above, please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive728#Mass of notablity violations in progress and User talk:Merovingian. I'm not sure his "help" would be beneficial with respect to the minor planet articles. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:40, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

The wider community has an interest in this issue as these articles make false the statement that Wikipedia has notablity standards. Please agree that the fact that a journey is long is no reason to delay careful planning. Chrisrus (talk) 18:43, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

What's the next step? Chrisrus (talk) 14:40, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

The immediate step is to make sure that meaningless main-belt asteroid sub-stubs are no longer created without there being a comment/reference about why the object is notable. Chrisrus, you seem like you are on a personal crusade. -- Kheider (talk) 15:19, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

This part "the immediate step...is notable" seems like that previous step, not the next step. The second part, about me, seems off-topic. So, you were suggesting only articles that are one line sub-stubs, then? Chrisrus (talk) 05:28, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

At this time, I would suggest only tagging articles that have two or less sentences and less than two references. That should help clear 99+% of your lament. -- Kheider (talk) 11:43, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Excellent! So, can we just tell the botrequest to do that? Chrisrus (talk) 16:03, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

This would be for tagging the articles for notability. Then there needs to be a reasonable period for the articles to be updated as to why they are notable. Then I think there will need to be a task-force involving members of the Astro groups to review the tagged articles and do the article re-directs. -- Kheider (talk) 17:27, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok! So first we tell the bot to tag all articles on List of minor planets that two or fewer sentences and less than two references. What do we do next? The botrequest wording? We'll have to be explict, such as what "tag" means, exactly. Chrisrus (talk) 18:27, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

There are two things it usually means: either adding a category to affected articles (so that they can be accessed for maintenance via the category page), or adding a template to affected articles (so that they're automatically tagged with a category embedded in the template, and other effects like a notification message or automated addition to a list may occur). The latter is already done by the various "stub" templates.

The catch is that your proposed "tagging" is not intended to be permanent, and does not directly overlap with an existing category. You could stick specific "cleanup" or "stub" template on the articles, which would add them to appropriate categories or lists, but the resulting list will contain a large number of entries you don't care about. You could propose a new template and category specifically for this purpose, but there are actually a fair number of hoops to jump through if you want to avoid stepping on toes (cleanup and stub-sorting projects have a fair bit of coordination, and we'd be breaking that). The fact that this wouldn't be needed for very long makes it questionable whether it'd be approved at all IMO.

The best thing to do, as far as I can see, is to do exactly what I suggested the last time this came up: Have your bot not modify the articles it catches, but instead just add them to a scratch page at WP:WikiProject Astronomical objects/List of automatically flagged object stubs or similar. Far less paperwork to do, and the only page the bot is actually modifying is one scratch-page. Any changes to other articles are done manually by editors, so it'll be a far easier sell approval-wise.

I assume that you have some experience writing bots and going through the approval process. If not, then I respectfully suggest dropping the suggestion, as learning how to do that from scratch will take longer than compiling such a list by hand. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 21:14, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not clear who you were referring to by the pronoun "you", but I'm looking to your community to WP:LEAD on the "(10531) 1991 GB1, etc." issue; I'm staying out of it as much as possible. Chrisrus (talk) 05:50, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm referring to you, personally, as you've been the one campaigning for a bot. If you feel capable of doing it, then after getting consensus on what the bot should do, file the appropriate paperwork and write it. If you'd prefer not to do it yourself, then I respectfully submit that two times is enough for asking that someone else do it. I respect your intentions, but everyone else here is already contributing to the extent that they feel they can/should. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 07:25, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, when you referred to my suggestion, scroll up you'll see, it wasn't mine. I'm just repeating back what others have suggested be done, so please address yourself to those whose suggestion it was. Chrisrus (talk) 13:13, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

If we WP:LEAD then you will WP:FOLLOW? Hmm, you might want to WP:READ the policy first and see what it actually says. ;-) Regards, RJH (talk) 16:13, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, if you'd like and I can, but maybe get out of the way entirely might be best. I just want to see it's not ignored. So, what in your opinion is the best way to take care of the problem exemplified by (10531) 1991 GB1, which, if you read the guidelines is a violation, and only one of thousands? There are several practical suggestion made above you might want to comment on. There's been quite enough talk about me. Chrisrus (talk) 16:58, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, for starters, it should probably be added to the table on the Eleanor F. Helin article. I did a search but couldn't find any sources to bring it up to the WP:NASTRO guidelines. Ergo, a redirect should serve, with a comment about not satisfying WP:NASTRO. If the redirect is reverted, then it should probably be taken to AfD for discussion. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:57, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

You mean like this: (10531)_1991_GB1? Chrisrus (talk) 21:29, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Nope. The table on the Eleanor F. Helin article hasn't been updated. Also, there's a way to use div tags to link to the actual row in the table; I went ahead and implemented that. We should have a note about that in WP:ASTRO, if it isn't already. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:35, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, I forgot to mention what happened when I went to do that first thing at the article Eleanor F. Helin. I found out that that table is only for a few unusual objects she found, not stuff like (10531)_1991_GB1. So it was a nice thought, but that article wouldn't be improved by such an addition. Chrisrus (talk) 21:51, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Hey I saw what you did with the addition to the (10531)_1991_GB1 redirect. That will certainly help a user get to the correct place more quickly and easily. Nice job. Would you call that one pretty much done at this point? Chrisrus (talk) 06:09, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay. I've added an example to WP:NASTRO. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:29, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Good. I've added a notablity tag to (10460) 1978 VK8. I used the format {{Notability|Astro}}. Does that cause it to appear on a list somewhere, or a bot to do something? Was the tag formatting as good as it could have been? Chrisrus (talk) 08:35, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, I did a Google Scholar search for "(10460) 1978 VK8" and got no hits in any of the WP:RSes it searches. Would that satisfy the "good faith effort" referred to in WP:NASTRO, clearing the way for me to redirect? Chrisrus (talk) 06:49, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Before declaring an object not noteworthy I do suggest a general Google search for "1978 VK8" just to rule out any public interest in the object. (I did not see any.) But I do have to wonder if tagging a page for only 4 days counts as a good-faith gesture. I would think 30 days would be more appropriate.

Make a list and tag them. Thirty days later come back and do the re-directs. -- Kheider (talk) 09:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Chrisrus, a solution was proposed to have a bot or a user create a list with possibly actionable articles to tag. I know I would much prefer to see this solution implemented rather than going through single articles one by one to tag them. This issue seems to be your only concern in the astronomy realm of WP, and I have before asked you to please leave this issue to the astronomy editors, who know best how to evaluate these stubs. What is wrong with the list solution proposed by Christopher Thomas above? AstroCog (talk) 13:35, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

That's ok with me. But who will do it? Chrisrus (talk) 16:53, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

@Kheider. Ok. As per your instructions, here is the list: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Category:Main_Belt_asteroid_stubs .

It is a list of all main belt asteroids that are stubs. Now we have to add {{Notability|Astro}} to each. Should we take just this request to WP:BOTREQ just yet, or is there an intermediate step? All we want this bot to do is to add {{Notablity|Astro}} to each. Chrisrus (talk) 20:26, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

We can not just assume any asteroid stub does not meet notability standards. On 22-Dec I suggested "only picking on the articles that are one line sub-stubs." On 10-Jan I suggested "only tagging articles that have two or less sentences and less than two references." Your bot would just be blindly labeling every stub. It took years for bots to create most of the sub-stubs, without a proper bot it might take years to remove them all. Why the rush when we do not have a proper bot to be selective tagging things? Surely 11 Parthenope, 14 Irene, 17 Thetis, any many others are notable enough to keep. You seem to be looking for short-cuts to achieve a desired result. If you are that ambitious you can make a manual list somewhere on your talk page. Each page will need to be human reviewed before re-directing or deleting. Maybe someone can make a special tag just to add to questionable main-belt-asteroids. -- Kheider (talk) 21:24, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I see. Sorry. I thought it was the list of main belt astroid sub-stubs you asked for. Instead, it's a list of main belt asteroid stubs. Many only say "(fill in the blank) is a main belt astroid. It was found by (person) on (date)", and nothing more. Is that what you meant by "sub-stub" to be tagged for review? Chrisrus (talk) 01:18, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, those one liners are what I call sub-stubs and I do not mind such articles being tagged. The question is, should we create a special tag for them to distinguish them for other stubs? -- Kheider (talk) 02:54, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Step Two Reloaded

Bear in mind that (per above) there's a rather involved process for adding new stub templates. The world won't end if we just make a scratch category/template for this, but other project members might get annoyed.

Here's a counterproposal for consideration: Give me until the end of the weekend to bodge together a Perl script that spiders stubs of interest and gives me a list that I can dump to a scratch page. This is not the preferred way of running bot-type work, but my impression is that it's wiki-legal as long as a) the request rate is low enough that it isn't hammering the system, and b) any actual modifications are made manually (me cutting and pasting its list to a scratch page).

If I haven't done that by the end of the weekend, implement whatever approach you guys feel is best.

Would this be useful, or should I just relax for the weekend instead? --Christopher Thomas (talk) 04:17, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Please do! Remember, the good folks at WP:BOTREQ are there to help. Thanks! Chrisrus (talk) 04:57, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll wait until other project members chime in before proceeding.

Also, WP:BOTREQ is just a queue for asking someone _else_ to make a bot. The waiting time seems to be about a month, based on the age of threads there. While in principle I could learn the bot API, write a bot myself, and jump through the hoops to get a bot approved, the whole point of bodging something together in Perl is to *not* have to do that (while making sure I'm not making a mess, and so not drawing anyone's ire). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 05:28, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

How difficult would it be to add additional data for each find? For example, a character count. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:41, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

It depends on the amount of parsing I'd have to do. Character count is easy, as I'd be sorting based on that already (extracting non-template body-text and measuring it). Parsing the number of different references cited would be trickier (though maybe worth it). Counting the number of sentences and paragraphs, while not "hard" per se, would be enough effort for little enough extra information that I'd probably stick with character count for triage. People will be manually examining these, after all.

The manual examination will be a very big job. There are close to 19k stubs in the category linked above, and literally all of the ones I checked during a random sampling would not pass the notability guideline as-written. It doesn't mean none of them will pass, but it does mean that we can expect the to-check list to be huge, and to have to do a Google Scholar search for almost every item in that list searching for additional papers (a possible future task to automate).

As near as I can tell from the histories, most of these were created in a 2008 spree attributed to ClueBot II (which may have been moving them from elsewhere), and several of the others were created by Merovingian (per above), with at least one created by Betacommand/Sigma during what I'm assuming is a bot run a while back. So, yeah, massive amount of cleanup effort needed. I'll see what I can do about making the output of the script facilitate that (maybe autogenerate a "perform scholar search" link for each entry in the list).

With two people expressing interest, I'll take that as indication that I should start writing the script. No promises on it getting done (that's why I added a deadline for "assume it won't happen", above), but I'll give it a shot. Also bear in mind that if I'm playing nicely (one request per second or similar), it'll take hours to crawl the full list. I'll attempt to post a partial list earlier than that (as soon as I've verified that the script is working). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:29, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

You're right, it may prove to be a lengthy, tedious job with not much to recommend it. :-) A character count would be a useful first cut in terms of assessing priority; as you say, a triage. It may also give us a view of the big picture. If 80% of the articles are only, say, 250 characters or less of alphanumeric text, that may cut down the problem quite a bit. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not very hard to automate stub-redirection - but I'm not sure it'd actually be a good _idea_. If we did manage to establish consensus for doing so here, and if I did manage to scrape in enough statistics to make a reliable triage decision (like only adding a magic "redirect this" link for pages that had zero or one scholar hits), it might be workable. But I'd still want to set up edit summaries and so forth that made it clear that it was a "redirect without prejudice" situation, so that anyone who did manage to scare up enough material to satisfy WP:NASTRO would feel free to un-redirect it.

That said, I'm pretty sure that's past the limits of what a bodged-together Perl script can (or should) do. Automated or even semi-automated changes to the wiki should probably go through the full process described at WP:BOT. I'm only getting away with my own script because it does *not* make any changes to the wiki (just spits out a digest that I have to post manually).

Let's see what the triage script tells us before deciding whether to go the bot route (leaving aside the question of who here has time and patience to set one up). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 23:02, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Well yes, automatic redirecting probably isn't necessary this point, if ever. But reviewing only stub articles below a certain size for notability tagging should be fairly quick and painless. Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:29, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The problem is, I think pretty much _all_ of them are small enough to make that cut. The ones I checked had a single sentence, an infobox template, and a single link to whatever database they were pulled from, pretty much without exception. I'll have actual statistics for you in a little while (hopefully). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 23:40, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

A link to the JPL small body DB may be useful in assessing the likelihood that an object may be notable; the notable ones may have some external sources listed on the JPL site. If a stub article doesn't even have that, or some physical characteristics listed, then it probably isn't worth rescuing. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:52, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

If you can give me positive and negative examples for reference, and the form of the links in question, that'll make it much easier for me to check for that. In the process of writing the first-pass script now (the one that just fetches the full list of pages in the category). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 23:59, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

It looks like a JPL small-body database link would contain: "http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=". I think the actual check of the JPL site would need to be done manually. Regards, RJH (talk) 00:13, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

The easy part is done (fetching the list of pages to examine). I've taken a handful of links from several parts in the list and am using that as my representative test sample. Pages in question are:

If any of you have time, please take a moment to glance at these and tell me if they suggest anything specific that I should be flagging with the main script (now in progress). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 01:07, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Update - The hard part is now done; I have a script that fetches and tabulates all of the data I thought would be useful. Sample output is below (for only a few lines; otherwise it'd get very spammy). I'll start the full run tonight, and then the rather involved process of cutting and pasting it into appropriate scratch space for full review. It should be up Sunday evening; Monday evening at the latest. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 05:17, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Phase three pilot can start

I've created a page at WP:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Stub processing. The purpose of that page is to a) list useful tools (like the Perl scripts, which are now up), and b) link to lists of pages to be processed. Discussion should probably stay here (WT:ASTRO), for convenience.

The data collection run for our pilot test case (triage of Category:Main Belt asteroid stubs) is done. I've put the first 5000 entries up; the next 14000 will be posted after I've had lunch. The first column in each stub entry is blank; add an appropriate template (tick, cross, or fixed, per the "stub processing" page description) after you've taken a look at any given entry. That way, someone can later run a bot to redirect anything that was manually marked as non-notable, without controversy or false-positives/-negatives.

A handful of people looking at a dozen stubs per week could process this small fraction of the total astronomical stub population in a few short years. So, far from a perfect solution, but my script can't reliably judge on its own what should be redirected, and it would be very hard to write one that could. Even small progress will be better than none, and there's no real hurry (as long as there aren't any new stub-creation sprees).

Enjoy. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 20:04, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

That looks good. Thank you Christopher. Regards, RJH (talk) 20:16, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

All 19k entries are now up, which means it's Minecraft time, over here. Please let me know if there are glitches in either the table data or my cutting and pasting thereof. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 21:12, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: automated pruning

Based on spot-checks of the main list, it's looking very tempting to apply a first-pass filter to automatically redirect a lot of these stubs. Possible criteria would be:

• 1a) Articles with (refs + ext links) = 1 or fewer, char count < 400 (flagged as stubs), no infobox (covers a lot of stubs, but at least one automated spree added infoboxes).
• 1b) As 1a, but with or without the infobox (covers about 90% of the stubs).

Some of these objects might actually be noteworthy; they just don't have an article explaining their notability right now. Some of these might even be worth keeping as-written (the script's statistics checking isn't perfect; it'll miss some references, and even text under some conditons). The rationale for redirecting these would be to focus human effort on the remaining 10% of stubs that the script can't make a first-pass judgement on. The idea is that it's less work to redirect the 90% now, and un-redirect ones that turn out to be notable, than to manually plow through all 19,000 stubs.

Is this worth doing, or should we just leave them as-is and go with a manual approach? For automated redirecting to be enacted, we'd need to establish very clear consensus before going to WP:BOT for approval. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 00:16, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

It may depend in part on whether we want to tabulate the list of discovered asteroids for each discoverer. For example, if we redirect (10299) 1988 VS3, would we want to tabulate that minor planet on the Yoshiaki Oshima article? Personally I don't really care, but I know some editors like to build those types of tables. Beyond that, if somebody wanted to expand on a redirected topic because they found a suitable in-depth source, they can always roll back the redirect. On the positive side, automatically redirecting the stubs per your criteria would make the task much easier.

I just noticed that the "Stubs starting from item ####" table headers don't match up with the entries in the same table. That makes it impossible to locate a particular minor planet. Regards, RJH (talk) 00:51, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for the oversight. A binary search should still find any given item fairly quickly.

My original assumption was that people would be starting with the tables and checking entries line by line, rather than trying to find individual named entries. In hindsight that might not have been a great assumption.

Automated attempts at altering the headings would actually involve more work than manually doing it (as each heading would still have to be hand-edited). So, alter the headings if you feel it's worth the effort of doing so (any future bot should only care about the row contents). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 01:06, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

No its fine thanks. I wanted to try checking a sample against this site, but no matter. RJH (talk)

Regarding building by-discoverer tables, is that information in any of the "list of asteroids" tables already? If so, there isn't really any need to keep the stub around. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 01:06, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes the lists do show the discoverer, but it would be easier to build a table for a particular individual by looking at the "What links here" table for individual objects than by looking them up in the lists. Still, its not really a significant issue.

OTOH, we should probably get feedback from a wider project audience before proceeding with something like this. Regards, RJH (talk) 01:12, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I can think of a couple of very quick ways to compile similar information, though I agree that it's hard to get simpler than clicking "what links here" while editing the astronomer's page. That said, I'm not sure ease of such compilations is worth keeping sub-stubs around.

What venues did you have in mind for getting opinions on stub-culling? WP:AST, certainly, but I'm not sure this warrants a full RFC (though I'm not opposed to doing that if you feel it's the best route). I'd be happy if we just had a reasonable number of comments from AST and ASTRO members.

Just this one. Regards, RJH (talk) 04:15, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

The downside to culling is that we'll redirect a few stubs that shouldn't be redirected, and the downside to not culling is that we'll need years to sift through it all manually, so I can see valid arguments both ways. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 03:37, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

According to speedy deletion guidelines, if an article meets certain criteria, a designated administrator with broad consensus may delete articles and bypass normally required, time-consuming pre-deletion procedures.

Now, you may say, this is a rule is about speedy deletion, and we are doing chart redirection. But chart direction is a much less drastic action than complete deletion, so if it applies to something as drastic as speedy deletion, it should obviously apply to taking a relatively mild action such as chart redirection.

So WP:SPEEDY permits you if you want to have an adminstrator with prior consensus chart-redirect large carefully predetermined swaths of these articles via autobot, and not necessarily fully apply every and every step, such the good faith search to establish notablity stipulated in WP:NASTRO, to absolutely each one of these 1,900 articles individually if it seems to you reasonable to do so and it would greatly assist you in this work.

Thanks again, I hope this helps! Chrisrus (talk) 06:12, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Establishing presence or absence of consensus is the purpose of this thread. If there's consensus to redirect stubs that probably don't meet WP:NASTRO back to the list, then I doubt anyone will complain. The issue is judging whether that consensus exists or not (depends on how people feel about the trade-off above). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 06:32, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Does the bot count references contained inside of the infobox? -- Kheider (talk) 16:56, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Not at the moment. I can change that easily enough (by moving the test for that outside of the state checking block), but redoing the data collection would take another weekend (overnight run plus a couple of hours of cutting and pasting again).

The script also can't tell if references are duplicates. All it does is count the number of </ref> tags. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 18:08, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Christopher,

If I may, I'd like to suggest starting a new thread at the bottom specifically for polling the WikiProject membership as to whether they want to proceed with the automated pruning per the criteria you have set forth. (In case nobody is looking back here.) I'd also like to suggest adding a link to the poll on the WP:AST discussion page to make sure everybody with an interest is aware. Thank you.

Personally I'm okay with #1b, since the data was probably just duplicated from the JPL site and is sure to become outdated (if it isn't already). Regards, RJH (talk) 16:08, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good; I'll start this tonight, if one of you doesn't beat me to it. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 18:08, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Exoplanets

Current

Planet	Minimum mass (MJ)	Period (d)	Semi-major axis (AU)	Eccentricity	Year of discovery
HD 156668 b	0.010	1.270	0.022	0.0003	2010
HD 40307 b	0.013	4.312	0.047	0.0081	2008
61 Virginis b	0.016	4.215	0.050	0.1188	2009
BD+20°2457 c	12.467	621.986	1.913	0.1783	2009

Proposed

Planetary system	Planet	Habitable zone	Type (g) (t)	Estimated temp. (K)	Orbital period (d) (y)	Semi- major axis (AU)	Orbital eccentricity	Orbital inclination (°)	Minimum mass: Jupiter mass (MJ) Earth mass (M🜨)	Radius: Jupiter radius (RJ) Earth radius (R🜨)	Discovery method	Discovery year
HD 156668	b (1/1)	unknown	unknown	unknown	1.2701.27 d	0.022	0.0003	unknown	0.0103.175 M🜨	unknown	Doppler spectroscopy	2010
HD 40307	b (1/1)	unknown	unknown	unknown	4.3124.312 d	0.047	0.0081	unknown	0.0134.127 M🜨	unknown	Doppler spectroscopy	2008
61 Virginis	b (1/1)	unknown	unknown	unknown	4.2154.215 d	0.050	0.1188	unknown	0.0165.079 M🜨	unknown	Doppler spectroscopy	2009
BD+20°2457	c (2/2)	unknown	g	unknown	621.9861.703 y 622 d	1.913	0.1783	unknown	12.46712.467 MJ 3958 M🜨	unknown	Doppler spectroscopy	2009
COROT-7	b (1/3)	unknown	unknown	1656	0.8535850.854 d	0.0172	0	80.1	0.02838.984 M🜨	0.820.82 R🜨	Transiting	2009

Template discussion

It's not a good idea to use TemplateSpace for drafts, which is what these are, or making this a subtemplate of Template:List, since they have no relation to that template at all. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 09:08, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Template space has always been used for template drafts particularly if parser functions are involved. I do not see the problem. I can move all templates right away if you have a better (and short) name for me. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 03:07, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Subtemplates unrelated to the main template are not used for unrelated templates, and are frowned on at WP:TfD. Further, parserfunctions have nothing to do with sitting in templatespace, they can be used anywhere. (templates: special:prefixindex/Template:List/Exoplanet )

renaming: Template:List/Exoplanet, Template:List/Exoplanet/Bottom, Template:List/Exoplanet/Top can be Template:Exoplanet list/bottom, Template:Exoplanet list/top, Template:Exoplanet list/entry (what you call Template:List/Exoplanet), etc. With Template:Exoplanet list doing nothing but containing the documentation subpage Template:Exoplanet list/doc.

Your parserfunctions are simple if statements, nothing complex, and the calculation templates don't even touch other templates. The calculation templates should be absorbed into {{convert}}. It's not like a multilevel nested switch statements with variable substitution.

Actually, I don't see why your calculation templates are even subtemplates, they can be used without using your other templates for regular conversion calculations (thus why they should be merged into {{convert}} )

76.65.128.132 (talk) 10:10, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I do not enjoy reading through thousands of {{ }}'s. It is just how I code templates. Do NOT try to dictate how I should edit please. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 16:58, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting you make use of nested switch statements. (It'd be rather pointless in this case) Just that your parserfunctions in these cases aren't that complex. As for merging into {{convert}}, that is what happens to conversion templates, as has happened many times before, with various conversion templates being merged into the main one. And it is a fact that your conversion templates can be used without using your other templates, so I am curious as to why we might restrict their usage to only this table (as is implied by the naming you chose). 76.65.128.132 (talk) 00:39, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh! By all means feel free to do that if you like. :) I used those as an example. Also I already moved the templates as you suggested. The links are still red because there is a case difference I think. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 20:31, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I went ahead and made some of the changes you suggested. The trasncluded sub templates aren't being used anymore however I want to hold off on nominating them for deletion for a while in case I need to experiment with units. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 22:02, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Discussion 1

Lists documenting these seem to be clustered in a manner that is perhaps unhelpful. The lists are hard to follow and even harder to update. Currently above information is listed and as you can see all but two of the items (name and year) becomes a number soup difficult to follow even if you know what the individual corresponds to. It is like a massive excel chart. I am not saying the information presented is unimportant however I do believe we can do better than this and I propose a template approach to handle the data.

To be honest I am unsure what information would the reader care more about. I'd like to discuss this first.

• System it orbits (HD 156668 in above example - there are multi-star systems so this may be a pair or more stars)
• Name of planet ("HD 156668-b" or "b" in above example)
• Planets number from its star. Earth is the third planet in the solar system. We see discovery of outer gas giants before the discovery of smaller rocky planets.
• Time it takes to complete an orbit (Earth days and/or Years)
• Size of the planet (mass, how many Earths/Jupiters)
  • These two could be different columns as .01 Jupiter-mass does not mean much to me. Earth is 0.00315 M_J so the above example is actually 0.01/0.00315 = 3.17 Earth-mass M_⊕ which means A LOT more to me.
• Size of the planet (volume)
  • How many Earths or Jupiters would fit in (similar to above point).
• Distance from its Star
• Year of discovery
• Year of confirmation (this could be presented with the "discovery date")
• Type of the planet (gas giant, rocky, whatever)
• Surface temperature (we see super hot and super cold planets)
• Is it in the "habitable zone" (a key aspect of Exoplanet search)

As technology develops we will know more and more about the individual planets we observe so we may add such info as it becomes available which is why a template would be ideal to quickly update such lists. This information may include:

• How many natural satellites does it have
• How long does it take for a day to pass
• Can it sustain life
  • This info can be presented with "habitable zone field
• Does it have life

-- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 20:28, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Also perhaps we can do better that "year of discovery" and go with the exact date rather than just Year. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 20:28, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

What page are you talking about? 76.65.128.132 (talk) 04:35, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Practically every page that involves exoplanets. Pages about stars such as HD 156668 which lists planets or lists such as List of extrasolar planets detected by radial velocity which is a massive list of planets. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 13:10, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The proposed table seems very messy, and quite redundant, with two values for mass, orbital period, volume. "Number" is a highly cryptic label to use for your proposed usage. "Earth mass" "Jupiter mass" "Earth volume" Jupiter volume" are also misleading (particularly, for most planets, only a lower bound for mass has been established) also only transiting planets have volumetric information. Temperatures require direct spectroscopic observation of the planet itself, and albedo requires direct observation, and why temperature instead of albedo? "Name" -- but these are partial designations... "Type" is undefined in most ways, except the mass range the planet falls in, and that involves a lower bounded mass instead of an accurate mass measurement, so even there, a speculated planet with a lower bound of 2 Earth masses does not mean it is a Super-Earth, it could be an ice giant type of giant planet, since that 2 Earth masses is only a lower bound. "Zone" -- what is a "zone"? Other than habitable zone, what else would go in here? Doesn't seem all that useful if it is a Y/N for habitable zone, which itself is a poorly defined concept, and requires consideration of amounts of greenhouse gases and atmospheric density/size/pressure and albedo. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 09:18, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Pretty much agree with all of your observations. The one data column I'd be interested in seeing would be the insolation values. But I suspect that might be hard to come by without our computing it. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:04, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a proposal. If I were sure about exactly what information should be present I would have went ahead and directly modified the articles directly. The thing is I do not know which information the lists should provide. This is why I am asking you to help come up with features.

Currently these lists in their current form are confusing to me. Your average reader won't have a clue as to make sense of it. Even astronomers would have to scroll back up to get a sense of which row is what. It is just random decimals.

• Number: This should represent the number of the planet. Earth is 3/8 being the 3rd planet out of 8 (or 3/9 if you count Pluto). It is indeed cryptic and I was not able to think of a simple short term that isn't three light years long.
• Zones: There are three types of zones we can mark. Planets closer to the star than the habitable zone (like Mercury), planets within the habitable zone (like Earth, Mars), planets outside of the habitable zone (like Jupiter). Habitable zone is not a poorly defined concept. Habitable zone of course does not mean the planet is Earth-like or that it has life on it. Mars is in the habitable zone for example despite being inhospitable. Mind you there are planets with eccentric orbits that zoom really close to the star and far out so those should also be addressed.
• Temperature: I have seen countless temperature estimations for some planets. The ranges indeed can vary which can be shown on the list as such.
• Your average reader will think of Micheal Jackson when they read M_J, not "Mass_Jupiter"
• Calculations: I designed the template to automatically calculate Earth/Jupiter values if one or the other is provided. Day/year is automatically converted as well. Such automatic conversions would save a lot of time.

The super-Earth could indeed be a Neptune like planet. However we do know most planets are in fact gas giants. It is all about what secondary sources tells us. If there are conflicting secondary sources we can present both. It is not like this is the first time. WP:NPOV would apply if there are conflicting sources.

-- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 20:11, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Understood. At a minimum I would change 'volume' to 'radius', as the latter is what it going to be available from sources. Most planets are going to be outside the so-called "habitable zone", so, to me, that column is not going to be particularly useful. It might be best just to have a table that only lists planets inside that zone. I definitely suggest including the eccentricity data as that is both readily available and significant. A planet with a high eccentricity that is also listed as being in the habitable zone is not going to be a pleasant place to live. The value can also say a lot about the dynamics of the planetary system. Note that M_J is standard astronomical notation; it is best to use the values employed in the literature. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:08, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The idea is to give an idea about where the planet is. Is it too hot, too cold, just right. The reader otherwise will probably have difficulty to visualize it. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 13:49, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I understand what you're trying to do. But if the table suggests the planet is in habitable zone, while in reality it is wandering in an out of the zone because of the orbital eccentricity, then the table is misleading the reader. The alternative would be to give the apoapsis and periapsis, plus list a "temperature range". Regards, RJH (talk) 15:39, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. Perhaps if it is in the habitable zone that could be also marked in the temperature field. What would be interesting to me is to have the ability to sort planets based on if they are like hot like Mercury, mediocre like Mars or frozen like Pluto. Could you give an idea on how to present the idea you mentioned? -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 02:58, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

If you automatically calculate and convert Earth/Jupiter/Sun masses/radii/volumes, it should be bundled into {{convert}} and then we could use standard Convert template for that. (ie {{convert|135|kg|lb st}} 135 kilograms (298 lb; 21.3 st) ) That should only use up one column for mass & volume/radius. And as for your zones, what do you propose to do with planets with highly eccentric orbits that cross in and out of a putative habitable zone, or with stars whose habitable zones have shifted within the lifetime of the planet in question? (for example, it is theorized that Venus once was within the habitable zone, but with the aging of the Sun, it has fallen out of the inside edge) And as for outside the habitable zone... we have speculation of life under the ice for Europa, being tidally heated by Jupiter, so if people are looking for places where exolife could exist, it does not mean that it needs to be within the habitable zone. Also, I haven't seen the zone cis-stellar of the habitable zone or trans-stellar of the habitable zone referred to specifically as zones. Doesn't that introduced WP:OR ? As for being just a table of decimal values, your proposal does not change that, it would still be a table of decimal values. "Number" is still a cryptic name, one that most readers will not understand, and as for the fraction that appears in that column, even less so. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 07:58, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

The template would add the unit next to the value. For example depending on mass it would either mark the mass as "n" many Jupiters or "n" many Earths. Do you have a better name to replace "number"? -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 13:49, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps you missed "|disp=output number only" in the {{convert}} documentation? (ie {{convert|135|kg|lb st|disp=output number only}} 298; 21.3 ) . As for replacing "number", order/ordinal/cardinal is better than number, or perhaps "Ordinal/Total" since that's what you're doing, you're giving the ordinal of the planet, out of the total planets. "5th of 8" would be even better than using fractions. Then you use a cardinal in place of the ordinal, and a phrase in place of the fraction. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 10:07, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps you missed my message in the previous section? You probably shouldn't be using subpages of Template:List for your draft proposal templates. They aren't helper templates to {{List}}, they should probably be in your user sandbox area, or as subpages of WP:Astronomical objects. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 07:51, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

It can be moved. I just am not sure about a name for that either. I do not want to sandbox it in a userspace because it complicates the code making it difficult to read. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 13:49, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't matter too much what name they use in a sandbox, since they are draft proposal and not the final templates. It does matter where they are located, since WP:TfD frowns on these uses of TemplateSpace (making subtemplates unrelated to the main template, making draft proposals that are not sandboxes of the main template, using templatespace for draft proposals).

Actually, I don't see why your calculation templates are even subtemplates, they can be used without using your other templates for regular conversion calculations (thus why they should be merged into {{convert}} )

76.65.128.132 (talk) 09:49, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Can't say I like the proposal much at all, too much redundancy but very little actual information and unspecific parameters so dumbed-down they don't make real-world sense. What does "distance from star" mean? A more accurate description is the current semi-major axis. Which temperature? Teq? Will we require use of the same source for these values because it is only an estimate based on ill-defined parameters which will vary depending on how you calculate it. Do we even need a column for what is nothing more than a potentially wildly inaccurate estimate?

In fact i'm not convinced standardising exoplanet lists is the best thing to do anyway. What's the point in a radius column in a list of planets discovered by radial velocity for a start?

Personally I quite like the one on the Kepler page and think if any standardising is to be done it would be better based on one like that. ChiZeroOne (talk) 17:17, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes that is a nice table, although it is carrying redundant information in the star columns. Maybe repeated rows could be grayed out in those columns? Regards, RJH (talk) 18:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

You do not like the table? That's good because I do not like either. That is why I posted it here. This is a Work in Progress. :)

The list should be prepared in a manner suitable for an encyclopedia. Accurate descriptions that Astronomy enthusiasts and PHD professors can easily understand does not necessarily mean much to your average reader that has little to no background on Astronomy. Terms like "semi-major axis", "Orbital eccentricity" will not mean much. The text should read something easy to understand and what it links to could explain what the term means. That said I am not too happy with my wording either. Perhaps text could read something like "Widest orbit / semi-major axis". Also I do think the semi-minor axis is just as important as semi-major so perhaps this information could be presented in pairs.

I do not entirely like Kepler pages information as there is so many repeats particularly for information on the star as RJHall mentioned.

-- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 02:54, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

That would be why semi-major axis and eccentricity are both wiki-linked. They are not difficult concepts; a lay-reader can glance at the other end of the link and come away with a good qualitative idea of what they mean (maximum radius(Edit: Half the maximum width) and how narrow the ellipse is, respectively).

If these are the terms used by the astronomical community, these are the terms that should be in any data table produced on-wiki. By all means have a leading section that explains them, but using some new non-standard convention in their place isn't going to help, and certainly isn't suitable for an encyclopedia (verifiability is the main goal, which means making it easy to compare data table values to sources). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 03:04, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

So you are saying it would be against policy to write Widest orbit / semi-major axis instead of Semi-major axis? We aren't writing an academic paper, we aren't required to comply with "terms used by the astronomical community" exclusively. Your average reader should be able to understand terms without clicking on and reading an entire article or ten. Why do you not want to do that?

Also how is eccentricity a simple concept? Have you seen the article? There is pretty complex math involved (trigonometry, square roots, squares). In fact even I cannot picture what the numbers supposed to mean by looking at them.

-- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 17:11, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

"Semi-major axis" is not "widest orbit"al point, that would be the orbital apocentre (apoapsis), and "semi-minor axis" is not the "closest orbital point", that would be the orbital pericentre (periapsis). 76.65.128.132 (talk) 00:53, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. How about a footnote explaining what the term means? It should be as simple as explaining with a single line of text. The reader cannot be expected to read a few articles just to understand what elements on a list means so we need to help the reader somehow. This can be done through a simplified (dumbed down) name or through footnotes. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 20:28, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Determining the widest orbital point and closest orbital point without data from papers would be WP:OR. The easiest way to explain the semi-major/minor axes is to point to the ellipse article, or have massive footnotes, and that would be a massive amount of repetition, with every planetary system article having an explanation of orbital mechanics and the geometry of ellipses. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 08:43, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

We have perfectly good explanations of the terms already: the links semi-major axis and Eccentricity (mathematics)#Ellipses (ok admittedly the latter is massively clear, but it's not that bad and an improvement to that article is preferable to one in every exoplanet article). There's really no need to provide summaries in every article, when a link suffices. They're not even particularly complicated concepts, and should require no more explanation in each article than temperatures which are expressed in kelvin. Modest Genius ^talk 10:50, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh and "trigonometry, square roots, squares" are not "pretty complex math" by any stretch of the imagination. Any 14 year old should be able to understand them. Modest Genius ^talk 10:55, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

My point is that the reader does not need to know how to calculate eccentricity to find it useful. A qualitative understanding is sufficient, and is given in the very first paragraph of Eccentricity (mathematics): 0 means "circle", 1 means "parabola", values between that mean "somewhere in between, with larger values being narrower". You won't be able to calculate orbital elements without a more detailed understanding, but anyone who needs a more detailed understanding either already has it, or will be willing to dig through the Eccentricity article to gain it. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 03:05, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Discussion 2

I really hate quoting policy to get to the point (as it is a poor way to engage in friendly discussion) but... Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal #8 reads: Texts should be written for everyday readers, not for academics

The reader does not necessarily understand advanced mathematical concepts. There is a difference saying "its about two times the mass of Earth" and "its eccentricity is about .67". I am sorry but trigonometry is pretty advanced math for vast majority of the readers. Even to me, an engineer who dealt with triple integrals, matrix multiplications, Gaussian calculations, Lagrange's theorem and various other such mathematical concepts, picturing what a .25, .5 or .75 eccentricity would look like at a glance is rather difficult even knowing .5 means half way between a circle and parabola. I feel this is a problem.

I am not suggesting the removal of these numbers, I am suggesting that they are currently meaningless to vast majority of the readers.

• One solution I can think is if the Orbital eccentricity article is updated to explain eccentricity of solar system objects for comparison. I know the example section exists but it could be improved greatly. Basically, "It is more eccentric than Pluto" would be more meaningful to the reader.
• Another solution is perhaps an article or list article explaining all the common terminology used in Astronomy that would be featured in such lists with links to main article explaining in even greater detail.
• A third solution could be if mouse hovering on the number shows if that value is more eccentric than objects user may know.

A watch of: http://fora.tv/2009/02/04/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson_Pluto_Files#fullprogram could convey my argument better than I maybe.

-- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 18:50, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Per the guideline WP:TECHNICAL, "Making articles more understandable does not necessarily mean that detailed technical content should be removed. For instance, an encyclopedia article about a chemical compound is expected to include properties of the compound, even if some of those properties are obscure to a general reader." I.e. the use of a technical term such as orbital eccentricity is acceptable and may even be necessary, as long as a means is provided for the reader to understand the term. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:26, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Right. I noticed that term while I was writing my response. I think that article if improved could be the solution I am looking for. Linking to Eccentricity (mathematics) will only confuse the reader and makes the list (at least that column) impossible to follow, Orbital eccentricity article is an entirely different matter. I have modified the template a little by the way. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 21:34, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Among the changes I made was the reduction of redundant entries and merging some as visible in mass, radius, and orbital period fields. Template currently expects Jupiter mass rather than earth mass. We may want to switch that at some point for added precision that instruments will eventually get. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 22:01, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

What's up with "type"? It still requires acknowledgement whither terrestrial or gas giant, but gas giants are a subclass of giant planet, and cold versions of Neptunes are predicted to be ice giants, not gas giants, which are not terrestrial either. With only minimum mass being usually the only thing available for determination, it seems excessive, as we already have a mass column. And "Habitable zone" still seems excessive. And what constitutes a "yes" in any case? If the planet transit through but does not remain there, what is it? 76.65.128.132 (talk) 09:27, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

The point for type is to express what the planet is thought to be made out of. with the knowledge of minimum mass and diameter/radius there exists sources predicting what the planet is composed of. If this information isn't available then we simply will write that the planets type is not known. Ice giant article is a disambiguation page that links to Gas giant so I would be uncomfortable using that as a class even when talking about Neptune. That said you do raise a fair point. We probably want an article explaining known planet classifications particularly when talking about extra-solar planets.

The type and habitable field and type field can be merged but I think keeping them separate would have more benefit.

Indeed "habitable zone" can be an interesting topic. Certainly there are moons of Jupiter and Saturn where life could exist well outside of the traditional "habitable zone" which restricted the zone to "where water can exist in liquid form". The point is finding a reliable secondary source that calls the planet "within" the habitable zone. We aren't here to conduct original research.

-- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 19:01, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

There is the Sudarsky extrasolar planet classification, but I'm not sure how widely that has been accepted, nor how well you're going to be able to assign planets to those classes. It might be best just to stick to the data that's available from sources like the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia. Otherwise we may wind up with dubious OR'd data, as has happened with many of the star articles. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:29, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

For the vast majority of the discovered exoplanets, I can agree with you. A good deal are not even confirmed. But for an elite few we do have this information and also the absence of the availability of this information itself is information.

We can use SEPC 9Sudarsky extrasolar planet classification) or any other source as long as such a classification for the planet is done by a verifiable source. We do not need "wide acceptance" by astronomy community (IAU) as they meet every 3 years. We can change the template structure should IAU comes up with something better (or both classifications can be shown). Because it is a template fields can be hidden with an edit should a need for it arise.

What I proposed was an article explaining what terms like Jupiter mass, Earth mass, Orbital inclement, Orbital eccentricity, and other such parameters in one article describing these terms briefly with links to main articles. More or less an Exoplanet terminology 101 kind of a thing.

-- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 18:45, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Extrasolar planet covers the subject. Regards, RJH (talk) 05:02, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough but article perhaps should cover each point as a separate section. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 18:35, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

The WP:LAYOUT guideline recommends against having many short sections. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:54, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Then what do you suggest. The links need to point to the sections that explain what these terms mean in terms of exoplanets.

I think I will be boldly changing pages in the near future as issues mentioned here have been addressed I think. Only issue remaining seems to be concerning labeling which does not affect the actual data.

-- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 12:48, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I guess at this point I'm not clear now why the links to the corresponding article topics wouldn't suffice. For example, orbital eccentricity covers that topic sufficiently well. Regards, RJH (talk) 01:05, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

What I want to do is link to one general article explaining exoplanets. I was originally thinking of a brand new list article but I think Exoplanet article itself would suffice based on discussion here. The reason why I do not want to link to more detailed articles such as orbital eccentricity directly is to provide the reader the relevant information on one page with links to more detailed explanation. If it takes for example several hours for the reader to figure out what the terms mean, he or she will probably look elsewhere. Do you see my point? -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 18:36, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes I understood the point you want to make. However, a more direct approach is to revise the leads in the linked articles so that they explain the concepts more clearly and cleanly, rather than having duplicate content in multiple locations. Regards, RJH (talk) 23:12, 23 January 2012 (UTC)