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Archive 1

Article name

Perhaps this needs to be called "List of minor planets" instead? The minor planets that are catalogued and numbered in this way are not limited strictly to asteroids. —LarryGilbert 21:33, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

Perhaps. Don't forget that the list only goes up to 4000 so far, so they're pretty much all "asteroids" with the possible exception of 2060 Chiron. It's debatable whether we can ever get around to listing every single numbered object (the number jumped from 79000 to 85000 in the last update, March to May, and there's every likelihood it will keep growing extremely quickly).
If I recall, "asteroid" and "minor planet" were almost always synonymous until recently. I believe the Centaurs like 2060 Chiron were called asteroids when they were originally discovered. The distinction between "minor planet" and "asteroid" only became an issue when they started finding KBOs, especially the ones bigger than Ceres; it seems wrong to call Quaoar an asteroid, and Sedna even more so.
If we get as far as (15760) 1992 QB1, I suppose it might be an issue.
If you want to go ahead and change it, I wouldn't object.
-- Curps 09:50, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
I call for a rename as well. These lists contain many KBOs, trojans, etc.. List of asteroids is simply incorrect. List of minor planets or List of minor solar system objects would be better. -- Jordi·✆ 12:32, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Minor planet is a synonym (or almost) for asteroid, and this list contains every minor planet known of the solar system, but the problem is that it also contains objects of the solar system which are not asteroids or minor planets. Objects like Pluto, Eris or Ceres are a part of the numeration of this list and they are not minor planets, these three are dwarf planets and they are bigger than an asteroid. Then, the name "List of minor planets" is still inadecuate to fit. ÏíìÏ 15:26, 13 May 2007 (U)

List of asteroids (1-100)

I took of the links to lists shorter than 1000 (like List of asteroids (1-100) since all of that information is in the list of asteroids (1-1000). Should these short pages be deleted? Rmhermen 20:33, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)

I redirected them all to List of asteroids (1-1000) -- Curps 19:22, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Splitting the pages for size

The "Meanings of asteroid names" pages have recently been split from 1000's into 500's, to put them below the 32K limit. Those pages are mostly edited down from the "List of asteroids" pages, which are close to 100K. Splitting these pages in half would be insufficient to go below the limit; splitting them into 250's begins to grow unwieldy, unless we begin to have two levels of selection(e.g. 1-1000 is a page with links to the four subpages).

Being a relatively new Wikipediast, I'm hesitant to just go splitting them up myself, but I feel like I should raise the issue.

Alfvaen 06:25, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

You can reduce them to 200 or even 100 with a bit of judicious table-handling: it would then be worthwhile merging back the meanings. --Phil | Talk 15:28, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
Please do not merge the meanings pages with the "raw" list! As it currently stands, the raw list is essentially language-neutral, which is a good thing for the other wikis. Merging the meanings in would destroy that.
Urhixidur 22:37, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

Do these need to be stubs?

Many of these articles are stubs, yet quite extensive numerical detail is given about them in the table. It is unlikely any other noteworthy information about them exists, so they have little potential for expansion. Hence I think we should remove these stub labels. Comments? 17:28, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree, and have been removing some stubs as the occasion arises.
Urhixidur 21:40, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
Except for some additions, like source of name, these articles are as complete as possible. I'll still have check many of them for extra information, but I don't think that any casual editor will touch them. So I agree, it may be better to unstub them. --Jyril 21:51, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)
I've put in a bot request to do this job Wikipedia:Bot_requests LukeSurl 18:20, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

New lists for asteroids number > 100,000

I've changed the title to a much friendly form: List of asteroids/$from–$to, and removed provisional designation column for named asteroids, add discovery site column, and i suggest to use its latin names rather than unicode names in the lists (however they can be used in their own articles), i don't know where the unicode names from (only a link in asteroid article), first, many sources only gives its latin form, unicode names is difficult to verify if it is correct, second, i found some conflicts in their names, different sources gives different names, maintain such lists, and make them correct is not a easy work.

If you have any suggestions, leave your word here. Thanks. -- Yaohua2000 05:55, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I like that, now URLs are easier to read. Hovewer, I'd keep the provisional designation column since it is needed for asteroids that have been named. I don't think the discovery site column is needed. And finally, see how discoverers are wikilinked. That makes the page less massive.--Jyril 10:13, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
No, the official names of asteroids are Unicode, not Latin. See the talk page of Meanings of asteroid names for details.
Urhixidur 19:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Oops, I didn't answer the first message carefully enough. Of course the names must be Unicode.--Jyril 00:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I wonder, do we really need wikilinks in the date columns? Removing the links could make the pages slightly easier for the servers to load.--Jyril 00:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Possible precedent setting action

Contributors to this list may want to look to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/17823 Bartels, which will impact many of the lists linked here. I have no strong feelings on this topic, but suspect some of you may have... Williamborg (Bill) 05:14, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Move

Since it seems nobody oppose in the discussion above, so could anyone move these articles to "List of minor planets/..."? Yao Ziyuan 20:57, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Subpages no longer enabled in article namespace

The subpages feature has long been disabled for pages that are in the main article namespace, as this one is, and according to our subpages guideline we aren't supposed to be "using subpages for permanent content that is meant to be part of the encyclopedia." (Wikipedia:Subpages#Disallowed uses). According to this all these asteroid list articles are incorrectly titled, and since redirects of the form List of asteroids (1-1000) already exist anyway I'm going to move them over to that form tomorrow. I figured I should give a heads-up here before doing something that major, though, just in case there was an objection I was overlooking. Bryan Derksen 20:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Umm...What move were you contemplating? Sub-pages are very handy for large lists such as the asteroid one. It took a long time for wikipedians (well, mostly me) to break the lists up into slices of a hundred. We're talking about nearly 1600 sub-pages, here. Think carefully. Urhixidur 01:56, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

2000 CR105

This is the actual name of one of the Oort cloud´s objects, In the page Oort cloud and 2000 CR105 it says that this object does not have a provisional name like (87269) 2000 OO67. In this case, How can I or anyone else find it in the List of asteroids?? ?? 19:46, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

2000 CR105 is the provisional designation. The object has not been numbered yet (insufficient observations to ascertain the orbit to the requisite level), and hence is omitted from Wikipedia's list of (numbered) asteroids. There are currently about 217,000 un-numbered objects, about 37% more than the set of numbered ones. Urhixidur 01:49, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Why???

What type of person would:

  • give a damn
  • want to write these pages
  • waste their time writing these pages

--Drkshadowmaster 06:53, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

  • It's raw scientific data. It is important because it is. It's not a waste of time. Much more important than who slept with whom on this week's episode of some tv show or similar. And yet people "waste" their time on those articles. -Nard 07:34, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
It's not the raw data, exactly. The raw data is the observations, and our sources are the reports. But this is basic verifiable data about the material structure of the universe, and therefore significant intrinsically. These are the things that thousands of people care about and study as a profession or a hobby. Let the television people write their articles, as far as I'm concerned--they have every right, and I won't go around making fun of them. And we expect the same tolerance and understanding. DGG (talk) 22:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps it has not occurred to Drkshadowmaster that amateur astronomers should help keep track of these many objects in perpetuity. With the early unnoticed result of billiard collisions vectoring them in our direction, the Earth might eventually risk a When Worlds Collide science fiction disaster reality. Milo 03:50, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Page moved

I moved this page to "list of minor planets" as requested; the old page is at List of minor planets/archive. The moving and editing of the hundreds of subpages is best done with a bot, but at least this is a start. -- Beland (talk) 07:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Pluto is a (wiki) asteroid now! :-) -- Kheider (talk) 22:47, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Using sorted tables?

How would you guys feel if I turned the currently static tables of asteroids into sorted tables, as I feel that would help users access the information they wanted about an asteroid? It Is Me Here (talk) 19:18, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Presently, there isn't much data by which to sort them. But if you add a column "diameter" or "magnitude", this would certainly be a good thing. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 17:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Parent Bodies anyone?

You could increase the usefulness of this hundredfold by adding two columns. One is parent body. That way people will know where in the Solar System we are talking about.

The other column is diameter or radius, take your pick, to tell us how big the body is. This will make it a lot more user friendly. ~Stidmatt —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stidmatt (talk • contribs) 02:11, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by parent body? Moons of planets (or of asteroids) are not included in this list. All of them orbit directly the Sun. (And 99% are located in the Main belt between Mars and Jupiter.) A diameter value would be useful, but for most newer discoveries it is not known. If you like, you can add the diameter values for the first 10,000 asteroids or so. These should be known by now. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 13:56, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
Stidmatt is referring to listing categories such as Flora family. See Asteroid family for more info. -- Kheider (talk) 15:26, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move. JPG-GR (talk) 03:05, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

This would need to be done with a bot, and I don't want to pile up any more work on Urhixidur, but I think these should be moved to List of minor planets. I don't know of anyone who calls Quaoar an "asteroid", which people think of as being rocky or metallic (though many like Ceres are icy), and even the centaurs are iffy. "Minor planet" avoids this problem. kwami (talk) 00:26, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

And Meanings of asteroid names as well. kwami (talk) 00:31, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Quaoar IS an asteroid, because it looks stellar, whether it consist of ice or not. — Chesnok (talk) 06:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
Is Pluto an asteroid then? kwami (talk) 20:12, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
JPL/NASA say bodies beyond the main belt 'may more correctly be called "minor planets" instead of asteroids.' We should use technical terms for technical subjects; no-one agrees on what "asteroid" means, but "minor planet" is pretty much synonymous with the objects on this list.
As for Quaoar looking "stellar", you're mixing up etymology with definition. Pallas has a disk in a good telescope, but is still an asteroid. We're not going to start redefining these objects just because our telescopes are improving. Pluto was never considered an asteroid, even though it looked stellar until 1977. The few planets we've directly observed around other stars all look stellar, but none of them are called asteroids. kwami (talk) 22:35, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
The term asteroid comes from being star like in appearance and showing no disk. When Pluto was discovered many astronomers wanted to treat it as an asteroid because it did not display a disk like Neptune. Astronomers have checked one of the largest plutinos 28978 Ixion for cometary activity. :-) -- Kheider (talk) 17:07, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
But that's all rather beside the point. "Asteroid" is undefined by the IAU; these were assigned MP numbers, but never classified as asteroids. kwami (talk) 08:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Support move - the terms "asteroid", "Kuiper Belt object", "centaur" etc. are used to represent different populations of objects in the solar system, all of which make an entry into this list. "Minor planet" is definitely a correct term, "asteroid" may or may not be correct depending on whether you are using a population-based definition or an etymological one. Icalanise (talk) 09:29, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
AFAIK those are all asteroids, but perhaps best to be safe. & consistent. kwami (talk) 00:35, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
They, and several other similar lists, have now been moved. I believe only the two large sets of lists remain. It looks like a bot will soon take care of them, though we (I) should redirect the links. kwami (talk) 19:37, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The first request for the bot, Chris G Bot (4th request), expired. The second request, Chris G Bot (5th request), isn't going anywhere either, so I'm going to start moving by hand. It's gonna take a while. kwami (talk) 12:14, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The 'meanings' pages have been moved and internally edited. Their category was changed along with the wording. The main pages were moved, but not many of the transcluded ones you only see when editing. (There aren't many of these anyway.) The 'lists' pages were only moved (again, only the pages accessible to the casual reader). The only thing to change in the text is the category, so I didn't bother. kwami (talk) 06:29, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
There are double redirects like List of asteroids (66001-67000) and List of asteroids/66001-67000 that need fixing. Ruslik (talk) 09:30, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Those should be taken care of automatically. Some times it takes a day.
Actually, half of them should just be deleted. They serve no purpose. I put a note on the category talk page. kwami (talk) 09:33, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

10,000 more

According to the numbers on this page, Wikipedia is about 10,000 minor planets behind. I was wondering how one goes about creating additions to these pages. Serendipodous 14:21, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

This is always going to be the case, since there are many NEOs which are being continuously discovered for which numbers have yet to be assigned. These carry temporary designations and in many cases no orbits have yet been determined. Stefansquintet (talk) 17:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
It is probably bot/script assisted process. Ruslik (talk) 14:28, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Merge sublists?!

With the ever-increasing number of minor planets, I suggest to reduce the number of subpages by making blocks of 2000 or 5000 minor planets each, instead of 1000. Or would the subpages exceed a technical limit then? --Roentgenium111 (talk) 13:22, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

The pages would be awfully long, which might cause problems for people with slow connections. kwami (talk) 23:07, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Would they? The current subpages are only about 3 kB in size, while there are other Wikipedia articles more than 100 times as large (e.g. 2007 in Iraq, 400 kB), according to the sizes given in the respective page histories. And I think the list of subpages on this page is getting too long. Note that also the article's source, the MPC, uses blocks of 5,000 by now.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 15:01, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
They aren't 3kb in size, that's wiki text, take a closer look; List of minor planets: 1–1000. Ctrl + S to save the web page and notice the HTML file is in fact 274kb. The reason why it's so small here is because
  1. this page transcludes a ton of templates
  2. the page doesn't use HTML (<a href="/wiki/Heinrich_Wilhelm_Matth%C3%A4us_Olbers" title="Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers"> vs. [[Heinrich Wilhelm Matthaus Olbers]])
2007 in Iraq should be split, if anything (~800kb). -- 6Sixx (talk) 01:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
I can't save the page with Ctrl+S (don't know why, I'm using Firefox) so I'll trust the numbers you give. But does the size double if we merge two such sides? Since each page uses the same templates, I imagine the size might increase much less by merging. I would also be content with only merging the subpages for N=100,000 and higher which are probably smaller because they contain much less wikilinks.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:20, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
What's the benefit of having fewer subpages? I think 1,000 for each page is large enough for a subpage. --Bxj (talk) 14:24, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

New names

Moved to User:Merovingian/Minorplanets. --Merovingian (T, C, L) 22:28, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. I added them to the list. — kwami (talk) 14:22, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Moving subpages

There is 1636 subpages of “List of asteroids” (e.g. List of asteroids/107801–107900) that are not redirects and I think those should be moved under this page. Do you agree? User<Svick>.Talk(); 13:52, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

We had this discussion before. No reader ever sees those, so what's the point? — kwami (talk) 14:03, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
Pretty much just to clean up. Also, I want them to disappear from Wikipedia:Database reports/Talk subpages with redirect parent, so that more pages with with actual problems can be brought to light. User<Svick>.Talk(); 14:24, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
Ah, okay, that makes sense. Make a bot request then. The only reason they weren't moved before is that when I made the original bot request, the bot people objected that there was no need to add these to the server load, and they only moved visible pages. — kwami (talk) 14:47, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. User<Svick>.Talk(); 15:16, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Names of people

We should do a bot edit to spell out everyone's names. We should never write, e.g., [[F. Smith]] ever on Wikipedia, it should always be spelled out as [[Foo Smith (astronomer)|Foo Smith]] (if that was the article's name). This is needed for disambiguation purposes, as well as research purposes. We are obfuscating names for no good reason, then not writing down any hints for the reader as to what the fully spelled out name should be. As a reader, we don't know who you are referring to, making further research difficult for no good reason.--Bxj (talk) 14:19, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Join discussion at RfC on proposal to promote Notability (astronomical objects) to guideline

The RfC mentioned in the title is for this essay, which does have implications for objects involved in this particular project. Editors at WikiProject Astronomy developed this proposal, partly in response to mass sub-stub creations, but also to clarify notability, since previous language was vague or non-existent. I see this issue has come up many times on this talk page, mostly with editors agreeing for the need to redirect trivial sub-stubs to appropriate lists, which is what the proposed guideline suggests for non-notable astronomical objects in general. Please join the discussion at the RfC. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 14:30, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Lead

Lead currently reads in part Most are not particularly noteworthy; only some 16,000 minor planets have been given. As of 31 August 2012... after the word names was separated from its sentence by this sequence of edits by an anon. Andrewa (talk) 03:29, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Fixed thank you! Andrewa (talk) 19:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Russian

Why are there Russian words in brackets in the pop-up tooltip for all of the redlinks on the article page? On other article pages I see "(page does not exist)" in English in that position. -- 79.67.252.42 (talk) 08:33, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Delete?

As per WP:IINFO? That would solve a lot of problems cleaning up WP:NASTRO-failing articles, which now have to be redirected here. But if this is WP:IINFO-failing itself, that would be greatly simplified. Chrisrus (talk) 19:45, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to have to agree that this list is far too indiscriminate. We link to the indexes that have this information, so that's fine. There are certainly some notable minor planets/asteroids that we could have a "List of notable minor planets" and just highlight those, but the rest of this is just repeating tables, like a phone book. --MASEM (t) 23:20, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
Please note that List of notable minor planets already exists. This is any/all minor planets. If you support deletion of this article please indicate by enclosing the word "support" in triple apostrophes. Chrisrus (talk) 20:12, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Oppose per the guideline at NASTRO: "It is acceptable for individual astronomical objects to be part of a list of similar objects." This isn't fancruft: Any of these bodies is potentially important. Although the liklihood of that is small for any individual object, it becomes relevant for the them when taken together. If an asteroid is mentioned somewhere, a search on WP should turn it up. — kwami (talk) 00:29, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

"potentially" is failing WP:NOT#CRYSTAL; if it does gain importance, we can add an article and add to the list, but we can't support the idea that may potentially become important. Certainly there are some on this list that have notability and should be discussed on WP, and listing those, and any newly-important ones that come along, is reasonable, but when 99% of these lists are non-notable entries w/o articles, and we're just linking in those who discovered them and the observatory, it's a data table that is better handled elsewhere. --MASEM (t) 13:36, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
This argument, as Masem points out just above, fails WP:NOT#CRYSTAL. Also, consider the fact that List of notable minor planets already exists. Finally, just because we can keep some lists of non-notable items doesn't mean we should must keep them all. For example, List of famous dogs should be kept, even though many of the items would not merit individual articles, but List of all dogs known to exist should not exist. Therefore, do consider these arguments and offer support in triple apostrophes. Chrisrus (talk) 20:12, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
List of notable minor planets already exists. Therefore, please register your support in triple apostrophes. Chrisrus (talk) 20:12, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
Restricting this list sounds like a good idea, for a reasonable definition of "notable". The current list is now very incomplete (above 217,000, almost no objects are listed in the subpages) and likely "incompletable" due to the ongoing large increase in minor planet numbers (except by copy-pasting data from the MPC, which fails WP:IINFO). Being "conservative", we could e.g. list all MPs up to 10,000 or ~25,000 (the range in which almost all resp. a substantial portion of MPs have their own articles) and afterwards list only the more notable ones (own article, especially large, unusual orbit, maybe all named ones), thus reducing this list at least by a factor of 10. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 17:11, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
List of notable minor planets already exists. Therefore, please register your support in triple apostrophes. Chrisrus (talk) 20:12, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
I will agree that I see little purpose in having unmaintained lists of minor planets above #25000 or so. Most notable asteroids should have an article that makes it fairly obvious as to what makes them standout against the average asteroid. Many asteroids numbered between 2000 and 5000 can be notable for weird reasons that border on sufficient notability. I assume this list, "List of minor planets", is suppose to be a master list of the sublists. -- Kheider (talk) 17:46, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
In that case, and given the existence of List of notable minor planets, please register your support in triple apostrophes. Chrisrus (talk) 20:12, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Oppose: List articles are perfectly fine. If you do not like them ignore them. Chrisrus, this is not the place to take up this conversation. Take it to WP:NASTRO, if you must. -- Kheider (talk) 16:20, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Did you mean to say that any/all conceivable list articles are perfectly fine? What if they are problematic? If this list no longer exists, WP:NASTRO will have to be addressed at that time. Chrisrus (talk) 20:12, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
List of notable asteroids is the correct name and it is intended only for "minor planets" inside the orbit of Neptune. This list, "List of minor planets", is intended for all numbered minor planets regardless of where they orbit. Deleting this list that contains the sublists of minor planets seems foolish. I have no problem considering a potential cut-off point between say #25000 and #200000 just to keep the lists manageable. As Astrocog asks below, please state your intentions. -- Kheider (talk) 00:38, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Is there any reason it could not house all notable asteroids? Setting an arbitrary cut off point would be an improvement, but if experts aren't interested in an object, they just aren't interested in it, no matter what side of Neptune its orbit lies. Similarly, if an asteroid is notable, it should either belong on the List of notable asteroids or the title should be changed to reflect its true nature and scope. Chrisrus (talk) 06:13, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Historically, asteroid are inside the orbit of Jupiter, so List of notable asteroids should not contain objects beyond Neptune. This article IS the master index for sublists of minor planets. -- Kheider (talk) 11:26, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose the idea is to have some place to put the information to stop proliferation of articles about non-notable objects. Wikipedia should be able to have a place for this sourced and verifyable information. But a list like this is a notable topic. I would be happy enough though to split this down somehow into smaller lists. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:18, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

It is not clear to me what is being proposed. Is there a proposal to delete this index of the lists? Or to delete all the lists? Or something else? Please clarify what exactly is being proposed here. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 21:34, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

What is being proposed is to delete this article on WP:IINFO grounds. As WP:NASTRO says, "It is not the job of Wikipedia to needlessly duplicate content in these databases". This article is nothing but an attempt to re-create the JPL database. Chrisrus (talk) 06:13, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia:NASTRO#Failing basic criteria but possibly helpful in another article or list specifically uses this article as an example of an appropriate list. Chrisrus, please quit forum shopping. -- Kheider (talk) 11:26, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I am not convinced there is a problem in need of a fix. WP:NASTRO is a notability criteria, with the purpose of guiding editors in deciding if an individual object is notable enough for an individual article. It was written specifically with the intent that list articles which include non-notable astronomical objects could remain intact. This list particularly offers readers and editors the utility of navigating the various asteroid lists. I have no problem with the list articles personally. There are relatively few enough of the asteroid lists to be a problem. The issue of redirects mentioned above is not a problem worth solving by deleting this article. If you don't like the "due process" of PROD or AfD for asteroid stubs, then you've got a problem outside the scope of NASTRO - so please stop invoking it. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 12:22, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Irrelevant. The question here is whether this article should be deleted as per WP:IINFO, that is all. Whether Nastro says so or not, the point is, there is no need to re-create the entire JPL database here. This collection of information is indiscriminate, and anyone who wants this information will go there, not here; this article serves no purpose. Chrisrus (talk) 13:53, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
And part of the problem is that while all the other issues related to notability as NASTRO are right in line, the idea that every recorded body be listed somewhere within WP is wrong. Otherwise we might as well list every verifiable living person, since we can document them similarly by that logic. Yes, that's not going to happen.
What can happen is that we can still have redirects from any found bound by name, or list them on disambiguation pages should that happen, and redirect those to List of notable minor planets. That list should describe the numbering scheme of such planets and where these databases are, and link the user to them so they can search if necessary. Then as it does, list those planets notable enough for their own articles. Mind you, I would also see it reasonable that if there's more to mention about a body than just the number, date found, discoverer, and which observatory that was found, then a description column could be used to avoid the creation of a full article but to point out why that one minor planet may be notable. We just simply don't need table after table of effectively raw data that the subtables here present. --MASEM (t) 14:21, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
List of notable asteroids (aka by Chrisrus as List of notable minor planets) is not a proper re-direct as it only applies to asteroids inside the orbit of Neptune. The list to modify would be this one. -- Kheider (talk) 14:35, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
That can easily be changed. List of notable asteroids can easily be expanded to accommodate all notable asteroids, including those that orbit outside of Neptune, if there should turn out to be any. The Neptune limitation is arbitrary, and any list of notable asteroids or minor planets should be titled "List of notable asteroids" or "List of notable minor planets". If that article seems to want to be sub-divided into notable main belt objects and so on, that's fine. The point is, we need a list or lists of minor planets, but we don't need this, which is a list of all minor planets known to man, but only a list or lists of notable minor planets. Chrisrus (talk) 15:13, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
The line is drawn at Neptune to differentiate asteroids from Trans-Neptunian objects. Another proper list is List of trans-Neptunian objects. I do not think your attempt at combining multiple lists into a one-size-fits-all "list" is appropriate or in the best interest of Wikipedia. -- Kheider (talk) 16:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
I see. Please note that I would not collect all minor planets, Distant or otherwise; this article would. You it seems would have this article cover not only the notable asteroids, but also some others, offering an apparently reasonable but somewhat arbitrary cut-off point. Furthermore, you would exclude from this article those minor objects outside Neptune, noting that List of trans-Neptunian objects and such already exist; is that correct/all? Chrisrus (talk) 06:09, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
There can be more than one list. This is a list of NUMBERED minor planets so obviously it will include objects inside the orbit of Jupiter and objects outside the orbit of Neptune. -- Kheider (talk) 08:16, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Before handwaving WP:IINFO, please read its clarification. There is nothing indiscriminate in a list of minor planets: it is as discriminate and clear-cut as a list can be. That said, Chrisrus is shooting himself in the foot with this, if his issue is to deal with minor planets failing NASTRO: a redirect doesn't need a deletion discussion, a deletion does (as he's been explained at lengths some weeks ago). The obsessive deletion crusade of Chrisrus related to minor planets is not improving the encyclopedia and it is becoming disruptive. --cyclopiaspeak! 20:18, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
    • The essay ignores the issue of a list with potentially an infinite number of items, which this can be, just like with do with "List of people from X" lists. There needs to be rhyme and reason to make this list discriminate and using the "having a standalone article" threshold is the way to do that. --MASEM (t) 00:33, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
      • There is no potentially infinite number of items here. First, it is practically certain that the number of minor planets in the Solar system is not infinite -it can be large, but not infinite for sure. Second, the number of known minor planets is even smaller, so I wouldn't panic. Third, as other editors noticed above, the current notability guideline on astronomical objects "was written specifically with the intent that list articles which include non-notable astronomical objects could remain intact." - while it is agreed that not all astronomical objects are notable, per WP:5P, we include almanac-like entries, and a list of minor planets is definitely included in such a definition. --cyclopiaspeak! 06:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
        • Then NASTRO was written incorrectly, because that goes against all other practices for lists of indefinite length. Also - at least until mankind has fast convinent space travel - consider the list of minor planets even within the solar system to be an almanac - it's a list of rocks. Some are clearly more notable than others (near-earth orbits, etc.) but that's it. It is excessive data that already exists elsewhere. --MASEM (t) 14:56, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
          • I've no problem with paring down the minor planet lists, perhaps even to a list with consensus-determined parameters, but that's not what I'm seeing here. The proposal seems to be "burn the spreadsheets! All of 'em!" I think a more moderate set of proposals should be made, so that we're not arguing over a all-or-nearly-nothing proposal, and then resorting to name calling. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 15:03, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
            • Yeah, I'm not saying get rid of all lists of minor planets, just pare it down to the list of those that are notable or can have something more said about them (from sourcing) in a table than just the who/when/where of discovery (as is the case for most of the lists with numbering in the 100,000+. That is, this table (which might be over several pages too, I haven't checked) can have a "comment" column, so that those minor planets that aren't notable for an article but have an interesting factoid (such as naming curiousity or the like) can be included and still redirected to there. --MASEM (t) 15:46, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Point of Order

Please discuss the delete proposal, not the delete proposee. If you could please not, in this section, discuss me, but rather the proposal to start a deletion discussion for this article on WP:IINFO grounds. Chrisrus (talk) 04:51, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Another Point of Order

I would like to add another grounds:WP:DIRECTORY. May I so amend? Chrisrus (talk) 04:51, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

None of the entries of WP:DIRECTORY applies here.--cyclopiaspeak! 06:44, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Why are you still here? What's the point? Everyone else has said "no". — kwami (talk) 07:26, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, it seems like Chrisrus is being pointlessly aggressive towards odd-toed ungulate corpses. --cyclopiaspeak! 11:04, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposal 1

I see this discussion as going nowhere as it stands. The original post did not offer a coherent proposal, so I'm offering a suggestion. The specific constaints can be debated in the discussion below. My constaint value is arbitrary (Kheider suggested it above), but another can be given.

Proposal: List of minor planets will be constained to include only numbered minor planets below 25000. The main list will include the objects of special note (they have their own article), but the indexed lists up to 25000 will remain intact. An index of these will remain on this article. Minor planets above 25000, but which have an article, will not be deleted - they must still go through a PROD or AfD process if an editor disputes the associated article.

Discussion of Proposal 1

Please discuss the proposal here. If changes to the constraints are warranted, please provide your rationale. Additional proposals can be made if a consensus on this one does not emerge. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 15:23, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

What is special about the first 25,000 on the list? --MASEM (t) 15:46, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
The first 25000 are on average the largest and brightest asteroids. They are the asteroids that amateur astronomers are likely to go look-up as most of those asteroids are in the range of modern ccds. Currently the Wikipedia lists go up to #363000, but are largely incomplete above #217000. Currently there is no rule preventing someone from using a bot to expand and complete the lists to #373392+. -- Kheider (talk) 16:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Spot checking through the list, it's clear the first several thousand (I checked through 4000, might go higher) are all "filled" in that there's an article for pretty much every entry, but as they go by age and being the brightest objects observable short of planets/stars, that makes sense. About 16,000 - 17,000 is when the completeness starts to falter (eg, only about half the entries have articles) and at 25,000 it drops down below that. I assume by a bot you're talking one that would create articles from the JLP database as to have articles, but I would argue that's not a smart idea. The counter example to all this is the fact we have articles - even if just stubs - on every recognized village and town. The argument there, when challenged on notability, is that because people actually lived in these places, there is likely to be sources, local, about them, and its just a matter of legwork and time to get that. You can't use the same argument on minor planets. Certainly some have been of academic interest, but not all of them. We're just presenting raw data with no likely expectation they can be expanded on, and that's not what a tertiary source should be doing. The JPL database is a great resource and we should definitely direct editors there, but we don't have to replace it.
Alternately, this could be held at Wikisource (since it should be PD-NASA-JPL), and keep the links of truly notable (more than just the basic details) minor planets here. --MASEM (t) 22:06, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I think Kheider is just saying that someone could conceivably create a bot to keep making articles, should a cutoff not be decided on. Although, I'd say that NASTRO wouldn't allow those articles to stay. Recent experience here tells me that once a stub is made, editors will find ways argue for inclusion, despite NASTRO being as clear as spring water. An upper cutoff to the minor planets could discourage the lists creeping indefinitely. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 22:36, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I am talking about a bot creating List of minor planets: 399001–400000 and filling it in someday. Newly generated (individual) asteroid articles are already covered by WP:NASTRO. I hope List of minor planets: 209001–210000 was created by some kind of bot. It looks like a lot of work if it was not. -- Kheider (talk) 22:58, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
cutting to about 25000 is a fair size, but the other information should not be lost. Instead the list should be split into shorter lists, perhaps each about 25000 long. I would only support shortening the list if the other parts were split off and retained. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:11, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
There's no way to shorten these because for pretty much all above 25000, it is just data. The breaking into 1000-chunk segments is necessary per WP:SIZE, so this isn't an option. --MASEM (t) 22:06, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
The lists are exact copies of the MPC lists ([1] etc.), no information is lost by deleting them (or copying them to Wikimedia, as suggested above) except for the wikilinks, which barely exist for MPs > 25,000. I think we should make the cut-off and only list notable MP's > 25,000. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 23:18, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
So how do we get a list of all notable MPs >25,000? I'd say all MPs with a non-boilerplate article (>>1kB) would be a good start (many named MPs seem to have a stub article containing zero information outside this list, except on their name). Is there an easy way to get a list of all these MPs? --Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:35, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
From [2], it seems that there's only some 300 non-stub main-belt asteroid articles out of ALL MPs; I couldn't find a single one >25,000. So we can already ignore the >93% main-belt asteroids...--Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:46, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
I'd argue that the currently 200-odd numbered TNOs and Centaurs List of Transneptunian objectsList of Centaurs and Scattered Disc objects are all notable, though not all have articles yet. OTOH, to avoid duplicating the TNO list, one could also restrict to articled objects here. All other categories of "unusual" MPs seem to have fewer than 1000 numbered members as well, except for Apollos and Jupiter trojans:[3] --Roentgenium111 (talk) 22:17, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Excessive wikilinking

Why do so many entries have blue links that merely redirect back to the same list? It's very frustrating for visitors not knowing whether there is actually any article. They should be either red-links if an article is expected to be written, or no links if editors object to too much red. Davidships (talk) 20:53, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

The mentioned problem has been fixed. Self-redirects no longer exist. Rfassbind – talk 11:47, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Or would that be prohibitive in some way? (page size, time to do, etc., please specify)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  01:56, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I count 454 "thousands" pages. Up to 200000, each of the 200 "thousands" page are split up into 10 "hundreds" pages. The remaining 254 are all self-contained "thousands" pages, so that's 2,254 pages to edit total. Sheesh. I could do this in AWB though...hmmm.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  07:39, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Since there is a structural change in the pages ~200,000, I'll go until at least that #, but try to do them all. I'll start with an obscure "hundreds" pages, link to it here when I'm done for comments, then apply the final version to the remaining pages.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:40, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Changes made to List of minor planets/57601–57700, using {{MPCdb}}.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:35, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
Comments solicited at WT:ASTRO#MPC link on List of minor planets pages and other changes on 5 March 2016 (UTC).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:26, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
The MPC-links are fine (I like them). The template needs to be updated though to accommodate the additional columns. The big difference between the list lower/greater than 200k is the (deprecated) usage of subpages. At least now, there is a clear transitional point at 200k (this was not always the case!). I also removed all the hyphens/dashes from the two thousand subpages up to 200k, since they were not helpful (i.e. causing inconsistencies). On the long run subpages will have to be removed. But that's a different topic for the moment, I guess. Rfassbind – talk 17:17, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Thank you. The link template has been added to all subpages <= 200000, and the associated headings adjusted to accommodate the additional column. I found 2 omitted MPs: (32103) 2000 KF52 (accidentally deleted in the past) & (196801) 2003 SY202 (never included). I'll proceed with pages >= 200001 shortly, and remove the errant hyphens.
Condensing the 100s pages <= 200000 (or splitting up the 1000s pages > 200000) seems like a lot of work for minimal effect. I have no preference either way, since both accomplish the same task, and no one seems to have a problem anymore with the page size of each 1000s page (~700 KB after they've been fully loaded). It's definitely a separate issue though (which I can help to implement, either way, once decided).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:54, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
 Done, along with heading standardization to match {{List of minor planets/header1}}. I found that pages >= 200001 are also mostly missing {{Anchor}}s to sections 001, 101, etc., so I will place them accordingly.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:23, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Reorganize page structure

According to its title, the List of minor planets really needs to focus more on the List of minor planets. Instead an array of thematically specific lists are mentioned in the lead. I would argue that "List of minor planets" is synonymous to "List of numbered minor planets" (for which not even a redirect exists on wikipedia), and that List and Lists are not the same.

Possible changes:

  • The lead section needs to give an overview of the content in List of minor planets (e.g. a description of the tables columns), improve on cross-references to related topics, and explain that all minor planet articles and redirects are linked from and to this list, respectively.
  • Give more context: Minor Planet Center (source), history and current status of this dynamical list, highlights such as first body, total number, provisional vs. permanent designation, lowest-numbered unnamed body (as already exists), and others
  • Move all thematically grouped list such as List of possible dwarf planets into a separate section (Other/Thematic/Specific lists)
  • Move all lists referring to comets to section "See also"
  • Move-up "Index" section as first section after the lead, and organize it into a more compact structure

Maybe you have some additional/different changes in mind. Please post them. I think the time has come to acknowledge what this list really stands for: the bedrock of all minor planet articles and redirects. Rfassbind – talk 11:31, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Not that I expected a lot of feedback after a week, but if you can, find some time and take a look at the first draft of the revised article at User:Rfassbind/Minor_planet_list_index, which includes a new infobox, a reordered structure, and a redesigned "Index"-sections. I'll still have to rewrite and expand the lead section, though. Thx, Rfassbind – talk 02:21, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

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"all asteroids with a diameter larger than 10km have been discovered"

...now that's just nonsense, isn't it? Whilst it's probably true that almost all cis-Neptunian bodies >10km have been found, and the majority still being discovered are 6km or less, there has still been the occasional 11 or 12km surprise in recent years, particularly amongst the Jupiter trojans, and out in the Kuiper belt there's still objects of 250km and larger being discovered (I only had to go back 3 or 4 pages amongst the many hundreds to find a pair of them, hanging out within a flush of those just-over-10k trojans), never mind the huge numbers of smaller and/or more distant ones that we can't currently detect, but are suggested to exist by the currently close-in members of the scattered disc & similar that we CAN simply because they're near perihelion. The further away a small body is, the harder it is to see, made even more difficult by smaller bodies generally being intrinsically a lot darker (ie, lower albedo).

There'd probably be a fairly steady stream of 10km thru 400km ones turning up, if the main thrust of trans-Neptunian study wasn't poring over existing data and setting up the occasional ground-based occultation at the moment, as we're waiting for a fresh set of suitable thermal-IR capable satellite scopes to be launched to replace the ones whose cryogenic supplies ran out in the middle of the decade (the last of the observations they made were still turning up objects on the order of 700km, e.g. (523794) 2015 RR245, which is still in the last 3% of all numberings). And I bet there's actually still relatively poor coverage in the higher inclinations above the ecliptic...

There's a grain of truth in the statement, but it needs rewritten, as it's not absolute truth, especially not as the resolving power and sensitivity of our telescopes continues to improve. Would I be OK to go ahead and change it to "almost all asteroids of 10km or larger diameter within the orbit of Neptune have been discovered", or similar? 146.199.60.87 (talk) 21:06, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Ok. Ruslik_Zero 09:38, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
I am fairly confident that the statement is referring to main-belt asteroids. -- Kheider (talk) 09:46, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

How was this made

How'd you guys get this done? a bot? wow!--Urthogie 21:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Several large Excel spreadsheets, with clever formulae. Mostly my work. Urhixidur 02:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
How do the formalae work? Sagittarian Milky Way 03:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
I routinely write scripts for stuff like this but I've never tried it for wiki. sed,awk, perl, etc can generate a lot of things but the real question is if you can automate the process, why is this list even needed? Doesn't NASA have a similar DB somewhere? It does seem a DB rather than an encyclopedia table, even for an electronic encyclopedia, makes more sense. Did this come up for deletion ever? Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 02:21, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Binary digits are cheap and it doesn't hurt anyone. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:33, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

So many pages

Do we really need an article for every asteroid. Surely 950_Ahrensa or 976 Benjamina are not notable. I think very few of these are notable. Couldn't they just be combined into one large page for every thousand asteroids?--God Ω War 04:19, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

agreed

U0000 is null (talk) 21:20, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

It would be nice if someone would make a bot to merge these more easily.--God Ω War 23:20, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

  • List of Integers Too?  : I guess the best comparison I came up with

for this page would be a "List of Positive Integers" and each page could show where it ranks in the set of intergers, important physical quantities that contain the integer, references from popular literature that mention the integer etc. Then, move on to a list of floating point numbers, including all rationals and transcendentals. Surely there must be a NASA or other DB that is essentially redundant with much of this? Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 20:18, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

If someone cares enough to write an article that's good enough for me. WP:WIKIISN'TPAPER. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:34, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
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