User talk:Sdsds/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

American pioneer comment

good point. i replied at the article talk page. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 21:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Reference for asteroid impact probability

OK, I found a very clear reference to why the probability goes up, then down, from Spaceguard UK. I've added it to the article. LouScheffer (talk) 03:11, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, this reference is great! (sdsds - talk) 06:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The Technology Barnstar

		The Technology Barnstar
		For your contributions to space-related articles, and the spaceflight portal. GW_SimulationsUser Page | Talk 00:27, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow, thank-you! (sdsds - talk) 21:54, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

TOC on your sandbox

Hey see on my edit to your sandbox how I put that "__TOC__" in. Well that puts the Table of Contents to wherever you put the __TOC__ in the code. So if you have a page where the Table of Contents is somewhere unusual (like in the comments area on that template) then just use that word. —Zachary ^talk 07:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a great work-around for the problem! Ultimately a solution would somehow come from a change in the template, so that whenever a Comments subpage was modified to include section headings, the TOC of the Talk page continued to be in the correct place, without adding anything to the Talk page itself. But for now ... your suggestion works! Thanks again for suggesting it. (sdsds - talk) 04:41, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Invite to WP:ROBO

NASA Spirit Rover Model

As a current or past contributor to a related article, I thought I'd let you know about WikiProject Robotics, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Robotics. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks and related articles. Thanks! - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 23:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

STS-122 launch tag

Probably best if we use {{launching/STS}}, as this can be re-used more. Also, I forgot to send you a note about WikiProjects, so I've put that below. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 07:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Human Spaceflight WikiProject

Hi, I noticed that you are a member of the Human Spaceflight WikiProject. A couple of weeks ago, I proposed that the Space missions and Space travellers projects, which both appear to be inactive be merged into the Human Spaceflight project. Whilst this is being done, the capitalisation of the Human spaceflight project's title would also be corrected (ie. Human Spaceflight → Human spaceflight). The projects are all doing the same/very similar things, and in my opinion, a single, larger, project would be more effective than three smaller, and somewhat inactive projects.. In light of very little response to messages on the project talk pages, I am now sending this message to all members of all three projects, inviting them to discuss the proposal on the Human Spaceflight project's talk page. I would appreciate your opinion on this. Thanks. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 07:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

RE: Plan for Category:Space exploration articles by quality

Yes. We'll need to check at WP:SPACE. We'll also have to drag it through CFD as well, because we are moving categories. It would probably be a good idea to leave notes on the project talk page, and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team as well.

In reply to your comment at the CFD for the member category, I think the best way to minimise self-references would be to merge the members into the main project category, and Category:WikiProject Spaceflight seems the best place for this to go. --GW_Simulations^{User Page | Talk} 22:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

It's an option, but it could be seen as WP:CPM. I suppose we could try requesting a speedy move, or if we have any administrators in the project, asking for their help. --GW_Simulations^{User Page | Talk} 08:10, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Edits to WPSpace template

Hey SD, I saw you've made some edits to the WPSpace template, and I was wondering if you'd fancy adding an entry on it for WP Human Spaceflight? We could start doing some assessment within the project then - the banner that I made is a bit useless, as it doesn't go in the main template and won't allow for assessment of the articles. What do you reckon? All the best, Colds7ream (talk) 13:11, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi! As it happens I was just thinking about that! But then I realized I didn't even understand the assessment process for WikiProject Spaceflight. What does it really mean to e.g. have Talk:Vostok 1 tagged "Importance to Spaceflight: High"? Are there any objective, written-down criteria for that? What does any "importance" rating (much less specifically the Spaceflight one) signify? I have looked at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Release Version Criteria#Importance of topic and at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Work via Wikiprojects but I'm still not sure I understand (or maybe agree with) the intent. (It sure seems like there's work to be done on WikiProject Spaceflight article assessment! See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight#Category:Unknown-importance space exploration articles.) Short term, for work on human spaceflight, I'm wondering if all the articles related to the subject at least have the Category:Human spaceflight tag, or the tag of one of its sub-categories...? (sdsds - talk) 16:14, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Categorisation like that sounds like a grand idea, and I'll work on some draft importance criteria to put forward for everyone's dissection. Colds7ream (talk) 13:25, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Done - have a see what you think! Wikipedia:WikiProject Human Spaceflight/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance Colds7ream (talk) 19:10, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow, this is a great start! I've started a discussion about it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Human Spaceflight/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance. (sdsds - talk) 21:05, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Space law

Per Talk:Space_law#Re-organized, it looks a little different than when you saw it last. Let me know what you think. Franamax (talk) 10:02, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Counter-insurgency

Many, many thanks for reading the article. As you may gather, it was something of a braindump when I needed to refer to FID in another article. Your point about improving the lead is well-taken, and your comment gives me encouragement to go back to work on the article. If you'd like to put it on your watchlist, you should see changes.

There is, incidentally, some related content I took out of the article and put in my userspace, although I'm embarrassed to say I have forgotten how to search in userspace and find the pages I've created. Hopefully, I'll remember in the next little while, or find it in the documentation. Anyway, there is an area that is clearly US-specific. It's entirely possible that it is too much OR for the mainspace, and can go into the Military History Project essay space. Essentially, it deals with several conflicts over the use of US special operations forces. The first article, which is not more developed than text yanked out of the FID article, deals with whether Special Operations forces, especially United States Army Special Forces, should principally be "door-kickers" doing special reconnaissance and direct action for counterterrorism, or whether the units that understand local language and training (primarily but not exclusively Army Special Forces) should have working with local countries, as in the FID mission, as their principal responsibility and other units, reinforced if necessary, should be door-kicking.

Thanks much for the interest.

Howard Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 11:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello, and thanks for your quick response! Thank-you also for the work you have already done clarifying the lead of the foreign internal defense article. Also, I found User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-IntelOversight by using the Special:Prefixindex search function. Is that the page to which you refer above? (sdsds - talk) 20:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Frustratingly, there's another page somewhere, I hope, in my userspace, which discusses the controversy in the US special operations community about misusing Special Forces people, qualified to teach in other cultures and languages, as "door-kickers" in direct action and special reconnaissance. Is there, perhaps, a text search that might come up with "kicker"? Perhaps if I go far enough back in the history on Foreign Internal Defense, I can find that text, which I removed as being to US-centric. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 20:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I was able to find the missing section, and have incorporated some of your suggestions into the lead. I'm starting to wonder about the proper relationships between the main counterinsurgency article, which I haven't looked at recently, and the FID article. FID is one way of carrying out counterinsurgency, and I wonder if some of the counterinsurgency models I have in the FID article belong elsewhere. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:53, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I've responded at Talk:Foreign internal defense, trying to get at the question of what makes sense to include in the article. Do we want it to help the reader understand the theory behind the doctrine, or merely to understand what kinds of activities the doctrine expounds? (sdsds - talk) 03:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Launching template

I have decided to remove the "launching" template from the NASA page. If have had doubts about this usage in the past, and have only seem them grown. I'll explain my reasons, and perhaps you can comment with your ideas.

1. NASA launches stuff every week. This opens a precedent to having the template included year round
2. I can see the point in having the template on payloads, sattelites, the general "Space Shuttle" article, the mission article, because those are all search terms that might lead people to wikipedia looking for that information. In my eyes anyone that looks for a "launchschedule" on the NASA page is just not using google correctly.
3. It needs and invites constent updating troughout the week simply to fix the "countdown" which really shouldn't be in Wikipedia at all. We say "something happens within the next" week, but we should not be "counting down".
4. Combined I think this is starting to violate WP:NOT in that wikipedia is not a TV guide, and it isn't a launchschedule or countdown either.

I'm interested what your opinion on this is, and what we should do address these concerns --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:27, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi! Thanks for leaving me a note about this here. I understand much of what you have written, but I am a bit confused by "NASA launches stuff every week." What do you mean by that? Would you like to discuss this here, or someplace more central? (sdsds - talk) 02:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Changes to {{launching}}

Hi, I have made two major changes to Template:Launching (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs). Firstly, the launch information now uses the named variable "info" rather than the first unnamed variable. Secondly, the time to launch is not automatically calculated, using information entered in the format "DD|MM|YYYY|HH|MM" (separating each with a pipe (|) symbol) into the first five unnamed variables. This can be overridden using the named variable "time", but this should not be required. If you have any questions, please let me know. --GW_Simulations^{User Page | Talk} 14:09, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Launching/GLONASS

A tag has been placed on Template:Launching/GLONASS requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{tranclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:48, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

And I have removed that tag as it is a template subpage used to enable correct and effective usage at a later date. As a subpage, not a template itself, I doubt if it meets the criteria anyway. --GW_Simulations^{User Page | Talk} 08:01, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

No, starting late this year, or early next, we are going to see GLONASS launches on Soyuz, and even a couple on a GSLV. There are four Proton pads, and Russian pad turnaround times are pretty fast, so it is not unusual to have two Protons going within the reccommended two week period for this template (Today's Proton launch, and the one on 28 January, for example). As for STS-400, I would advise not using a tag unless it is called up (by which time the main {{Launching/STS}} tag would have freed up. --GW_Simulations^{User Page | Talk} 09:07, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow, there are four Proton pads? So one re-used sub-template per launch system really won't work. I suppose we could get some re-use by standardizing on one sub-template per launch pad.... But I see your point: given that there will certainly be future GLONASS launches the GLONASS sub-template will potentially get re-used a number of times! And who knows what valuable reminders and hints can be stashed in the <noinclude> section of the sub-template between launches? (sdsds - talk) 15:45, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there are four. Areas 81/23, 81/24, 200/39, and 200/40 at Baikonur. I think Soyuz has six or seven, two at Baikonur, one under construction at CSG, and the rest at Plesetsk. I think if we stick with the tags we've got for now, and create more when needed, that would be the best policy. I can't see any point in deleting used templates unless the rocket is retired, or in the case of satellite-specific tags like GLONASS, the last such satellite is launched.

On a different note, I was considering preloading some of the general information (timeline of spaceflight, spaceflight portal, etc) into the template, using a parser function to only display when in the template namespace. What do you think of that? --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 16:23, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Diagram

Done, with a slight contrast adjustment. Might I ask where you got the illustration? It would be better loaded as a .png, and I'm not sure that this is the original resolution; it looks upscaled. thegreen J Are you green? 01:10, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks. The original resolution was actually 298 by 222, so I've re-uploaded it as a .png at Image:Image-CONTOUR SRM configuration.png. thegreen J Are you green? 21:42, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

That looks great. Nicely done! (sdsds - talk) 21:45, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

NRO L-21

Hi. I've proposed that the article you started, NRO L-21, be merged into USA 193. Both articles are about the same satellite, and the USA-193 one is more established, so I think merging that way would be a good idea. Do you have any comments? --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 22:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I've redirected the page; I believe USA 193 contains most of the same information. However, I'm seeking a good source for U.S. officials or NASA previously claiming that the satellite posed no danger. I'm sure this is the case but can't find a good source. Evercat (talk) 23:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to you both for fixing this. FWIW, I chose to create "NRO L-21" only because that was the (red) link in the launch table of 2006 in spaceflight. Are we now consistently using "USA" designations for articles on individual NRO launched satellites? (sdsds - talk) 05:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

There's no policy that I know of, I just started the article at USA 193 some time ago. But if it's felt NROL-21 is a better title I'd be perfectly happy with a move. Evercat (talk) 14:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

L-21 is the launch designation, 193 is the satellite designation. The L-21 designation is technically and officially obsolete, but is just still used by a few people who got used to it. 193 is the official designation, and is the only official designation for the satellite itself. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 15:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

{{Launching/SM}}

Please could you take a look at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Launching.2FSM. You would probably be better at explaining the core purpouse of these templates than me. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 08:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I tried to explain them. Sometimes it is difficult to explain why something is a "good thing." (sdsds - talk) 06:59, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 13:11, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I realized today with the {{Launching/Sea Launch}} delay that we need never remove these templates from the articles once they have been added, but can instead merely put all the content into <noinclude> sections when it shouldn't appear on the article pages (as you have already done a few times and did again with the Sea Launch delay). This is great because there's no hit on the article history at all for each subsequent launch. Possibly even better, to the casual observer the template never appear to be unused! (sdsds - talk) 21:21, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Caesium v. Cesium

I totally agree that where, for example, the name of a Pop group is Cesium-137 then that remains as spelled. Similarly where publications are quoted in which the author spells the element Cesium then that too stands. However, when referring to Caesium clocks, it is indeed the element being referenced - what other sort of Caesium is there in this context? There is not a different Caesium for physics from that in Chemistry - just two properties of the same material - hence the appropriate change in spelling. Will you revert or shall I ? Velela (talk) 15:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC).

Hi again! I am perfectly happy discussing this here rather than on your talk page, if that is your preference. But maybe there's a better place to build a community-wide concensus? It might seem like that would be Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemicals, but my concern would be the inherently biased sample of editors who would become aware of the discussion. The specific article in question, Global Positioning System, is not even claimed to be within the scope of WikiProject Chemicals! (And as you'll note, that's pretty much my entire point about why the policy you quote is not the spelling policy that is relevant to the GPS article.) So perhaps the best place is Talk:Global Positioning System? Shall we continue the discussion there? (sdsds - talk) 01:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I have moved the whole discussion there as suggested Velela (talk) 15:13, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Jewels

Thank you for beginning a list of companies that perform Jewels! Robert Greer (talk) 20:41, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Vandilism

Your page has been vandilised by 96.235.113.20 and reverted by Freshbakedpie ^{(Wanna talk?) \'_'/} 22:08, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject History of Science newsletter : Issue IV - May 2008

A new May 2008 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter is hot off the virtual presses. Please feel free to make corrections or add news about any project-related content you've been working on. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss (talk) 23:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Requesting your input at Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics/Featured Article drive

Since you are a member of WikiProject Economics, I would like to direct your attention to Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics/Featured Article drive. We are currently deciding on an economics-related article to bring to Featured Article status and we would like your input. Thanks! Gary King (talk) 15:12, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

RE: Neutral dialect

It is a similar issue to the Long March issue which we discussed last year (User_talk:GW_Simulations/Archive_2007#Variant_spellings). I have absolutely no problem with either dialect, but seeing as both are used, it sometimes looks a bit scrappy. It is always best to use a "neutral" dialect - ie. words which are spelled the same in both British and American dialect (your suggestion, I believe). I think that without realising it, I sometimes use words that are not in the American dialect, so if you notice any of those on the portal, feel free to change them to make them neutral. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 08:50, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Chinasat 9

Just to let you know, with regard to the launch date for Chinasat 9 (which you changed from 6 to 9 June in Portal:Spaceflight/Next launch), it is not clear whether this will occur on 6, 9, or 22 June. All three dates were mentioned at around the same time. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 06:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Re: Space photos

Hey, thanks for the note. I'm pretty busy right now for photos (got a 49 megapixel panorama in front of me at the moment), but I should be able to do something with it in the next day or two. Just some preliminary notes: Part of the exhaust plume is blown, i.e., there's digital clipping, so there's not much I can do about that, but I will try to do what I can to remove the washed out look and clean up some scanned dust and scratches while I'm at it. Also, do you have an idea as to what you want for the crop? It looks like the photographer was trying to avoid cutting off the exhaust, but any cropping is going to do that, which could make the image look a little awkward. I was thinking of ending the crop just left of the smaller water tower and below the launch pad; does that sound okay? Thegreenj 02:38, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Image:STS31 carries Hubble to orbit edit.jpg. Sorry about the halos around the fumes and shuttles; someone's got there before me about sharpening and did a rather poor job, leaving artifacts all over the place. And I'm afraid I'm just no Monet—but that's not to say it's not possible! Thegreenj 01:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

LOCAD Article

Hi there! I just saw your article on LOCAD. Were you part of the original group of researchers working on the PTS at MSFC? Dognap (talk) 04:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello -- I'm glad you found the article! I was very curious about the research topics the LOCAD work addresses, but don't have any affiliation with the people working on the project. All the content of the article came from the sources it references. If you know of any others, particularly anything more current, please don't hesitate to add them to the article! (sdsds - talk) 05:16, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Final frontier

Nothing new I'm aware of; I lifted the templates trying to find something appropriate. (I wish, again, there weren't about 800 diff ones...) If they need changing, I'll leave off adding new ones, but there's a bunch of redlinked Mars projects that could use it (if I haven't already hit most of them...). TREKphiler 09:12, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Zenit

Oh my God. That is... not intentional. I have to access to the Chinese Wikipedia through an IPv6 proxy server ( "sixxs.org" ), so when I jumped to the English version the system added "sixxs.org" to the images' URLs automatically. I have added the Chinese entry's link again, by normal IPv4 this time. --Douglasfrankfort (talk to me) 09:05, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

RE: Editlink interaction with show in Template:Launching

• Fixed. What do you think of the new feature I added to disable transclusion? --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 22:17, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Conversation continued at User talk:GW_Simulations. (sdsds - talk) 03:59, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

JDS Hyūga

Click on show to view the contents of this section

My responses to these messages are on the other user's talk page. (sdsds - talk) 21:29, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

The posting in the "Proposed edit to protected page" section of Talk:Hyūga class helicopter destroyer was directed specifically to you. The "too many words" were intended to encourage you to re-visit your opposition to the proposed one-word edit. Did those words fall on deaf ears because there were too many of them? -- Tenmei (talk) 23:28, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Specifically, please:

• 1. Did this argument on this one point change your view on this one-word edit? If so, why? If not, why not? What could I have said differently or more succinctly. In my view, my thoughts were ordered in a well-constructed manner; and this newest gambit captures my full attention.
• 2. I'm particularly interested in your take on the last segment -- the part about getting my "peers" simply to scan a few paragraphs in a linked source? In my view, this page requires a modest paradigm shift which has been strongly resisted by editors who admit knowing nothing about the Japanese context in which this ship is built. The knee-jerk reactions have been so intense that I can't get beyond that odd blank wall. You offer the first real prospect for a fresh "take" on a modified strategy for moving beyond the status quo ante ... and therefore, your perspective is likely to be very helpful in evaluating what has gone wrong thus far AND figuring out how to move forward constructively in an effective and seemly manner.

Although you are correct in assessing this as non-urgent in a general sense, I suspect that it is probably not a good idea for me to continue to be slow-going, deliberate, patient. I would hope to solicit your impressions ...? --Tenmei (talk) 01:14, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Too many words?

Is it constructive to present this draft here? If so, are you willing to suggest a way to make the prospective posting more succinct, less wordy? Does this help you understand how Nick Dowling contributed to that scenario in which I alone have been cast in the role of enigmatic troublemaker? If so, good -- a step in the right direction at last. If not, that could still be a good thing if it helps you discern how you can help me figure out what I can do to move beyond today's impasse?

I hesitate to add this to the talk page at Hyūga class helicopter destroyer for fear that someone will complain that it has "too many words." In a context which arises before I posted my initial edit to that article's second paragraph, it becomes possible to begin to appreciate what's gone so very wrong as the result of an unthinking reliance on Jane's Fighting Ships and Global Security.org without giving due weight to consequences which flow from the Japanese context.

Wikipedia's current treatment of JDS Hyūga implicates deep-rooted paradigms based on premises which effectively function to exclude or excise issues from the body of the text; and this includes significant content which remains otherwise inextricable in reality. Relying solely on English-language naval ship catalogs, the edit history for this article reveals how otherwise credible editors have thwarted, deleted or blocked a number of crucial contributions to this subject's development -- see Talk:Hyūga class helicopter destroyer#Article name

Personally, of course, I don't care what the article about JDS Hyūga is named, nor do I care about the terminology used to describe this vessel -- but I'm persuaded that WP:NPOV expects us all to care very much about the "why" which informs whatever name or terminology is selected.

Although generally valued as highly credible resources, Jane's Fighting Ships and Global Security.org promote systemic bias in at least this one instance because their congruent terminology derives from primary sources bearing the imprimatur of the Japanese government. As such, reliance on this "gold standard" for descriptive terminology relating to Japanese naval ships is defensible, as would be any reasoned consensus based on such standards; however, neither can be considered determinative. There is an inherent problem with that imprimatur when its progeny produce deleterious effects in a Wikipedia venue giving more than lip-service to WP:V and WP:NPOV.

As you may know, the Constitution of Japan prohibits "aircraft carriers"; and therefore the Japanese quite sensibly identify the JDS Hyūga with a unique, non-aircraft carrier name. In Japan, if ducks were prohibited by the Japanese Constitution, then something which waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, and behaves like a duck would be sensibly given a unique non-duck name. As it relates to use of the term "aircraft carrier," this unique bias is informed by the constitution which was imposed during the post-war occupation by the Americans; and it, along with many other salutatory aspects of the Constitution, has been embraced by subsequent generations of Japanese.

Among the Japanese, the practical decision-making which sometimes calls for a prudent substitution of flexible notions of "fiction" for "fact" is recorded across the span of centuries. This aspect of Japanese history and culture need not intrude into this Wikipedia article about the Hyūga except when an otherwise useful fiction is proffered as sufficient rationale for devaluing, denying, and deleting edits and citations (consistent with WP:V) which state that JDS Hyūga is an aircraft carrier with another name.

Sdsds construes the phenomenon in terms of a familiar line from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet -- in that passage in which Juliet muses about "that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet". In my view, this specific quotation does capture the essence of a very important aspect of this somewhat complicated issue.

Perhaps a more apt illustrative exchange is to be found in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in that scene in which Petruccio looks at the sun and defies his new wife to disagree when he identifies it as the moon -- especially in that passage which begins, "I say it is the moon ...

In that Wikipedia article about the first of the Hyūga-class vessels, I would hope to make a constructive contribution by re-casting this controversy using medical terminolgy:

In oncology, the metastasis of cancer is conventionally described as insidious or "developing so gradually as to be well-established before becoming apparent." It is also well-known to be pernicious or "highly injurious or destructive." It is unfortunate that criticism of Wikipedia has not yet encompassed the oncological model, but it is arguably true that the metastasis of systemic bias, like cultural bias elsewhere, is insidious, pernicious and sometimes invasive.

Prior to this, the non-NPOV problems in Hyūga class helicopter destroyer have escaped a thorough examination. The thin record of postings in the initial section of the talk page suggests a nascent pattern of thwarting discussion and inquiry; and the subsequent record on that talk page confirms this unwanted hypothesis.

Across the arc of talk page exchanges amongst potential contributors and others, intense, concerted resistance made it impossible even to reach a threshold from which to begin parsing aspects of this non-NPOV cancer. This resistance becomes a powerful element of proof -- a multi-faceted demonstration of an undetected, highly persistent, insidious and pernicious problem.

Initial examination of this suspect article included a complete review of the edit history, including scrutiny of relevant external links which were deleted without any efforts to incorporate plausibly useful data.

An ameliorative edit was initiated. This involved one sentence only, supported by an in-line citation with an external link to a credible source. The talk page record reveals that this precisely-targeted intervention was reverted twice without substantive discussion. The edit encountered further resistance which blocked access to any threshold from which to begin to address the unacknowledged bias which remains the article's pervasive flaw. --Tenmei (talk) 05:57, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Request for mediation

Sdsds -- I have filed a request for mediation at Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Hyūga class helicopter destroyer. I identified you amongst the relevant parties:

Involved parties

1. Tenmei (talk · contribs), filing party
2. BillCJ (talk · contribs)
3. Nick Dowling (talk · contribs)

Assent from the following need not be a factor in the decision to accept this dispute for mediation; but perhaps these contributors might consider themselves as parties because of their participation in creating the talk page record.

1. Buckshot06 (talk · contribs)
2. Parsecboy (talk · contribs)
3. Bellhalla (talk · contribs)
4. Optigan13 (talk · contribs)
5. Coldmachine (talk · contribs), mediator
6. Sdsds (talk · contribs), mediator

The step-by-step instructions for filing a request for mediation did not explain that I needed to notify others;[1] but Nick Dowling's notice here implies that I have a responsibility to remedy that oversight without further delay.

At this point, Nick Dowling, Buckshot06 and Parsecboy have already agreed to mediation. It's up to you to decide what, if anything, you want to do. Even if you don't decide to participate, I hope you will watchlist the page so that you are able to follow what unfolds. --Tenmei (talk) 23:44, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Hyūga notification

"Disagree" -- that single word from BillCJ's doomed my request for mediation, but it need not be the last word.

I have re-submitted the request as the somewhat modified Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Hyūga class helicopter destroyer2 -- seeWikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Hyūga class helicopter destroyer2.

Changes include expressly incorporating Talk:Hyūga class helicopter destroyer along with Hyūga class helicopter destroyer. Also, the number of named parties is smaller. Another potentially helpful improvement -- first on the list of issues to be mediated is:

• 1. As per WP:LEAD, the article's introduction needs to be brought in line with the article's text and reflect the paragraph which was included after being endorsed by a unanimous consensus on the article's talk page which describes the fact that different reliable sources call these ships aircraft carriers, helicopter carriers, helicopter destroyers and destroyers (Tenmai has stated that he chose to sit out this discussion [2], and instead restarted it after consensus was reached).[3]

• 1A. Issues of Framing -- identifying a problem and moving beyond it?

I'm much more concerned about getting this process started than I care about what or who comes first. I hope you join me in this concern.

I hope you will again assent to this request for mediation.

By sharing a copy of this notification with those who had not decided what to do about the first request for mediation, I am fulfilling my responsibilities as the filing party; and at the same time, I open a door to the possibility that one or more may yet decide to do more than watchlist this page. --Tenmei (talk) 18:28, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Oncological metaphor

The following attempt to create a neutral restatement was unsuccessful at Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Hyūga class helicopter destroyer#Supplemental restatements. Perhaps for you, the effort might possibly resonate? --Tenmei (talk) 18:45, 2 August 2008 (UTC) Framing using medical terminology?

• Restatement alternative using plausibly useful medical terminology:

In oncology, the metastasis of cancer is conventionally described as insidious or "developing so gradually as to be well-established before becoming apparent." It is also well-known to be pernicious or "highly injurious or destructive." It is unfortunate that criticism of Wikipedia has not yet encompassed the oncological model, but it is arguably true that the metastasis of systemic bias, like cultural bias elsewhere, is insidious, pernicious and sometimes invasive.

The non-NPOV problems in Hyūga class helicopter destroyer have escaped even cursory examination thus far. An ameliorative edit was initiated, involving one sentence only, supported by an in-line citation with an external link to a credible source. The talk page record reveals that this precisely-targeted intervention was reverted twice without substantive discussion. The edit provoked intense resistance which blocked access to any perceived threshold from which to begin to address the unacknowledged bias which remains the article's pervasive flaw.

Talk page sequelae revealed underlying toxic peripheral wiki-pathologies which are become corollary subjects of this request for wiki-diagnostic and wiki-therapeutic interventions. --Tenmei (talk) 16:21, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

March 2009 commissioning

As you may not know, the official commissioning of the JDS Hyūga on March 18, 2009 was widely reported:

A. RTTNews (link) noted interest in the event:

• "Anticipating international concern over the launch of the mammoth destroyer, the Japanese government insisted the vessel would not carry fighter planes and that it was different from an aircraft carrier."

B. AvioNews (link) reports that Japan has commissioned the helicopter carrier Hyūga:

• "The Ministry of Defense underlined that, even if it resembles a light aircraft carrier, the "Hyuga" is an helicopter carrier and respects the pacifist constitution imposed to Japan by the United States after World War II. The Country renounced to use force in international disputes, but anyway it has one of the best organized armies in the world."

C. The Straits Times (link) published an Agence France Presse (AFP) news story which explained that the Maritime Self Defense Force (MSDF) "stressed that the destroyer complies with the country's post-war pacifist constitution."

• The Straits Times news story included a AFP photo.
• China Daily published a smiliar Xinhua photo

D. iStockAnalyst.com (link) posted a Kyodo News report mentioning "concerns about its resemblance to a light aircraft carrier":

• "Despite the Hyuga's look and feel of a light aircraft carrier, the MSDF says it is anything but."
• "'An aircraft carrier, I believe, has a fair degree of offensive functions. Based on that definition, this Hyuga falls a little bit outside of the frame,' MSDF Chief of Staff Adm. Keiji Akahoshi told a news conference on Tuesday."
• "The acquisition of a destroyer that could project the force far from Japan's coast, however, raises concerns in Asia. It may even spur rivalry with countries like China, which is rumored to build an aircraft carrier of its own."
• "Japan denies itself offensive capabilities under its war-renouncing Constitution. But the government interprets the supreme law to mean that it can possess the minimum level of armed force necessary for its self-defense."

• The Japan Times news story included a Kyodo photo.

I wonder if you might be willing to share some thoughts about how to go about incorporating this relevant information into an article -- Hyūga class helicopter destroyer -- which was the subject of controversy some months ago?

A constructive step might be to re-post what I've written here -- perhaps just after this now-timely diff or this diff which were contributed by Nick Dowling on the Hyūga talk page?--Tenmei (talk) 17:11, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi again, Tenmei. You're correct: I hadn't been following the Hyuga news. Thanks for pointing it out to me! (sdsds - talk) 21:07, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

The implied question in the last paragraph of my post above? What if I were to re-post what I've written here after this talk page diff or this alternate talk page diff? My intention is to avoid controversy by beginning to move forward constructively on the talk page?

In preparation for this inquiry I created Takes two to tango (idiom). --Tenmei (talk) 22:15, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

ESRO

Hi, I just started a new article: ESRO. There's a tonne of stuf that needs to be done on it that I don't know exactly how to do (and what exactly to do). Could you take alook and help me out?

Thank you. U5K0 (talk) 23:28, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Wow, this was great work -- thank-you! I wasn't familiar with the history of European space exploration organizations, so reading through your article was very helpful to me. After I read it again in more depth, I'll leave comments on the article's talk page. Thanks again for making such a great start on this article! (sdsds - talk) 23:43, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Somewhat urgently, please see Talk:ESRO#Source_of_the_article_text. (sdsds - talk) 00:07, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Robotics July Newsletter

Wikipedia:WikiProject Robotics/Outreach/Newsletter July 2008

date-autoformatting

Hi Sd

In response to your request at MOSNUM talk, one of the pages that may interest you is the two-and-a-half-year-old saga at Bugzilla. (You'll need to register and log in if you want to comment.) Despite the 88-person petition about halfway through, the discussion has gone around in circles and has shown that developers, particularly volunteers with little direction from atop, are generally unwilling to make major technical changes, particularly if the way to do it is unclear. You'll see that there are quite a few suggestions as to the syntax and programming method, despite my plea to keep it as simple as possible and to let the developers do it as they saw best. The whole thing wasn't helped by the fact that Brion Vibber has never really been onside, and that WP is only one of a huge number of sites that uses WikiMedia's system. How to avoid syntax, programming, that doesn't conflict with all of those environments?

We gave up some time ago. In the meantime, the community appears to have gradually evolved a more skeptical attitude to the blueing of dates and date fragements. The argument over 1989, 1960s, 19th century and other absurdities is largely over. The numerous disadvantages of DA, and the utter triviality of the differences it purports to iron out, are now the motivation to get rid of it, or at least to empower editors with the right not to use it.

I hope to convince you to support moves to see DA in a different light. Tony (talk) 05:39, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Tony. Thanks for your response! The transcript for bug 4582 does indeed make good background reading for this topic.

Of course the "right" solution long-term will be a move to wiki software that supports an "autoformat" markup syntax that doesn't overload the syntax for wikilink markup. (That is, the <<angle brackets>> suggested early in bug 4582, rather than the [[square brackets]] currently in use.) But moving in that direction, as you suggest, is almost impossibly difficult. The question we should ask for MOSNUM is, "What's the best suggestion we can give today to editors who are creating or modifying articles?"

The best solution available today is also mentioned in bug 4582 -- markup using the <span> mechanism, simplified for editors by wrapping it in template syntax like {{Date}}. The difficulty with this might be explaining it to editors who frankly "don't want to know" about the ugly details. Or is there some other difficulty I don't yet see?

The major trouble with your idea of allowing editors to do no markup of dates whatsoever, is that we will lose valuable meta-information when they unlink dates without using markup that allows that text to be later identified as dates that could be formatted according to per-user preferences (or per-article settings, or whatever).

Without any major change to wikimedia software, enwiki could impose arbitrary date formatting for readers who don't set a preference, including all anon-IP readers. (Note that if anon readers dislike the arbitrarily imposed format we can tell them, "One advantage of creating and logging into an account is that you can select your own preference for this.") This proposal could be implemented in days (minutes really, eh?) and would immediately alleviate one of the major concerns driving this, i.e. the anon-IP readers seeing inconsistently formatted wikilinked dates. But by encouraging unwikilinked dates this immediately avaliable solution is being made less valuable! (sdsds - talk) 06:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Sd—Sorry, I didn't watch your page (got a bloated watchlist already, as I'm sure you do too). Can you buzz if you reply here further? To take your points para by para:

Well, my overriding reaction is: do you really think it's worth bothering with? The order of month and day seems as trivial as the or/our spelling, or the traveling/travellling couplet. All very recognisable by all anglophones. My own daily newspaper uses [month day, year], when the prevailing format in my country is the international: I suspect that few readers have consciously notice it, and indeed I didn't myself until I had to grapple with the fuss at WP! The US military sector uses international, and many Canadians do. Doesn't seem to be an issue to me. I suppose if I were a computer programmer I might be motivated by the technical challenge of "fixing up" the function, but it would be such a tangled business to make it flexible (date ranges too, please) as well as devising the right syntax to render it plain black. Someone will always have a better way at Bugzilla pages, you've noticed too. That makes developers wary and turns them off, typically. A "right" solution needs a "right" problem, which is missing.

"Some other difficulty?"—removing the ungainly square brackets and avoiding them when first writing an article is simple in concept: everyone can understand it, including newbies. Yes, it's harder to get people to substitute another syntax (although, to argue your case, a script could easily be written to change them over and/or add them). Apart from getting people to agree on a new syntax—no easy thing—remember that WikiMedia software is used by a huge number of sites worldwide. Any new syntax proposal has to avoid interfering with locally registered syntaxes and local usage. We'd need to be sure that no one was using <blah> with functional meaning in their text. Someone objected early on to <blah>, didn't they?

Losing valuable meta-information. I'm not even a script-writer, let alone a programmer, but I can see how dates can easily be identified in a text by a simple script, if required in the future (in fact, a script that picked up faulty and inconsistent date formats would be easy to write, too, I suspect—that could be done at the same time. The loss of square brackets appears to be inconsequential in that respect.

Arbitrary formatting imposed on IP users: I think many users and readers would object, just as they would to a dictum that only British spelling is to be used on WP. The binary spelling and date-formatting arrangement does two good things: it's the minimum that will calm ruffled feathers across the Atlantic; and (2) it's simple enough to manage.

I still think simple wins out: remove it, since it's a solution chasing a non-problem. Let me know of any further thoughts you have. Tony (talk) 00:23, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Shavit 2

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Shavit 2, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised because even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. Zack Holly Venturi (talk) 23:31, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Ooops!

I think I overlooked this :/ Did you get any answer to this from anyone else? I'll have a look if you like, but it's totally not my area of expertise ... - Alison ^❤ 06:06, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

No worries! I know there are mechanisms (email, irc, bug databases, etc.) to which some members of the community have access off-wiki where they can request server software configuration changes. I wish a similar mechanism existed within the wiki, but if it doesn't, I won't champion the crusade to create one. (That is, I wish the English language Wikipedia were a democracy, yet recognize it is instead controlled by a fearsome cabal. ;-) (sdsds - talk) 06:24, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

My edit here expresses my sentiment about this. (sdsds - talk) 22:03, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

ANI

I'm unsure why you're going to ANI. You did put your case, but people generally didn't agree with it. Given that there is overwhelming support for the deprecation of DA, what do you hope to achieve by posting a note there? I can't really see how I can participate there at the moment—nothing substantive to defend or comment on. Tony (talk) 10:56, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Tony, you as an active participant in the debate attempted to close the debate and assert there was consensus. This is not in keeping with Wikipedia convention for closing debates. (sdsds - talk) 11:01, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

You make it seem like a one-person campaign. Yet the most substantial changes came today and were not my doing. Aren't you flogging a dead horse? The consensus was overwhelming and you don't agree with it, that's all. It's not as though people didn't engage with your point of view; look at my effort on your talk page. And please do not post negative comments—any comments—within someone else's post, as you've done at GA talk. I've relocated it to where it belongs chronologically, with a note in square brackets. Tony (talk) 11:28, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Sd, for you note on my talk page; however, in the spirit of collaboration and consensus, I'm still keen to know whether you feel differently after a few months or so. Do keep in touch. Tony (talk) 04:42, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

My note at AN/I was directed at anybody who could explain exactly what the thread was intended to achieve. I still don't understand why this discussion of a minor disagreement over date formatting has been posted on a noticeboard used for requests for urgent admin intervention. Tim Vickers (talk) 04:56, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Craters and spaceflight

Moved to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spaceflight#Craters_and_spaceflight. (sdsds - talk) 05:11, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

SIM PlanetQuest

I wanted to alert you to my comments here. --IvoShandor (talk) 13:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Category:Documentaries alleging war crimes

You had participated back in February in this CfD regarding the Category:Documentaries alleging war crimes, which ended in no consensus. A new proposal has been made to eliminate this category and merge its contents to Category:War documentaries which is now going on at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 September 24#Category:Documentaries alleging war crimes. You are encouraged to reconsider the original CfD, revisit your opinion in that discussion and participate again in this latest CfD. Alansohn (talk) 20:21, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Feitian spacesuit

Hey, just a heads-up, I moved your new article Feitian space suit over to Feitian spacesuit, as that is a more common spelling. So you might want to add the new one to your watchlist as well. —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 02:56, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh...whoops. I didn't think to look at those. I guess they are pretty interchangeable, and if "Space suit" is the de facto standard for WP articles, I can see why it would be better to keep things that way for consistency. If you want, you can move the new article back to its original location; personally, I don't really have a preference. —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 03:11, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I just moved it back. As far as I know, moving over a redirect page works the same as moving to any other pages. Let me know if you see anything in the article that's gotten messed up through the moving back & forth. —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 03:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

No problem! Sorry I jumped the gun with the first move. —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 03:26, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Gerard K. O'Neill

Thanks for assessing Gerard K. O'Neill. It help me to improve the article if you could let me know which of the B-class criteria the article did not meet. Wronkiew (talk) 16:17, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for spending the time to reassess the article. Wronkiew (talk) 03:39, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Eastern Range

Hi - the article starts out with: "The Eastern Range (ER) is a rocket range that supports missile and rocket launches from the two major launch heads..." -- The term "launch head" is not used anywhere else in the article, and is not defined. Could we Wiki link to a (new) article, simply defining what a launch head is, or perhaps even listing some? 63.75.83.149 (talk) 15:09, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, wasn't logged in when I posted the above comment -- MithrasPriest (talk) 15:10, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Talk:International Space Station/Comments

Thank you for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and the page that you created has been or soon will be deleted. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on [[ Talk:Talk:International Space Station/Comments|the talk page]] explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the article does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that a copy be emailed to you. Colds7ream (talk) 16:37, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Marriage Privatization DRV

In view of your edits at Marriage, please consider commenting at Marriage Privatization DRV. If you know where in Wikipedia that the idea of marriage privatization is covered, please post that in the DRV as well. Thanks. -- Suntag ☼ 17:18, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:HSF Taskforces Proposal

Hey Sdsds, just a quick request - I've put up a proposal at Wikipedia:WikiProject Human spaceflight/Taskforce proposal as to as possible structure for some taskforces for WP:HSF. If you could take a look and see what you think, I'd very much appreciate some feedback! :-) Thanks in advance! Colds7ream (talk) 18:48, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Happy Holidays!

A special message, just for you! → → → →

Happy holidays, Sdsds!

May your holidays be filled with family, friends, and fun, and may the new year bring you much joy. Ariel♥Gold 21:24, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

As with many designs on Wikipedia, this one was of course, inspired by the wonderfully talented Phaedriel, the "design Obi Wan".

Flagged Revs

Hi,

I noticed you voted oppose in the flag revs straw pole and would like to ask if you would mind adding User:Promethean/No to your user or talk page to make your position clear to people who visit your page :) - Thanks to Neurolysis for the template   «l| Ψrometheăn ™|l»  (talk) 07:24, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject History of Science newsletter : Issue V - January 2009

It's here at long last! The January 2009 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter is ready, with exciting news about Darwin Day 2009. Please feel free to make corrections or add news about any project-related content you've been working on. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse --ragesoss (talk) 02:54, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Userbox and other stuff

Hope you don't mind, but I borrowed one of your userboxes.

On another note, about your comment on spacewalks lists with templates, have you tried making these templates? And can references be linked through the templates to a reference list at the bottom of an article? Thanks,WVhybrid (talk) 03:58, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad you find the userbox is useful! As regards the spacewalk lists -- I pretty much agree with the opinion you expressed on the article talk page, i.e. other efforts (like getting to featured-list quality) are probably better uses of time/energy. Indeed, using the template mechanism to generate sub-lists based on selectors may always be "too complex" for any real uses. (sdsds - talk) 09:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

International Space Station

Hi! You might be interested in the discussion at Talk:International Space Station#The Failed FAC. Thank you. Colds7ream (talk) 22:25, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Launch Windows

Sdsds, I've made a schedules of launch windows of Hohmann orbits from various departure planets to various destination planets. They may be found at http://clowder.net/hop/railroad/sched.html . Also on the page is the spreadsheet (downloadable) that calculates the schedules, delta vee, trip times and more. Would this resource be a good link for your Launch Windows article? Thanks for your time, Hop David. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.52.34.250 (talk) 23:15, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Hello, Sdsds. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Timeline of spaceflight/Launch tags.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

-MBK₀₀₄ 21:53, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Invitation to Meetup/Seattle6, a focus group

Hello. I'm part of a research group at the University of Washington (Seattle campus), and my group is reaching out to Wikipedians in the Puget Sound area. We're hosting a focus group designed to gather information on what Wikipedians would like to know about each other when interacting on Wikipedia. Our end goal is to create an embedded application that helps people quickly know more about others' history and activity on Wikipedia, and we feel our design will be much more useful if it's based on insights of users like you.

I'm hoping that the chance to help out local researchers, to engage in lively face-to-face discussion with other Seattle Wikipedians, and to contribute to Wikipedia in a new way will entice you to join us. The session lasts 2 hours and snacks are provided. Sessions will be held on UW Seattle campus - directions will be sent after registration. Your contribution will be greatly appreciated!

Willing and able to help us out? RSVP here. Want to know more? Visit our user talk page . Please help us contact other local Wikipedians, too! Commprac01 (talk) 01:04, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Hyuga

Thanks for thinking of me. I'm extremely intrigued about these vessels and will certainly have a look and do some investigating on my own, but in the mean time I've placed a notice for extra comment from WP:SHIPS here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships#Eyes_requested_on_a_controversial_ship_class_article. Hopefully some good ideas will come from this. -MBK₀₀₄ 17:36, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

NowCommons: File:SRST Figure1.jpg

File:SRST Figure1.jpg is now available on Wikimedia Commons as Commons:File:TacSat-1.jpg. This is a repository of free media that can be used on all Wikimedia wikis. The image will be deleted from Wikipedia, but this doesn't mean it can't be used anymore. You can embed an image uploaded to Commons like you would an image uploaded to Wikipedia, in this case: [[File:TacSat-1.jpg]]. Note that this is an automated message to inform you about the move. This bot did not copy the image itself. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 13:38, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Currently in space category

Thanks for you comments at my page—I had overlooked my reference to WP:USELESS, as I was just focusing on my initial nominating statement. I hope it's alright with you, but I've quoted you at the nomination—the part about the category not being neglected by any lack of updates. The obvious enthusiasm for the category that you've pointed out has somewhat dampened my conviction that deletion is the correct choice with this category. For now I'll keep the nomination open and see what others think. I'm sorry if you've felt the space categories are under assault lately—pretty much coincidence of an ongoing interest at CfD, I suppose, but nothing coordinated between editors. At least not with me .... Thanks. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 09:04, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

User:Tenmei

User:Tenmei has filed an ArbCom case against me and I have done a little research on Tenmei and noted you have interacted with this user. Can you help provide an opinion about him? Thanks.Teeninvestor (talk) 22:06, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Tang_Dynasty/Evidence

Talkback

Hello, Sdsds. You have new messages at Talk:Comparison of heavy lift launch systems.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

GW… 07:16, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Am I funny?

Do you think im funny? 99.29.236.85 (talk)` —Preceding undated comment added 18:59, 23 May 2009 (UTC).

Some shameless thankspam!

Talkback

Hello, Sdsds. You have new messages at Template talk:TLS-M.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

GW… 06:44, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Launch Windows

I notice one of the articles you've worked on is Launch Windows. My page lists various Hohmann Launch Windows. From this page you can also download a spreadsheet where you can type in departure and destination planets. You can also type in periapsis and apoapsis altitudes for the orbit you're departing from/arriving at.

The sheet returns launch windows, trip times, arrival dates, and delta vees.

The schedule and spreadsheet may be found at: http://www.clowder.net/hop/railroad/sched.html

Thank you,

Hop David —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.52.34.250 (talk) 22:54, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Hydyne article appreciated

Thanks for doing the Hydyne article. I noticed you're also an economics literate contributor: if by chance you have a hankering to assist in the prevention of environmental degradation, kindly contribute to Environmental tariff. There's a fair amount of literature readily available, and what's been created on the article so far doesn't do the concept justice. Tnx --HarryZilber (talk) 05:27, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

from SDSDS: ....These stages get dropped, still containing residual fuel, somewhere in the middle of Kazakstan! In regards you other comment, I wonder if an environmental tariff approach would hasten Russian conversion to less toxic propellants?

I've heard/read about the problem with unspent propellants still residing in components that survived reentry -there are probably relatively easy engineering solutions to it, perhaps for example, by including destruct charges that automatically fire during reentry, attached to each toxic fuel tank. As general threats to humankind go, however, that problem is way, way down near the very bottom i.m.h.o. (famous last words -watch a fuel tank crash into the downtown core of a metropolis next week).

The most severe threats to human societies can be divided into two general categories: those of human origin (nuclear Armageddon + nuclear winter, global warming, etc....), and those of non-human origin (mega-tsunamis, asteroidal impacts, etc...).

Threat	Response
Mega-tsunamis	Non-human origin Preparations have included sophisticated oceanic monitoring networks that can automatically trigger warning alarms to affected coastlines. Pre-planned mass evacuation routes away from the coastlines, etc... Further countermeasures are probably highly warranted. Cost/benefit analysis: low cost to extremely high value.
Asteroidal/cometary impacts	Non-human origin Even twenty meter dia. strikes can cause significant damage, and another Tunguska event in central Europe or the populated regions of North America today would likely change human societies significantly. Preparations can include a significantly expanded spaceguard effort, plus deep-space observatories looking for the same. The best response is obviously a course change in deep space which results in a complete miss in lieu of an impact, which would require extremely expensive hardware pre-positioned in deep space. Other response options should be researched and pursued as well -what we don't know can hurt us very badly. Not paying attention to this threat will never reduce the probabilities. Cost/benefit analysis: extremely high cost to mega-high value. There is obviously a very long lead time effort required to provide effective countermeasures, and it needs joint actions at an international level to be effective.
Environmental degradation Global warming	Human origin. This is highly controllable and mitigation/reduction efforts should be rapidly ramped up. The denialists need to get out of the way or be beaten into the ground with the abundant data already available. Here you can see rapid results in numerous areas if political pressures are brought to bear on the causal factors. Hopefully Obama will yield significant positive changes in both the medium and the long term; perhaps by creating a cabinet level post for someone like Al Gore. These efforts need to be coordinated at the scientific levels, however I view environmental tariffs as a highly effective political tool to obtain immediate cooperation at the international level. Not to beat something to death, but the international pollution control index as mentioned in the proposed law was also inspirational. Cost/benefit analysis: very high cost to mega-high value.

Nuclear armageddon has been left off because the causes/countermeasures are self-evident and are already being addressed at almost all levels on an on-going basis. For the other major human-origin item shown above, the response and countermeasures to global warming and environmental degradation can likely be dealt with fairly quick.

Positioning cometary movers and the like in deep space will likely take decades to achieve for an unknown, but real risk (and which needs to be done). However global warming, despite all the winter-related humor from the pundits, is here and its here now. Removing harmful types of manufacturing, energy production, and fuels from use world-wide will take significant efforts at very high costs, but those large scale efforts need to be started immediately. Even simpler: helping the politicos by encouraging them to use good tools such as environmental tariffs is a quick way to introduce positive changes, which is why a polished, detailed expansion of that article, plus translations, needs to be implemented. Your help in putting this suggestion forward to the WikiProject Economics group would be appreciated. --HarryZilber (talk) 16:25, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

TMM

Thank you. It's been rewarding working on the article. Lionelt (talk) 08:25, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

NASA GAR

hi Sdsds, I just wanted to let you know that the main NASA article is undergoing a Good Article Review. Most of the gruntwork is done now, and the article could use a fresh set of eyes to copy edit it, add more materiel, and offer suggestions and feedback. If you have a chance, I would appreciate it if you could take a look. Thanks!
— V = I * R (talk) 23:44, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

NEW CATEGORY PAGE

Hello Washington-user!! What do you think of this category?
Either on a scale of 1-10 or with commentary.
Let me know through the "Special:EmailUser/" section. #TTiT# 13:30, 14 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by The-Traveller-in-Tacoma (talk • contribs)

An exciting opportunity to get involved!

As a member of the Aviation WikiProject or one of its subprojects, you may be interested in testing your skills in the Aviation Contest! I created this contest, not to pit editor against editor, but to promote article improvement and project participation and camraderie. Hopefully you will agree with its usefulness. Sign up here, read up on the rules here, and discuss the contest here. The first round of the contest may not start until September 1st-unless a large number of editors signup and are ready to compete immediately! Since this contest is just beginning, please give feedback here, or let me know what you think on my talkpage. - Trevor MacInnis ^contribs 05:16, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

SMOS satellite

You are absoltely right. I fixed that. Thank you. --BatteryIncluded (talk) 20:30, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

ISS FAC4.

Hello there! As an editor who has posted a comment in one of the recent Peer Reviews, GANs or FACs of International Space Station, or who has contributed to the article recently, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind commenting in the current Featured Article Candidacy with any suggestions you have for article improvements (and being bold and making those changes), whether or not you feel any issues you have previously raised have been dealt with, and, ultimately, if you believe the article meets the Featured Article guidelines. This is the fourth FAC for this article, and it'd be great to have it pass. Many thanks in advance, Colds7ream (talk) 16:45, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Qian

It is a bit ambiguous - "After World War II he served under von Kármán as a consultant to the United States Army Air Force, and was given the temporary rank of colonel." I suppose that would make him temporarily personnel. Neutrality^talk 07:54, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Your tone at AfD:Galaxy Express Corporation

Hi there. I'd like to take a second to point out that I think your tone at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Galaxy_Express_Corporation was a bit uncalled-for. We are all here to benefit Wikipedia and there is no need to not assume good faith just because of proposed deletion of an article. I am naturally not an expert in that field, and what you have pointed out in that discussion is neither written anywhere in the article nor would I be able to find it in sources without knowing what I am looking for. This is why these discussions exist -- they are not something you should take personally. --Shirik (talk) 18:59, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Hello, Sdsds. You have new messages at Shirik's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Shirik (talk) 06:08, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Hello, Sdsds. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Shirik (talk) 06:19, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Hello, Sdsds. You have new messages at Shirik's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Shirik (talk) 18:28, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

WP:Articles for deletion/Galaxy Express Corporation

Just to let you know, I've withdrawn the nomination at WP:Articles for deletion/Galaxy Express Corporation. This should give it some time for us to cite more reliable sources regarding its notability and to find additional projects, as well as to identify if the cancellation of the project is in fact true. Hopefully there are no hard feelings about the deletion proposal. --Shirik (talk) 19:53, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Dates in sortable tables

Just so you know, you can use {{dts}} to make dates sort properly without using ISO dates. --NE2 18:31, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Very cool -- thanks! (sdsds - talk) 01:12, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Alternative launch vehicles comment

Discussion transferred to Talk:Multi-Purpose_Logistics_Module#Alternative_launch_vehicles_comment. (sdsds - talk) 00:55, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Sdsds, why do you feel mention of other launchers should not be made here? Otherwise the impression will be that future use of MPLMs will be ruled out once the Shuttle is retired, which is simply not true. Moving these remarks elsewhere seems difficult, what other page would be more appropriate? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.92.177.81 (talk) 08:14, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

I think your comment refers to this edit to the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module article. My edit summary was, "Removed discussion of non-shuttle vehicles transporting MPLMs. That material does not belong here."

My edit summary could have been a lot better; I apologize for any confusion it caused! There is nothing wrong with the MPLM article discussing transport of MPLMs using non-Shuttle vehicles. Please find reliable sources for these proposals and add them back to the article. I suggest, though, finding someplace other than the "Pressurized Multipurpose Module" section for this. Maybe create a new section? My understanding is that from the perspective of the ISS program there is to be one and only one PMM, and it is to be transported by Shuttle. That's what I meant by my too-brief edit summary. (sdsds - talk) 00:47, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

SmackBot

Thanks, this will take some checking! Rich Farmbrough, 09:40, 29 December 2009 (UTC).

Proposed deletion of Seattle Children's Theatre

The article Seattle Children's Theatre has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Un-addressed advert tag from July 2009, unreferenced, no indication of notability, appears to fail WP:ORG

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 15:21, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of Seattle Children's Theatre

Jezhotwells (talk) has nominated Seattle Children's Theatre, an article that you created, for deletion. The editor does not believe that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and they have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Seattle Children's Theatre. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. -Tracer9999 (talk) 19:48, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Economics census

Hello there. Sorry to bother you, but you are (titularly at least) a member of WP:WikiProject Economics, as defined by this category. If you don't know me, I'm a Wikipedia administrator, but an unqualified economist. I enjoy writing about economics, but I'm not very good at it, which is why I would like to support in any way I can the strong body of economists here on Wikipedia. I'm only bothering you because you are probably one of them. Together, I'd like us to establish the future direction of WikiProject Economics, but first, we need to know who we've got to help.

Whatever your area of expertise or level of qualification, if you're interested in helping with the WikiProject (even if only as part of a larger commitment to this wonderful online encyclopedia of ours), would you mind adding your signature to this page? It only takes a second. Thank you.

Message delivered on behalf of User:Jarry1250 by LivingBot.

Firstly, thank you for signing the census, and an apology if you are one of those editors who dislike posts such as this one for messaging you again in this way. I've now got myself organised and you can opt-out of any future communication at WP:WikiProject Economics/Newsletter. Just remove your name and you won't be bothered again.

Secondly, and most importantly, I would like to invite your comments on the census talk page about the project as a whole. I've given my own personal opinion on a range of topics, but my babbling is essentially worthless without your thoughts - I can't believe for one moment that everyone agrees with me in the slightest! :)

All your comments are welcomed. Thanks, - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 18:03, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Talk:International_Space_Station#Proper_Noun_.22International_Space_Station_Program.22

Thought this discussion might be of interest to you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aalox (talk • contribs) 11:05, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Sdsds. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rocketry‎.
Message added 13:02, 6 June 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

This is a (belated) followup to a discussion you participated in last year on Talk:Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite GW… 13:02, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

You are now a Reviewer

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

When reviewing, edits should be accepted if they are not obvious vandalism or BLP violations, and not clearly problematic in light of the reason given for protection (see Wikipedia:Reviewing process). More detailed documentation and guidelines can be found here.

If you do not want this userright, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. Courcelles (talk) 18:32, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Sdsds. You have new messages at Jafeluv's talk page.
Message added 23:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Basically, it isn't the spacecraft you're talking about, but I think you should consider using the Russian name Kompas-2 rather than COMPASS-2, since I think it is slightly more common in English usage, and also it keeps the English name free for another satellite in case we have difficulty disambiguating one in the future. GW… 23:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Soyuz articles

Hello, there's a discussion regarding article naming (here) of Soyuz / Salyut articles, and we are having difficulty reaching a consensus.. maybe you could help out; thanks. Mlm42 (talk) 21:01, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. (sdsds - talk) 22:36, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Spaceflight portals

Hello! As an member editor of one or more of the Spaceflight, Human spaceflight, Unmanned spaceflight, Timeline of spaceflight or Space colonisation WikiProjects, I'd like to draw to your attention a proposal I have made with regards to the future of the spaceflight-related portals, which can be found at Portal talk:Spaceflight#Portal merge. I'd very much appreciate any suggestions or feedback you'd be able to offer! Many thanks,

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Human spaceflight at 08:52, 9 November 2010 (UTC).

WikiProject Human spaceflight activity

Hello there! As part of an effort to determine how many active editors are present in the spaceflight-related WikiProjects, I have made some changes to the list of members of WikiProject Human spaceflight. If you still consider yourself to be an active editor in this project, I would be grateful if you would please edit the list so that your name is not struck out - thus a clearer idea of the critical mass of editors can be determined. Many thanks in advance!

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Human spaceflight at 19:11, 17 November 2010 (UTC).

WikiProject Timeline of Spaceflight activity

Hello there! As part of an effort to determine how many active editors are present in the spaceflight-related WikiProjects, I have made some changes to the list of members of WikiProject Human spaceflight. If you still consider yourself to be an active editor in this project, I would be grateful if you would please edit the list so that your name is not struck out - thus a clearer idea of the critical mass of editors can be determined. Many thanks in advance!

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Timeline of spaceflight at 07:07, 19 November 2010 (UTC).

WikiProject Space reorganization

Hello WikiProject Space member! A discussion has been started regarding the future of WikiProject Space here; any comments you might have would be welcome! There are mainly two competing ideas:

1. Centralize all the Space-related WikiProjects, such as Astronomy and Spaceflight, and merge them into WikiProject Space, or
2. Separate the Astronomy and Spaceflight "sides" of WikiProject, and remove WikiProject Space.

If you can think of other options, that's great too. Your contribution to the discussion would be much appreciated. Thanks! :)

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Space at 00:11, 29 November 2010 (UTC).

WikiProjects Moon and Mars activity

Hello there! As part of an effort to determine how many active editors are present in the space-related WikiProjects, some changes have been made to the lists of members of WikiProject Moon (here) and Mars (here). If you still consider yourself to be an active editor either of these projects, it would be appreciated if you would please edit the list so that your name is not struck out - thus a clearer idea of the number of active editors can be determined. Many thanks in advance!

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Solar System at 17:54, 3 December 2010 (UTC).

WikiProject Spaceflight activity

Hello there! As part of an effort to determine how many active editors are present in the spaceflight-related WikiProjects, changes have been made to the list of members of WikiProject Spaceflight. If you still consider yourself to be an active editor in this project, it would be appreciated if you would please edit the list so that your name is not struck out - thus a clearer idea of the number of active editors can be determined. Many thanks in advance!

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Spaceflight at 18:03, 3 December 2010 (UTC).

WikiProject Spaceflight reboot

Hello there! As you may or may not be aware, a recent discussion on the future of the Space-related WikiProjects has concluded, leading to the abolition of WP:SPACE and leading to a major reorganisation of WP:SPACEFLIGHT. It would be much appreciated if you would like to participate in the various ongoing discussions at the reorganisation page and the WikiProject Spaceflight talk page. If you are a member of one of WP:SPACEFLIGHT's child projects but not WP:SPACEFLIGHT itself, it would also be very useful if you could please add your name to the member list here. Many thanks!

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Spaceflight at 00:17, 6 December 2010 (UTC).

Flight dynamics (satellites)

Hi. Back in 2008, you commented on the Talk page of an article that is currently named Flight dynamics (satellites). There are several discussions going on over there now and your input would be very much appreciated on each topic. Cheers. N2e (talk) 17:33, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

The Downlink: Issue 0

The Downlink
Your source for news on WikiProject Spaceflight	Issue 0, December 2010
Welcome to The Downlink · Reorganisation of Space WikiProjects · User Activity Checks Welcome to The Downlink Welcome to The Downlink, a new monthly newsletter intended to inform members of WikiProject Spaceflight about the latest developments in the project and its articles. Future issues will contain information on issues under discussion, newly featured content, and articles written by members of the project to appear in the newsletter. All members of WikiProject Spaceflight are invited to contribute any content that they would like to see in the newsletter. If you were not aware of being a member of WikiProject Spaceflight, membership of the former Human spaceflight, Unmanned spaceflight, Timeline of spaceflight and Space colonization WikiProjects was merged into WikiProject spaceflight during the reorganisation of the spaceflight projects, for more details, please see below. Reorganisation of Space WikiProjects The ongoing discussion of the future of Space WikiProjects has been making progress. WikiProject Space was abolished on 5 December 2010, with the Spaceflight, Astronomy and Solar System projects becoming independent of each other. On the same day, an assessment banner, {{WikiProject Spaceflight}} was created for WikiProject Spaceflight to replace the generic space one which had been used previously. On 9 December, WikiProject Space Colonization was abolished, with its tasks being subsumed into WikiProject Spaceflight. On 12 December, the Human spaceflight and Unmanned spaceflight WikiProjects became task forces of WikiProject Spaceflight, whilst WikiProject Timeline of spaceflight became a working group. A number of issues are still under discussion: Introducing better defined assessment criteria and an A-class review process Setting clearer importance criteria for assessing articles Establishing a joint task force with the Astronomy and Solar System projects to cover space telescopes and planetary probes Defining the roles of projects, taskforces and working groups, and processes for establishing new ones Improving the profile and activity of the project Much of the current discussion is taking place on the WikiProject Spaceflight talk page, however there is still some discussion on the original proposal page. User Activity Checks A series of checks are underway to establish the numbers of users who are still active within WikiProject Spaceflight, its task forces and working group. All usernames on the members lists were struck out, and members were asked to unstrike their own names if they were still an active member of the project. If you wish to do so, and have not already, please unstrike your name from the master list, plus the lists on any applicable task forces or working groups Published by WikiProject Spaceflight, if you have any content you wish to include in future newsletters, please contribute

You have recieved this newsletter because you are currently listed as a member of WikiProject Spaceflight, or because you are not a member but have requested it. If you do not wish to receive future issues, please add your name to the opt-out list.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Spaceflight at 16:26, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

The Downlink: Issue 1

The Downlink
Your source for news on WikiProject Spaceflight	Issue 1, January 2011
Welcome to The Downlink · Project News · News from Orbit · Article News · Space Stations and the Push for Featured Topics · Salyut 2 Welcome to The Downlink Welcome to the first full issue of The Downlink, a new monthly newsletter intended to inform members of WikiProject Spaceflight about the latest developments in the project and its articles. Below you will find information about happenings within the project, our recognised content, spaceflight in the news and events needing to be covered in articles. You will also find an editorial about the first concerted effort to develop featured topics related to spaceflight, and an article in need of your help and improvements. Project News will provide details of discussions about and changes in the organisation and structure of the project, newly recognised content, and changes in membership. News from Orbit will summarise spaceflight news and upcoming events, and list suggestions for articles in need of updating as a result. Article News will give details of requests for assistance within articles, and discussions regarding content. All members of WikiProject Spaceflight are invited to contribute any content that they would like to see in the newsletter, and we would particularly welcome the submission of editorials, or an article about an area of spaceflight which you are working on, or particularly interested in. Please see The Downlink page for more details. Project News A new working group has been formed. The space stations working group is expected to work towards creating Featured topics related to space stations. It currently has three members. Discussion within the project is still dominated by the reorganisation proposals. A discussion over the formation and roles of working groups and task forces has led to some clarification regarding working groups, however the roles of the task forces remain vague, and several proposals to abolish them have surfaced. The Human Spaceflight to-do list has been merged into the main project to-do list, with the combined list currently located on the Tasks page of the Spaceflight portal. A discussion regarding opening relations with the Aerospace biography task force of Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation was held, but no conclusions were reached. The Article Alerts bot has resumed operation, and a problem with the information the bot had been delivering was discussed and resolved. New assessment criteria for importance and quality have been implemented, and refinements continue to be made to the importance scale. The scope of the project was redefined to exclude astronomical objects explicitly. Although A-class criteria have been defined, a review process is yet to be discussed or implemented. Colds7ream conducted an analysis of open tasks related to the reorganisation which four major issues remain unresolved: Discussion concerning the existence and roles of task forces within the project; recruitment of new editors; updating guidelines and whether the project or the task forces should be responsible for maintaining them; and the continued existence of the Human spaceflight portal six weeks after consensus was reached to abolish it. Discussion about the structure of the project is ongoing, with several proposals currently on the table. One proposal calls for the abolition of task forces in favour of increased emphasis on working groups, whilst another calls for the task forces to become a list of topics. The idea of a formal collaboration system has been suggested, however opposition has been raised. One of the main open tasks at the moment is replacing the older {{WikiProject Space}} and {{WikiProject Human spaceflight}} banners with the new {{WikiProject Spaceflight}} banner. Articles which need to be retagged are currently listed in Category:WikiProject Spaceflight articles using deprecated project tags. ChiZeroOne is doing a very good job replacing them, but as of the morning of 31 December, there are still 1,424 left to be converted. Additionally, the implementation of a new B-class checklist built into the template has necessitated the reassessment of former B-class articles, which the template has automatically classified as C-class. News from Orbit On 3 December, USA-212, the first X-37B, landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base after a successful mission. On 5 December Proton-M with a Blok DM-03 upper stage failed to place three Glonass-M satellites into orbit, the first of three failures in less than forty eight hours. The NanoSail-D2 spacecraft was supposed to have been ejected from FASTSAT in the early hours of the next morning, however it does not appear to have separated. Finally the Akatsuki spacecraft failed to enter orbit around Venus in the evening of 6 December. The Proton launch was the maiden flight of the Blok DM-03, which does not currently have an article. On 8 December the Dragon C1 demonstration mission was conducted, with the SpaceX Dragon making a little under two orbits of the Earth on its maiden flight, before landing in the Pacific Ocean to complete a successful mission. The Falcon 9 rocket which launched the Dragon spacecraft also deployed eight CubeSats: SMDC-ONE 1, QbX-1, QbX-2, Perseus 000, Perseus 001, Perseus 002, Perseus 003 and Mayflower. The CubeSats do not currently have articles. On 15 December, a Soyuz-FG launched Soyuz TMA-20 to the International Space Station, carrying three members of the Expedition 26 crew. It docked two days later. The Soyuz TMA-20 article is currently short, and could use improvements to bring it up to the same level as articles for US manned spaceflights. On 17 December, a Long March 3A launched Compass-IGSO2. There is currently no article for this satellite. 17 December saw Intelsat regain control of the Galaxy 15 satellite, which had been out of control since a malfunction in April. The Galaxy 15 article is in need of serious cleanup and a good copyedit. On 25 December a GSLV Mk.I failed to place GSAT-5P into orbit. A Proton-M with a Briz-M upper stage successfully launched KA-SAT on 26 December. Barring any suborbital launches at the end of the month which have not yet been announced (a NASA Black Brant was scheduled for December but does not appear to have flown), 2010 in spaceflight concluded on 29 December when an Ariane 5ECA launched the Hispasat-1E and Koreasat 6 spacecraft. These do not currently have articles. Four launches are currently scheduled to occur in January 2011. A Delta IV Heavy is expected to launch NRO L-49 on 17 January. The satellite is expected to be an Improved Crystal electro-optical imaging spacecraft. Two launches are planned for 20 January, with Kounotori 2, the second H-II Transfer Vehicle, being launched by an H-IIB, and the Zenit-3F making its maiden flight to deploy Elektro-L No.1, the first Russian geostationary weather satellite to be launched since 1994. On 28 January Progress M-09M will be launched by a Soyuz-U. 28 January will also be the twenty-fifth anniversary of the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51-L. Article News It was requested that the article Walter Haeussermann be expanded. Haeussermann, a member of the von Braun rocket group, died on 8 December. Although the article has been updated following his death, a user requested that more information about the engineer be added. Another user requested that the articles Commercial Space Launch Act and Launch Services Purchase Act be created, to cover laws of the United States concerning spaceflight. Articles related to methods of taking-off and landing were discussed. The term VTVL currently has an article whilst VTHL and HTHL do not. It was suggested that the existing article should be merged, and each term be covered by the article for the equivalent aviation term, however some distinction between use in the fields of aviation and spaceflight should remain. Concern was raised that a large scale deletion request could cause many images to be lost from articles, help was requested to investigate whether any of the images were not subject to copyright, or if they were then whether they could be uploaded to the English Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. Concerns were raised about a large amount of content in the newly-created article deorbit of Mir duplicating existing content in existing Good Article Progress M1-5. A proposal to merge deorbit of Mir into Progress M1-5 was made, however objections were raised, and discussion has since stalled without reaching a consensus. It has also been requested that the article Mir be copyedited. The existence of separate categories for "spaceflight" and "space exploration" has been questioned, with a suggestion that some of the exploration categories, including Category:Space exploration iteslf, should be merged into their spaceflight counterparts. Missile Range Instrumentation Ship is currently listed at requested moves, with a proposal to rename it tracking ship. The only open good article nomination is of the book Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet, which is currently awaiting review. Editorial – Space Stations and the Push for Featured Topics There has recently been much talk about trying to increase the activity of the project. To this end, a major reorganisation effort has been undertaken, which has seen the space WikiProjects separated into the Astronomy, Solar System and Spaceflight groups, with WikiProject Space being abolished. We have also seen the child projects of WikiProject Spaceflight being abolished, with Timeline of Spaceflight becoming a working group, and the Unmanned and Human Spaceflight projects becoming task forces for now, with some suggestions that they should be abolished outright. The problem with the previous structure was that there were too many different groups of editors, and nobody was sure which projects were supposed to be doing what. Now there is only one project, this is somewhat clearer, but spaceflight is still a huge topic. Another way to improve the activity of the project is to attract more editors. Spaceflight is a topic which many people have at least a very casual interest in, and therefore it is strange that there are only about four or five people regularly participating in discussions on the project talk page. Evidently action is needed to raise the profile of the project. One way in which the project's profile can be raised is to have a major success associated with it. The creation of a featured topic could be one such success, and would also be hugely beneficial to articles in the area that it relates to. Space Stations are one of the most high-profile and notable areas of spaceflight, and are therefore a logical choice to spearhead such an initiative. To this end, in late December a working group was established to concentrate and coordinate efforts to establish featured topics related to space stations. An initial proposal calls for topics on Skylab, Salyut, Mir and the International Space Station, as well as one on space stations in general. There is currently an effort to get Mir promoted to Good Article status; the article currently requires a copyedit, after which it will be sent for peer review and then to GAN. This is by no means a short-term project. There are many articles, particularly for the larger space stations such as the ISS and Mir, which are currently nowhere near becoming recognised content. Skylab is the smallest of the proposed featured topics, but it still requires that three C-class articles, two Start-class articles and a redirect all reach at least Good Article status, with at least three becoming Featured Articles. The ISS topic is so large that it may have to be subdivided. I don't expect that we will have any featured topics by the end of the year, but I believe that a Good Topic, which requires all articles reach at least GA status, but does not require any featured articles, may be possible. I also believe that several articles on the subject can easily be improved to Good Article status, and some articles may be at featured level by the end of the year. In the long term, having featured topics will benefit the project and its content. Selected Article – Salyut 2 Salyut 2 was an early space station, launched in 1973 as part of the Salyut and Almaz programmes. It malfunctioned two days after launch, and consequently was never visited by a manned Soyuz mission. The Salyut 2 article describes the station: “ Salyut 2 (OPS-1)(Russian: Салют-2; English: Salute 2) was launched April 4, 1973. It was not really a part of the same program as the other Salyut space stations, instead being the highly classified prototype military space station Almaz. It was given the designation Salyut 2 to conceal its true nature. Despite its successful launch, within two days the as-yet-unmanned Salyut 2 began losing pressure and its flight control failed; the cause of the failure was likely due to shrapnel piercing the station when the discarded Proton rocket upper stage that had placed it in orbit later exploded nearby. On April 11, 1973, 11 days after launch, an unexplainable accident caused the two large solar panels to be torn loose from the space station cutting off all power to the space station. Salyut 2 re-entered on May 28, 1973. ” The article is currently assessed as start class, and is in need of attention. It consists of the above paragraph, along with a list of specifications and an infobox. The article needs to be rewritten in a more encyclopaedic style, and with more information about the space station. It has not yet been determined whether Salyut 2 would have to be included in a featured topic about the Salyut programme, or whether since it was never manned it is less integral to the topic, however if its inclusion were necessary then in its current form it would be a major impediment to this. Downlink readers are encouraged to improve this article, with a view to getting it to B-class and possibly a viable Good Article candidate by the end of the month. Published by WikiProject Spaceflight, if you have any content you wish to include in future newsletters, please contribute

You have recieved this newsletter because you are currently listed as a member of WikiProject Spaceflight, or because you are not a member but have requested it. If you do not wish to receive future issues, please add your name to the opt-out list.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Spaceflight at 14:48, 1 January 2011 (UTC).

Autopatrolled

Hello, this is just to let you know that I have granted you the "autopatrolled" permission. This won't affect your editing, it just automatically marks any page you create as patrolled, benefiting new page patrollers. Please remember:

• This permission does not give you any special status or authority
• Submission of inappropriate material may lead to its removal
• You may wish to display the {{Autopatrolled}} top icon and/or the {{User wikipedia/autopatrolled}} userbox on your user page
• If, for any reason, you decide you do not want the permission, let me know and I can remove it

If you have any questions about the permission, don't hesitate to ask. Otherwise, happy editing! Acalamari 21:45, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

The Downlink: Issue 2

The Downlink
Your source for news on WikiProject Spaceflight	Issue 2, February 2011
Project News · News from Orbit · Article News · The Charts · Yuri Gagarin Project News A report on popular pages from December 2010 revealed surprising trends in readers' interests. Boeing X-37 was the most popular article within the project's scope, with SpaceX Dragon in second with Global Positioning System in third place. The top seven articles were all assessed as C-class, with the remainder of the top ten being Good Articles. It was noted with some concern that moon landing conspiracy theories was more popular than moon landing. A discussion regarding whether missiles warranted inclusion within the project scope was conducted, and resulted in the continued inclusion of missiles. The last remaining articles tagged with the banner of the former Human Spaceflight WikiProject were re-tagged with the WikiProject Spaceflight banner. The last banner was removed on 8 January, and the template has since been deleted. The project is thankful to ChiZeroOne for his work in this field. Concerns were raised that the new article reporting system was not working correctly, however it was noted that there is sometimes a delay before articles appear on the list. Discussion regarding the existence of the separate spaceflight and space exploration category structures led to a mass CfD being filed on 10 January to abolish the space exploration categories, merging them into their counterparts in the spaceflight category structure. This was successful, and the exploration categories have been removed. Several other categorisation issues remain unresolved. A proposal was made to standardise some of the infoboxes used by the project, the future of Template:Infobox spacecraft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) was discussed, and design work began on a replacement. Template:Rocket specifications-all (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) was nominated for deletion and subsequently kept due to extant substitutions, however it was noted that the template had been deprecated by WikiProject Rocketry. Concerns were also raised that the existing infoboxes were not well-equipped to handle spacecraft which operated in more than one orbit, or whose orbits changed over the course of their missions (which in practise is most of them). Five members of the project gave interviews for the Wikipedia Signpost, and a report on the project, authored by SMasters (talk · contribs), is expected to be published in the 7 February edition of the Signpost. It is hoped that this will raise interest in and awareness of the project. News from orbit Four orbital launches were conducted in January, beginning on 20 January with the launch of Elektro-L No.1 on the first Zenit-3F rocket. This was followed later the same day by the launch of a Delta IV Heavy with the USA-224 reconnaissance satellite. The articles for USA-224 and the Zenit-3F rocket could use some expansion, whilst the Elektro-L No.1 satellite needs its own article. On 22 January, an H-IIB launched the second H-II Transfer Vehicle, Kounotori 2, to resupply the International Space Station. It arrived at the station on 27 January. Less than a day after its arrival, another cargo mission was launched to the station; Progress M-09M departed Baikonur early in the morning of 28 January, docking on 30 January. In addition to payloads to resupply the station, the Progress spacecraft is carrying a small subsatellite, Kedr, which will be deployed in February. Kedr does not currently have an article. Progress M-08M departed on 24 January to make the Pirs module available for Progress M-09M, and has since reentered the atmosphere. Its article needs to be updated to reflect the successful completion of its mission. The NanoSail-D2 satellite, which failed to deploy from FASTSAT in December, unexpectedly separated from its parent craft and began operations on 18 January, with its solar sail deploying on 21 January. Nine orbital launches are scheduled to occur in February, beginning with the launch of the first Geo-IK-2 satellite; Geo-IK-2 No.11, atop a Rokot/Briz-KM, on the first day of the month. Articles need to be written for the Geo-IK-2 series of satellites, as well as for Geo-IK-2 No.11 itself, and the Briz-KM upper stage that will be used to insert it into orbit. A Minotaur I rocket will launch NRO L-66, a classified payload for the US National Reconnaissance Office, on 5 February. The payload has not yet been identified, however once more details are known, it will need an article. Iran is expected to launch the Rasad 1 and Fajr 1 satellites in February, with 14 February the reported launch date. The satellites will fly aboard a single rocket; either the first Simorgh or the third Safir. Once this launch occurs, the satellites will need articles, and the article on their carrier rocket will require updating. The second Automated Transfer Vehicle, Johannes Kepler, is scheduled to launch on 15 February to resupply the ISS. Docking is expected to occur on 23 February. 23 February will also see the much-delayed launch of Glory atop a Taurus-XL 3110 rocket. This will be the first Taurus launch since the launch failure in early 2009 which resulted in the loss of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. In addition to Glory, three CubeSats will be deployed; KySat-1, Hermes and Explorer-1 [PRIME]. KySat and Hermes require articles, whilst the article on Explorer-1 [PRIME] needs to be updated. On 24 February, a Soyuz-2.1b/Fregat rocket will launch the first Glonass-K1 satellite; Glonass-K1 No.11. Articles are needed for the series of spacecraft, as well as for the specific satellite being launched. It is likely that a Kosmos designation will be given to the payload when it reaches orbit. In the evening of 24 February, Space Shuttle Discovery will begin its final mission, STS-133, carrying the Permanent Multipurpose Module, a conversion of the Leonardo MPLM, to the ISS. Other payloads include an ExPRESS Logistics Carrier, and the Robonaut2 experimental robot. The first manned mission of 2011, Discovery's six-man crew will transfer equipment to the station, and two EVAs will be performed. The launch has already been scrubbed five times, before Discovery was rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to inspect and repair cracks on its External Tank. At some point in February, a Long March 3B rocket is expected to launch two navigation satellites; Compass-M2 and Compass-M3, as part of the Compass navigation system. The date of this launch is currently unknown. Both satellites will require articles once more information is available. A PSLV launch, carrying the Resourcesat-2, X-Sat and YouthSat spacecraft, is expected to launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre towards the end of the month, probably between 20 and 23 February. Stop press: The Rokot launch was conducted at 14:00 UTC on 1 February, and at the time of writing it appears to have ended in failure, due to a suspected upper stage malfunction. The spacecraft is in orbit, it is not clear at the time of writing whether it will be salvageable. Article news Reaction Engines Skylon is currently undergoing peer review, its discussion page can be found at Wikipedia:Peer review/Reaction Engines Skylon/archive1. A user requested feedback on major changes which had been made to the article, however at the time of writing no responses have been offered. Following up on the issues covered in the last issue, the requested move of Missile Range Instrumentation Ship to Tracking ship was successful, with the article being renamed. The discussion concerning types of launch and landing resulted in a proposal to merge VTVL into VTOL, however this has been met with some opposition. Several other options have been suggested on Talk:VTVL. The large scale deletion of mis-tagged Soviet images on Commons went ahead, with most of the useful ones having already been backed-up locally under fair use criteria. Discussion was held regarding the naming of spaceflight-related articles. Concerns were raised regarding inconsistency in article titles and disambiguators. A project guideline was adopted to standardise titles, with the parenthesised disambiguators "(satellite)" and "(spacecraft)" being adopted as standards for spacecraft, and the exclusion of manufacturers' names from article titles was recommended. Issues regarding Japanese spacecraft with two names, the correct names for early Apollo missions, and dealing with acronyms and abbreviated names remain unresolved. A large number of articles were moved to conform to the standard disambiguation pattern. In addition, several Requested Moves were debated. A proposal to move SpaceX Dragon to Dragon (spacecraft), which began prior to the adoption of the standardised disambiguators, was successful. Atmospheric reentry was subject to two requested moves, firstly one which would have seen it renamed spacecraft atmospheric reentry, which was unsuccessful, however a second proposal shortly afterwards saw it moved to atmospheric entry. A proposal currently under discussion could see Lunar rover (Apollo) renamed Lunar Roving Vehicle Questions surrounding the transliteration of Russian names resurfaced, with a proposal to rename Vladimir Chelomey to Vladimir Chelomei being closed with no consensus, and a proposal to rename Yury Usachov to Yuri Usachev ongoing. Several long-standing merger proposals were closed. A proposal to merge Venera 15 and Venera 16 into Venera 15 and 16 was closed as no consensus, with the combined page being moved to Venera 4V-2 to reduce the overlap in the articles' scopes. Returnable satellite was merged into Fanhui Shi Weixing. Experimental Assembly of Structures in EVA and Assembly Concept for Construction of Erectable Space Structures was nominated for Good Article reassessment due to concerns over the article's quality. Doubts were also expressed over the thoroughness of the original review conducted upon its nomination for GA status. It was also suggested that the article's title may not be the most common name for the experiment, and that it might be necessary to move the page. Concerns were also raised regarding whether Space Interferometry Mission was up-to-date, however these are being addressed. Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet looks likely to be promoted to GA status. Help was requested for adding citations to List of Mir spacewalks. A request was made that STS-88 be reviewed against the B class criteria, and suggestions for improvements made. Another user requested improvements to the article Yuri Gagarin, with a view to having the article promoted to featured status in time for the fiftieth anniversary of his Vostok 1 mission. As a result of this request, Yuri Gagarin is this month's selected article. Questions were raised as to whether an article or category should be created to cover derelict satellites. The categorisation of spacecraft by the type of rocket used to place them into orbit was also suggested. In another categorisation issue, it was questioned whether Space law should fall under space or spaceflight. Stop press: Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet has now been promoted to GA status. The Charts There is no editorial this month as no content was submitted for one. Instead, we present the "top ten" most popular articles within the project, based on the number of page views in January. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was the most popular article of the last month, up fourteen places from 15th in December. Space Shuttle Challenger was the highest climber in the top 40, up 42 places from 50th. December's most popular article. Boeing X-37, dropped 57 places to 58th. On a happier note further down the chart, moon landing is now ahead of moon landing conspiracy theories. № Article Movement 1 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster ↑14 (15) 2 Richard Branson ↑5 (7) 3 Neil Armstrong ↑2 (5) 4 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster ↑16 (20) 5 Global Positioning System ↓2 (3) 6 Apollo 11 ↑2 (8) 7 Satellite ↑4 (11) 8 Space Shuttle Challenger ↑42 (50) 9 Apollo 13 ↓3 (6) 10 NASA ↓1 (9) For the full list of the top 1,500 popular pages within the project, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Popular pages (or the archived record for January). Selected Article: Yuri Gagarin Yuri Gagarin was the first man to fly in space, aboard Vostok 1 in April 1961. He was subsequently awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, and was training for a second flight at the time of his death in 1968. His article describes him and his spaceflight experience: “ Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (Russian: Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин, Russian pronunciation: [ˈjurʲɪj ɐlʲɪˈksʲeɪvʲɪtɕ ɡɐˈɡarʲɪn]; 9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968), Hero of the Soviet Union, was a Soviet cosmonaut who on 12 April 1961 became the first human to journey into outer space. On 12 April 1961, Gagarin became the first man to travel into space, launching to orbit aboard the Vostok 3KA-3 (Vostok 1). His call sign in this flight was Kedr (Cedar; Russian: Кедр). During his flight, Gagarin famously whistled the tune "The Motherland Hears, The Motherland Knows" (Russian: "Родина слышит, Родина знает"). The first two lines of the song are: "The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows/Where her son flies in the sky". This patriotic song was written by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1951 (opus 86), with words by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky. ” The article is currently assessed as C class, and had been assessed as B class prior to the criteria being redefined. Although a full reassessment has not yet been made, it seems close to the B class criteria, however details on his spaceflight experiences are somewhat lacking. It has been requested that the article be developed to Featured status by April, in time for the fiftieth anniversary of his mission. Published by WikiProject Spaceflight, if you have any content you wish to include in future newsletters, please contribute

You have recieved this newsletter because you are currently listed as a member of WikiProject Spaceflight, or because you are not a member but have requested it. If you do not wish to receive future issues, please add your name to the opt-out list.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Spaceflight at 00:22, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

Talkback

Hello, Sdsds. You have new messages at Talk:Johannes Kepler ATV.
Message added 13:48, 20 February 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

The Downlink: Issue 3

The Downlink
Your source for news on WikiProject Spaceflight	Issue 3, March 2011
Project News News from Orbit Article News Direction of the Project The Charts Europa Project News There have been very few discussions relating to the administration of the project in the last month, as things start to settle down after the merger. An invitation template has been created in an effort to attract new users to the project. Discussion was also held regarding the creation of a list of common templates, however no conclusions were reached. A proposal was made to implement an A-class assessment process, however editors are undecided about whether it would be best to copy the system used by another project such as WP:MILHIST, or to develop one specifically for the requirements of this project. User:ChiZeroOne has set up a collaboration page in his userspace, initially focussing on articles related to Skylab. Collaboration pages were at one point proposed as part of the structure of the Spaceflight project itself, however no consensus was achieved on the issue. If this collaboration is successful, it could open the door to a reevaluation of that situation. News from orbit Five orbital launches were conducted in February, out of nine planned. The first, that of the Geo-IK-2 No.11 satellite atop a Rokot/Briz-KM ended in failure after the upper stage malfunctioned. The Rokot has since been grounded pending a full investigation; the satellite is in orbit, but has been determined to be unusable for its intended mission. A replacement is expected to launch within the year. A general article on Geo-IK-2 satellites is needed, to supplement those on the individual satellites. A Minotaur I rocket launched USA-225, or NROL-66, on 6 February following a one-day delay. The second Automated Transfer Vehicle, Johannes Kepler, was successfully launched on 16 February to resupply the ISS. Docking occurred successfully on 24 February, several hours before Space Shuttle Discovery launched on its final flight, STS-133. Discovery docked with the ISS on 26 February, delivering the Leonardo module and an ExPRESS Logistics Carrier to the station. Following several delays, a Soyuz-2.1b/Fregat rocket launched the first Glonass-K1 satellite; Glonass-K1 No.11, on 26 February. It is currently unclear as to whether the satellite has received a Kosmos designation or not. Seven launches are expected to occur in March. On 4 March, the Glory satellite will launch atop a Taurus-XL 3110 rocket. Three CubeSats will be also be deployed by the Taurus; KySat-1, Hermes and Explorer-1 [Prime]. KySat and Hermes require articles, whilst the article on Explorer-1 [PRIME] needs to be updated. This launch was originally scheduled for February, but following a scrubbed launch attempt, it was delayed. 4 March will also see the launch of the first flight of the second X-37B, atop an Atlas V 501. An article is needed for that flight, which will probably receive a USA designation once it reaches orbit. On 8 March, Discovery is expected to land, bringing to an end the STS-133 mission, and retiring from service 27 years after its maiden flight. On 11 March, a Delta IV Medium+(4,2) will launch the NROL-27 payload. Whilst the identity of this payload is classified, it is widely believed to be a Satellite Data System communications satellite, bound for either a molniya or geostationary orbit. An article for this payload is required. 16 March will see the return to Earth of Soyuz TMA-01M, carrying three members of the ISS Expedition 26 crew. A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle is expected to deploy the Resourcesat-2, X-Sat and YouthSat spacecraft during a launch in March. The flight has been delayed several times, and was expected to have launched last month, however it is currently scheduled to occur no earlier than 20 March. On 29 March, an Ariane 5ECA will launch the Yahsat 1A and New Dawn communications satellites. Both currently require articles. On 30 March, a Soyuz-FG will launch the manned Soyuz TMA-21 mission to the International Space Station carrying three Expedition 27 crewmembers. On 31 March, a Proton-M/Briz-M launch will carry the SES-3 and Kazsat-2 spacecraft into orbit, in the first dual-launch of commercial communications satellites on a Proton. Several other launches may occur in March, however their status is unclear. Last month, a Long March 3B rocket was expected to launch two navigation satellites; Compass-M2 and Compass-M3, however this launch did not take place. It is unclear if it has been delayed to March, or further. The launch of the Tianlian 2 communications satellite on a Long March 3C may also be conducted in March, or possibly April. Both the Compass and Tianlian launches would occur from the same launch pad, which requires a turnaround of almost a month between launches, so it is unlikely that both will happen in March. A Safir launch, which had been expected in February, now appears to have been delayed to April, but given the secrecy of the Iranian space programme, this is unclear. Article news Discussion regarding the merger of articles on launch and landing modes seems to have stagnated, with no consensus being reached on any existing proposal. A discussion regarding changes in the sizes of Soviet and American rockets during the 1950s and early 1960s was conducted, with claims that rockets became smaller in that period being dismissed, however it was noted that smaller rockets were developed with equivalent capacity to older ones were developed, as well as much larger ones with increased capacities. Category:Derelict satellites orbiting Earth was created as a result of discussion surrounding the categorisation of derelict satellites. Concerns have also been raised that satellites are being listed as no longer being in orbit whilst still in orbit and derelict, and a discussion was held on how their status could be verified. An effort to categorise spacecraft by the type of rocket used to launch them is underway, however the categorisation of satellites by country of launch was rejected. It was reported that a sidebar has been created for articles related to the core concepts of spaceflight. Editors noted that it should only be used for core concepts, and not where it would conflict with an infobox. An anonymous user requested the creation of an article on moon trees. It was pointed out that the subject already had an article, and a redirect was created at the title proposed by the anonymous user. Concerns were raised regarding the quality of the article Japan's space development. Editors noted that the article appeared to be a poorly-translated copy of an article from the Japanese Wikipedia, although there have been some signs of improvement. Discussion regarding moving the article to Japanese space program is ongoing, however a move request has not yet been filed. A particular concern was raised regarding false claims in the article Van Allen radiation belt. In one case a scientist to whom one of the claims had been attributed was contacted, and clarified that he had made a remark to that effect as a joke in the 1960s, but was not entirely sure how or why it had been included in the article. Other concerns were raised before the discussion moved to WikiProject Astronomy. A question was raised regarding the copyright status of images credited to both NASA and ESA, particularly with regard to images of the launch of the Johannes Kepler ATV. The discussion reached no general conclusions, however it was found that the specific images that were suggested for inclusion in the article could be used, since they were explicitly declared to be in the public domain. A template, Template:Spaceflight landmarks (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), was created to cover landmarks in the United States that are related to spaceflight. Several sources of public-domain NASA images were also discussed, and it was noted that almost all NASA images are public domain, however there are some exceptions. It has been proposed that Leonardo MPLM be merged with Permanent Multipurpose Module since the two cover separate uses of the same spacecraft. A review of the article STS-88 has also been requested. Three new Good Articles have been listed: Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet, Bold Orion and SA-500D. Orion (spacecraft) was delisted after concerns that it contained out-of-date content. SA-500D is currently undergoing good article reassessment, using the community reassessment method, after the review of its good article nomination was criticised for being lenient and not sufficiently thorough. Mir, Mark E. Kelly and Reaction Engines Skylon have been nominated for Good Article status and are awaiting review, whilst List of Mir spacewalks is undergoing a peer review with a view to it becoming a featured list. Editorial: Direction of the Project Well folks, its now been more than three months since the discussion that reformed the space-related WikiProjects, and in that time we've had a number of achievements we can be rightly proud of; we've gathered members up to a total of 43, improved awareness of the project via an interview in the Signpost, and refreshed the spaceflight portal into an attractive, up-to-date and useful page. Meanwhile, User:ChiZeroOne has made a sterling effort in clearing up talk page templates belonging to prior projects, we've managed to sort out various policies, started work on rearranging our templates, and User:GW Simulations has begun this excellent monthly newsletter for us. However, there are a few areas of the project that seem to be passing by the wayside, specifically the areas dedicated to fostering collaboration on articles and article sets between the project members, so here I present a call for more collaboration on the project. Presumably, the lack of collaboration is due to folks not being aware of what's going on, so here's a quick rundown of some of the ways you get involved in the group effort. Firstly, and most importantly, it'd be fantastic if more members got involved in the discussions ongoing at the project's main talk page, found at WT:SPACEFLIGHT. There are several discussions ongoing there, such as the relaunch of the spacecraft template, requests for assistance with various assessment and copyright queries, and conversations regarding category organisations, which affect many more articles, and thus editors, than are currently represented in the signatures so far. Secondly, it was established earlier on in the project's formation that a great way to attract more editors would be to develop some good or featured topics. There are a couple of efforts ongoing to try to see this idea to fruition, such as the Space stations working group and ChiZeroOne's own collaboration page, currently focussed on Skylab-related articles. These pages, however, have been notably lacking in activity lately, which is a shame, as their aims, given enough editor input, would really see the project furthering itself. Similarly, there are a number of requests for assessment for articles to be promoted to GA class, among other things, on the Open tasks page, which lists all of the activities needing input from members. If everyone could add this page to their watchlists and swing by it regularly, we could power through the good topics in extremely short order! Other things that could do with being added to people's watchlists include Portal:Spaceflight/Next launch‎, the many templates at Template:Launching/Wrappers and the task list at Portal:Spaceflight/Tasks. Finally, I'd like to try and get people involved in finally settling the organisational problem we have with reference to the task forces and working groups. Whilst the Timeline of spaceflight working group is a continuation of the old Timeline of spaceflight WikiProject and thus is ticking over nicely and the space stations working group has been mentioned previously in this editorial, the task forces (Human spaceflight and Unmanned spaceflight) in particular are currently dead in the water. I'm unsure as to whether or not this is because people are unaware of their existence, they clash too much with one another and the rest of the project or because people don't see a need for them, but if interested parties could make themselves known and others voice suggestions for getting rid of them, we can decide either if they're worth keeping and get them running again, or do away with a layer of bureaucracy and close them down. Any thoughts on the matter would be much appreciated. In summary, then, we've got a great project going here, with a nice set of articles, a good editor base and lots of ways of getting involved. Thus, a plea goes out to everyone to get involved, get editing with the other project members, and hopefully we'll see ourselves take off in a manner not dissimilar to the trajectory dear old Discovery took last week. Many thanks for everyone's hard work so far, and poyekhali! :-) The Charts Since it is useful to keep track of the most viewed pages within the project's scope, it seems like a good idea to continue this feature, which was originally included in last month's issue as a one-off. Satellite was the most popular article of February, up six places from seventh in December. STS-133 was the highest climber in the top 10, up 78 places from 88th. January's most popular article, Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, dropped seven places to eighth. Moon landing remains ahead of moon landing conspiracy theories for the second month in a row. Of the top ten, two articles are featured content, two are listed as Good Articles, and the remaining six are assessed as C-class. № Article Movement 1 Satellite ↑6 (7) 2 Space Shuttle ↑11 (13) 3 NASA ↑7 (10) 4 Neil Armstrong ↓1 (4) 5 Apollo 13 ↑4 (9) 6 Global Positioning System ↓1 (5) 7 International Space Station ↑5 (12) 8 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster ↓7 (1) 9 Apollo 11 ↓3 (6) 10 STS-133 ↑78 (88) For the full list of the top 1,500 popular pages within the project, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Popular pages (or the archived record for February). Selected Article: Europa Europa was a rocket developed by a multinational European programme in the 1960s. Consisting of British, French and German stages, it was intended to provide a European alternative to the US rockets used for the launch of most Western satellites to that date. Although the British Blue Streak first stage performed well on all flights, problems with the French and German stages, as well as the Italian-built payload fairing, resulted in the failure of all multistage test flights and orbital launch attempts. The programme was abandoned after the failure of the Europa II's maiden flight in 1971. The article Europa (rocket), describes it: “ The Europa rocket was an early expendable launch system of the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO), which was the precursor to the European Space Agency and its Ariane family of launchers. The programme was initiated by the UK and the first launch occurred in August 1967. Tasks were to be distributed between nations: the United Kingdom would provide the first stage (derived from the Blue Streak missile), France would build the second and Germany the third stage. The Europa programme was divided into 4 successive projects : Europa 1: 4 unsuccessful launches Europa 2: 1 unsuccessful launch Europa 3: Cancelled before any launch occurred Europa 4: Study only, later cancelled The project was marred by technical problems. Although the first stage (the British Blue Streak) launched successfully on each occasion, it was the second or third stage that failed. ” The article is currently assessed as start-class, and is missing a lot of information. It also lacks some basic features such as inline citations. Since Europa was a fairly major programme, enough information should be available to produce a much higher quality article, and it could probably be brought up to GA status with enough effort. Published by WikiProject Spaceflight, if you have any content you wish to include in future newsletters, please contribute

You have recieved this newsletter because you are currently listed as a member of WikiProject Spaceflight, or because you are not a member but have requested it. If you do not wish to receive future issues, please add your name to the opt-out list.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of Spaceflight at 09:10, 3 March 2011 (UTC).

WikiProject Rocketry activity check

You are receiving this message because you are currently listed as being a member of WikiProject Rocketry. In order to establish how many members are still actively editing within the project, if you still consider yourself to be an active member of WikiProject rocketry, please go to Wikipedia:WikiProject Rocketry/Members and move your name from the list of inactive members at the bottom of the page to the list of active members at the top of the page.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of WikiProject Rocketry at 19:03, 12 March 2011 (UTC).

Speedy deletion nomination of JPSS

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on JPSS requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is an article with no content whatsoever, or whose contents consist only of external links, a "See also" section, book references, category tags, template tags, interwiki links, a rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hang on}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion, or "db", tag; if no such tag exists, then the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate and adding a hang-on tag is unnecessary), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:03, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Sdsds. You have new messages at Talk:Mir Docking Module.
Message added 09:00, 27 April 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

sample return

I don't know how you're supposed to do this "officially", but for the sample return article I'd say we should greatly expand the History section before I'd consider it B quality. I've read of dozens of proposals, but none of these are covered in any depth. Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:34, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Next shuttle mission listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Next shuttle mission. Since you had some involvement with the Next shuttle mission redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Thryduulf (talk) 21:02, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Clearing out your sandbox

You have material sitting in User:Sdsds/Sandbox which has not been touched in years. Could you delete this? Some of this material is landing high on certain Wikipedia searches, which begins to raise WP:FAKEARTICLE concerns. --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:29, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I was getting your sandbox as the second result for this search (your results may vary, as Google stacks results differently depending on the user who searches.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 20:37, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Elevator rocket vs. Sounding rocket

I was looking up Orion (rocket) today and found your comment on the article talk page. I've gone ahead and made the change with a link to sounding rocket. I've never heard the term elevator rocket before. Bob305 (talk) 17:38, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Typography request on File:1000px-Atmosphere layers-en.PNG

File:1000px-Atmosphere layers-en.PNG has been corrected, as per your request.... Done. And thank you!  :) Kelvin Case (talk) 22:31, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Love history & culture? Get involved in WikiProject World Digital Library!

World Digital Library Wikipedia Partnership - We need you!

Hi Sdsds! I'm the Wikipedian In Residence at the World Digital Library, a project of the Library of Congress and UNESCO. I'm recruiting Wikipedians who are passionate about history & culture to participate in improving Wikipedia using the WDL's vast free online resources. Participants can earn our awesome WDL barnstar and help to disseminate free knowledge from over 100 libraries in 7 different languages. Multilingual editors are welcome! (But being multilingual is not a requirement.) Please sign up to participate here. Thanks for editing Wikipedia and I look forward to working with you! SarahStierch (talk) 21:20, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject Invention

Hello, Sdsds. You are invited to join WikiProject Invention, a WikiProject and resource dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of inventions and invention-related topics. To join the project, just add your name to the member list. Northamerica1000(talk) 10:12, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Space_Shuttle_main_engine#Requested_move3

As a significant contributor to that article, you are invited to participate in a discussion about its title. All input welcome. Thank you, ^walk victor falk ^talk 14:36, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Template:Launching and Category:Current spaceflights

Hi; since you commented at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 March 23#Category:Current spaceflights, you may be interested in the discussion at Template talk:Launching#Recent edits and Category:Current spaceflights concerning the categories emitted by {{Launching}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:22, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Global account

Hi Sdsds! As a Steward I'm involved in the upcoming unification of all accounts organized by the Wikimedia Foundation (see m:Single User Login finalisation announcement). By looking at your account, I realized that you don't have a global account yet. In order to secure your name, I recommend you to create such account on your own by submitting your password on Special:MergeAccount and unifying your local accounts. If you have any problems with doing that or further questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Cheers, —DerHexer (Talk) 22:02, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Human-rating certification

An article that you have been involved in editing, Human-rating certification, has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:38, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Horizons Satellite

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Horizons Satellite requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), web content or organised event, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such articles may be deleted at any time. Please read more about what is generally accepted as notable.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator. AusLondonder (talk) 18:51, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Merger discussion for RD-107

An article that you have been involved in editing—RD-107 —has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Baldusi (talk) 19:52, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:34, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Sdsds. You have new messages at Talk:Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska.
Message added 21:21, 31 August 2016 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Based on your previous work with the spaceport template, you may be interested in the change of names mentioned here. Cheers. N2e (talk) 21:21, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Horizons Satellite

The article Horizons Satellite has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

The coverage (references, external links, etc.) does not seem sufficient to justify this article passing Wikipedia:General notability guideline and the more detailed Wikipedia:Notability (companies) requirement. If you disagree and deprod this, please explain how it meets them on the talk page here in the form of "This article meets criteria A and B because..." and ping me back through WP:ECHO or by leaving a note at User talk:Piotrus. Thank you.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:31, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

re: Horizons Satellite

I am fine with merger, you are welcome to execute it and remove the prod. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:20, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Sdsds. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Sdsds. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Sdsds. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Your access to AWB may be temporarily removed

Hello Sdsds! This message is to inform you that due to editing inactivity, your access to AutoWikiBrowser may be temporarily removed. If you do not resume editing within the next week, your username will be removed from the CheckPage. This is purely for routine maintenance and is not indicative of wrongdoing on your part. You may regain access at any time by simply requesting it at WP:PERM/AWB. Thank you! — MusikBot II ^talk 17:09, 29 August 2019 (UTC)