User talk:Tom.Reding/Archive 1

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Barnstar

		The Original Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to everyone who - whatever their opinion - contributed to the discussion about Wikipedia and SOPA. Thank you for being a part of the discussion. Presented by the Wikimedia Foundation, January 21, 2012.

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	Congratulations, Tom.Reding, you've recently made your 1,000th edit to articles on English Wikipedia! Thank you for all the great DAB work you've been doing recently, and for all your contributions to the encyclopedia. Keep it up! :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

Hello. You have a new message at Maryana (WMF)#Another "thank you for the barnstar" section's talk page. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Heat vision?

I didn't want to revert you without clarifying, but I don't think disambiguating heat vision to Infrared vision is accurate, because that article isn't describing what is meant by heat vision in the articles. Infrared vision is using infrared light to see, where heat vision in the context of the Power Girl, Superboy-Prime and other comic articles are more along the lines of an shooting "energy beams" out of their eyes, similar to Superman. But maybe you're seeing something about it that I'm not, so I wanted to check with you first. - Sudo Ghost 06:29, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Reverted. I tried to stay away from the heat vision articles that weren't related to infrared vision since there's no good page to disambiguate to except the ugly looking List_of_superhuman_features_and_abilities_in_fiction#Energy_blasts, but it looks like a few slipped through. -- Tom.Reding t
c 06:43, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, not a problem, thanks for clarifying. :) - Sudo Ghost 06:52, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Biodiversity of New Caledonia.

I want to thank you by your help in Biodiversity of New Caledonia. Thank you very much, and I apologize by my bad english. You are welcome. Curritocurrito (talk) 08:07, 18 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ocotea Lauraceae

Hello, how are you? I have edited in Ocotea I saw that you like biodiversity articles. Can you help me to edit again Ocotea? Palecloudedwhite wipe out the article over and over again. In any case I thank you it very much. Curritocurrito (talk) 11:09, 19 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

[Fe/H]

Hi, have you come across an article that describes the notation used in [Fe/H]? even dex does not cover it in any meaningful way. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:21, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

`|year=` is not a deprecated parameter in {{cite journal}} and the like

Please stop making edits like this. These add nothing, clean up nothing, and are based on utterly flawed logic (or a misunderstanding of Template:Cite_journal#Date). |year= is both valid, and non-deprecated. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:03, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That seems like a bit of an over-reaction. Date is a catch-all parameter. From Template:Cite_journal#Deprecated: Use date to include the day, month and year.. From Template:Cite_journal#Date: Can be full date (day, month, and year) or partial date (month and year, season and year, or year), and Year [is only r]equired with some types of {{sfn}} citations; otherwise use date.. Therefore, I don't agree with your direction nor magnitude unless/until the documentation is changed, sorry :-/. But, for your sake and the fact that conflicting interpretations exist, I'll focus elsewhere for now. How's that? -- Tom.Reding
20:40, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
I think we can both agree that |month= is unnecessary, so I'll continue going through the WikiProject Astronomy cleanup listing, combining |month= and |year= into |date= only where both of the former parameters exist (empty or not). This is a much smaller subset of pages, so it should minimize disagreement :) -- Tom.Reding
21:08, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I agree there is no question that you can (and probably should) convert any |year= parameter to |date= where an existing |month= parameter is also found in the specific citation template. Otherwise just switching |year= to |date= is not particularly useful, and is working in cross purposes with other editors. Specifically, I've seen Trappist the monk (talk · contribs) doing exactly the opposite (changing |date= to |year= when only a year value is specified in that parameter) on a large swath of articles on my watchlist. ^—^Asterisk*^Splat^→ 17:50, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I withdraw the mistake I made, as identified below. — User talk:AsteriskStarSplat 20:28, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Edit conflict b/w Trappist and I. This is my response posted after (but written prior to) his, fwiw.:

Interesting. That's unexpected to me (outside of {{sfn}}), especially given the language year: [...] Required with some types of {{sfn}} citations; otherwise use date. (my emphasis on otherwise). I only hesitate because the cite journal documentation uses |year= more liberally than it's instructing, so it needs to be made more internally consistent, one way or the other, imo. I certainly don't want to be effectively mass-reverting without consensus, so I'll probably bring it up on Help talk:Citation Style 1 (Template talk:Cite journal redirects there) or get Trappist's input first. ~ Tom.Reding (talk|contribs|dgaf) 18:31, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Umm, I think you misspoke. I don't have any scripts or Monkbot tasks that wholesale change |date= to |year=. If anything, I would go the other way and convert |year= to |date=. |year= is only required by those few CS1 templates that still use {{citation/core}}. These would be the one not marked with a green check mark in the table at the top of Help:CS1 errors. For those templates, switching from |year= to |date= should be undertaken carefully.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:19, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent, thank you! The citation documentation deserves some cleanup, then? The jist (rule) I'm getting is:

|year= to be used only in {{sfn}}, or when: |pmc= or |pmid= or |authorformat=vanc exist,^{[a rarity in astronomy]} or in those templates not marked with a green check mark in the table at the top of Help:CS1 errors.

Does that sound all-encompassing, Trappist the monk? ~ Tom.Reding (talk|contribs|dgaf) 19:26, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

{{cite episode}} is one that still uses {{citation/core}}. When {{cite episode}} has |ref=harv, {{citation/core}} creates a CITEREF anchor id that is the target for {{sfn}} and the {{harv}} family of templates. The anchor id is a concatenation of the first four author surnames and |year= or the year portion of |date=. If the author(s) have multiple publications in the same year these are disambiguated by adding a disambiguator character to |year=. Adding the disambiguator to the year portion of |date= does not work because the Mediawiki parser ignores it. This simple citation illustrates:

{{cite episode |last=Smith |date=1 December 2014a |title=Title |ref=harv}}

which produces this for the Mediawiki parser:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000002-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFSmith2014a" class="citation episode cs1">Smith (1 December 2014a). "Title".</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=unknown&rft.date=2014-12-01&rft.au=Smith&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AUser+talk%3ATom.Reding%2FArchive+1" class="Z3988"></span> <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment"><code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite episode|cite episode]]}}</code>: </span><span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Invalid <code class="cs1-code">&#124;ref=harv</code> ([[Help:CS1 errors#invalid_param_val|help]])</span>; <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Missing or empty <code class="cs1-code">&#124;series=</code> ([[Help:CS1 errors#citation_missing_title|help]])</span>

Look at the CITEREF anchor id and compare it to |date= in the citation. Note that the year portion of the id does not contain the disambiguator character. To get this citation correct so that {{sfn|Smith|2014a}} will properly link to it, we set |year=2014a so that {{citation/core}} can create the correct CITEREF anchor:

{{cite episode |last=Smith |date=1 December 2014a |year=2014a |title=Title |ref=harv}}

which produces this for the Mediawiki parser:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000007-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFSmith2014a" class="citation episode cs1">Smith (1 December 2014a). "Title".</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=unknown&rft.date=2014-12-01&rft.au=Smith&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AUser+talk%3ATom.Reding%2FArchive+1" class="Z3988"></span> <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment"><code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite episode|cite episode]]}}</code>: </span><span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Invalid <code class="cs1-code">&#124;ref=harv</code> ([[Help:CS1 errors#invalid_param_val|help]])</span>; <span class="cs1-visible-error citation-comment">Missing or empty <code class="cs1-code">&#124;series=</code> ([[Help:CS1 errors#citation_missing_title|help]])</span><span class="cs1-maint citation-comment">CS1 maint: date and year ([[:Category:CS1 maint: date and year|link]])</span>

Now the CITEREF anchor id has the correct date fragment.

So then, the rule I think is: For those templates still using {{citation/core}}, you may convert |year= to |date= when |year= does not have a CITEREF disambiguator and when |date= is empty or omitted.

I know of no reason why |pmc=, |pmid=, or |authorformat=vanc should enter into this calculation, but, I have been surprised before. So, tell me why you think they matter.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:44, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, |pmc=, |pmid=, and |authorformat=vanc are more of a style choice used mostly by medical journals than a coding integration/text parsing choice, and literally all I know about it is from Template:Cite_journal/doc and Vancouver system. There are 2 Vancouver system examples at the top of the doc - one that uses an explicit |year= only, and the other that uses |date= to include day, month, and year.

This is the main contradiction in the documentation is see (my italics):

Template:Cite_journal#Date says: year: [...] Required with some types of {{sfn}} citations; otherwise use date. and date: [...] Can be full date (day, month, and year) or partial date (month and year, season and year, or year)., but
Template:Cite_journal#Template data under Year says: Year of the source being referenced; use 'date' instead, if month or season is also known. Based on this discussion, this should read something like: [...]; use year for {{sfn}}, Vancouver style citations, <an explicit list of citation templates not yet migrated to Lua here, currently {{episode}}, {{cite mailing list}}, {{cite map}}, {{cite report}}, {{cite serial}}>, or whenever a CITEREF disambiguator is needed (i.e. 2014b), and removing |year= from any examples not explicitly meeting this criteria.

~ Tom.Reding (talk|contribs|dgaf) 03:01, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

|year= is only required when: a CITEREF disambiguator is needed and the CS1 template is: {{cite episode}} or {{cite mailing list}} or {{cite map}} or {{cite report}} or {{cite serial}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:53, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, then definite changes definitely need to be made to {{cite journal}} and to whichever other templates there is ambiguous (residue from before deprecation?) year/date instruction. Should this talk be moved somewhere more visible before changes are made, or should you or I (or someone else) just make the changes, as long as they're all fully described? ~ Tom.Reding (talk|contribs|dgaf) 13:46, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:42, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

O K! ~ Tom.Reding (talk|contribs|dgaf) 15:08, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Made changes to Template:Cite journal/doc, and to Template:Citation_Style_documentation#date which gets transcluded onto all Template:Cite X pages. If you don't see any problems, then I'll replicate as needed to the other relevant citation template docs. ~ Tom.Reding (talk|contribs|dgaf) 19:28, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Umm, no. It's pretty clear that I have failed to communicate. Because of that, I'm copying your change to this talk page and will revert your changes to Template:Citation_Style_documentation#date. Then I'm going to go away and think on it a bit.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:40, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

- year: is required when |ref=harv is used and when the value in date is in non-numeric format (i.e. not DMYYYY, MDYYYY, YYYYMD, etc.). For example: citations with |ref=harv and |date=Winter 2012 or |date=23–24 Sep 2012, etc. require |year=2012.
- year: is required when a CITEREF disambiguator is needed and the CS1 template is: {{cite episode}} or {{cite mailing list}} or {{cite map}} or {{cite report}} or {{cite serial}} only. These templates are those not marked with a green check mark in the table at the top of Help:CS1 errors. For example, if |date=1 December 2014a, then |year=2014a is required only for the above templates.

Does this help?

Is the template {{cite episode}} or {{cite mailing list}} or {{cite map}} or {{cite report}} or {{cite serial}}?

NO: use |date=.

YES: Does the citation use |ref=harv?

NO: use |date=.

YES: Is the date format in |date= DD Month YYYY or Month YYYY or YYYY or Month DD, YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD?

NO: year required

YES: Does the citation require a CITEREF disambiguator?

NO: use |date=.

YES: year required

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:01, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, concatenated if-the-else statements are always better than prose! Especially in cases like this. Bold "NO:" lines are my addition above, for explicitness. I think it's clear. ~ Tom.Reding (talk|contribs|dgaf) 14:33, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here's what I propose to have under the "OR:" bullet on Template:Citation_Style_documentation/date:

year: Year of source being referenced. Required with some types of {{sfn}} citations.^[more]
Is the template {{cite episode}} or {{cite mailing list}} or {{cite map}} or {{cite report}} or {{cite serial}}?
NO: use |date=.

YES: Does the template use |ref=harv?
NO: use |date=.

YES: Is the date format in |date= DD Month YYYY or Month YYYY or YYYY or Month DD, YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD?
NO: |year= required.

YES: Does the citation require a CITEREF disambiguator?
NO: use |date=.

YES: |year= required.

Better to get it right here. ~ Tom.Reding (talk|contribs|dgaf) 15:41, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I tweaked it a bit. I hadn't intended that construct as 'documentation' but merely to help you understand how it works. It would seem that if the if-then struct is useful, it might be better placed in Template:Sfn#More than one work in a year.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:40, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Because the {{cite <blah>}} templates are not fully-migrated, I think this logic should stay on the Template:Citation_Style_documentation/date just so there's no confusion. Sometimes I (and others) incorrectly assume consistent-ish behavior between templates and don't go through the details (which is part of the reason why I like standardizing things). Having it transcluded to all citation templates will let everyone know of the behavior discontinuity. Only after {{cite <blah>}} templates are fully migrated should this move to Template:Sfn#More than one work in a year, imo. ~ Tom.Reding (talk|contribs|dgaf) 16:56, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The NO answer to the first question in the if-then is actually a bit more complicated:

year: Year of source ...
Is the template {{cite episode}} or {{cite mailing list}} or {{cite map}} or {{cite report}} or {{cite serial}}?
NO: Does the template use |ref=harv? (answer YES if the template is {{citation}})
NO: use |date=.

YES: Is the date format in |date= YYYY-MM-DD?
NO: use |date=.

YES: Does the citation require a CITEREF disambiguator?
NO: use |date=.

YES: |year= required.

YES: Does the citation use |ref=harv?

This answers the case when the template is one that is supported by Module:Citation/CS1 and where the template uses |ref=harv (automatic when the template is {{citation}}) and when the date format is YYYY-MM-DD because this date format does not support CITEREF disambiguation.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:04, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In a Jon Stewart voice: Holy shit.

I was wondering where {{citation}} fit into all this too, since I've been seeing more of it recently.

I'll get to updating the docs after some settling time (like Monday). ~ Tom.Reding (talk|contribs|dgaf) 18:00, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Changes made to Template:Citation Style documentation#date. I'll wait a little bit before changing the individual citation examples on the separate cite doc pages (got reverted last time and I didn't feel like pursuing it yet). ~ Tom.Reding (talk|contribs|dgaf) 13:35, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Exoplanet

The discussion that was here has been moved to the Talk:Exoplanet#Mixed use of numerical suffixes. Astredita (talk) 16:37, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

List of most luminous known stars‎‎

The discussion that was here has been moved to User talk:I am. furhan.#List of most luminous known stars‎‎. ~ Tom.Reding (talk|contribs|dgaf) 19:26, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi

I have made some kind of mistake with the dates on Carolina Neuraths article. Please take a look.--BabbaQ (talk) 00:15, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Holy crap. Yup, lol. Easy fix though, there was just an extra comma between month and year: 30 November, 2010 -> 30 November 2010. Looks like someone just edit-conflicted my fix. Thanks for asking though :) ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 00:22, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation

You've been invited to be part of WikiProject Cosmology

Hello. Your contributions to Wikipedia have been analyzed carefully and you're among the few chosen to have a first access to a new project. I hope you can contribute to it by expanding the main page and later start editing the articles in its scope. Make sure to check out the Talk page for more information! Cheers

Tetra quark (talk) 19:51, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'll keep it in mind and do what I can. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 16:57, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Error in your edits using AWB

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs&diff=641503790&oldid=641410099

{{cite arxiv}} does not have authors=, it only has author=.

AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:13, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I enumerated the full list of 24 authors. I'll ask the citation module folks why that arXiv behavior differs from the others (probably as a nudge to prevent editors from being lazy when seeing 3 lines of authors...). Actually, that's probably the reason. And {{cite arXiv}} needs |authorn= to auto-truncate to 8, so no |display-authors= is needed. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 15:32, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Stellar objects images

Did you say you were going to create new size comparisons for the objects in my image that don't currently have one? It might be worth considering creating one for all of the small objects. Thought I'd get your input here to avoid excess clutter on WP Phys. Primefac (talk) 17:08, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To the 1st part: yes, although I'm sure I lack the image editing expertise, so I'd like to restrict myself to those larger satellites missing a comparison where I can easily do something easy like this.

To the 2nd part: you mean something like this mixed with the British Isles? That sounds like a good idea (with something other than the Earth there, maybe). That would definitely be a much larger undertaking (deciding what landmass or object to be the main comparator, text/object spacing, making sure the text is readable all around it, lots of nitpicking, etc., etc.) that I definitely don't want to do, but will gladly provide input to whoever does :) ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 17:26, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your edit to HZE ions

The reason is pretty clear I would have thought. I said it was block evasion and of the seven edits before my own two are bots, and two are blocked sockpuppets (one of which a large amount of content). Policy is quite clear that edits made in defiance of a block can be reverted without further reason however they can be placed back if editor reinstating them take complete responsibility for the content. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 04:52, 16 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for informing me about block policies. The HZE content is informative and referenced, puppeted or not, and the term block evasion ~~means~~ meant nothing to me. I will reassess the sources and the text in more detail shortly. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 13:02, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Done[reply]

AWB

Please read #4 and 3 in Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser#Rules_of_use and avoid making such edits [1]. Materialscientist (talk) 03:52, 21 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the rendered page was not affected. No, this was not a controversial change (see here). I'll make sure to add visible changes to my edits. Reverting mine, however, is even less productive; a simple message would be sufficient. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 04:22, 21 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your recent AWB change to Mundo Perdido, Tikal has produced a whole bunch of editor fields with a single close parenthesis after them, not to mention skipping some entires and leaving an inconsistent referencing style - please be more careful and check your edits. Many thanks, Simon Burchell (talk) 09:19, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

By "a whole bunch", you mean 3. Thank you for correcting them, though I just as readily would have. I've updated my code to catch this. Please be more careful in your talk posts as well. Also, partially fixing a page is insufficient for complaint. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 13:19, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What? This article was fine before, with consistent referencing. And all AWB edits should be checked before saving. Simon Burchell (talk) 14:16, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

All my edits are checked. Editors belong in the |editor= family of parameters. Being followed by a ")" was a subtle and unexpected exception that I'm now aware of and accounting for. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 14:47, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Tom, your edits at Planetary boundaries have a number of problems. E.g., spliting up multiple author/editor/coauthors is good, but you should also break them down into last/first. You should also brush up on the use of {{{display-authors}}}. There was also an explicit "author= et al."; let the template handle that. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:53, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. |authorN= is much more straightforward to code for though, and is perfectly acceptable. If someone wants, and has the code to do so, they can parse authors into first/last much more easily now that I've done the awful author separation.

I now use |display-authors= when there are >= 7 authors on the page and when |display-authors=4-9 exists somewhere on the page. I then adopt the lowest value 4-9, and apply it to citations which have more than that number of authors and don't yet use the |display-authors= parameter. If 4-9 don't exist, then I use 4. However, I've been thinking of expanding the search to 1-9 (1-3 seemed too restricting to me, so I refrained, but I'll change that).

Regarding the separation of |author=name et al. to |author=name|author2=et al.: that is the recommendation of the CS1 folks, which I made sure to get before doing so (see here: Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 7#Treatment of a literal "et al." in an author parameter).

Do you have any other concerns? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 22:40, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I see your point about author vs. first/last—in a few of the citations, most of the authors were in first/last and I enumerated into |author8-10= or so. Yeah, I'll do my best to keep the prevailing parameter convention in each citation. However, if my enumeration into authorN makes authorN the prevailing convention (like when 5 authors are listed in |last2=, for example), then I defer to authorN.

Regarding |display-authors=, that page was edited prior to when I made the above logic.

I'll look at Planetary boundaries again in the near future. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 23:40, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The "CS1 folks" you refer to was Trappist the monk, who said: "I think that the use of |authorn=et al. should be discouraged because et al. is not an author's name ....". (BTW, I re-titled your discussion at CS1 to remove the templates; it is now Help_talk:Citation_Style_1#Treatment of a literal "et al." in an author parameter.) There is no need to explicitly add "et al." to a citation (it is done automatically), and doing so corrupts the metadata by introducing a spurious author. (Mr. "Et"?)

Cramming last/first names into the |author[n]= parameter is not acceptable (let alone perfectly). It is for institutional and similar names that do not parse into "first" and "last" (more correctly, "surname"), and therefore need not be inverted for purposes of sorting. Sure, lots of editor have done that, but more out of laziness or ignorance than acceptability. As long as you are in there you might also straighten those out.

The use of {{para|display-authors]] (see Template:Citation#Display options) is a bit problematical. Some journals limit the number of authors they list in the full reference because for them space is at a premium, but that does not apply to Wikipedia. And many editors prefer to list all authors. That someone has previously added 'display-authors' to a single reference should not be taken as grounds for adding it to all references. Note that a previous version of CS1, given four authors, displayed three and appended 'et al.'. To display four authors one had to specify |display-authors=4. Ditto for |display-editors=.

Those are my main concerns here. I don't see any others worth mentioning. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:36, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with citations which use a literal "et al." is that the editor who made the citation omitted authors, and the "et al." must exist either in |author=name et al. or in |author2=et al.. Trappist went on to say, without any objections for almost a month now, that the lesser of two evils is et al. in its own parameter.. No comments for that long indicates that what was said is consensus (...or that it was too trivial for anyone to be bothered commenting on). Either way, I was going to suggest that responding to that discussion is the right venue, and I see you've already done that. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 23:14, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, what I am doing is UNcramming multiple authors in |firstN=, |lastN=, |authorN=, |editorN= fields.

Regarding |display-authors=: I now add the parameter if 2 or more instances of |display-authors=<1-99> exist (and I enum past that number, of course). I also now add the parameter if |display-authors= does not exist on a page, and my author-enumeration goes beyond 4 and the previously-existing maximum number of authors (in other words: if I'm the first one to enum to |author5= on a page whose highest author count used to be |first4/last4/author4=, then I add |display-authors=4 if |display-authors=<1-99> doesn't exist on the page). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 16:47, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote some code to parse authors into first/last at the end of my rule-sequence. However, I quickly found it difficult to double check the many other corrections I am making. To quickly and easily check the first/last parsing, I need/want to place each first/last pair on separate lines. This causes the diff to highlight whole blocks of text in many cases (when splitting in-line citations into multiline), making it very hard to double check all other one-to-several-character fixes. Therefore, since |author=last, first (and variants) is indeed acceptable, causing no errors nor any ambiguity for the reader, and adding first/last parsing at this time would be unprudent error-checking-wise, I'm going to continue to parse into |authorN= until some time in the future when I (or someone quicker) separates the authors into first/last. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 18:00, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
	For your incredible WikiGnoming over the past few months. I am in awe. A2soup (talk) 23:25, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! :) ~ Tom.Reding & his 200-some-odd lines of regex (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 02:03, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

State of Matter

The State of Matter page has an image with the caption "The four fundamental states of matter. Clockwise from top left, they are solid, liquid, gas and plasma, represented by an ice sculpture, a drop of water, the air around clouds, and electrical arcing from a tesla coil respectively." However, electrical arcing from a tesla coil comes third in the figurative clock. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1014:B114:7042:7CA4:978D:45ED:8C54 (talk) 17:41, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't produce this error, but I corrected it (since State of Matter is semi-protected). Thanks! ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 18:06, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: New helper policy

Hello member of Category:Wikipedians who use IRC! You are invited to join an ongoing discussion on Wikipedia talk:IRC/wikipedia-en-help aimed at defining a policy for prerequisites to being a helper in the "#wikipedia-en-help ^connect" channel in a section titled "New helper policy".

To prevent future mailings about IRC, you may remove your user page from Category:Wikipedians who use IRC.
Assistance is available upon request if you can't figure out where it is being added to your user page.
This message has been sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:59, 27 April 2015 (UTC) on behalf of — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)}[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	You have nearly single-handedly eliminated the minor planet notability problem, which had stood for seven years before you decided to tackle it, because nobody wanted to do the massive amount of work required. If this doesn't deserve a barnstar, I'm not sure what does. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:49, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Asteroid list

First of all, thank you for the asteroid list. I only now noticed it. However I'm still finding my way around wikipedia (after over two years, somehow;) and have no idea how to convert the list into the category. So, how exactly would I do that? exoplanetaryscience (talk) 22:19, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. And I believe Help:Category has what you're looking for. To save you some trouble, the only way to "convert" the list into a category is to add [[Category:Numbered asteroids]] to the bottom of each page (even if it's a redirect). That category only has 529 pages in it right now, so this needs to be done on almost 19,000 pages, so I recommend you make a Bot request. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 13:38, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The only problem I see is that, if/when each redirect is made back into an article, the editor's 1st choice may be to just revert the #redirect, thus removing any category additions made to it. There's no work-around for this, though, except making sure editors are informed, and periodic monitoring. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 13:50, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 64#Request for category adding, for reference. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 16:29, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Can you state the purpose of replacing many Wikipedia articles about the minor asteroids with redirects? I see many edits that removed more than 1000 bytes each (and many details removed). Note: many details are "lost" because the list does not contain such details. There are other-language versions of the articles, just "no" English version. Examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=9001_Slettebak&type=revision&diff=656073792&oldid=633721627 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2355_Nei_Monggol&type=revision&diff=658462614&oldid=545271370 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=31061_Tamao&type=revision&diff=656525111&oldid=540761139 1 Aug 2015 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.0.208.22 (talk) 06:44, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See this extensive discussion for the consensus. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 14:01, 13 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Undo

Kindly stop smacking "Undo" on me & everyone as you haven't undone a single thing - You've simply amended the redirect target and categories which you can do without notifying anyone!, Thanks, –Davey2010^Talk 14:52, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose of undoing is twofold:

1) Since I have no idea who's going to fulfill the redirect request from an AfD, it effectively notifies those who have fulfilled the request in the past so that they may do it properly in the future.

2) It puts all the information I need to correct the redirect on a single browser-page (the target page (which is correct), and the {{defaultsort}} and categories (which are absent)), instead of opening up another window. Since there are about 100 poorly-redirected asteroids which have now populated Category:Uncategorized from May 2015, saving even 1 step saves me lots of time.

To oblige, I'll remove the undo part of the summary (which should stop the notifications, I think), and only keep it for the 1st time I come across a new user who performed the initial redirect. How's that? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 15:28, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Tom, I only removed the message as I'd just woken up and wasn't best pleased with the undo so I apologize if I came across funny,

With the redirects - No AFD closer as far as I know adds all the categories & all that - I simply close it and usually add the "R from X" template and that's it,

Not entirely sure why Uncategorised comes up as looking at previous AFDs it's never cropped up before - Meh I dunno

That's perfect :) - Don't get me wrong it was nice of you to notify everyone but yeah, Anyway thanks & Happy editing, –Davey2010^Talk 15:51, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I guess other projects don't have someone monitoring their cleanup listing like astronomy does :) ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 15:58, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh my god that's one long list

, Well thank you for taking the time to clean them all :)

BTW sorry to make your life hardwork but I'm still getting notifications

- I should've asked earlier but are you still clicking undo as even if you remove my name from the edit summ I'll still be notified as you're still technically undoing my edit, I guess you could click the last edit before mine and click edit and see if that's any better - Problem is If I'm getting them then so are others and then you could end up with a really unhappy editor

, Anyway thanks for clearing all the planets up :), thanks and Happy editing :) –Davey2010^Talk 23:34, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to say - I've closed over 100 or more of the planets and so I'm gonna end up with a lot of notifications

- I wouldn't have a problem if it was 2 or 3 but I'm getting quite alot

, Oh the joys of Wikipedia eh

. –Davey2010^Talk 23:41, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh... Yeah, I was hoping the notification mechanism looked for your name in the summary, but it's apparently more robust than that (a good thing). I'll work around that behavior to spare you and others the wall of notifications (I want to finish this up tonight). Thanks for letting me know. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 23:45, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Haha sometimes it can be a good thing and like now it can be a bad thing

, Anyway I'll bugger off now

, Thanks again and happy editing. –Davey2010^Talk 00:38, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reading difficulty?

Please read the text of the tag you have added at Triploid block. It says "This article is an orphan, as no other articles link to it." As you yourself admit with this edit summary, the number of links is two, not zero. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:49, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There're 2 thresholds for removing orphan status: strict (> 0 links), and liberal (> 2 links). The latter is ideal and builds a better encyclopedia, which is why we're all here, no? Fine with me if you still want to remove it, but is that really helping anyone but yourself? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 22:58, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever. Triploid block is something I know a lot about, but if the wikipedia page is going to be tagged in this fashion, then I'm removing it from my watch list. Taking the impolite advice from your signature, I guess. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:02, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Pluto comp img

Hi Tom. Could you add Charon to File:Pluto Earth Moon Comparison.png? Since some characterize Pluto--Charon and Earth--Moon as double planets, I think that would make the image more useful. — kwami (talk) 18:02, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. File:Pluto Earth Moon Comparison.png actually belongs to the "<Earth or moon-ish sized solar system body> Earth Moon Comparison.png" family of images. For example, File:Enceladus Earth Moon Comparison.png, which I believe was the smallest we decided to go. Fortunately, Charon is about 2.5x larger. What I can do is make a "Charon Earth Moon Comparison.png" and a "Pluto Charon Earth Moon Comparison.png" and let ... wait, someone already made it: File:Pluto Charon Moon Earth Comparison.png (and updated it last week). I'll still make the Charon Earth Moon comparison, though, since I couldn't find one. Happy editing. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 14:38, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Kwamikagami: Just sat down to do this and I see it's already been done ~ File:Charon, Earth & Moon size comparison.jpg. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 15:50, 15 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Use of multiple names when citing author.

Thankyou for editing my programming on various articles. I am curious though about what is incorrect, or not encouraged, about using multiple names when using | author=example |.

Many times I have used multiple names in this as it shortens the ref and above all works successfully. To demonstrate: I would write the ref for the following paper using: author=N.Bergvall, E.Zackrisson, B.-G.Andersson, D.Arnberg, J.Masegosa, G.Östlin

which ends up in a ref like this: N.Bergvall, E.Zackrisson, B.-G.Andersson, D.Arnberg, J.Masegosa, G.Östlin (2006). "First detection of Lyman continuum escape from a local starburst galaxy. I. Observations of the luminous blue compact galaxy Haro 11 with the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE)". Astronomy and Astrophysics. 448 (2): 513–524. Bibcode:2006A&A...448..513B. doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20053788.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

N. Bergvall; E. Zackrisson; B.-G. Andersson; J. Masegosa; et al. (2006). "First detection of Lyman continuum escape from a local starburst galaxy. I. Observations of the luminous blue compact galaxy Haro 11 with the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE)". Astronomy and Astrophysics. 448 (2): 513–524. Bibcode:2006A&A...448..513B. doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20053788.

I'm not writing to berate you, but the bottom of the two refs does seem long-winded. I notice in some of the changed refs you use: |display-authors=etal | which seems to work well and saves a lot of time! Richard Nowell (talk) 13:08, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Richard Nowell: For the author enumeration: there are other programs and services that grab this meta reference info, and while it may look adequate on the rendered page, the back end is still messy.

As for the addition of 'et al.': I'd need to see the specific edit, because, as my code got more sophisticated, I started checking the maximum # of authors listed in an article prior to my enumeration. The rule was: if I enumerate past the current maximum number of displayed authors in an article, I would truncate the list with the et al. to match the article's current maximum and maintain citation consistency.

So feel free to modify |display-authors= on a per-article basis since it is arbitrary. But I don't advise reverting the author enumeration since it is not. Thanks! ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 15:35, 15 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I'll try to be more correct in future. The enumeration that is favoured can hinder (me) improving an article though. I give the editing on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lintott#Galaxy_Zoo_.26_The_Zooniverse as an example. The programming is so dense that I have given up trying to correct the citation that is wrong, as shown in red. While the refs maybe correct and the author used the recommended method, editing anything is difficult. Rgds Richard Nowell (talk) 09:41, 16 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I see what you're talking about (though I've never edited that article). Yes, the preferred preferred citation style is to use |firstn= & |lastn= parameters, but I've no intention of coding for that in the near future. There are bots out there that take what I've done (|authorn=) and do just that. Ultimately, content is the most important thing, so as long as your author list is consistently separated using some popular convention, then there'll always be people like me and those bots to take care of the dirty work. Writing an article properly in every way is hard. Luckily, there're lots of people to help. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 15:33, 16 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Enum authorN/editorN using AWB

Dear Tom, it is long overdue to tell you my deep appreciation for your consistent and unrelenting efforts with the thousands of minor planet articles on wikipedia: well-done my friend; you have earned my deep appreciation and respect!

A few days ago I noticed, your systematic formatting of the authors attribute in the citations of the articles I revised. My apologies for any extra work my sub-optimal citation format might have caused. I have now amended the algorithms that generate these citations based on the template description for multiple authors, using a |first1=...|last1=... format. Please let me know if I should change it into a |author=...|author2=... format. I also added a "display-authors" attribute, and set it to a maximum of 6. Just tell me what else you'd like me to change and I will do so, OK?

The tools I created to help me editing minor planet articles are now online (beta only). Maybe the ADS generator might be helpful to you. --Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 07:51, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Why thank you. And thank you for making minor planet articles that much less minor! No need to apologize for editing. On the contrary, parsing semicolon-delimited authors was one of the first rules I made, since that's the easiest delimitation to code for (comma delimited is a nightmare). I'm choosing at this time to not use |first1=|last1= since I have over 500 AWB rules which run on every page, so it's already pretty slow, even after some optimization. I also feel like putting the rules I've made to use, instead of constantly creating more. This is my 2nd pass through all Category:Astronomy articles. I created 99% of my rules during the 1st pass, now I'm just tweaking. I may or may not code for firstn/lastn in the future. Either way, it's a step in the right direction, and you using first/last is even better.

You've got the right idea: always defer at the citation template documentation. I also recommend watching Help talk:Citation Style 1 for current issues/bugs/requests/questions/opinions on style.

I've found that using |display-authors=6 to be a good compromise between those that want only 1 author displayed and those that want all authors displayed. However, my code conforms to the prevailing format already on the page; i.e. if I'm the first to enumerate authors to 8 or more, and no |display-authors= exists on the page, I'll go with |display-authors=6. Otherwise I'll go with the current value used on the page. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 14:22, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I thank you because, you are one of very few consistent editors on minor planet articles, as I've seen lots of good-faith edits by many capable editors that end-up detrimental to the overall consistency of the articles. For this I thank you; who else would have checked and revised all the poorly implemented redirects by certain users, if not you?

Please check 5333 Kanaya. It is my first article rewrite with the revised citation format, as discussed above. Unless you tell me otherwise, I will use this format from now on. By the way, I removed all self-redirect in the List of minor planets § Main index. Whenever you #REDIRECT or rewrite a minor planet article, it would be great if you could update (add/remove) the corresponding link on the list. --Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 16:57, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Solo Toady's edits are actually what got me started, heh, since I'm a consistency-monger.

My code didn't come up with any significant changes to 5333 Kanaya, but I do see a "CS1 maint: display-authors" error next to reference #6. Here's how to display all error messages. The error comes from |display-authors=5 being equal to the total # of authors in the citation. I'm going to add a rule that checks for and removes these now. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 17:52, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And nice work on the self-redirect removal, the pages look better. But I remember talking about this with Fyunck(click). The major concern I had was creep, and that a periodically-run maintenance bot (or human) would be needed to check that all unlinked entries are still redirects (or don't exist), and that all linked entries are still not redirects. If you're able to make something like that, that would be pretty cool. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 20:58, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Good to know that thing about the "display-authors"="number of authors" I'll fix that. Also I encountered a citation with about 170 authors...3787 Aivazovskij. Does this make sense to list all of them. Algorithm for the list: [2] does several checks, including self-references, and find recently named asteroids (i.e. when a name should be listed instead of the provisional designation). Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 16:24, 31 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh wow, that's great. So it looks like all the back-end work is done. There are 2000 links on your list parser, though, so going through them all is still quite laborious (but a fantastic improvement nonetheless). What would be ideal is if you set up a wikipedia bot account (a non-trivial task, you need to have a request to do so approved, etc., and idk all the details) to automatically go through those links and only update the pages that need updating, say, once/month or twice/year. If you need help, I'm sure there are WT:AST editors who are ready, willing, and able. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 18:23, 31 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As for the 170 authors...ummm...technically they should all be listed, but I would bring it up at Help talk:Citation Style 1 if you start to see more than a handful of those. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 18:42, 31 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Numbered asteroids Maintenance (WT:AST)

A big applaud for your tireless efforts in sorting Minor Planets in Categories. Check my recent 7 contributions [2016-01-07T23:59:45 to 00:07:41] and let me know if those done are up to the mark. Also, provide me a reference list (if available) & a Minor Planet number to start with (As of now my latest one was 6239 Minos). Awaiting Reply. - Ninney (talk) 18:47, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much, but please read my latest post at WT:AST#Category:Numbered asteroids Maintenance.

Concerning your edits: why did you remove the category for 4675 Ohboke? 5143 Heracles through 6084 Bascom look mostly fine; I would not have included the category sortkey when a 6-digit DEFAULTSORT exists, though. And I definitely wouldn't have added a sortkey to these 3 other categories before checking their prevailing sorting method (I presume you have).

My intention of using WT:AST is to request feedback from the community on the details of how I should proceed with correcting a problem, not to ask for help correcting, though I'm explicit when I do want help. I prefer to complete this on my own, for consistency and accountability. I don't want to be responsible for others' mistakes. It won't take very long; I'll likely finish tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:26, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion declined: 3962 Valyaev (asteroid)

Hello Tom.Reding. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of 3962 Valyaev (asteroid), a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: This is very confusing. This page has content, the other page you refer to (without the (asteroid) disam) redirects to a list of planets. Do you want this page renaming to 3962 Valyaev? let me know and I'll look at it again. . Thank you. Ged UK 14:09, 8 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I didn't include the background from WP:AST when it comes to the consensus to redirect asteroid stubs. It was desired that 3962 Valyaev become a redirect, which it did, along with ~11,000 others. 3962 Valyaev (asteroid) contains no new information from 3962 Valyaev, so it too, at the very least, should be a redirect. However, there is no need for its "(asteroid)" distinction. In fact, none of the ~19,500 minor planets contained in Category:Minor planets contain the word "asteroid", so this creates an arbitrary, isolated exception and serves no useful purpose, other than keeping someone's mistake around for posterity. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:45, 8 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Tom, hi Ged UK, I did a rewrite on 3962 Valyaev and redirected its alias accordingly, as I found some additional information to write a stub. Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 10:41, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding removed wikilinks on 19156 Heco

When you sorted the categories on the 19156 Heco minor planet article that I created, I noticed that you removed the wikilinks to Wikipedias in other languages. If there was a reason for removing the wikilinks that were at the bottom of the page, then you can explain why. Newman2 (talk) 19:23, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's my understanding that interwiki links are no longer necessary. I've seen bots removing them years ago, and I very rarely see any interwiki links now. If they're still needed for some reason I'm not aware of, feel free to replace them. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:30, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, wikidata is garbage. 19156 Heco (Q21856114) and 19156 Heco (Q3597871) both exist, and you can edit parts of the 1st one as much as you want, but there other parts you don't know you can't edit until after you try to save and waste your time. And there's no obvious option to merge them or delete one. So much for my first foray into WD. Regardless, 19156 Heco (Q3597871) seems to have the 3 interwikies you're talking about, but I don't see them come up on the left-hand-bar's Language section on 19156 Heco (maybe there's some delay?), so it's your call. Wikidata: 1/10 stars. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:03, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I got it to work. I moved the lone "en" entry from 19156 Heco (Q21856114) to 19156 Heco (Q3597871), and the interwiki links show up on the left of 19156 Heco. However, this means that you can easily have the en version pointing to a different wikidata entry than every other language points to. Brilliant! Wikidata: -1/10 stars. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:15, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

PHA Cat

Tom, you know the maintenance side of this much better than I do. But should Category:Potentially hazardous asteroids be a subset of Category:Asteroids or Category:Minor planets or Category:Near-Earth objects? -- Kheider (talk) 17:27, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I only added Category:Asteroids as the parent after a very quick scan for potential parents, just to unorphan Category:Potentially hazardous asteroids. Given those options, Category:Near-Earth objects definitely seems like the most appropriate parent, since NEOs can be either PHAs or not. The number of PHAs is a much smaller fraction of "Asteroids" and "Minor planets" than it is of NEOs, too. I'll change it. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:10, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Notability of 342843 Davidbowie

Hello! I would like to ask for your thoughts on the notability of 342843 Davidbowie. I've started a discussion on the article's talk page explaining why I think that it should be replaced with a redirect per WP:NASTRO. Thanks! Best Regards, Astro4686 (talk) 03:42, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Your mass edits

Hi there. You seem to be making a huge number of edits at an extremely high edit rate without a clear bot request for approval. Are you approving each edit? Have you taken a quick look at our bot policy? --slakr^\ talk / 03:59, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm looking at and approving each edit. For your concern, I'll slow down and/or pause for a bit. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 04:01, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet! Thanks a million =) --slakr^\ talk / 04:08, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tom has approval from wp:WikiProject Astronomy to be cleaning up minor planet categories. Tom has also kept the astro groups informed of what he is doing. -- Kheider (talk) 12:14, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Tom's edits are sound, definitely needed, and approved by many hard-core editors on the topic. His heavy editing on minor planet categories, redirects and candidates, and general clean-up including templates, talk-pages etc. are all well documented. -- Rfassbind – talk 21:15, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	For dealing with the minor planet clusterfuck as efficiently as you have! Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:13, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing quite like cleaning up a good, 'ol-fashioned clusterfuck. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction :) ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 04:17, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, this isn't just for the recent banner tagging, but for the shear amount of effort involved in cleaning up the mess for the past year or so. Possibly longer. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:27, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Categories amendments

Hi Tom, I apologize in advance for my amendments I did to the hierarchy of the following categories.

Hierarchy

Category:Discoveries by institution (parent)
- Category:Discoveries by ODAS (new cat)
- Category:Discoveries by CSS (new cat)
- Category:Discoveries by UESAC (changed its parent cat from Category:Asteroid surveys to here, i.e. "Discovery by institution")

I will have to do some more changes. The rule is: a category "Discoveries by xzy" always exclusively contains a listing of bodies, so it either a child of the parent "Discovery by institution" (survey, observatory, etc.) or of the parent "Discovery by astronomer" (real persons). The category "Asteroid surveys" contains a listing of all articles related to the topic except for the discovered bodies themselves.

TODO's (as far as I see):

the Category:IRAS catalogue objects (in "Asteroid surveys") and Category:Discoveries by IRAS seem to be redundant (for bodies such as 3200 Phaethon (JPL), or 3728 IRAS (JPL). They should be merged into your category.
are you sure to delete Category:Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research? The cat seem fair to me (it just must not contain discovered bodies).
following the explained "rule" above, Category:Palomar–Leiden survey, should be renamed to Category:Discoveries by PLS, as it contains the discovered bodies. Moreover, its special sortkey is not helpful and should be changed to standard zero-padded-6-digit-number. In addition, Category:Discoveries by PLS trojan-1, Category:Discoveries by PLS trojan-2 and Category:Discoveries by PLS trojan-3 are to be created.

You're the boss, so I don't want to get in your way, but the listed changes seem paramount to me. Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 13:50, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This should be moved to WT:ASTRO to get a broader audience (I'll let you do that). I'll add my comments to it there. My only immediate comment is that there is a difference between Category:IRAS catalogue objects and Category:Discoveries by IRAS; the catalogue category contains previously-known targets, while discoveries contains new objects discovered over the course of the survey. If we (WP:ASTRO) want, we can keep both and put this distinction on the top of each category page. ~~Also, we can think about putting fuzzy categories like Category:Discoveries by LONEOS in both Category:Discoveries by institution and Category:Asteroid surveys~~. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:14, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've thought too much about this, I need to write this down...

I like your rule, and can simply change the header on Category:Discoveries by institution to accept survey-target cats.^Done I've struck my previous comments that contravene this. Here are my opinions to your #1, 2, and 3:

3200 Phaethon and 3728 IRAS are now both in Category:Discoveries by IRAS, since this is explicitly stated in their articles.
Empty, so deleted. Can be remade, if needed.
I agree that PLS discoveries should go into a cat like Category:Discoveries by PLS (since the inclusion criteria for Category:Discoveries by institution will be relaxed). I also agree that the trojan surveys should have a similar catalog-nomenclature, so I'd also be ok with Catalog:Discoveries by PLS T-1 (trading clumsiness for conciseness). If you decide to go with Category:Discoveries by PLS Trojan-1, etc., (I'm fine with either) "Trojan" should be capitalized, per the Jupiter trojan article, which capitalizes "Trojan" when used alone and unqualified (i.e. not for "Jupiter trojan" and "trojan moons", but for "just Trojans", "the first Trojans", and "most known Trojans").

3.a. Regarding Category:Palomar–Leiden survey's (and Category:Discoveries by PLS's) sortkey, the survey designation # should supersede the 0-padded 6-digit #-sorting for survey categories, if easily found.

My only concern is: where will existing, known, MPs that are part of a survey fall into this hierarchy? I can't say off the top of my head, how big or small this number is (Kheider, can you ballpark?). Or, is this a moot point since asteroid surveys exclusively(?) deal with finding new asteroids, and not building a dataset of new observations on known objects? Perhaps these are the only objects that we will/should put under Category:Asteroid surveys? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:18, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To answer my own question: in Category:Palomar–Leiden survey catalog, where Category:Discoveries by the Palomar–Leiden survey is a child. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:00, 13 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New category Discoveries by PLS

Hi Tom, I've been now thoroughly preparing "Category:Discoveries by PLS". It should have a zero-padded 6-digit sortkey. Using a sortkey based on the PLS designation (such as displayed in your example) undermines my efforts and is redundant with Category:Palomar–Leiden survey. Rfassbind – talk 17:10, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't Category:Palomar–Leiden survey being moved to Category:Discoveries by PLS though? That's why I'd like to maintain the P-L designation sortkey - to not lose that information. Let's see what WT:AST thinks. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:16, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Renaming categories I created

Tom, when renaming categories I have created (example), I need to know that in order to change my mapping otherwise this will create inconsistencies. Thx, Rfassbind – talk 10:05, 13 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sure thing. I haven't moved any recently, but I have created a bunch. I'll keep posting them to User:Rfassbind/Minor planet redirects of non-exsitent articles#Created categories (Discoveries by...). I meant to post yesterday's batch before bed, but forgot. Will do so shortly. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:57, 13 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Asteroid RfDs

Thanks for the listings at RfD. Once the redirects (36183) 1999 TX186 and (136693) 1998 ST49 get deleted, I'll close the RfD unless you want to (it's not too tricky once you've done it a few times: you need to subst: {{rfd top}} and {{rfd bottom}} around the section, and it's good practice to add {{nac}} in the closing comment if, like me, you're not an admin).

You may be interested in commenting on Artificial object(s), which are also up at RfD here. The discussion is partly on whether artificial objects means, primarily, artificial satellites and other man-made space objects.

Si Trew (talk) 06:35, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well that was quite speedy indeed. Thanks for the info; I would've chosen to NAC them myself if they were still up. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:45, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template usage in the talk page of #REDIRECTs (minor planets)

Tom, as per your conversation with Huntster on Wikiproject SS, your (amended) guidelines for tpls on talk pages last week, and this edit, I'd like to confirm these changes, since they affect several hundreds of my future edits and about two thousand ones I already made. Rfassbind – talk 10:53, 2 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes indeed, that is all correct. Explicitly stating {{WPAstro}} & {{WPSS}} class & importance is only needed once the article is no longer an #R. Otherwise, as #Rs become articles, their banners become incorrect, without an easy way of finding them amongst the correct ones (unless you have AWB and/or a database scanner). I noticed this problem first hand as I started looking at talk pages more closely, so I want to prevent it from happening in the future.

Of course, if you create an #R for an MP that deserves an importance rating higher than 'Low', then use that rating instead.

I had to go back myself and make additions & changes to #R talk pages I created. In doing so I went through all MPs in Category:Minor planet redirects so I probably caught a lot of the ones you created. When I notice problems that I thought I already fixed, I usually cycle through all the MPs to see if it was an isolated exception or a systemic omission on my part, so that minimizes anything falling through the cracks (which I might do now). Thanks for checking! ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:07, 2 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting pages when moving from provisional to name

Tom, as far as I see, deleting pages is not helpful when moving from provisional to final designation. Why not a simple redirect with the templates you specified yourself? Rfassbind – talk 18:18, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't remember in this case whether I just didn't want the extra #R laying around (reminiscent of 12817Federica), or if I didn't want to bother fixing the now-double-#R. Regardless, if it's more convenient for tracking purposes to keep them, I can do that. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 22:23, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, is it more convenient to keep them for tracking purposes, or for another reason? Just curious. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:37, 4 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Tom, yes "tracking purpose" is good reason, as a search for e.g. "123456" doesn't render a direct result in wiki's auto-search dropdown (due to the fact that wiki drops the parenthesis in the final designation). Also, as per the Category:Main-belt numbered unnamed asteroids, you created in January, there are more than 4,000 numbered minor planets with a provisional designation. Eventually, they will get named and moved/renamed to their final designation, by different editors little by little, while, in addition, newly created articles will join the category. These editors, most likely, won't request a deletion of the provisional redirect (and if they do, I would hope that the deleting admin will check it to prevent any link breakage). So for the sake of consistency, deletion is not really an option. On the long run, it might be even useful to create a provisional redirect for each and every numbered minor planet? Epilogue: what's your current status, Tom? Are you now near the end of your overall revision of redirects? If yes, any ideas/plans what to do next? Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 10:49, 5 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, all that makes sense. And yeah, one of the many logical next steps (though a very low priority one) would then to be to create uncategorized #Rs for former numbered unnamed MPs, if most of them indeed exist. I.e. if ~40 - ~60% of formers have #Rs, I wouldn't make the remaining 60-40% without approval from WT:AST, and I would even consider deleting them if they comprise < ~30% of the population, though again not without approval (which I doubt anyone would get). But I'll leave that area to you since you've done & are doing a great job on the List of minor planets pages (which I'm trying to add an MPC link to, but no one's responded).

Yes, I'm pretty satisfied with the current state of MPs on WP. More so after you're done creating the missing numbered+named #Rs (again, another logical next step, but I'd rather you make them without error than several editors make them with varying degrees of completeness). I'll continue to cycle through all of them periodically to prevent any drift. I'll probably post my C# code at some point, and maybe my AWB rules (but they're much more of a mess), for anyone interested. It took a long time to get here, and it was worth it. I don't know if you remember the state they were in late 2014, but it was mind-boggling and seizure-inducing...

There are a few things I'm still mulling over. For example, 1) the prevalence of chronologically-converted provisional DEFAULTSORTs and sortkeys like 1994 W012R for 1994 WR12. I can concede this, reluctantly, for provisional MPs, but not for numbered provisional MPs. To me, it's unnecessary complexity where none is required. I tried bringing it up at the end of this thread, but no response, and it deserves its own separate discussion anyway.

2) Automatically transcribing the orbital and physical characteristics from the MPC to existing MPs' infoboxes. Though this might be more trouble than it's worth for me, since most MPs have many of their parameters' values duplicated in the text, which is/can be a pain the in the ass to search for and to correct. If that wasn't the case, or if everyone was ok with my just correcting/updating the infobox parameters and not the text, or if someone was willing to update and/or remove parameters duplicated in the text, only then would I do it.

Done 3) Adding the MPC link (+{{Anchor}}s, +heading standardization) to all List of minor planets family of pages, already mentioned.

Working on 4) Finish off the User:Tom.Reding/Shortlist of minor planet redirect candidates.

Working on 5) There are a lot of discoverer categories that may/not need to be made, depending on what is deemed an acceptable cutoff for deserving a category. I.e. only being credited with 2 discoveries probably doesn't warrant a category, but that also depends on WT:AST sentiment.

I react to problems as I find/realize/am convinced of them, so some of these may change. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:36, 5 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nice. I will get back to you as soon as I'm done with the #Rs up to 200k. I also have some ideas, opinions and wishes. Maybe we could brain-storm about them. And thx for the great work you've done so far. Rfassbind – talk 03:59, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I probably won't do #2 above, since just this week (Tuesday) it seems that my home network has been blocked access to the MPC db! I submitted a problem-ticket 3 days ago on Wednesday, but I'm still waiting to hear back. I explained who I am, what I'm doing, and asked what the db access rate limit is, so I can stay below it in the future. I can still access the db using my mobile network, but it is slower and a less stable connection. I access both the JPL and MPC DBs for each MP, at a rate of ~1/second, and I only recently started using the MPC (which halved the request rate to 1/sec), so JPL wasn't even bothered by my prior 2/sec request rate.

If that wasn't the case, I would prefer to write a separate AWB module for updating existing MP infoboxes with MPC info, and post it somewhere visible for others to use in the future, or maybe even create a maintenance bot to do it, or both. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:25, 12 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

see § Outlook March, -- Rfassbind – talk 09:57, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Renamed Discovered-By Cat

FYI, I moved your Category:Discoveries by Gyula Szabó (astronomer) to Category:Discoveries by Gyula M. Szabó and changed the 4 existing items in your cat accordingly. (Also see it:Gyula M. Szabó, de:Gyula M. Szabó). Sorry for the inconvenience this might cause you. Rfassbind – talk 10:32, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No inconvenience. I prefer a less ambiguous name over the "(astronomer)" suffix too. Thanks for letting me know. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:02, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

FYI you should move the old cat to the new one instead of manually creating a new one. That automatically creates a category redirect from the old cat, and notifies me at the same time. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:49, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, this notification did not work when you renamed (at least two) of my categories. If I had received a notification, I wouldn't have asked you to tell me to prevent inconsistencies (§ Renaming categories I created). Also, my renaming mentioned above was to be consistent with the German and Italian wikis, arguably the better/more detailed ones for "asteroid"-astronomer articles. Of course I also checked for redlinks in the List of minor planets and changed them from "Gyula Szabó (astronomer)" to "Gyula M. Szabó", as you would have certainly done as well. Rfassbind – talk 07:17, 17 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, whatever works (I'll always notify you, no matter what). For me though, I periodically use AWB's list comparer to reconcile any differences between my local category-list and any new or modified categories since my last check, so I'm able to catch changes even if I miss a notification, or if someone other than us makes a change. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:11, 17 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discoveries by C. Michelle Olmstead

The currently 3 items listed in your category Category:Discoveries by C. Michelle Olmstead refer to different astronomer articles on wiki: C. Michelle Olmstead and C. M. Olmstead. Let me know if I can be of any assistance for this puzzeling (at least to me) situation. -- Rfassbind – talk 07:33, 17 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good eye. I hadn't noticed the "not to be confused with" note on each article. I avoid sorting ambiguous names, like "M. Wolf", which could refer to Max or Marek. I do sort "M. F. Wolf", since that's definitely Max. Likewise, I'll adjust my code to avoid "C. M. Olmstead", for now. If you're confident enough to distinguish them, i.e. if the 2 people had mutually exclusive asteroid-discovery periods, go for it. My code isn't this nuanced (yet). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:51, 17 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tom I have no idea whether or not these two astronomers might be the same person or not (just because "someone" adds an note to an article saying so, does not mean a lot to me anymore). I guess your experience with the MPC has also told you that "data inconsistency" is their middle name. Sometimes I really get upset how carelessly things are handled at and by the MPC (I mean, what's the matter with them? A 12-year old ADHS-challenged still would produce less anomalies in the data than the MPC). As for C. M. Olmstead, I will look into it. It might turn out to be a fruitless google-endeavour (as it was the case for C. Cofré /C. Cofre). If I find anything will post it here. ~~For the time being, and on second thought, let's put the discoveries by either one into the same category. We can split it up later on. This way we wont't lose any objects out of sight.~~ Rfassbind – talk 11:53, 18 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the MPC isn't that detail-oriented when it comes to names, I'm surprised to say (I say the interns probably did it), but the JPL is ridiculously worse. I started with JPL, so I'm a bit desensitized. From JPL's perspective, the MPC is a French garden.

C. M. Olmstead appears to have only discovered asteroids between 1977-1978, inclusive, from their WP page. C. Michelle Olmstead appears to have been active over a decade later ~1990 (going purely by their WP pages). Assuming there is no overlap in their discovery dates that we don't know about, that's good enough to distinguish them. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:36, 18 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so you've created Category:Discoveries by C. M. Olmstead in addition to Category:Discoveries by C. Michelle Olmstead and I ~~stroked through~~ what I wrote above. We will have to merge them in case they can be identified to refer to the same person. Fine with me. Rfassbind – talk 09:54, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

follow-up: strange, just as I tried to adjust my internal mapping to the two discoverer categories, when I noticed that the MPC discoverer list (now?) only displays one single "Olmstead" (with 46 discoveries, 1977-1990, C. M. Olmstead). If we don't find more information we need to merge the articles and categories its seems (damn, I thought I checked that list for this name redundancy... or did it change recently??!). Rfassbind – talk 11:18, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that page, I didn't know about it. Using web.archive.org they've only had 1 Olmstead for a while. No matter. Let's figure this out.

Thiebes, you added Not to be confused with C. M. Olmstead on C. Michelle Olmstead's page, and turned C. M. Olmstead's #REDIRECT into their own article. You seem very certain of this distinction, but it contradicts the MPC (not to imply that the MPC is infallible, though; it's not). Do you have any references to back this up, or should we assume the MPC is right, and merge these 2 astronomers' pages into 1? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:17, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Message left at User talk:Thiebes#C. Michelle Olmstead vs. C. M. Olmstead ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 03:59, 21 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, I'm going to use Category:Discoveries by C. Michelle Olmstead for instances of both C. M. Olmstead and C. Michelle Olmstead until contradictory evidence presents itself (pinging Thiebes again), since that is the most likely scenario at this time, based on the MPC's discoverer list (I've done no further searching since). More conclusive evidence will be needed before we merge the 2 articles and restore the C. M. Olmstead #REDIRECT to C. Michelle Olmstead, however. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:07, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Outlook March

My current Status

I'm currently at number 250,000 for new #Rs creation, and I will go all the way to 450k+. The List of minor planets will also be updated (link-revision). This will take some time as many Discovery-by categories need to be created.

Upcomming tasks

merging the subpages for the first 200 pages in List of minor planets. I will still have to ask the admin who was involved in the deleting of subpages few years ago. Any feedback or contribution on your side is welcomed, but should be coordinated.
refine categories: some categories could be "divided" into subcategories, while new one could be created and others renamed. For example:

generic rename from "asteroid" to "minor planet"
rename cat "Category:Numbered asteroids" (#2,934 items) to something like ≈ (numbered) "Minor planet articles". (bot request?).
the Category:Asteroids named for places could be refined (cities, towns and villages versus geographic features such as mountains and islands and political divisions. As far as I see, rivers are either not categorized or part of this (places) category. There is also a List of minor planets named after rivers.
the Category:Asteroids named for people includes probably 80% of all numbered minor planets. There is a List of minor planets named after people, yet not very complete without a proper (sortable) table structure. Many subcategories could be thought of (something like "asteroids named for notable people" as already mentioned by Kheider at Talk:342843_Davidbowie).
In general there are many "Lists" and specific categories, such as Category:Asteroids named for members of The Beatles. They all seem to have grown "organically", with no (obvious) frame-work in which they are embedded into.

Feedback appreciated. If you're thinking about anything related to infoboxes, I don't know whether you already noticed this online tool. -- Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 10:43, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bravo on your current status.

My thoughts on upcoming tasks:

I've noticed this as partly done too, and can help where needed (I recall seeing either a post or an edit summary of someone doing this in the past that basically said "I'll stop here until a MP/asteroid consensus is reached". It's probably been reached, but I would look at it on a case-by-case basis, and bring it up to the community for any ambiguous cases. Category:Asteroids is huge though, and sits within Category:Minor planets, so WT:AST and/or WT:ASTRO should definitely be notified and "RfC'd", on second thought.
I like your Category:Numbered minor planet articles suggestion, since the scope of the category changed during its implementation (by me) w/o changing its name from Category:Numbered asteroids. I also purposely decided to use a 0p6d sortkey for provisional designation MPs for this category only to see how they would appear in the list and, if people liked it, to propagate it to other categories. I don't see this happening though, so I would feel most comfortable making both of these changes (cat name & non-0p6d sortkey for provisionals) simultaneously myself.^{I mistook this category for Category:Potentially hazardous asteroids, somehow}
Further refining Category:Asteroids named for people seems like straying into WP:Overcategorization, and also makes maintaining the categories a bit harder. "Rivers" makes sense though, since they're not a place (1D), but a line (2D). I would also condone Category:Asteroids/Minor planets named for things, like for 9997 COBE, and maybe even for rivers (debatable).
Didn't know about this page until now. Turning it into a table, and sortable, makes sense.
1. Defining "notable" people seems subjective, and probably falls under WP:Overcategorization too.
I created all (currently) 3 subcategories of Category:Asteroids named for people because, as I was going through and #R'ing stubs, I did not want to lose this information. It was information listed in the article (i.e. all Beetles' asteroids were listed on each Beetle's asteroid) that is now preserved in the subcategories, which seem to be in their proper parent-child categories.

I hadn't noticed that tool of yours (though I suspected you had something like that!), but I also don't quite know how to use it. For example, I see Earth MOID and Jupiter MOID values for JPL's 342843 (I'm currently debugging my code on it while going from largest MP to smallest), but I don't see how to extract that into infobox-form? Also, there are fewer steps involved when using WP:AWB (you should look into requesting access for it; it's fantastic). I'd also rather use my own tools (when "easily" creatable), since I can tweak/customize the hell out of them. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:29, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Manipulation of other user's comments

Although I understand your intentions are good, I am uncomfortable with you changing two other user's comments here and here not long ago. If you'd like for their support to be more obvious, please ask them to do it, and in the meantime, put the comments back as they were left. Thanks. fredgandt 17:43, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A reasonable request; I'll revert the addition of my obviously-placed "Support"s. Kheider & JorisvS, please revert my reverts if you agree with their placement. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:46, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Tom. Their addition would only be obvious to anyone watching or reading the history. fredgandt 18:01, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. The entire content of their messages is contained on the talk page, i.e. no edit summaries were given to further qualify their statements in any way. Regardless, I've reverted my edit. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:10, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If a reader of the page (as you had left it prior to my messaging you here) did not also read the history, or see the changes you made to the user's comments in their watchlist, that reader would be reasonable to assume that those users had written what you had added to their comments. There are guidelines, but it's a simple matter of courtesy to not put words in other people's mouths. If they want to state loudly that they support something in that manner, they can and should do it themselves. Your disagreement is expected (you wouldn't have done it in the first place otherwise), but consider this - I could edit your comments and make everyone else think you said something you didn't. How would you feel about that? fredgandt 18:23, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I understand your concern, which is why I heeded your request. For the record, however, I maintain that I am facilitating rather than manipulating. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:34, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

RfC's I would like you to comment on.

Hello Tom.Reding, due to your responses on recent AfD's I thought you would like to place some input to the RfC's that me and I9Q79oL78KiL0QTFHgyc opened up as a result of a heated debate on the use of the ESI score and Citing PHL/HEC. They can both be found here, and here. Cheers, Davidbuddy9 Talk 03:21, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Re-categorization of everything but orbit/numbered categories

It seems that around January you made a change to the classification of minor planets, where everything except their orbit categories (such as Mars crossing asteroids) and numbered asteroids category has been changed to their default name. Perhaps I have a poor memory in all of this, but I don't remember the discussion where that was brought up and approved. Even so, it seems rather counter-intuitive to me. Should an asteroid not be sorted after its order of discovery in the category of "discoveries by X" instead of what X decided to name it? And it would certainly save space to defaultsort to its number and put the name where applicable (which I believe in most cases makes the text shorter, unless the asteroid's name is 6 characters or less.) exoplanetaryscience (talk) 21:28, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For precisely these kinds of discussions I created and have been adding relevant discussions to the new WT:AST topical archive: Category maintenance 1. I was very transparent about my changes and offered ample opportunity for discussion before making any. It's a 1-stop-shop to see what's been done recently—I even looked through the archives to find other cat-maintenance discussions, but only found 1 from 2010, now at the top of the topical archive.

Category:Mars-crossing asteroids's sort method is to use 0-padded 6-digit assigned-number as the default sortkey. Failing that, the provisional designation is used (this is the standard for most WP:AST categories now). The use of MP number as the default sorting criteria was proposed by you at On a revision of the categorization of astronomical objects, and agreed to by others (and brought up by myself in other discussions). Before targeting specific categories, I RfC'd WT:AST about the preferred sorting method for each category. All those discussion can be found in the topical archive.

Regarding Category:Discoveries by astronomer subcategories, you can find the discussion at Preferred sort for Category:Discoveries by astronomer. My original assumption was to sort these by # as well, and I pinged you at the start. Rfassbind brought up the fact that most astronomers' wiki-pages already contain a number-sorted and/or provisional-sorted table of all their asteroid discoveries. So, if given the opportunity to sort by a different method, it seems like a good idea to take it. If we're going to have 2 similar lists, we might as well sort them differently. There were no dissenting remarks, so I continued.

Regarding saving a small amount of space on the page, I think that's a trivial concern compared to having a consistent and logical sort method. However, you can always bring it up at WT:AST, and I'd be happy to facilitate any changes, as long as there's good reason & agreement. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:27, 17 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps my memory is also not 100% accurate: historically, all permanently named minor planets had their name as default sort. Then, around spring 2015, exoplanetaryscience changed the DEFAULTSORT to a 6-digit-zero-left-padded sort key, which was per se a good idea (though 7 digits would have been probably better). This useful sorting order has been incorporated into the extensive revision made the last few months by Tom and me.

There have been, however, some "unfortunate side-effects". One of the most disturbing, was that most of the then existing "Discovery by ..." categories got completely muddled-up, since half of the entries were sorted by number the other by name (or any other ratio depending on the individual discoverer/s). We not only fixed that, but created several hundreds of additional "Discoveries By"-categories and made sure that, whenever possible, every named minor planet was checked and categorized.

So my first question would rather be: "where's the discussion and who approved" to change the DEFAULTSORT from name to a number? And why has this been done inconsistently, only for a fraction (about 1000 minor planets) and not for all of them? I believe most editors would agree that any consistent sorting is much better than having an inconsistent one. Rfassbind – talk 23:54, 17 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding {{DEFAULTSORT|<0p6d #>}}, if no DS existed, or if it needed updating (i.e. in cases where it hadn't been updated since the provisional name, and the MP was now both named and numbered), I would add {{DEFAULTSORT|<0p6d #>}}. I brought this up here for Category:Numbered asteroids as point #1, and here (with 3 reasons) for the Category:Minor planets hierarchy, also as point #1. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:05, 18 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Currently there is a mixture of DF's using name, number or provisional designation. I would presume that +80% uses a name. I guess the post below refers to this comment. So "standardizing the defaultsort" means to replace name by number. That seems not harmful, as long as the changes are reflected in the sort-key of the associated categories. Just one question: what exactly is the benefit for converting named into numbered DF's? -- Rfassbind – talk 21:36, 18 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I can go through and tally the usage of DS # vs. name vs. provisional (once AWB is usable again). I am curious to know, but it's not entirely relevant, since we're talking about making sweeping changes. What is relevant is which one is "best". That was my rationale when choosing # over name (sortkeys changed accordingly, of course). My 3 reasons, listed here, for using # for missing DEFAULTSORTs over name were (my additions highlighted):

There are more asteroid categories which sort by number than there are that sort by name. [this might no longer be true overall, but it usually was (and possibly still is) true on 1-discoverer MP pages; either way I'm willing to reassess this]
All asteroid categories which sort by name, that I'm aware of, have been sterilized by me, and already use the proper DEFAULSORT/sortkey combination.
Most of the objects discovered by multiple people, and hence with multiple [[Category:...discovered by <blah>]]s already use the more-appropriate [in this case] alphabetic DEFAULTSORT.

Given all the recent corrections to diacritics used in names, which aren't allowed in DSs nor sortkeys, it might be better to in fact use DEFAULTSORT:<de-diacritized name> across the board to remove a possible source of error. I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:29, 19 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, my findings:

# of named MPs: ~19,761; # using {{DEFAULTSORT:<alphabetic>}}: ~16,675 (84.4%).
# of numbered MPs: ~21,106; # using {{DEFAULTSORT:######}}: ~3,554 (16.8%).
# of numbered provisional MPs: ~4,431; # using {{DEFAULTSORT:<provisional>}}: 3,961 (89.4%).

So the overwhelming majority of MPs which are able to use their alphabetic name as their DS do so. And an overwhelming minority of numbered MPs use their # as their DS. However, among that minority are 986 of the first 1000 numbered MPs, so there are certainly good arguments either way, if we wish there to be a standard DS. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 21:19, 22 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting #R

I thought about to format all minor planet #Rs as described here, using Template:Redr. There are still a number of other possible #R-amendments, so the formatting could be made along with these simultaneously. What you think? Rfassbind – talk 05:00, 18 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've never been a fan of the {{Redr}} template since it's harder to read and to code around than several consecutive {{R}}s.

In terms of #R-amendments, just so you know, {{R to anchor}} auto-populates {{R unprintworthy}}, so having both is redundant. Also, before making mass changes to the #Rs, I'd make them first to the WP:NASTRO#Dealing with minor planets example for about a week for comments/corrections first. If you're thinking about {{DEFAULTSORT}} standardization as well (I presume), it'd be good to run it by WT:AST, and I have some suggestions for provisional MPs' defaultsorts that I'd like to piggyback on if there's agreement. Were there any other amendments were you thinking about? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:41, 18 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's exactly why I'm asking you first before even considering proposing anything on WT:AST. Don't jump to conclusions that I would already start doing these changes... so no need to wave WT:AST in front of my nose every time I'm including you in my thought process about something you don't like (I sincerely wished you'd showed the same level of cooperation). If you're not in favor of these formatted #Rs, then there is no reason for me to consider the issue any further, since I'm not prepared to make the changes all #Rs by myself without your help. Moreover, I, myself, have also concerns about the {{Redr}} template, but not the coding (that's surly not an issue) but it adds complexity to the redirect, and less experienced editors (those who will re-write the article when the body becomes notable one day) might be confused. On the other hand, a non-diacritical redirect, for example, isn't really readable...

So let's forget about the formatted redirects. We have discussed it and we agree that they look nicer, but also add complexity which is potentially detrimental for future editing. In the name of consistency, I suggest to remove the Redr-Templates from the few #Rs when we come across.

Your other comments:

good to know that "anchor" and "unprintworthy" are redundant.
DEFAULTSORT – I have no clue what you're comment about standardization refers to specifically.
sortkey for unnamed minor planets: I thought the current sorting was defined by you... did you change your mind?
other amendments I'm thinking about: a) amending #R-anchors to tenners (e.g. 511, 521, 531, 541...). Category renaming for Asteroids named for places and people, respectively. Also, I thought about the possibility to create a template for the so often used html-comment ("Before reverting the this redirect..."). To me this is worth thinking about. Again, just a thought with no actions planned. Last but not least, it seems appropriate to add a newline in every #R after the first line (I also read that in a guideline). That's it, Rfassbind – talk 21:13, 18 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing you've said (or I've assumed you've said) that I'm not in favor of (except {{Redr}}). I can't help but be cautious whenever talking about a large # of changes, however, whether I like them or not. I hope you don't take offense to that.

My DEFAULTSORT comment was just an FYI to summarize the more recent relevant discussions I've had about it (mostly for exoplanetaryscience since they've been away for a while).

For provisional DEFAULTSORTs, I'd like to see if there's any momentum for using the unmodified provisional designation instead of jumbling up the characters.

Creating a template for the NASTRO comment is a fantastic idea. Boleyn I think wrapped that comment in {{source}} or <syntaxhighlight lang="">, so that editors can see the comment before editing the page, which is something I'd like to see more of. (~~I can't find an example right now since AWB is acting up~~ found one! 21001 Trogrlic) I might've replaced some of these with the standard comment by accident, but avoided changing them once I noticed.

Regarding the tens-anchors, I'd even go a step further and assign an anchor for each entry (and perhaps keeping the #101 etc. anchors for legacy purposes). That makes the #Rs a lot more accurate and a lot easier to make, both manually and via code. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:58, 19 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Let me summarize and give a quick feedback

Using {{Redr}}) – we agreed not to use it for several reasons and despite being visually more appealing. We also agree to remove it when it is used: due to our prime directive, which is called consistency.
New #R template Boleyn's html-NASTRO comments using a source tag, were pointing into the right direction. I have removed maybe a dozen of them, since they were not compliant with the overall project (consistency). In addition, I also changed the inconsistent/more complex text "Before reverting the <number-name> redirect..." to "Before reverting this redirect...". I think it would be most appropriate, if you could created such template. You have my unconditional support, and I will help implement it as well.
Cat-Renaming Asteroid→Minor planet (for name/place cats). However and despite being uncontroversial, we should incorporate such changes into a bigger revision where we might re-structure the category hierarchy for "asteroids" and "minor" planets on a more basic level. In such process we might find more changes or different solutions. So I suggest we put our heads together and think about it even before involving others on WT:AST that are less familiar on the subject. We might even start a project page together (in our, your or mine, user space) to elaborate a better concept.
Adding a newline (empty 2nd line) to all #R. Agreement. It should be incorporated into an overall #R revision.
List of minor planets: anchor. I evaluated whether or not an individual anchor or one every 10 items is better. I concluded every 10 items is the best solution. As far as I see we both agree that every 100 items is just not good enough and that it has been one of the many bad decisions made in the past (to be fair: the now removed subpage structure was also a big obstacle for accurate anchors, of course). Disadvantage of oner's vs. tenner anchors: a) the first table-row in an anchored view is actually not the best line: People notice, say, the 5th line better than the first one (the 5th line is the average distance from the top for tenner-anchored redirects). Also oneer's add another 900 × 7 = 6.3kB to the page-size, which, as you know, was a concern and has received most of the attention in my proposal to merger and layout-revise the List of minor planets. I'd rather used the remaining available size to expand the table for a new column (such as category - orbital family), and for a color code of the table rows (according to orbital groups). Since no one other than us is going to implement the changes in the MP-list tables and in #Rs, coding is not a problem (I'm a professional web developer, you're also very capable, especially on regex, as you have proved to me several times already). Last but not least, I proposed the tenner-anchors in my WT:AST post and implemented them on 200 pages, saying that the remaining pages will follow as soon as they are ready (complete lists). That got approve; I posted an example; I waited for at least another week for feedback (like your's now) before I started to implement the tenner-anchors along with the page merger.
tpl Redundancy anchor-and-unprint worthy (in non-diacritical #Rs) Whenever I edit such #R, I also remove the redundancy you mentioned above.

What you think? Rfassbind – talk 13:05, 23 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ok
Ok, Done I'll make a template called {{NASTRO comment}} or some such and update WP:NASTRO with it.
Ok I'll help with asteroid->MP cat restructuring, but I'll let you setup a project page for it. I started looking into this, very superficially and just out of curiosity to size up the situation a few months ago, and quickly realized how much work it might be, all the coordination with others & input/voting that will probably have to happen.
~~Maybe~~ Ok, Done I'd like to find the guideline(s) that mention this. I do remember reading this too, but I also remember thinking that it was probably a legacy issue since I've never seen it brought up in any #R discussions, on NASTRO's #R example, nor while I was performing most of the #R'ing.
Ok Good point about WP:SIZE, but I think only 6 extra characters are needed per entry (|- -> |-id=102 does the trick), so the increase would only be 900 × 6 = 5,400 b = 5.27 kB, or ~0.78% of the current page size of ~675 kB. However, combined with your point about their visual aspects, tenners are indeed the better option.
Ok, Done I'll update WP:NASTRO, replacing {{R unprintworthy}} with {{R to anchor}} when I add the {{NASTRO comment}}.

~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:15, 23 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quick reply: concerning #4, adding newline, see examples at Wikipedia:Redirect > Wikipedia:SELFREDIRECT and at WP:REDCAT

Updated points with changes made to WP:NASTRO. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:26, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

April 2016

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, we would ask that you assume good faith while interacting with other editors, which you did not on List_of potentially habitable exoplanets. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. [3] Do not accuse other editors of vandalism falsely. jps (talk) 15:12, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I9Q79oL78KiL0QTFHgyc, you're vandalizing the page by removing relevant, referenced information saying that it is unreferenced. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:15, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You're also valdalizing List of Kepler exoplanet candidates by ESI by turning it into a redirect against any established consensus. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:19, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please read WP:VANDAL and understand that this is not what I'm doing. Accusing others of vandalism falsely is considered a personal attack on Wikipedia. Since the list of Kepler exoplanet candidates by ESI fails WP:LISTN, it seems reasonable to redirect to the list of exoplanets for habitability. If you have an explanation for why this isn't a good idea, let it be known here. jps (talk) 15:22, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would assume good faith, but you've been a part of several AfD discussions on these topics which have not gone your way. Knowing your involvement, and seeing these edits, I can only assume that you're fully aware of your actions, and therefore not acting in the interests of Wikipedia, only your own. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:44, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Even if you think I'm wrong, you should not be identifying things as vandalism which clearly are not. Discuss on the talkpage why you think the edits are problematic. To be clear, I do not see no consensus as a statement that things should stay as status quo. jps (talk) 16:19, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Can you stop?

It looks like you've got some sort of grudge against me. I'm just trying my best to remove problematic content from Wikipedia. Being half-assed in your reinsertions makes me feel like you're just trying to get a rise out of me.

jps (talk) 19:55, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No grudge—you've made plenty of productive edits in the past, and I hope you continue to. I only revert unsubstantiated, baseless edits and vandalism, regardless of who makes them. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:21, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You keep using the term vandalism and I keep telling you to stop. Moreover, I don't see you starting any discussions about your reverts of my attempts. All it seems to be is a desire to keep ESI material in Wikipedia. That's fine, but you should make a case for it on the talkpages. jps (talk) 20:24, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You don't see my comment on WT:AST#Is Citing PHL/HEC in violation of WP:SELFPUB?? It seems your account has responded to it 2 minutes prior to your response here, assuming you have full control of it... ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:30, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm talking about article talkpages. jps (talk) 20:40, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You continue to infuriate me. I am trying to see things from your perspective but all I can perceive is that you are bitter because the area which you closely watch is being changed. You don't seem to have any arguments for why you want to keep all the ESI discussion in the encyclopedia. Your insistence that we wait for Wikipedia's notoriously broken RfC process to "play out" over the course of months looks to me like an excuse to feet drag. Couple that with your blatant mischaracterizations and invocations to the "admins" to ban me from parts of the website, it just looks to me like you are just engaging in your don't give a fuckism present in your signature. Disabuse me of this feeling, if you please. jps (talk) 17:50, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

All I care about is what the community decides to do with unique values on the PHL website, pending this discussion, WT:AST#Is Citing PHL/HEC in violation of WP:SELFPUB?, where I've posted verbosely, wherever relevant, for visibility. Taking any significantly large action (adding many new values from that website, or removing information based on its reference to PHL) is not warranted at this time. Please wait until the discussion is resolved decisively in either direction. Right now, as with most AfDs you've started, the result is no consensus, which defaults to keep. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:58, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I precisely hope that you DGAF, as I do, until which time it is appropriate to "GAF". Right now, you GAF when you should DGAF. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:04, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't give a fuck about that insipid discussion and your deference to it looks to me like that's precisely where you give a fuck. We are at definite odds. I cannot see it your way. Process is not supposed to matter on Wikipedia. Content matters a whole lot more. Promulgating content that will confuse and mislead users should be at odds with the way a decent reference work is set up. Claiming that my actions are "significantly large" also belies your claims not to give a fuck. If you didn't give a fuck, you'd leave me alone to fix problems. Using "no consensus" as a reason to revert is especially cynical when you basically oppose the majority of actions I take with regards to cleaning up ESI-related nonsense. You clearly have an agenda as can be seen from your insistence on taking the opposite side of me in almost every discussion on the subject we've had in this encyclopedia. jps (talk) 18:17, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Basically, I'm accusing you of being a jerk. jps (talk) 18:18, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You're free to call me whatever you like, since I think I understand where you're coming from. However, I clearly stated above that I only revert unsubstantiated, baseless edits and vandalism, regardless of who makes them (I obviously GAF about those things, as everyone should, and should expect). Boldly going against the current consensus (that is, no consensus, defaulting to keep) once is fine, and encouraged. However, persistently, and relentlessly doing so falls under all 3 reasons I have to revert any edits because it is clearly WP:Disruptive editing when one cannot WP:Drop it.

We are at the discussion phase of WP:BRD. This might take some time, so being patient is key, and being impatient, let alone angry, helps no one. Other editors have reverted your reverts to my reverts, further showing you what the community expects (despite you reverting them). Going against what the community expects is going against the spirit of Wikipedia. If, or when, there is clear decision to remove uncorroborated PHL information, I will not stand in your, nor anyone's, way.

Also, you cannot ascribe your actions to cleaning up ESI-related nonsense, because we (WT:AST) have not decided which side of the debate is the cleaner side. I hope you can see my point, which I think I've made abundantly clear, because you, and everyone else, will be better off for it. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:54, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My God, stop being so tiresome. The problem is discussion is simply not happening. You will not engage in it substantively. Either you think ESI values from a website are worthy of proliferation on Wikipedia or you don't. But your devotion to reverting "baseless" edits is making a categorical claim about my actions. HOW DO YOU SEE THEM AS BASELESS FROM A CONTENT PERSPECTIVE? As it is, this discussion has been moribund for about a month and is going nowhere, but you don't seem to want to defend the other side. Why is that? Do you not believe in the other side? Do you just find queries like those below to be beneath your notice? All you are doing is referring to the alphabet soup of Wikipedia nonsense and you aren't speaking to the fundamental issues: is it a good idea to be promoting ESI and the PHL website all over Wikipedia. If you think it is (which you have come out in favor of) explain why you think that in your own words. Have the goddamn discussion. Stop evading. The only point I see is that you might be angling for some sort of idealism related to a misplaced faith in Wikipedia process. Fuck Wikipedia. It's a shitty website full of shitty articles. It would be better if it didn't exist. The only reason we should care about it is because people use it uncritically. As such, I care about the policies which govern the content of the website which seem to align pretty closely to what I think a good academic reference source would require. Being devoted to Wikipedia process basically makes you someone who is impossible to deal with. Open up. Discuss the facts of the matter. Stop hiding behind Wikiklawyering. PLEASE. jps (talk) 19:02, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fuck Wikipedia. It's a shitty website full of shitty articles. It would be better if it didn't exist. It sounds like you are WP:Not here to build an encyclopedia, which begs the question: why do you bother? You should probably stop, or someone will eventually make you. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:18, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My goal while active on Wikipedia is to make it as accurate as possible. Once the goals of Wikipedia do not align with that, I will be shown the door. However, Wikipedia, for the time being, seems to favor this approach. Which is exactly why I want you to focus on the content and have a discussion about ESI with me. I do not care about Wikipedia idealism or free culture or promoting the website or the nonsense spouted by Jimmy Wales. Nope, none of that matters. What matters is that people use this website and as long as I am allowed to edit here, I will try to make it a better encyclopedia in whatever way I can. jps (talk) 19:44, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would be more comfortable if you would just argue in favor of ESI being on as many pages on Wikipedia as possible, if that's what you think. As it stands, your defense of its usage seems to rely mostly on WP:Wikilawyering.. What is it about ESI that compels you to want to preserve it here? That's the discussion I want to have. I understand from some of the other disputants that they like ESI because it is used in Universe Sandbox. Is that your reason? If not, what is it? I want to have an actual content-based discussion rather than constant meta-discussions to which discussions should be allowed to take place. jps (talk) 18:45, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've had many discussions with you on the various AfDs and on talk pages, and others have backed up both your points and mine, and I'll continue to at the appropriate venues. We've both said what we wanted to say, I think. You removing PHL/HEC data and references (instead of simply talking about removing them) is a fulfillment of an extension of that debate and is a case of not being able to WP:Drop it. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:05, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My fucking god. I'm telling you that you haven't explained why you want these references in the encyclopedia. You haven't explained yourself. The closet you've come is "per other people". And now you are shutting down discussion here. But you simply aren't active in any other venue beyond the insipidness of your desire to conform to policy. Why won't you discuss? If you won't discuss matters, just get out of the way. jps (talk) 19:10, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template Editor granted

Howdy, Welcome to the Template Editor team. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Nakon 04:52, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 05:01, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Enumerate multiple authors/editors

Hi. Concerning citations that contain |author= parameters whose authors are formatted in Vancouver style, please consider using |vauthors= instead of |authorn= . The |vauthors= parameter preserves the original citation rendering, is less cluttered, and produces cleaner metadata. Thanks. Boghog (talk) 03:23, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see. I saw Trappist putting in |vauthors= and figured he picked most of the low-hanging fruit already. I've never used it before, but I'll check it out and incorporate it into my script. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 03:30, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I immediately notice that some pages (i.e. 90Y-DOTA-biotin) have multiple Vancouver-style authors in |author=, but the rest of the page uses |authorn=, so using |vauthors= would actually be inconsistent, so I'm adding |vauthors=/|veditors= now IIF

|vauthors=/|veditors= already exists on the page, or
the page contains less than 2 instances of |author2=, |last2=, or the corresponding |editor2= aliases, and
author/editor list is in Vancouver style (obv). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:53, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
For the time-being, I'm restricting myself to pages which do not contain \|\s*(author|last)2\s*=, which simplifies things greatly, and is still at least ~10% of the maintenance category. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:17, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Typos and spelling mistakes versus filenames

Hey Tom, great you resolve spelling errors and typos, but on the List of monuments in Colombia it's not text you changed, but a filename of an image: [[File:Capilla de Nuestra SeÃ±ora de la Candelaria-Montebello.jpg|thumb|170px|Chapel de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, Montebello]]. So when you change the "Ã±" into "ñ", the filename gets corrupted and the image is not showing anymore. Take a look with the preview, you'll see what I mean. Cheers and keep up the good work! Tisquesusa (talk) 00:40, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tisquesusa, apologies, I did not see that. I'll adjust my code to avoid files and image names.

The best solution (one I'll leave to yourself or others), is probably to change the filename from Ã± to ñ, especially given that both names use non-keyboard characters. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 00:57, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, one loses the overview with such long articles sometimes. Indeed it would be best if the filename on Commons would be changed to the correct version, but I fear that there is more important work to do. Thanks, Tisquesusa (talk) 01:20, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I do it. 2602:306:3357:BA0:91FA:29C8:1A98:AC81 (talk) 21:34, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Thanks. And don't forget to update all the pages it is linked-to on (not a lot in this case). I'll put links here to both to keep track:

Old: File:Capilla de Nuestra SeÃ±ora de la Candelaria-Montebello.jpg

New: File:Capilla de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria-Montebello.jpg

~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 00:36, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a {{rename media}} tag at File talk:Capilla de Nuestra SeÃ±ora de la Candelaria-Montebello.jpg#ñ. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:47, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Access-date/no url maint

Please don't add <!-- as this would disrupt the access date. and the wiki markup. Thanks. TheCoffeeAddict talk|contribs 07:06, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, edits like this are pointless - they just sweep the problem under the carpet. Since it's a print source, an access date is meaningless, so it's better to remove the parameter entirely. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:15, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

TheCoffeeAddict & Redrose64, in the past (> 1 year ago), I was actually removing |access-date= entirely, but other editors disapproved, claiming it was "potentially useful" information (despite the text on the maintenance category page). As a compromise, I started putting it in comments at the end of the citation. Going forward, I'll remove |access-date= entirely and link to this discussion. I've renamed it to be more informative. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:44, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Re: this AWB edit on Kim Novak: I admit to being confused by the AWB edit summary but I can tell there's something wrong with all that red print in the ref... Wanted to let you know I have reverted your edit but am working on fixing the information & the ref. Shearonink (talk) 18:38, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Shearonink, my edit summary is as detailed as space allows. The edit itself is correct and didn't cause the error you're describing; that error existed prior to my edit. Thanks for fixing. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:45, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please be careful not to remove the access date when |contribution-url= or one of its aliases is present, rather than |url=. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:40, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I've broadened the check to |<chapter- or archive- or contribution- or section- or nothing>url=, with/out - (I was previously checking for |<chapter- or archive- or nothing>url=). I'll go back through my edits to look for the errant cases. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 22:22, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Peter coxhead, backsearch complete: 111 pages I've performed this fix on contained either a non-empty |contribution-url= or |section-url= (the cases I previously wasn't accounting for). Of these, I had removed |access-date= on 5 (including the one you fixed). The remaining 4 were corrected. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 04:00, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Great. (I've been caught before by the large number of aliases in the cite/citation templates. There are historical reasons for them, but it would make life simpler if they were now reduced!) Peter coxhead (talk) 07:51, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You might be surprised. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:58, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

List of people who disappeared mysteriously

Hello Tom, I'm sorry, in editing out vandalism on the above article, I deleted your recent edit and have attempted to restore - without success. Can you possibly get it back please? Apologies again, David, David J Johnson (talk) 18:46, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting... this'll take a minute, but it's just a syntax problem. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:02, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

David J Johnson,

good as new. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:22, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tom, Many thanks. Regards, David, David J Johnson (talk) 20:55, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Revenant article adjustments

I have read the article on revenants that you recently edited, and I'd like to request the permission to revise it. You see, revenants were also known to come back to avenge something wrongly done to them in life. I see you are well versed in the Historia rerum Angelicam, and I respect that you are an educated researcher. Thank you. ResearcheroftheOccult (talk) 17:33, 19 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ResearcheroftheOccult, revenant isn't a protected article, so you're free to make any productive changes that you want. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:47, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

IP block on Minor Planet Center website

Hi Tom,

As of this morning I can not connect to the Minor Planet Center's website. I circumvented the problem by calling it from a script on my dedicated webserver, which initially worked for a few request until that too failed to connect...

Can you connect to http://www.minorplanetcenter.org?
Can you open/download the latest Minor Planet Circulars PDF?

Since you have experienced a similar problem, what did you do to resolve it? Thx and best regards, Rfassbind – talk 20:49, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, welcome to the club! A right of passage for only the most scrupulous, ardent, and relentless editors. Here are my results:

Accessible to me http://www.minorplanetcenter.org/

Accessible to me Minor Planet Circulars

Accessible to me MPC DB Search - wow, I'm finally unblocked!

My home address was originally blocked 3 months and 2 weeks ago on 8 March 2016. I wrote a very nice letter the following day to the sys admin explaining my use of their website. I checked every day for ~1 week, then checked ~2x/week for ~1 month, then admitted defeat, so I don't know exactly when I was unblocked, but 3 months seems like a typical/round amount of time for it to last. I got around it by accessing the internet through an alternate network (in my case I tethered through my cell network, but I could have used public WiFi too). The same machines that were blocked via the router worked when accessing the website through a different network.

Do you recall what your query rate was? Mine was ~1/sec, for ~8-12 hours each day, for a few consecutive days, maybe a week, tops. I'm guessing they have short-term (minutes/hours) and long-term (day/week/month) query limits. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 21:34, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thx for the quick reply. So you never received a reply after you contacted the MPC... that's a bleak outlook. I don't think my number of requests per day were ever more than a few thousands (though scripting errors such as endless for-loops are always possible). I did, however, request large text-files from the MPC website (about 45 MB), so if there were something like a stream-quota, I might have exceeded the limit. But, honestly, these kind of explanations seem all very convoluted to me (e.g. my dedicated web server gets blocked almost simultaneously?!). I simply don't know what they are doing... and I hope the folks at MPC at least do (which I sincerely doubt).

If it's not too much of a hassle, could you email me the above PDF to reto.fassbind at my @gmail.com accout? Rfassbind – talk 22:03, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sent.

Yeah, I never got a response. IMO the MPC's rate/bandwidth limits are much stricter than JPL's, which I was querying at least twice the rate of MPC. It'd be nice to know what those limits are so we could stay below them, but we may well narrow it down by trial and ~~error~~ ban. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 22:26, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, the saga continues. Today, after ~3750 requests via AWB, the MPC has blocked me once again. I wasn't throttling my requests, but they were still very slow (~1/sec, same as the first time) compared to the speed AWB goes through WP pages (5–7/sec with modest rules & code). Seems they have more stringent limits for followup "offenses". Thought you should know. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:12, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is so annoying. You already know what I think about the MPC-website and the data presented. Fortunately, my home IP is no longer blocked. My frodox.ch website, however, remains blocked. I will post here again, when I arrive at home and check my MPC-access, because, as I mentioned, I never sent too many requests to the MPC while at home, but got blocked for a few days nevertheless, so maybe the MPC is fiddling around with some server security parameters lately... I think it's worth to check your MPC-access on a daily basis. Also, let me know if I can provide you with "any" type of their data. Best, Rfassbind – talk 05:51, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Update: I added a 3-second delay between pages, making the average time between requests = 4.05 seconds, and was able to go through ~17,500 pages (~20 hrs) from a 2nd internet accesspoint (IAP) (one which has not been previously blocked) before being blocked again. I finished going through the remaining ~7,000 MPs from a 3rd IAP. I'll likely raise the interval to 5 seconds total since I'm running out of IAPs... ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:25, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Huh?

Hi! I must say, I completely confused about how the names of the asteroids are supposed to be linked. I stumbled upon this part of the WP when I started to write articles about places on Gotland. I noticed that many of the names of places such as Fleringe were just redirects to a bunch of asteroids, each with their own article. It seemed ridiculous to search for a place on Gotland and end up in space, so I started to fix up DAB pages or small stubs for the places, mentioning the asteroid on the place's article, instead. Also leaving a note about the place the asteroid was named after on the asteroid's page. When I've finally "reclaimed" all the redirected pages and made them into articles about the Gotland places, I found that the asteroids' pages had been turned into redirects to the lists! That is why I linked to the lists rather than the now 'deleted' articles about the asteroids. And now they are to be turned back into articles yet again? O_o Where's the logic in all this? I'm happy to leave the list as you have converted it now, even if it looks utterly messy with the script I'm using, just tell me there is some reason behind it all. w.carter-Talk 13:19, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for List of Gotland related asteroids, it looks much better as a separate article.

See WP:NASTRO, particularly the WP:DWMP subsection, for some historical context on the redirects. Basically, a few bot operators mass-created non-notable minor planet (MP) stubs. We (WP:AST) have redirected (#R'd) most, if not all, of them to the List of minor planets. We chose to #R over deletion in case any particular MP achieves notability, and we treat the #Rs as such, maintaining their categories, updating their designations, etc.

This should make things easier too, since you no longer need to mentally (or via code) calculate which numerical list page each MP is on. All you need to do is link to the #R, which already contains the proper target information (including anchor). Hope this helps. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:34, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah! The "in case any particular MP achieves notability" was the missing part of logic I was looking for. Fine. That also explains why 7545 Smaklösa is still kept as a separate article, not so much why (from my point of view) 10131 Stånga still has an article. Any sports fans in the astronomy section? ;)

The list was actually not totally intentional. As I found Gotland-asteroids, I added them to a section in the Gotland article. When they became too many I split the whole thing off into a separate list and left a 'Main' at Gotland#Astronomy. It also gave me the opportunity to spruce up the list a bit. Glad you liked the article. :) w.carter-Talk 14:19, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We have a Shortlist of minor planet redirect candidates with several inclusion criteria modeled after the major MP#R-run I did, which was modeled after an incomplete WP:BOTREQ. 10131 Stånga is 3207 bytes, which is larger than the ~2575 b cutoff, but it definitely looks like it should otherwise be #R'd. Rfassbind, does 10131 Stånga look like an MP you could make an overall revision to and save it from #R'ing? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:01, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, yes, 10131 Stanga looks like a potential redirect, as I can not find any physical data. Of course I'm also not happy about all the many MP#Rs PotatoBot has made ("Redirect from short name") in April 2010. Most of these minor planet names are just last names of people or of locations. These MP#Rs are often counter productive, as, for example, when you're looking for the astronomer Debehogne, you end up at the list of minor planets. It is no problem at all to change the target for any of the MP#Rs which have no number in their title (except for Pluto and some other rare cases, of course). Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 15:47, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Totally agree with Rfassbind that the redirects are confusing, as I said in the beginning of this thread. Still something fishy going on with 10131 Stanga since it now redirects to 10131 Stånga, the original spelling for the asteroid since the place Stånga has the Swedish letter "å". No such problem with 10812 Grötlingbo, 10813 Mästerby, or any of the other names containing the Swedish letters "Å Ä Ö". Guess they thought of that the first time around. w.carter-Talk 16:04, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/MPNames.html is the 'master' list I check to see whether or not an MP's offical page should or shouldn't be diacritized (see the right-most column). JPL is like MPC's foggy half-broken mirror. Interestingly, the MPC lists Stanga (no å), but Grötlingbo and Mästerby (both diacritized). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:27, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I dont see anything "fishy". "Stånga" is one of the known diacritical mistakes the MPC has made it their 5k lists. Oh well, we do it better on wikipedia;)

I'm certainly no expert on the original databases!

Just want the WP links to be right or at least consistent (well, sort of). And since all the other links goes to teh lists now, I just thought both spellings should go there as well. w.carter-Talk 16:55, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Relevant link to User:Rfassbind/Minor planet list link revision#Name check, FFR/FYI, which lists where the MPC is mistaken. I have that link bookmarked, but it's good for it to get more visiblity. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:57, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Implemented #R for 10131 Stånga *D* and changed target-page for Debehogne Rfassbind – talk 20:25, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Should we create a category for these ~50 bodies, i.e Category:Minor planets with Gotland-related names (not all are places)? And should we rename List of Gotland-related asteroids to List of asteroids with Gotland-related names? Rfassbind – talk 10:40, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind & W.carter:

Asteroids vs. MPs: For List of Gotland-related asteroids to fit into Category:Minor planets with Gotland-related names (or similar), it would first need to be moved to List of Gotland-related minor planets (or similar). Does it contain any non-asteroids, though? If so, that move makes sense.

New category: Normally (without a Gotland cat), the people & places would go into Asteroids named for people & Asteroids named for places, which don't unnecessarily duplicate names, so the new Gotland cat should be a child of Category:Asteroids by source of name (or MPs). All other subcats there start with Asteroids named for/from ... (except Category:Asteroids with names of unknown origin). But I'm ok with Category:Asteroids with Gotland-related names (or MPs), since that's better than any Asteroids named ... alternative I can think of.

New article name: Because of this, moving List of Gotland-related asteroids to List of asteroids with Gotland-related names (or MPs) makes the most sense. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:00, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is sort of beyond me. I don't mind the article being renamed as you see fit. I had a hard time comming up with a good one in the first place. Just as long as you don't delete the article! It serves a purpose. There could probably be other similar lists made about other topics so some sort of cat might come in handy somehow. w.carter-Talk 15:11, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. And don't worry, there's no reason to delete the article. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:21, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MP-discoverer table

Hi Tom, I've been working for some time now on my discoverers of minor planets table. If you want to, give me a quick feedback. The list is still under construction and for most redlinks a redirect still needs to be created. Thx, Rfassbind – talk 23:35, 28 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, wow, that's fantastic, especially the base legend table part! It looks like a much more useful version of Created categories (Discoveries by...) & Potential categories (Discoveries by...). I'm glad you made it; it will come in handy for me in the near future.

Now that my MPC access is restored, I can focus on MPs again (for a bit). I feel like I've done ~80–85% of what I've wanted to do with them, but I'm sure I'll have more comments and some questions about this as I get back into it. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 03:48, 29 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thx Tom. I let you know when I have finished working on this table. Here is a list of things or tasks (some of which we already came across) I plan to do this year.

"Discovery by"-categories: yes this list of discoverers allows us to quickly assess, which discovery-by categories still should be created, based on the displayed redlink and the number of discoveries. I also noted, that some of discovery-by categories were created for astronomers with only 1 discovered MP, which is not a bad thing per se, but indicates a rather unsystematic category creation process (guess who created most of them? Hint: neither you and me, but someone who did a lot of minor planet categorization...).
Naming of the list: I thought the best name for this list would be List of minor planets: discoverers. I would also create an alias List of minor-planet discoverers. What do you think? I
Context: I'm also working on a revised version of the main-page of the List of minor planets (nobody replied to my post on the talk page).
List of minor planets: discovery sites: The list of minor planets also needs a base/legend-table for all the discovery sites (basically the same thing I am doing now with the discoverers). It will also be a table (rather than a list), created based on MPC's webpage (observatory codes) and wikipedia's List of observatory codes. See the first version here. There are many open questions.
pLOMP revision on all partial list in list of minor planets (pLOMP): all the stuff I mentioned above is actually just a prerequisite for updating/revising all the pLOMPs:
- We already talked about using anchors for each row, and to adjust all MP#Rs accordingly, for example.
- I came up with new features such as a Back-to-top link, or
- a new color coded column with the MPs category (i.e NEO, Mars-crosser, main-belt, trojan, KBO).
- many other new columns, such as "Diameter", "spectral-type" or "rotation" could be added to the pLOMP tables, using a data dump from LCDB. However, this needs to be thoroughly evaluated, before any of this would be implemented (LCDB contains data for only 16,000 MPs; LCDB provides data for 49% of the first ten thousand MPs, ranging from 1 to 10,000).
- The most important feature for a revision I haven't yet mentioned, is to add all missing MPs and to complete the tables the pLOMPs. For example pLOMP Nr. 424 only contains 27 minor planets instead of 1000 entries.
- User Ilvon has done a great job in creating and maintaining the growing number of pLOMPs and we could improve on that.

Hope that wasn't too long. I'm sure we'll discuss some of these tasks in more detail when the time has come to implement them. Rfassbind – talk 10:38, 29 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Removing stub tags

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T139452

I'm not sure exactly what you're doing, but it looks like you're bulk-removing stub tags. I saw that you removed one from The Fight for Bala, an article that has only one short paragraph, followed by another sentence. The entire article is 78 words long, it has no structure to speak of, and it's missing massive amounts of information. I reverted this, but then I saw you've done the same thing to what looks like hundreds of articles. Please stop doing this until you discuss this somewhere. I don't think you are exercising enough diligence. You are making multiple edits per minute, which makes it look like this is an automated process. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 04:57, 30 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please address this to Bovineboy2008, who classified The Fight for Bala as a start class article. Project classification supersedes stub tags, so you are free to reassess at any time and, if needed, revert. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 05:06, 30 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded. It's time to slow down your removal of stub tags, and to be much more careful about it. Don't just blindly rely on project assessments. —swpb^T 15:08, 30 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How do you know he blindly relies on the classification given in the talk page? Why is there only one example given, where the removal of the article's stub-template is unfortunate? Large-scale revisions are never perfect, it's a trade off between quantity and quality. Why would someone rather prefer outdated stub templates in an article and inconsistent project classifications over a few unhelpful edits? As far as I can see, even Tom's reverted edit did some good: the project classification in the articles talk page was changed from start to stub... If there are too many discrepancies between classification and footer templates, it is time to address the problem, not to prevent others from doing something about it. Rfassbind – talk 13:02, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If there are too many discrepancies between classification and footer templates, it is time to address the problem, not to prevent others from doing something about it. Well said; I completely agree. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:37, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

NinjaRobotPirate, swpb, Debresser, to address your concerns here, I could 'tag' these talk pages with a standard discussion heading like == Please confirm classification == with a short description of the problem, possibly linking back to this discussion. The criteria would be for articles which I correctly removed the stub tags from, which also have less than a certain # of words—say, 300 or 400? I've asked WP:AWB about how to make word count code-accessible (currently, to my knowledge, it isn't). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:24, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if there's a discrepancy between the project's classification and stub tags, I think it requires human intervention to determine the proper solution. If we're talking about putting an alert on the talk page, yes, that seems like a decent solution. But I don't think one should use AWB to automatically remove stub tags simply because they disagree with the project classification. If there's a a major problem that needs to be solved, discuss it at the village pump or something to find a solution that has consensus. AWB is not a license to run unapproved bots. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 17:25, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There are 550 pages with < 100 words which I removed {{stub}} tag(s) from with start-or-higher-only classification(s). On the associated talk pages I will leave a message under the heading == Please confirm classification == (example). Anyone can find all of these by searching my edit summaries for said heading (except Talk:Ergonomics in Design & Talk:Xylulose, which didn't include it, b/c AWB is weird). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:41, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done 155 of those 550 had < 50 words. For those 155, I changed their classification to stub where obvious. Some contained text in template-form that appears in the main article-body, which put the effective word count > 100; those were left alone. All others were given the aforementioned talk-heading, for a total of 395, 316 of which are, rightly or wrongly, still non-stub-class. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:53, 12 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please explain this to me

I saw your edit at Soloveitchik with the edit summary "Rem stub tag(s) (class = non-stub & non-list)", and I don't understand what you mean to say. Please explain. Debresser (talk) 06:29, 30 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Debresser, see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment#Grades & Talk:Soloveitchik. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:01, 30 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That was not much of an explanation, but I figured it out. A question remains, however. The article was tagged as a stub, while on the talkpage one of the two banners calls it a start class article. I for one think it is more of a stub than a start class article. Why did you decide to remove the stub template, rather than change the class? Debresser (talk) 14:59, 30 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The WikiProject classification on a talkpage automatically classifies the main article. Having both a stub tag on the main article and a non-stub class on the talk page is incorrect. Feel free to reclassify per the guidelines. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:13, 30 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Astronomy Newsletter Q2 2016

WikiProject Astronomy Newsletter

— | Q2 2016 News | Next →

(subscribe)

Welcome to the first WikiProject Astronomy Newsletter!

The project at a glance

At the end of Q2 2016 the project has reached:

113 Featured articles
14 Featured lists
6 Featured miscellaneous
174 Good Articles
45,161 total articles
3,274 (or 8%) are marked for cleanup
4,767 issues in total.

News by month

April 2016

April 2016 featured the discovery of 2MASS J1119–1137 a rogue planet discovered by the Carnegie Institution for Science and Western University of Ontario, Canada on April 6th. Also in April, the Crater 2 dwarf galaxy had been discovered from imaging data from the VST ATLAS survey making it the now fourth largest satellite of the Milky Way.

May 2016

May 2016 was a big month for Exoplanetology, starting on May 2nd 2016 with the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system (Pictured) featuring TRAPPIST-1b, 1c and 1d which lead to these new articles being created, as well as Ultra-cool dwarf which was translated from French Wikipedia. On May 10th, 2016 NASA announced 1,284 new exoplanets which lead to the creation of articles for Kepler-1229b and Kepler-1638b, both of which are located in their system's circumstellar habitable zone.

Other created articles in May includes Astro microbiology, TYC 9486-927-1, DENIS J082303.1-491201 (translated from French Wikipedia), NGC 5343, NGC 6452, NGC 137, NGC 138, NGC 139, NGC 140, NGC 141, IC 4499, Locomotion in Space, NGC 4388, 171 Puppis, Elisa Quintana, Halil Kayikci, HELIOS Lab, and Utpala (astronomer).

June 2016

On June 4th 2016 Circinus was the daily featured article (See blurb), and on June 21st, 2016 Sidney Hall - Urania's Mirror - Draco and Ursa Minor was the featured image on the English Wikipedia.

In June 2016, NASA announced the discovery of the exoplanet Kepler-1647b orbiting around in a circumbinary orbit around an F-type star; the typing of the other star in the system is unknown. V830 Tau b was also discovered in June 2016 orbing around a very young T Tauri star with an incredibly young age of approximately 2 million years.

Other articles created in June include; Jean-François du Soleil, Shawn Domagal-Goldman, Tidal downsizing, ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre, AGC 198691, Abell 2597, MACHO 176.18833.411, NGC 152, Astronomy Photographer of the Year, Karan Jani, CVSO 30, Adriaan Wesselink, Laura A. Lopez, Heather A. Knutson, Jiong Qiu, Tracy Slatyer, Rachel Mandelbaum, Sarah T. Stewart-Mukhopadhyay, Jenny Greene, Sara Ellison, Emily Levesque, Smadar Naoz, Yūko Kakazu, Kristen Sellgren, Kimmo Innanen, Ruth Murray-Clay, Henry "Trae" Winter, 2016 HO3, Sentinel-4, GW151226, WR 93b, WR 30a, Prairie Observatory, Mineralogy of Mars, Edith Alice Müller, Athena Coustenis, Global catastrophic risk, Christina Richey, Ann Hornschemeier, Katherine Reeves, W Aquilae, TV Geminorum, HV 11423, BC Cygni, International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, RW Cygni, Nadia Zakamska, Vassiliki Kalogera, UGC 10, 22899 Alconrad, Galileo's telescopes, Aomawa Shields, Tommaso Perelli, Antonio Santucci, François de Baillou, List of minor planets: 469001–470000, List of star systems within 25–30 light-years, NGC 6120, V419 Cephei, BI Cygni, List of Gotland-related asteroids, Extrasolar atmosphere, List of gravitational wave observations, NGC 142.
This is a trial run of the WP:AST Newsletter. To start or stop receiving these messages on your talk page please add or remove your username from the subscription page.

Davidbuddy9Talk 01:42, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Removing the stub tag from should-be, but misclassified, stubs

Would you kindly stop removing the stub tag from stubs? If a page is clearly, obviously a stub, but is classified as something else on the talk-page, please don't remove the stub tag, but instead change the class to "stub". If you want that to be done by a member of the project, you can always add your name to the project before you do so. Naturally I'm assuming that you don't actually want to make a nuisance of yourself? Thanks, regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:13, 11 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That is up for individual projects to decide. Just because I (or anyone) simply add my name to a project does not give me the insight or general understanding & atmosphere of the project or of its standard practices. Nor does it bestow on me knowledge of the extent of the available information on a subject. I assume the original classifier had some combination of these qualities, so I defer to them, and/or other project members, and/or anyone else that shows interest. I'm a member of WP:AST and I've still asked to confirm our crater start-class/stubs, because there is (probably) nuance to project structure that I'd fail to consider.

So, in short, identifying a problem ≠ creating a problem. Assuming so, or fostering an environment where these are true, as you're doing, or preferring editors to not be aware of (or ignore) possible minutiae of a process all resists improvement, and is not helpful to Wikipedia. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:16, 11 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tom, I see from further up this page that I'm not the only one who's less than pleased at what you've been doing. I continue to assume that you thought you were doing something good, but I think you've miscalculated. I'd like to suggest that you either manually check whether the hundreds of stub tags you've removed were correct or not, or just go ahead and revert all those removals. May I remind you that you are responsible for changes you make with automated tools? At the very least, would you please restore the stub tags to the following breed articles from my watchlist:

79 articles requested

It is of course possible that a few of them aren't actually stubs – I've removed a few from the list for that reason. Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:57, 12 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Will do. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 03:56, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done The remaining unstruck pages are now all classified as stubs with their stub tags restored. If you have a list of any others you'd like to reclassify, let me know. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:17, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Your input

Hi Tom, as I am preparing the list of minor planet discoverers, I'd like to ask you for your advice:

There are 1004 astronomers (persons) of which 619 don't have an article on wikipedia. These need to be redirected to the list.
For example, for astronomer Cesare Barbieri:

#REDIRECT [[List of minor planets: discoverers#C. Barbieri]]

{{Redr|R to list|R to anchor}}

[[Category:Discoverers of minor planets]]

Questions: Would it make sense to create a template for these 619 (primary) redirects? Based on my experience, it would. Besides the "R to list/anchor", such template could also include a notice:

"please add a link to the above list when turning this redirect into an article"
"do not categorize, to avoid duplication" (for secondary redirects)

What you think? If yes, how would you name such template? Thx, Rfassbind – talk 22:00, 12 July 2016 (UTC). Just updated post and replaced table with a link. Based on my javascript highlighting, there might have been a conflict with other posts. Rfassbind – talk[reply]

I like where this is going.

Discoverers page name. The most obvious options are:

Given that Meanings of minor planet names exists, and that #1 & #2 sound a bit clumsy and redundant, I like #3 most.

Discoverers template - yes, absolutely. Options:

Add |discoverer=yes to {{NASTRO comment}}, since MPs & discoverers share similar {R}s
{{NASTRO comment2}}
{{NASTRO discoverer comment}}
{{NASTRO discoverers comment}}

I don't see a need for a new template, unless the discoverer #Rs should have vastly different content than the MP #Rs (I don't see that they would), so I like #1 most.

Also, let me know if you want help creating these #Rs. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:53, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good suggestions.

As for the article's name, we can take them all (as #Rs). I'll start with List of minor planets: discoverers and move it later (there is also a list of discovering observatories in a separate table, and I haven't yet made up my mind whether we should create an article for each, astronomers and observatories). In addition, there is already a List of asteroid-discovering observatories...
NASTRO template. All valid suggestions, and I can certainly live with all of them. However, "NASTRO" is for Wikipedia:Notability (astronomical objects), and discoverers are not objects, so there will be someone complaining about it. I've been recently working with #Rs on comets and supernovae as well (to List of hyperbolic comets): there are many lists, and, on the long run, I don't see a reason why we shouldn't use a NASTRO template for these objects as well. What about a parameter in NASTRO comment, like: |type=<mp|sn|comet|astronomer|observatory> that defaults to "type=mp"? If it is too far fetched, just let me know. In case you prefer a separate template, I suggest not to name it NASTRO or to expand WP:NASTROs title (to objects and subjects). Let me know what you think best and I'll be fine with it.
Creating redirects, I have created a tool to generate these redirects. There are also some additional things I want to do (list of deleted astronomer articles), so I think best I'll create these myself. There is also a group of 50+ astronomers for whom we don't know their first names... which seem problematic for creating a #R (however, I chose the MPC-name as anchor/ID for the astronomer #Rs, so we don't depend on the first name for creating #Rs.

So, plz let me know which template/name we should use. Thx,Rfassbind – talk 19:27, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As for the article's name, List of minor planet discoverers is fine, and works with List of asteroid-discovering observatories, now that you mention it. List of minor planets: discoverers seems unnecessarily similar to List of minor planets: 1–1000, which are all strictly numerical. If it's easier for you, we can move them later.

NASTRO template, good point. I agree, {{NASTRO comment}} should not be used for non-objects. Whether or not we use |type=... depends on how different each object-comment "should" be. Perhaps we can work towards a general object-comment? As for non-objects, {{Astro comment}} seems the most intuitive to me.

Creating redirects, great! ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:59, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good points, I'm also fine with List of minor planet discoverers (as for the final move-to location). So let me reiterate, since this seems to me a discussion that has huge implications with potentially tens of thousands of edits. We talk about a template that is used for:

Astronomy related entities that are not enough notable to have their own article... as for the moment.
So they are all redirects to row in a wikitable (list) marked by an ID-anchor
The template therefor contains an "R to list and anchor" and a custom text about its lacking notability (or avoiding double-categorization), displaying its (article-)name and a link to a wikipedia guideline such as WP:NASTRO

So we could summarize this as a "Redirect to a list with anchors of a non-notable astronomy object or subject". The fact that it contains a text (which not only varies depending on its type but also depends on whether it's a primary or secondary #R) is only circumstantial, not an intrinsic property of the template itself (e.g. maybe an icon/image will be added to the template as well) . So why not drop the "comment" part in the template and use a name that describes what it its and does: an AstroListRedirect, ALR?

By the way the article List of asteroid-discovering observatories actually clashes with Discovering dedicated institutions. The former only contains 30 observatories (with several observatory #Rs that point to this list), while the latter list contains all (or 300+) discovering observatories, including surveys and, if you like, projects and programs. The former contains a list of discovered bodies while the latter does not. To me this is a chaotic situation:

All observatory #Rs should point to List of observatory codes (IAU codes), if they don't have a proper article.
The "List of asteroid-discovering observatories" is rather an incomplete list of minor planets, which discovery is credited to observatories.
As far as I see, I need to completely revise both "List of observatory codes" and "List of asteroid-discovering observatories"...

Best, Rfassbind – talk 20:45, 15 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Astro comment/Astro list redirect: I don't see a case where either {{NASTRO comment}} nor the new template (whatever it gets called) don't display a comment, so "comment" is still a meaningful part of the name. {{Astro list redirect comment}} would be the most verbose version, and still accurate, which I'm actually not opposed to.

Observatory lists: It makes sense for observatory #Rs to point to List of observatory codes since asteroids are likely only a subset of ways someone would have landed at that observatory page. I see what you mean about this being chaotic. If discoveries-by-institution cats point to your observatory list (whatever it ends up being titled), then if those observatory #Rs are turned into articles, then the discoveries-by-institution cats won't notice them (unless periodically updated). That doesn't mean your observatory list isn't useful, I think it is; it's just of a smaller scope (but greater quality) than what's currently available. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 23:58, 15 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template: sure, Tom, the term "comment" describes the obvious feature of the template and is therefor meaningful. No disagreement here. {{Astro list redirect comment}} seems A.O.K. to me. One day we might reconsider the content, naming and structure of these templates, depending on how far this project goes (supernovas, comets, observatories), but for now my concerns above were purely hypothetical and far-fetched. Do you think it would be best to copy-paste the {{NASTRO comment}} template to "Astro list redirect comment" and amend its text to a more generic version (seems the easiest way to me). As there is no guideline, e.g. WP:NONODISC (for non-notable discoverer) the text simply wouldn't mention/link-to such guideline. What do you think?
Discovering observatories: I think its best to have no #Rs that point to the list of discovering observatories. They all have a column called IAU-code which displays an id-anchor to the list of observatories (not working yet). So there will only be a link on the discovering observatory's name if there is an article. The discoverer list (astronomers and observatories) is generated from MPC's large 45MB file (the one you sent me some weeks ago) and combined with the existing discoverer list on wikipedia, i.e. my webapp will read out both MPC and wikipedia, and spit out 2 new tables with updated number of discoveries, and will show a notification about those discoverers that are added or removed(!) from the list (I think it is possible that the MPC re-assigns a discovery from an observatory to an astronomer(s)... and if all the observatory's discoveries are reassigned, the observatory is no longer a discoverer and removed from the list when updated). Also, for observatories that have only a #RO and not their proper article, the "discoveries-by-institution cats" will always link to an #R to list of observatories (IAU-code), as there can only be one base-list which can be redirected to. For minor planets it's the list of minor planets, for observatories it's the list of observatories (IAU-codes) and for discovering astronomers its the list I'm preparing. I know, that there is a List of astronomers, which would be - theoretically - the best base-list for all astronomers. But that's simply not doable yet. As far as I have checked, most of the 619 #RAs I have to create (astronomers, often amateurs), are not even mentioned in this broader list.

OK, I created {{Astro list redirect comment}} and used it for about 600 redirects such as Michał Żołnowski, pointing to List of minor planet discoverers. I still have to create the secondary #Rs (diacritics; alternative names). If there is anything that could be improved, plz let me know.
Revising Talk page templates of existing discoverer articles: Currently, I'm updating the talk page templates on existing articles about discoverers of minor planets (generated from the new list). E.g for Talk:Hiroshi Abe (astronomer), the revised template looks like this:

{{WikiProject banner shell|blp=yes|1=
{{WikiProject Biography|living=yes|class=stub|importance=low|s&a-work-group=yes|listas=Abe, Hiroshi}}
{{WikiProject Japan|class=stub|importance=low}}
{{WikiProject Astronomy|class=stub|importance=low}}
{{WikiProject Solar System|class=stub|importance=low}}
}}

As you see, after the update there are 5 templates, including the wrapper and WPSS, since they are all MP-discoverers. I also make use of the date-of-birth/death info for the |blp=yes and |living=yes/no, and of the country-flag for the WP-<country-name> template, as well as of the "class"-type to label it stub/start/C/B. Only the importance-param needs to be manually assess.

Question: What about adding WP-templates to the talk page of the recently created #Rs?
- Following your example for minor-planet articles as per Tom's guideline, the WPA and WPSS templates are also used in #Rs.
- For the {{WikiProject Biography}}, it seems legitimate to use an empty |class= parameter (see Category:Redirect-Class biography articles)
- For the WP-"country" templates such as {{WikiProject Japan|class=}}, an empty parameter also seems OK.
- What do you think, Tom? Should I also add the templates to the discoverer-#Rs (as shown above, but with an empty class param)?

Thanks, Rfassbind – talk 11:12, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I did a little gnoming on List of minor planet discoverers. List of asteroid-discovering observatories now seems woefully inadequate, since one is able to get more-complete lists of MP discoveries by following the category links on List of minor planet discoverers, and find out more about the observatory via the observatory links. We might be able to do away with List of asteroid-discovering observatories altogether. One of the possible arguments against this would be to take the observatory part of your list and move it into/replace List of asteroid-discovering observatories, which would probably require a renaming of List of minor planet discoverers to something like List of minor planet discoverering astronomers. Personally, I like both on the same page...but actually I just tried to add {{TOC}} to the top and was unable to isolate the two sections (#Discovering astronomers & #Discovering dedicated institutions) in a normal-TOC-looking way. I could add that functionality to {{TOC}}, but it will be tedious, since it's a long, but at least well-formatted, template.
Nice work on revising talk page templates; very thorough.
Some WikiProjects don't like categorizing some/all of their redirects (WP:LANG is the first one that comes to mind), so you have to do a little bit of investigation first to see which ones you should/not add. Barring that, having a complete list of WikiProjects is a good idea.
I'm pretty sure most WikiProject templates work similarly, but you might want to spot-check this - empty |class= & |importance= are not necessary on #Rs, but are a courtesy for future editors if/when the #Rs become articles (I updated my guideline just now with that (maybe it changed since I first wrote it, or maybe I just didn't notice?)). Either way, I'd still place them. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:32, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To point 4 - if the subjectpage is a redirect, |class= and |importance= may both be omitted. The code inside {{WPBannerMeta/class}}, {{class mask}}, {{WPBannerMeta/importance}} and {{importance mask}} (which are all subtemplates of {{WPBannerMeta}} and therefore subtemplates of almost all WikiProject banners) will detect the redirect, and automatically assign NA-importance; they will also assign Redirect-class if that is defined for the WikiProject, otherwise NA-class. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:59, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Pages using invalid self-closed HTML tags

Hi, re edits like this, you can use the |id= parameter of {{Football box}}. That is, an edit like this. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:13, 15 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Redrose64: Ah, thanks! I will do that. Especially since it turns 10 bytes of extra text (div) into 4–5 b ( |id=), instead of 17 b (span), a 12–13 b swing per id (where 100s could exist on a page)! I'm tempted to go back and change them, but that would violate AWB rule #4. I'm also tempted to work this into the category's documentation too. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 23:39, 15 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that {{Football box collapsible}} didn't have the |id= parameter available, so I implemented it. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:48, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for doing that. This will help WP:FOOTY immensely. — Jkudlick • t • c • s 23:20, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've done the same for {{Handballbox}} & {{Handballbox compact}}. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:15, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And {{Basketballbox}} & {{Basketballbox collapsible}}. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:57, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And {{IceHockeybox}}. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:16, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You might be interested in Wikipedia:CHECKWIKI/WPC 002 dump if you haven't seen it yet. It lists self-closed HTML tags and other tag syntax problems. I think there are a few false positives on there, but it will be easier to see them once we clean up the ones that are clearly errors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:30, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That looks super useful, thank you. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:36, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Category on unnumbered MP-articles

Tom, do we actually have a category for unnumbered minor planets articles such as Category:Unnumbered minor planets or similar? As we have a Category:Numbered minor planets and Category:Minor planet redirects, such category would include all remaining MP-articles. Rfassbind – talk 02:23, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, the only one I can think of is under Category:Main-belt asteroids called Category:Main-belt provisional asteroids, which is obviously limited in scope, unlike those available for numbered MPs & redirects. I agree there should be an analogous category for the unnumbereds, maybe called Category:Provisional minor planets to match the main-belt one. Though that name assumes the reader knows "provisional" refers to the nomenclature and not something else (i.e. "Provisionally identified minor planets" would be more clear, but wordier). So I like the idea of renaming Category:Main-belt provisional asteroids to Category:Main-belt unnumbered asteroids and creating Category:Unnumbered minor planets instead.

If the number of unnumbered #Rs is low (I don't know/recall off the top of my head), having articles and #Rs in the same category is ok. The reason no one wanted all the #Rs in Category:Numbered minor planets is that the #Rs would have outnumbered the articles like 6-7:1 to a category which was already almost 3k in size. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:20, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes it was the category "Main-belt provisional asteroids" a vaguely remembered. I think it's best to call them "unnumbered" minor planets (unMPs), as the term "provisional" is not as clear and sometimes used in the sense of "unnamed". Of course, such a category would have the same problem as "Numbered minor planets" if it were used just for articles and not for redirects.

OK, so there is the List of unnumbered minor planets and the Category:Near-Earth objects. They do contain many unMPs. But nobody can tell how many of them exist on wikipedia, whether they need revision, or, whether they would be better deleted/redirected to a list? Without any specific category for unMPs it is hard to tell. There seems to be one or two editors that create such articles on a regular basis with no one ever checking...

I think the basic problem is the (hierarchical) categorization on wikipedia itself. Also, I think a "Category:Main-belt unnumbered asteroids" or alike is too specific and therefore not helpful. So maybe its not yet time to deal with them...

I just noted that Category:Near-Earth objects is a direct (1st level) subcat of Category:Minor planets. That's has obviously gone unnoticed, despite the category's boldface comment "Please add asteroid articles under correct category, not here. See Category:Asteroids". Best, Rfassbind – talk 15:28, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I count slightly less than 216 unMPs (at least 2 are Category:Space debris) from recursing Category:Minor planets. I think the saying "don't let perfection be the enemy of progress" applies here, and at least having all of them rounded up is better than it currently is. We can always improve later.

Category:Near-Earth objects definitely needs some attention. I don't know any near-Earth MPs, so it's probably better off in the asteroid tree, and whatever other parents of categories of things it contains (i.e. since it contains space debris, Category:Space hazards is a parent). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 22:10, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Unnumbered minor planets created and Category:Main-belt provisional asteroids moved to Category:Main-belt unnumbered asteroids. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 00:36, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good job on creating Category:Unnumbered minor planets and adding 218 unMPs to it. Well done. As for the Category:Near-Earth objects, it definitely needs to be moved under Asteroids (and by the end of the year we might be ready to take a closer look at the comets tree and find a better hierarchy).

Also good job on the "Meanings of minor planet names". I noticed the functioning navigation and the creation of talk-pages.

Suggestion: the page Meanings of minor planet names: 439001–440000 has an {{unreferenced|date=October 2015}} hatnote. This disrupts a fluent navigation due to vertical shift of the TOC001-bar's position. I came across quite a few partial list with such a hatnote.
Idea: what about simply adding 3 helpful citations (see below) to {{{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsDisclaimer}} and a "=== References === section plus Reflist-template to {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsFooter}}. In turn the "unreferenced"-hatnote would then have to be removed. The 3 citations I have in mind refer to the "Minor Planet Circulars" (the archive page) and the "Dictionary of Minor Planets" as mentioned in the disclaimer template.

<ref name="DoMPN">{{cite book
  |title      = Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
  |last       = Schmadel | first = Lutz D.
  |publisher  = Springer Berlin Heidelberg
  |date       = 2003
  |url        = http://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-540-29925-7
  |isbn       = 978-3-540-00238-3
  |accessdate = July 2016}}</ref>

<ref name="DoMPN-Addendum">{{cite book
  |title      = Dictionary of Minor Planet Names – Addendum to Fifth Edition: 2003–2005
  |last       = Schmadel | first = Lutz D.
  |publisher  = Springer Berlin Heidelberg
  |date       = 2006
  |url        = http://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-540-34361-5
  |isbn       = 978-3-540-34360-8
  |accessdate = July 2016}}</ref>

<ref name="MPC-Circulars-Archive">{{cite web
  |title      = MPC/MPO/MPS Archive
  |work       = Minor Planet Center
  |url        = http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/ECS/MPCArchive/MPCArchive_TBL.html
  |accessdate = July 2016}}</ref>

Does this make sense? What are your thoughts on this? Best, Rfassbind – talk 22:57, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, thanks. I knew for a while that the meanings pages have not gotten nearly as much attention, but I wasn't aware of how many problems went unfixed.

Category:Near-Earth objects is now under Category:Asteroids.

Yes, I've noticed several technically-correct, but don't-really-apply-here, citation/reference tags on the meanings pages too. Perhaps I can add {{nobots}} on all of them so the unwanted tags don't accidentally get placed in a drive-by edit. I'm meaning to add {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsTableHeader}} to them anyway (for similar functionality to {{List of minor planets/header2}}).

Yes, that makes a lot of sense, and I can implement all of these things in 1 run through the meanings pages in the next few days. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:46, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, I'm looking forward to it. I'm currently completing the partial List of minor planets (pLOMP), i.e. those lists above 200k which do not have 1000 items and are missing some bodies for no obvious reasons to me. This has to be done before updating the discoverers in the list (as otherwise the link-algorithm, which only adds a link when the above row does not contain the same discoverer, is incorrect and the list would need to be revised a second time). I think next week I'll give a another feedback about the "meanings"-pages and do some work there, before I get back to the pLOMPS to colorize the rows based on a color-scheme for their categories (such as main-belt, NEO, JT, MC, etc.), using mostly JPL-data (and some orbital parameters) to do the job. I would be glad if we could share the work on this taks. Rfassbind – talk 20:12, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sure thing; I'm a little less active than normal due to summer & RL events but can usually respond within a few days at the most. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:52, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, an update:

Done - {{Nobots}} added to {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsDisclaimer}}.

Done - References added to {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsDisclaimer}}.

Done - ==References== section added to the {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsFooter}} template family.

Done - all 39 meanings pages had their unnecessary tags removed, and some other incidental abnormalities removed.

Pending - {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsTableHeader}}.

~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:19, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Molto bene, Tom. and already close to the end. Well done, indeed. Here is my feedback and proposals for further changes:

(1.) On the first and second 1000s, partial page (1–1000 and 1001–2000) the header text is different as it mentions The Names of the Minor Planets. I suggest to:
- add the text about Herget's The Names of the Minor Planets to the header template. This text should be displayed on the first two pages only. A selector in the template could display this additional text, based on the given prefix.
- This optional text should be linked as Herget's The Names of the Minor Planets, as some time ago, I created this #R and a section with a few paragraphs.
(2.) The non-1000s pages such as Meanings of minor planet names: 1–500, do not display a header navigation box. The existence of 1000s and 500s pages is extremely confusing. I suggest to merge:
- {{:Meanings of minor planet names: 1–500}} and
- {{:Meanings of minor planet names: 501–1000}} into
- into its parent, 1000s-page, i.e. Meanings of minor planet names: 1–1000
- There are 10 × 2 pages to merge for up to number 10,000, so its much less than the 10 × 100 → 1000 merger I did at LOMP.
- What you think. Would you like to post on the WT:AST first?
(3.) The index of the main-page, Meanings of minor planet names, could/should be revised. what do you think if I replace it with something like this, when the 500s vs 1000s issue is resolved?

Rfassbind, sorry I missed this post. When was it?

All Done.
Go for it! I think merging the 500s into 1000s is uncontroversial at this point and simplifies all the associated templates.
Excellent.

~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:41, 2 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Very well. Oops, I think I posted my previous comment in July this year. In August I already revised the Index section, listing all partial pages (as suggested in (#3). I didn't, however, merge the first twenty 500s into 1000s pages, so there is still no working navigation for these partial list. I'll post on WT:AST announcing the merger first (maybe this is not so uncontroversial as you think) and then do the 500-to-1000 merger a few weeks later. Rfassbind – talk 11:34, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MOMP revision

OK. I announced the merger of 500s-pages in Meanings of minor planets on WT:AST here. After the merger has been done, I'd like to do an overall revision of all partial lists in "Meanings". This includes changes similar to the ones done in LOMP, i.e. introducing sections (per 100 entries), adding anchors (for each row), and create an external procedure to check and add all newly named MPs to the partial lists. Would you like to do the "sectioning/anchoring" mass-revision?

In addition, there are three more changes I'd like to do but I need your feedback:

XREFs LoMP-to-MoMP. It is possible to cross reference all named items in LOMP to the corresponding entry in "Meanings", using a new template that creates a link to the anchored meanings page. While there is a lot of redundancy (since, in LoMP, the {{MPC}} also links to the body's naming citation), there are many low-numbered MPs for which MPC's object view does not provide a citation at all (e.g. for 1001 Gaussia the MPC gives no info, while in Meanings for 1001 Gaussia there is a useful description and a link. So, using a {{MoMP}} template in the Ref-column of LoMP (e.g. {{MoMP|1001}}) could produce a helpful link (to Meanings of minor planet names: 1001–1500#1001). Even for redundant MPC/"Meanings" naming cites there is still an improvement if there is a wikipedia link (such as Carl Friedrich Gauss).
Automatic update procedure for MoMP entries from JPL: There is a copy-right issue with the citations given in MPC's object view (thanks to the reserved copyright in Schmadel's Dictionary of Minor Planets). However I do not believe that any given naming-cite at JPL is copyright protected (do you agree?). This would allow us to easily update/add the naming-cites in "Meanings" if available at JPL. For example, a naming citation for 282897 Kaltenbrunner exists at JPL (see JPL). (It is identical to MPC). The body's entry in Meanings could there for be expanded/improved from "Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner (b. 1970), Austrian mountaineer. JPL" to "Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner (b. 1970), Austrian mountaineer, was the first woman to climb all fourteen "eight-thousanders" without utilizing supplementary oxygen. Kaltenbrunner's first 8000-meter conquest was Cho Oyo in 1998, her last was K2 in 2011." without any fear of copyright violation. So an automatic MoMP-update procedure could not only add recently named bodies, it could also read-out JPL's naming citation at the same time and directly add it to the list (since it is not copy-right protected).
Revise used cites and format: I'm not happy with the citation-"system" used in "Meanings". For 12001 Gasbarini the entry in Meanings displays a 404-cite, while there is a perfectly good cite on JPL (see JPL, identical to MPC). The cross (†), double-cross (‡) and plain [H] refs are confusing. They should be replaced with an MPC, JPL and custom refnote (e.g. ^[H]). This raises the question whether {{MPCit_JPL}}, that produces the inappropriate †-symbol, should be revised or even replaced .

Sorry that was a bit long, but since it concerns 20,000+ named citations in almost 500 partial list, it is worth a preliminary discussion, I think. Rfassbind – talk 07:57, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

sectioning/anchoring: I'll gladly take care of it.

XREFs LoMP-to-MoMP: I'll make {{MoMP}} using the {{LoMP}} module. Putting it into the Ref column is a good option since it won't result in mostly-empty columns above the first 50-or-so 1000s pages. We could change the Ref column to Ref/Meaning perhaps (and luckily we have {{List of minor planets/header2}} for very easy changing).

Automatic update procedure for MoMP entries from JPL: I have no idea. You'd have to read into the fine print or look for that somewhere. NASA's public domain copyright-ness only applies to material they've created, not to everything they've put on any of their websites, like if they took it from Schmadel (I don't know), so we need more info. If there's no problem, then yeah, updating the meanings with that seems fine. As long as it's not erasing any additional meanings-text added by others (therein might lie the problem).

Citation format: it is a bit weird and nonstandard yeah. Having numbers to normal refs makes the most sense, though I haven't given it much thought yet. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 11:47, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I think we agree on most things.

The update procedure (adding newly named MPs to MoMP) and copyright issues are not urgent, as we first need to revise the structure in LoMP and MoMP.
To me, creating a MoMP-template, adding sections and anchors to the partial MoMP-lists can be done right away. Alternatively, you could also announce it on WT:AST, as I have done with the proposed page-merger.
In LoMP, I agree with you on renaming the "Ref" column header (maybe a "dot" instead of a "slash" is more elegant). In addition I propose to let the content in this row to be left-aligned (as per default), to use a dot-separator · , and an em-dash (unicode) with a leading &ensp; for unnamed entry such as in this example:

Ref · Meaning
MPC · MoMP
MPC · —

Named entries: {{MPC|1001}}{{·}} {{MoMP|1001}}
Unnamed entries: {{MPC|305454}}{{·}}&ensp;—

This is the best I could come up with, hope you agree (PS: of course, I produced a dummy MoMP-link in the example, since the template does not exist yet). Rfassbind – talk 21:22, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's definitely the right idea. I will probably make {{MoMP}}'s default wikilink text = "Meaning" though. Also, here's a comparison of a few leading spaces (  looks more aligned with "MoMP" than &ensp;, though it's still a little off):

Ref · Meaning	variant using
MPC · MoMP	label; short
MPC · —	(keyboard space)
MPC · —	(thinsp)
MPC · —	(nbsp)
MPC · —	(ensp)
MPC · Meanings	label; long

MPC · 1001	(MP# instead of text)

~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 22:11, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, given that   would add ~6.8k more text to the page than a keyboard space will, and only add a small aesthetic improvement, I'm leaning more towards 'keyboard space'. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 22:21, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think MoMP with an en-space is better than Meaning with a keybord space (as "Meaning(s)" is already in the header; LoMP vs. MoMP consistency; character diff not significant; tested different options; slim "Ref"-column is better than wide one), but if you disagree I won't argue about that, because I'm really grateful for your collaboration. Rfassbind – talk 23:28, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What about using the MP# instead of "Meaning(s)"/"MoMP"? Having the # there brackets the list, and I think will make it easier to look through, especially since the text differences per row get smaller the farther to the right you go. I put an example at the bottom of the above table. I don't like "MoMP" b/c it links to Meanings of minor planet names, so the intuitive reader-facing acronym should be more like MoMPN. As template names, LoMP & MoMP are fine b/c they don't (might not) appear to the reader and they're intuitive to the editor. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 00:31, 12 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

{{MoMP}} created with behavior analogous to {{LoMP}}. I think we were subconsciously conflating {{LoMP}} & {{MPC}}'s behaviors (or at least I was) b/c I forgot that {{LoMP}}'s default text is a lot more than {{MPC}}'s. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:30, 12 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tom, I just finished the 500s-page merger in Meanings of minor planet names#Index, so from my point you are good to go with the discussed sectioning and anchoring in MoMP.

As for the cross-reference we want to add in LOMP, I amended your edit example using the original header, a "cite"-label such as {{MPC|200003}}{{·}}{{MoMP|200003|cite}}, and for unnamed MPs, I changed the cell content from  — to [keyboard space] + utf8-mdash (as you had already proposed previously). There is also no need for a {{small}} to be wrapped around the "cite", I think. That's what I think is the best and simplest way, but that's of course just my opinion so I won't insist if we're disunited about this. If you want me to do the changes just let me know, otherwise I'm happy if you do it. Rfassbind – talk 20:43, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, awesome! I'm writing & testing my MoMP-ID-placement code now and will finish that portion today. When I get to LoMP's cross-references to MoMP (which may or may not be today), I really want the 'meanings' link to be different for each line, like

{{MPC|200003}}{{·}}{{MoMP|200003|200003}} MPC · 200003 (looks the nicest (to me) because of its regular width down the column), or
{{MPC|200003}}{{·}}{{MoMP|200003|Hehe}} MPC · Hehe (the most intuitive text, given the 'meaning' column-header), or
{{MPC|200003}}{{·}}{{MoMP|200003|200003 Hehe}} MPC · 200003 Hehe (the best of both, but adds the most width to the table),

to make it easier & faster to see which meaning you're clicking on, and to get some bearing on which entry you're looking at if you're reading the right hand part of the table; otherwise you could lose your place looking back & forth to see which row you're on. Which do you think is best? I'm partial to #3, to have the full designation on the left and right hand sides of the table. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:50, 21 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Among your proposals, I think #1 is best, followed by #2. If you opt for #3, then you potentially will have two identical links in the same table row: one pointing to MoMP, and one pointing to the linked MP-object article. As it is just a cross-reference, mostly redundant with {{MPC}} (which has a static label, btw), the less emphasis put on the MoMP-link, the better. Many other columns may be added to the partial LoMP tables in the future (orbital, physical and family data), and the space will get awfully sparse, so that we even have to reduce the tables's font-size and to change the discoverer entry for "C. J. van Houten, I. van Houten-Groeneveld, T. Gehrels" to PLS + a {{note}}, for example. For now, it is important that the LoMP-referenced MoMP entries actually exist in LoMP, for which the "Automatic update procedure" has to be coded. Rfassbind – talk 14:36, 21 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

#1 it is. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:40, 21 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Other account

Hello, thanks for the confirmation. I will assume that the username won't be used for much editing prior to getting a bot flag. It will help in the future to make confirmation edits to show who is in control of the account. Consider yourself removed from UAA on this basis. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 15:53, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That assumption is correct, and {{Alternative account}} has now been added to TomBot. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:40, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Minor planets named for members of The Beatles has been nominated for discussion

Category:Minor planets named for members of The Beatles, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:47, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

thanks

thanks a lot you save my time, It work very well.--جار الله (talk) 17:40, 10 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Using Redr in NASTRO comment

Tom, I know we discussed this before, but things have changed since your introduction of the {{NASTRO comment}}. I propose to use {{Redr}} inside NASTRO comment for the static list, anchor and up tpls. I used a "Redr" for all MP#R-discoverers and I think it looks better:

Layout-comparions: Brian D. Warner with 32022 Sarahjenkins

What do you think? Rfassbind – talk 15:44, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, {{Redr}} is ok now - what I didn't like about it is that there are a lot of aliases to different R-templates, so going through #Rs en masse would have been unnecessarily complicated. On small scales though, now that we have {{NASTRO comment}}, this isn't really a problem. Is that what you meant by 'things have changed'? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:13, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes Tom, I referred to any handling-problem one can think of before the static templates (anchor, list and up) had been moved into {{NASTRO comment}}, including the many different possible combinations with other templates, that you've mentioned. I also referred to any future problem that might occur and render the usage of "Redr" impractical. In this case, thanks to the NASTRO comment, "Redr" could be removed again in one quick edit. Best, Rfassbind – talk 09:27, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:25, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Table layout in Meanings of minor planet names

In case you are going to run a series of edits on the partial list in "Meanings of minor planet names" in the near future, I suggest to add a fixed column width for the tables "Name"-column (see example edit). I think this improves the table's visual appearance considerably. If you're not going to edit these lists any time soon, then, of course, I'll edit them myself. Best, Rfassbind – talk 13:20, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, I'm about 1/2 way done populating the meanings pages with {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsTableHeader}} (will finish today). I'll add your edit to the template. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:55, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Great news. Thx, Rfassbind – talk 14:08, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Both

Done. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 03:53, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MinorPlanetNameMeaningsFooter00

Hi. Why you added Reflist to be automatically generated bu the footer? What happens in cases a pages does not ave references or if an editor wants to add other stuff in the ref section? In general, reflists generated by templates should be avoided. You ended up restricting bots. CC: @Bgwhite:, @GoingBatty: and @Frietjes:. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:23, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

it would be better to undo this edit and add the section and relist template to the articles directly. this also avoids potential empty sections. Frietjes (talk) 13:41, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Bgwhite, GoingBatty, Frietjes, and Magioladitis:, I put {{reflist}} into the {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsFooter00}} family of templates for 2 reasons; 1) since the ~500 meanings pages were missing a references section, so it would be simpler to edit 3 preexisting template pages instead of hard-coding the section onto the 500 pages, and 2) so that the references section could be standardized, i.e. if we decide that 25em (for example) is better than 35em, we just have to edit the template instead of all ~500 pages.

I chose to add {{nobots}} because these meanings pages had a problem of being unnecessarily tagged in the past, and I wanted to avoid this as much as possible.

If it's the majority opinion that these actions cause more harm than good, I'll hard-code a ref section onto each meanings page and remove {{nobots}}. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:51, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

the best specifications for the reflist are article dependent. if there is only one reference, then you typically want only one column. the biggest problem is that the section link takes the reader to the template rather than to the section in the list article. Frietjes (talk) 13:57, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just for reference,^(pun) {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsDisclaimer}} contains the standard set of references, which exist on 98% of all meanings pages.

Tom.Reding I added the MinorPlanetNameMeaningsFooter00 in the exceptions. So the nobots wont be neccessary anymore. At leasy for Yobot. But I prefer if the References section is visible in the page. Take his as please please please. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:54, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@All, ok, I will make the changes later today.

@Magioladitis:, the relevant templates are {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsFooter}}, {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsFooter00}}, {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsFooter10k}}. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:06, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I added all. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:18, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done! ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:59, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template:MP small

There is an almost obsolete {{MP small}} which is still transcluded 3 times. I'm now removing it from 884 Priamus. Can you find out where else this template is still used? In case there are other MP-object articles using it, I'll replace it with the standard {{Infobox planet}}. The obsolete template could then be tagged for deletion, I think. Rfassbind – talk 00:18, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good find, and on low-numbered MPs too... You can see each transcluding page by clicking on "What links here", under "Tools" on the left side of the template page. The other 2 transclusions are 478 Tergeste & 659 Nestor. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 00:31, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done! the template has been removed in the above mention articles. I wasn't aware that What links here can be used to find the target pages of transcluded templates. Great. As for the tamplate {{MP small}}, it no longer serves any purpose and should be deleted. Since I'm not familiar with the AfD-process, I leave that to your jugement. Rfassbind – talk 14:18, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

TfD'd.

I normally use WP:Twinkle to facilitate XfDs, but for some reason the "TW" dropdown doesn't appear on {{MP small}} for me, so I created the missing talk page and it showed up on the talk page only. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:06, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Well done. Rfassbind – talk 16:30, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Minor planets named for members of Monty Python has been nominated for discussion

Category:Minor planets named for members of Monty Python, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. MSJapan (talk) 19:35, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thoughts about template: Minor planets navigator and redlink-problem

Tom, I was thinking about how to improve the usefulness of {{Minor planets navigator}}. The template has already improved due to the increased number / correct anchoring of MP#Rs. However there are not so many redirects for unnamed minor planets, which means, that, in the case of 101955_Bennu#External links, the footer template simply shows two red links for the n-1 and n+1 sequential MPs, while 101955 Bennu itself is displayed in boldfaced. This is hardly helpful.

Question: would it make sense to display a link to the list entry for 101955 Bennu instead of just displaying it in boldface'? The template could derive such link, i.e. List of minor planets: 101001–102000#955, based on the minor planet number, i.e. 101955.

What you think? Rfassbind – talk 15:20, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(Sidenote: you already thought about the possibillity to create a redirect to LOMP for each numbered but unnamed MP. Of course if all numbered MPs had a MP#R, irrespective whether they are named or not, it would solve the mentioned navigation problem. However this might lead to other complications (e.g duplicates created by less familiar editors).

Rfassbind, I agree - {{Minor planets navigator}} would be made better with a link to that page's corresponding LOMP. I can do so shortly.

Making new #Rs makes sense to complete a "final destination" category like Category:Named minor planets if it's only missing a few entries, but making #Rs on a large scale isn't worth the effort, especially if it would cause other complications (as we've seen with previously-created #Rs for unnamed MP#Rs). Many of the astro navigation bars are sparsely-populated. Take the {{NGC5}} template family and most uses of {{Astronomical catalogs}} - they all display several entries in either direction, though. Replicating that for MPs would be a non-trivial task, and would require duplicate maintenance/updating to that already being done on the LOMP pages. Adding a direct link to List of minor planets: 101001–102000#955, for example, is a good compromise I think. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:13, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, since {{Minor planets navigator}} is protected, can you make an edit request for this? I'll support it of course. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:09, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah OK, I thought you had edit rights for protected templates? I think you need to get them. I reluctantly I will make such request (last time I asked for change in the navigation bar, it wasn't such a satisfying experience). I would be good to have the algorithm at hand so things would be easier. The same algorithm I also need for a new template {{LOMP}}, which creates a link to LOMP based on the mp-number (as the first line in MP#Rs), so:

{{LOMP|373461}} would link to List_of_minor_planets:_373001–374000#461.

If the template syntax were C-like, I'd use a division by 1000, followed by (floor)-rounding and multiplication by 1000 to get the 1000s, and %modulo for the anchor to construct the target-link. If you can give me a tip on mathematical operations using the template syntax, I'd really would appreciate. Rfassbind – talk 13:55, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, yes {{LOMP}} is quite doable using the available meta:Help:Calculation tools. I can work on that in the near future first, then worry about {{Minor planets navigator}}. {{LOMP}} will make the edit request simpler much simpler and I'll feel much better doing it myself without a formal request (my reservations were partly b/c I wouldn't want my efforts to goto waste if ppl didn't agree with the change; creating {{LOMP}} solves that). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:55, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It would be great if you could look into it. I can imagine that such LOMP template could be very handy. Yes, I'm sometimes scratching my head about the discussions made on wikipedia. I slowly start to realize how many regular editors have already given up the talk and "do their own thing" now, staying below the radar as much as possible. Oh well... What are your current tasks? Any large-scale edits in the pipeline? Rfassbind – talk 20:19, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

After this I'm planning on taking care of Category:CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list, Category:CS1 maint: Uses authors parameter (~30k pages in each but only some of them are 'easy'), and some associated {{IUCN}} template-family fixes/standardizations which I've left half-done atm.

Heh, well I did my own thing with Category:Minor planets named for people subcats, which didn't turn out so well; which is fine since they're small, but it makes me second guess what I think constitutes an improvement.

Oh yeah, and I keep forgetting to update {{Infobox galaxy}}, like, chronically... ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:39, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done — {{LoMP}} created! (that was fun)
Done — Edit request posted at Template talk:Minor planets navigator. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:08, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Done — Edit request fulfilled. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:16, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Great. Thank you. So to more nested selectors, the more fun you have. By the way, I fixed those few MP-object articles that showed up in Category:CS1 maint: Uses authors parameter. Rfassbind – talk 23:20, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template:LCDB

Hi Tom, I created {{LCDB}}, similar to {{MPCdb}}, as both link to a minor planet's "object-view" on their corresponding websites.

The {{LCDB}} template currently uses just one parameter, the MP-number. In addition, I'd like to add a second parameter to the template (name or prov. designation). It is purely optional, but since I'm not sufficiently familiar with the syntax, I didn't add this 2nd parameter in order to avoid any parsing errors. Could you help me out with this?

Simple usage (already implemented)

{{LCDB|2000}} produces
[[http://www.minorplanet.info/PHP/GenerateALCDEFPage_Local.php?AstInfo=2000%7C]]
http://www.minorplanet.info/PHP/GenerateALCDEFPage_Local.php?AstInfo=2000%7C

With 2nd param (TODO)

{{LCDB|2000|Herschel}} produces
[[http://www.minorplanet.info/PHP/GenerateALCDEFPage_Local.php?AstInfo=2000%7CHerschel]]
http://www.minorplanet.info/PHP/GenerateALCDEFPage_Local.php?AstInfo=2000%7CHerschel

The second param directly follows the URL's pipe character (%7C). I think the value of the 2nd param would be best url-encoded (eg. whitespace → %20). No problem if you have no time, it is not urgent anyway. Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 22:06, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I used this template in Slow rotator (asteroid). Rfassbind – talk 04:11, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind,

Done - 2nd optional parameter created, but I don't know how to easily replace spaces with %20 (I have to look a bit harder to see if such a parser function already exists, but I might be able to create one). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 03:30, 11 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thx, for the effort. For MPs such as 2099 Öpik, instead of LCDB, one can alternatively use a non-diacritical version (LCDB), or directly use the encoded version (LCDB)

Template:Minor planet color code legend

Another template, {{Minor planet color code legend}} wraps a legend (wikitable) with the color codes used for minor planets:

I added this template to {{List of minor planets/intro}} so that each partial list of minor planets#Main index displays the this legend.
Please feel free to revise, amend, improve or remove whatever you think best. This is only a tentative location for the template.

The main reason for the creation of {{Minor planet color code legend}} was/is to maintain the definitions for colors and orbital classes in one place. This should help to keep track when further changes are made to p-and main LOMP and {{Infobox planet}}. What you think? Rfassbind – talk 04:08, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think you did a great job on it, especially the sources for classification part of the documentation. It looks very thorough and transparent :) ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:15, 11 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New List: Slow rotators

I created a list of minor planets containing those with the longest known rotation periods: see User:Rfassbind/Slow rotators.

This will be a standalone list.
In List of exceptional asteroids § Exceptionally slowly rotating objects a {{main list}} will be added and the current table will be replaced with the first table of my list.
How would you name my list? What about ~~List of slow rotators (minor planet)~~? Articles like Centaur (minor planet) also use a "minor planet"-tag.
Some time ago I created Slow rotator (asteroid) (#R) and used it in 26 MP-object articles (see here). So this now comes in handy, as I just need to switch the target of this #R to the new list.
Is there anything else I should consider before implementing this list?

Apologies for posting so much on your talk page. Rfassbind – talk 21:22, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I did not even know List of exceptional asteroids existed. The slow rotators sections seems very incomplete compared to your list. It's definitely large enough for its own spinoff article, using {{Main list}} as you say.

Article title: List of exceptional asteroids seems overdue for a transition from asteroid to minor planet. Because of that, ~~List of slow-rotators (minor planets)~~ (plural) seems most appropriate. I'm tempted to include the hyphen, but since 1) you have ~26 links to Slow rotator (asteroid) displaying as "slow rotator" and no one has hyphenated them (at least the 8 or so I looked at), and 2) since a google search gives roughly 50-50 splits (somewhere between 40-60 & 60-40) between slow rotator & slow-rotator and fast rotator & fast-rotator, and an ADS search for "slow-rotator" returns less than 1 article per year, unhyphenated is probably best. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:50, 11 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thx Tom, so List of slow rotators (minor planets) and List of fast rotators (minor planets) it will be.

I also created a lead-image: File:LCDB Period vs. Diameter Plot.png. Rfassbind – talk 03:42, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Page moved to List of slow rotators (minor planets) (article namespace). Can you give it a read and c/e any ungrammaticalities I have possibly produced?. Thx, Rfassbind – talk 14:12, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Great edits! Very much appreciated. Rfassbind – talk 10:28, 16 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Named MPs missing on wikipedia

As per your post Named minor planets tree on WP:AST, you categorized 19,980 named MPs, while the MPC statistics showed 20,071 named MPs, giving a difference of 91 uncategorized items at the time (figures have changed since).

I tried to pinpoint this discrepancy here. However I only found 1 missing item (which I created now). If the used MPC sources are correct, that means, that there are still 80 named MPs (articles or MP#Rs) that exist on wikipedia lacking this category. (As per 6 September 2016, the MPC source I used gave a list of 20,244 named MPs, while there are currently 20,162 items categorized under Category:Named minor planets). If there is anything I can do, plz let me know. Rfassbind – talk 13:35, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting... I'll check all these things out like this weekend or next week. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:24, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The difference is now at 77 mising items in Category:Named minor planets. They all seem to be remnants of incompletely implemented redirects, as this one here. I think these MP#Rs are typically one-liners with much fewer characters than our standard redirects, and one newline character only.

Another possible selection criteria for many uncategorized MP#Rs is that they typically have a #001 anchor (e.g. this one here). Statistically speaking, only 1% or 202 named MP#Rs with a 001-anchor should exists. When searching through all named MP#Rs with 001-anchors, a good fraction of them might be missing Category:Named minor planets. Rfassbind – talk 09:16, 11 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind,

Done: ~80 remaining missing named (and a few missing numbered) MPs found! I'm not/surprised & slightly embarrassed to say that the last 3 found were Makemake‎, Eris (dwarf planet), & Pluto... ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 23:00, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Molto bene! The missing named MP#Rs were all remnants of an incomplete #R-implentation, weren't they? As for the dwarf planets, I also had my difficulties when I did my link revision because a dwarf planet's numbered version is typically an article-redirect, rather than LOMP-redirect or an article. Since there are so few DPs, I never spend time coding these special cases, so they pop-up once in a while.

By the way:

I created Category:Discoveries by Indiana University (Indiana Asteroid Program) and resolved the category redundancy (see comment). I think we had a conversation about it in the past, and I hope you agree. It's probably something your code should include.
I finally started to revise List of minor planets (main-page).
I have troubles reverting edits made by User:InternetArchiveBot. There are so many of them, e.g. here and here. It seems the IP from where the bot is running is blocked by the MPC. Some edits I have reverted for the third time already (Talk:1722 Goffin) and I already posted a message. Although I'm a rollbacker, it still takes me hours(!) to go through my watchlist reverting these edits... What to do?

Named-MP#Rs: If there is still anything I can do, please let me know. I've seen you started to edit the secondary-MP#Rs (do-not-cat) as well. Good thing. I hope you're also happy with the template's new comment-box format. Unfortunately, {{Astro list redirect comment}} is still being discussed, which is rather annoying. Rfassbind – talk 11:09, 16 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, most of the missing named MPs were older, bare #Rs to the LoMP. Some of them were even uncategorized despite not having a #+provision, nor a non-diacritical counterpart, nor a do-not-cat msg.

I saw Category:Discoveries by Indiana University (Indiana Asteroid Program) - I was hoping that there would/could be 3 distinct categories separated by date, but, barring any WP:OR, the MPC discoverers should be used.

Regarding List of minor planets, can you find a place for File:Euler diagram of solar system bodies.svg, since it serves as a useful categorical cheat-sheet?

Re: InternetArchiveBot, one solution would be to place {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}}. I think that's worthy of a vote. If it used a more recent version or forced one to be created (I think there is a way to nudge webcitation.org to update) that would solve the issue, right?

Yeah, I started do-not-catting some of the #Rs I came across, but that became too time-consuming, especially since most of them were missing {{R avoided double redirect}}, which requires some manual searching & c&p'ing. A large majority of the secondary #Rs I came across while looking for the missing numbered MPs did have the do-not-cat msg (~900), and there were only ~150 that I found that were missing it, so I might update those leisurely in the near future. I'll post what remains of those here if I get tired of doing that.

I do like the new, standardized comment box since it matches other notices elsewhere on WP, and lines up horizontally with the {{This is a redirect}} box.

{{Astro list redirect comment}} should be closed either today or tomorrow as keep, but it makes me wonder how many other templates the nom has gotten deleted based on non-existent guidelines they are trying to uphold for no reason (or misunderstood reasoning). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:47, 16 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect, Category:Named minor planets now contains 20,244, and exactly matches MPC's named MP-count of 20,215 (per July 19, 2016) plus the 29 items (from the Sep 4, 2016) batch. Well done. To me, this is a long-sought milestone we have achieved. Thank you Tom.
We have also settled the issue with those redundant Indiana Asteroid Program discovery categories as per our discussion.
List of minor planets still needs its lead to be revised. After this I'm done with the first overall revision.
Article List of fast rotators (minor planets) has been created. Since almost half of the bodies have low-quality periods, I did not create a separate section for the "potentially fast rotators", as I did in article List of slow rotators (minor planets). Both lists can be generated on my online web application. I also included your suggestions for a revised table header. The top rotators are also displayed in List of exceptional asteroids § Slowest rotators and List of exceptional asteroids § Fastest rotators.
{{Astro list redirect comment}} is now closed, finally. Good thing is that this "episode" helped to improve the template and its documentation.
InternetArchiveBot: I don't see a point in adding archives links to pages that are (potentially) changing in the future / are not prone to disappear from the web (such as the Minor Planet Center's Discovery Circumstances). Even more so, when the archive is several years old. The bot also adds a |dead link= "=yes" to webpages that have a 302 HTTP status code, instead of simply substitute the existing URL with the forwarded one. If this continues, a deny-bot tag seems to be a solution.
Secondary MP#R: if I can help, let me know.
Let me know what you are doing... I know you're alway up to something ;) Rfassbind – talk 21:00, 20 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks; there's a certain zen-ness about completing a category or list. And thanks for recognizing the discrepancy.
Maybe we can talk to the bot creator to see if they can improve it and go from there.
I don't think I'm going to finish standardizing those ~150 secondary #Rs anytime soon, so I'll post them here later ~~today~~.
Currently (but intermittently) writing rules & code to apply {{APOD}} & {{Cite APOD}} to external links, bare refs, and refs, since the templates have been improved since their next-to-last TfD. I still have to mature {{Cite APOD}} a bit more to recognize & accept multiple date formats so it doesn't mess up the date convention on higher quality articles, and make it accept additional archive-link params. Then it will be ready for full deployment. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:06, 23 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

85 secondary MP#Rs

Rfassbind, as promised:

85 secondary MP#Rs needing the do-not-cat msg & possibly other fixes

We can cross them off in batches as we go. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:26, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 03:42, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, another piece of the MP-object-puzzle has been inserted.

I will still create some talk-page redirects
I noticed you prefer {{R to diacritics}} over {{R from title without diacritics}}, correct?
I intend to add {{Redirect category shell}} (as discussed below), OK?

Thx, Rfassbind – talk 18:18, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I only prefer {{R to diacritics}} b/c it's the name of the template :)
Sounds good!

~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:25, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

FFR, these 85 have been checked to conform to the Secondary non-diacritical MP#R revision (where appropriate). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:53, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template:MPCdb

Tom, I have revised the template description for {{MPCdb}}.

I was wondering if a |name= would be useful for this template. What you think? Rfassbind – talk 16:04, 20 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, cool, I didn't realize it could work for comets & provisionals.

I can add a |name=-parameter check such that the template accepts either the first unnamed param or |name=, with priority given to |name=. But since the template only accepts 1 parameter, I don't think it's really necessary, and if someone wanted to, they could be (loosely) justified in adding it to the LOMP pages, adding at least an extra 5000b to each page. Also, someone might misunderstand it to mean the # <name> portion of a named MP, which needs English-izing of diacritics to work, so I'm just trying to keep it simple. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:33, 23 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I should have been clearer: I just wanted to ask, whether it would also make sense to you to add a 2nd-parameter in {{MPCdb}}, so that the default link label, "MPC", could be overridden by a custom label, such as the object's name the external link refers to. Rfassbind – talk 14:57, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, yeah that's way more useful! I'll make it like {{LoMP}}, where the 2nd unnamed parameter is the link text, and update the doc. ( Done ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:08, 29 September 2016 (UTC))[reply]
Question: I'm going to remove {{small}} when the 2nd parameter is used; should I keep {{small}} when the 2nd param isn't used (the current behavior)? ( Done ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:08, 29 September 2016 (UTC))[reply]
I just noticed that {{MPC}} is an unused template #R to {{Marijuana Party of Canada}}. I'm tempted to reappropriate it to {{MPC}} so we can drop the "db". What do you think? (I'm going to have to get 2 WikiProjects' approvals first though) ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:22, 28 September 2016 (UTC) ( Done here & here ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 00:40, 30 September 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Hi Tom, to:

big thx,
I would keep the small tag for the "MPC" default label. Maybe using a plain HTML -tag instead of a {{small}} template would be better (parser overhead); and
Makes sense to me.

Thx for your efforts, Rfassbind – talk 23:41, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Never post on my user talkpage again.

In light of your latest comment, I am now asking you to never post on my user talkpage ever again. Please see Wikipedia's relevant project guideline on this matter and, if you have any further questions, direct them to a 3rd party.

Thanks.

jps (talk) 22:20, 23 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I won't post there for as long as sensibility allows, per said guideline. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 23:14, 23 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rcat shell on secondary MP#R to LoMP

After all the implemented improvements for handling secondary redirects to LoMP, I wonder if we can wrap the custom R-templates as described here into a {{Rcat shell}}, e.g. change this into this version?

If not, I have no problem sticking to the unwrapped version, I just need to know, so my edits are consistent with yours. Thx, Rfassbind – talk 11:21, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, R-wrapping looks better with {{NASTRO comment}} than bare R-templates. I've never used {{Rcat shell}} nor {{Redr}} on secondary MP#Rs though, but can do so in the future. And from the wording of {{Rcat shell}}, {{NASTRO comment}} should use it instead of {{Redr}}. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:27, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This of course could also apply to non-LoMP primary MP#Rs and to {{Astro list redirect comment}}-#Rs. I'll be amending latter to the updated guidelines when I'm back by the end of next week. Thx Rfassbind – talk 14:45, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

NASTRO comment template

Can't thank you enough for your recent edit that converted {{NASTRO comment}} to the {{Rcat shell}}. Usage jumped from about a thousand to more than 23,000, and that's very much appreciated! Paine ^u/c 07:55, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

:) ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:37, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also amended {{Astro list redirect comment}} (here), Rfassbind – talk 23:58, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Question about AWB

Hello, I asked you some time ago, and you were a good help for me, and I'm really grateful for your speed response. now i have a new question About the AWB or Regular expression i don't know how can i do it i need if the ArticleTitle == somename "make the replace" if not skip.

Sorry for my bad English.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by جار الله (talk • contribs) 19:49, 8 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, the easiest way is via the AWB custom module, which you can get to via Tools > Make Module. Copy & paste this into that window:

public string ProcessArticle(string ArticleText, string ArticleTitle, int wikiNamespace, out string Summary, out bool Skip)
{
   Skip = false;
   Summary = "Summary text here";
   
   // simple skip on ArticleTitle
   string somename = "User talk:Tom.Reding";
   if (ArticleTitle == somename) Skip = true;

   // regex skip on ArticleTitle pattern
   string RegexTitle_Pattern = @"some regex search pattern";
   Match mRegexTitle = Regex.Match(ArticleTitle, RegexTitle_Pattern);
   if (mRegexTitle.Success) Skip = true;

   return ArticleText;
}

Then make sure the "Enabled" checkbox is checked in the top left, and "C# 3.5" is the language in the top right. Then click the "Make module" button in the top right. Then just make your rules as you normally would. The module's Skip = true statement overrides AWB's "general skip options", giving you the behavior I think you're looking for. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:35, 8 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much, I am grateful to you.--جار الله (talk) 02:17, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Astronomy Newsletter Q3 2016

WikiProject Astronomy Newsletter

← Previous | Q3 2016 News | Next →

(subscribe)

The project at a glance

As of Q3 2016 the project has reached:

115 Featured articles
14 Featured lists
6 Featured miscellaneous
177 Good Articles
46,996 total articles
3,462 (or 8%) are marked for cleanup
5,081 issues in total.

News by month

July 2016

On July 1st, The Man in the Moone was the featured article on English Wikipedia (see blurb). On July 26th, Pavo was the featured article on the English Wikipedia (see blurb).

On July 4, the Juno spacecraft entered orbit around Jupiter. On July 18th, NASA announced over 100 new exoplanets discovered by the K2 Mission including the K2-72 system which features a sub-Earth sized exoplanet in its circumstellar habitable zone.

August 2016

On August 3rd, The 2014 edition of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (See image) was the featured image on the English Wikipedia. On August 24th Proxima Centauri b was discovered using Doppler spectroscopy on ESO and other telescopes. On August 29th, speculations about the Radio signal from HD 164595 caused by an isotropic beacon from a Type II civilization began circulating in the media, even though the signal only scored a 1-2 on the Rio Scale.

Other articles created in August 2016 include: 2014 FE₇₂, Radio signal from HD 164595, CL J1001+0220, Super-Neptune, Kepler-20g, Mikko Tuomi, Dragonfly 44, Proxima Centauri b, List of minor planets: 472001–473000, List of minor planets: 471001–472000, List of minor planets: 470001–471000, Usuda star dome, NGC 162, WD 1145+017 b, NGC 161, NGC 160, NGC 159, Gliese 3293, 2016 PQ, (471325) 2011 KT19, NGC 158, NGC 156, NGC 155, IAU Working Group on Star Names, NGC 5053, LkCa 15, NGC 154, NGC 153, NGC 150, NGC 149, NGC 148, Kepler-419b, Kepler-419, IC 5332, WASP-82, V4024 Sagittarii, U Lacertae, Kepler-418 b, HD 169142, Kepler-1520b, NGC 146, NGC 7582, AR Scorpii, CX CMa.

September 2016

September 2016 mostly focused on expanding Wikipedia's coverage on astronomical objects such as NGC objects, Asteroids, Star system lists, and constellation stars. New articles were also made for exoplanets and other topics.

Examples of articles created in September 2016 include: NGC 163, NGC 164, NGC 165, NGC 166, NGC 167, NGC 168, NGC 169, Robyn Millan, (50719) 2000 EG₁₄₀, NGC 170, NGC 171, NGC 172, NGC 173, NGC 174, NGC 175, NGC 176, NGC 177, NGC 178, NGC 179, NGC 180, NGC 181, NGC 182, NGC 183, NGC 184, NGC 185, NGC 186, NGC 187, NGC 188, NGC 189, NGC 190, NGC 191, NGC 192, NGC 193, NGC 194, EPIC 204278916, K2-33, Q Cygni, Psi Leonis, List of asteroid close approaches to Earth in 2009, Pi Geminorum, Tau2 Gruis, Iota2 Normae, NGC 195, NGC 196, Iota Normae, Rho1 Eridani, Rho2 Eridani, Rho3 Eridani, Rho Eridani, Gamma Normae, Eastern Anatolia Observatory, NGC 197, NGC 198, NGC 199, NGC 200, HD 164922 c, NGC 202, NGC 203, NGC 204, NGC 207, Ward doubles, Earth Proxima, NGC 208, NGC 209, (75482) 1999 XC₁₇₃, (39546) 1992 DT₅, (219774) 2001 YY₁₄₅, List of slow rotators (minor planets), Anders Planman, NGC 212, NGC 213, NGC 214, Swedish Astronomical Society, NGC 215, NGC 216, NGC 217, NGC 218, NGC 219, NGC 220, NGC 221, NGC 222, NGC 223, NGC 224, NGC 225, NGC 226, NGC 227, HR 6594, Kepler-1606b, N6946-BH1, NGC 228, NGC 229, NGC 230, NGC 231, NGC 232, NGC 233, NGC 234, Failed supernova, BINGO (telescope), HD 30963, 38 Virginis b, NGC 236, NGC 237, List of fast rotators (minor planets), 38 Virginis, O'Connell effect, Sevenfold sun miracle, Judith Gamora Cohen, NGC 238, NGC 239, OGLE-2007-BLG-349(AB)b, List of star systems within 35–40 light-years, NGC 240, NGC 241, NGC 242, NGC 243, NGC 244, NGC 245, Argonium, List of star systems within 40–45 light-years, Outline of Earth, Jansha (impact crater), NGC 256, NGC 257, NGC 258, NGC 259, HD 150248, HD 117939, HD 71334, HD 118598, NGC 260, NGC 261, Cosmic wind, Galactic Tick Day, Emily Lakdawalla, List of star systems within 45–50 light-years, HR 4887, DS Crucis, BU Crucis.

Article Alerts

Apus GA nominated since 22 Sep 2016
Exoplanet FA review since 26 Jun 2016. (See Discussion).
Tycho Brahe GA reassessment since 02 Sep 2016. (See Discussion).

You received this message because your username is listed on the subscription page. If you are no longer interested please remove your username from that list.

Davidbuddy9Talk 00:34, 12 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox planet > labelstyle

Just realized, that in May 2016, the {{Infobox planet}} received a the param |labelstyle= which defaults to 11em max-width style (see edit). I cant find anything on the talk-page and the param is not documented at all. While I'm not against such param, it doesn't seem to work. (There was already a previously removed param "width" which didn't work either). Can you confirm that? Do you want me to take a look a the CSS? Rfassbind – talk 23:41, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

follow-up: your documentation edit seems to correspond with that parameter, despite being named differently. This seems to modify <th scope="row" style="max-width:11em;"> which has no apparent effect. Rfassbind – talk 23:54, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, check out WT:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Archive 26#Infobox planet's inner margins and this comparison image I made. Which page is it not working on? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 00:36, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And the editor-facing param is |label_width=, which gets passed to {{Infobox}} via labelstyle, which is documented somewhat at {{Infobox/doc}}. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 00:46, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Understood: |label_width= in {{Infobox planet}} represents |labelstyle= in {{Infobox}} and allows to modify the width of infobox'es "left-column" (or label-coloumn) from its 11em default. So the documentation is accurate. The talk-page also contains a corresponding request. The custom "label_width" parameter works fine, although large custom values for "label_width" may have no effect when a {{nowrap}} template or a large string of non-spaced characters is used in a value-column.

I think I was on vacation when you discussed the label-width issue based on my hack using {{nowrap|largest line  }}, so I couldn't give a rationale, which was to give more space to the value-column (at the expense of the label-column) in order to avoid line breaks inside coherent bits of information. This work-around had not been necessary if the overall size of the infobox could have been changed from its fixed 22em-width. (Note: an image-containing infobox planet template can be easily enlarged since a larger image-size overrules the overall fixed-width. The example used in the discussion, Mercury (planet), is therefore rather unfortunate, I think).

It all boils down to the question of whether or not coherent values in the infobox should be displayed on one line as much as possible. I always considered this to be important and a best-practice type of approach to add   where I want them and not to let the template decide where to wrap the data in the right-column. It seems that this was of no concern for those edits labelled "Update infobox with JPL data (code) using AWB". For example, the 1-liners in "Discovery site", "Dimension" and "Geometric albedo" in my version (5. April) became 2-liners later on (11. April).

What I would need most is to have a parameter so that a non-image containing {{Infobox planet}} could also have a flexible overall width. Presumably this concerns param |bodystyle= in {{Infobox}} which seems to be responsible for that. For example, a new param such as |box_width=25em would produce <table class="infobox" style="width:25em"> in html. --Rfassbind – talk 11:18, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

During that discussion we were cycleing through different default |label_width= values with 2 different infoboxes, one with an img (and many many parameters & values), and one without, to look at the parameter's behavior under different circumstances (like to see if it overrode the {{Infobox}} enlargement somehow, etc.).

I agree about segregating multiple values to different lines most of the time (with the exception of short, unitless values like abs mag (H)). That's why I was trying to preserve (naively) the string of  s or at least the effect. In my JPL to Infobox planet code I maintain  -separated values, and add  s if the value-list (for a few different typically-long-valued parameters) isn't already ,-separated. 15811 Nüsslein-Volhard "Dimension" and "Geometric albedo" both appear on 1 line for me, before and after, even when making my browser (Chrome) window very thin and very wide. With Firefox, however, I do see what you're talking about. |label_width=9em fixed it. Is that good? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:09, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Pages created by User:Archeologo (Museo Galileo)

(If you would please, forgive me Archeologo for the alert you are being mentioned here. I'm trying to help, and Tom seems the best place to begin with the following)

Tom, I've created User:Hammersoft/Archeologo as a holding pen to review articles created by Archeologo. I've reviewed a few, and welcome your contributions there.

Archeologo, your heart is in the right place, but we need to (a) decide on the best course for future article creations from Museo Galileo, and (b) review everything that's been created so far (and not deleted) to clean up what's been made to get to bare minimums.

--Hammersoft (talk) 16:35, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hammersoft, fantastic, thanks for compiling that list; I'll take a casual look through it. I don't have the time to make a significant dent in it though, so I think it would be a good idea to notify the WikiProjects that these pages would/should belong to (most of them are probably untagged right now) of this list, to get more eyeballs on it. {{WikiProject History of Science}} & {{WikiProject Astronomy}} apply for sure for some, not sure what other projects though. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:53, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Will do. Thanks for the input! --Hammersoft (talk) 16:55, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hammersoft, please let me know if you want me to post this at WT:AST, or if you want to, or if you don't think it's necessary anymore. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:22, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's gathering dust now. The editor's stopped editing as of the day this came up. It wasn't my intention to shoo him off the project. I need to do more work on it. If we can get more eyes on it, that would be great. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:26, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Question about AWB II

Hello Tom, If you don't mind, I really need your help with remove duplicate image, i use \[\[Image:'''image name'''\|([^][]*(\[\[[^][]+\]\][^][]*)*)\]\] to remove the image, my problem is the entire image is removed from the article and I do not want remove the image in infobox Is there a solution make Regular expression or #C don't remove anything in tamplates? Thank you.--جار الله (talk) 00:26, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There should be an infobox parameter specifically for the image, and possibly some aliases. So you can backsearch exclude using (?<!) to exclude those parameters, i.e. (?<!\|\s*(image|photo|aliases here)\s*=\s*)\[\[Image..., would help from removing the image from those infobox params. This has the side effect of also keeping the image inside of non-infobox templates that happen to also use the same |image= parameters (i.e. fase negatives). Let me know if this is good enough or if you need to weed those out as well. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:00, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

it works very well, and i'll let you know if I got an error, thank you very much.--جار الله (talk) 19:40, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Templates not safe for use in citation templates

What is this and what have you been doing to several wikipages removing "nonitalic" from those? MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 17:04, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please read Category:Templates not safe for use in citation templates and the template documentation for the corresponding template. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:06, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have read but I don't understand, could you provide a simple explanation? MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 13:44, 2 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Module:Citation/CS1 & {{Citation}} (CS2) parameters mostly expect literal values (aside from the occasionally allowed wikilink markup [[]], and the like) when populating the COinS metadata associated with each citation. When a template contained in Category:Templates not safe for use in citation templates is used inside these literal parameters, it is taken out of context and misinterpreted, either because it is not evaluated, or not evaluated correctly, leading to gibberish metadata. Since the metadata is then usually machine-parsed, you end up with a garbage in, garbage out situation. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:05, 2 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

all the little ones

Dear Tom: thanks for changing all the parameters in the iucn templates. This reminded me that some of these little long-neglected ones have been on my watchlist for quite some time, and gives me the chance to check and update years of assessment. Cheers -- BhagyaMani (talk) 17:04, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

AWB Error

Hey Tom. I don't use AWB but if it can be tweaked so past errors can be avoided, be aware of the error it introduced in Przevalski's nuthatch in your edit to it.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:38, 9 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'll filter my recent edits to look for and correct similar instances. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 01:45, 9 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery re-sorting

Hey! I've been taking another look at the different categories in the category Astronomical objects by year of discovery and as you had established a while ago, the rule for objects with unknown months/days of discovery is to default to 00/00. While it certainly has some advantages, it can make objects that could have been discovered any time in the year appear to have been discovered first. Furthermore, as I had been doing with my previous sorting efforts, I put objects with unknown dates sorted as (?). Although this could theoretically be confusing for objects with known months but unknown days, that type is rarely found, and I could probably count instances of such a situation on my left hand. What is your input? exoplanetaryscience (talk) 02:17, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad to see you've got more time to edit now.

When I was going through those categories I remember taking precautions not to disrupt the ?-sortkey system, unless there was either a month or full date of discovery available from JPL. This makes sense for objects with known year but unknown month. For a known month and unknown day, I only see 3 sortkey choices (if I missed any, feel free to add):

19990100 (current, groups them at the top of the 199901-list.)
199901?? (similar grouping, but a little easier to spot when editing)
? (groups them at the top of the category, together with unknown-month objects)

Of those, I prefer #1 & #2 over #3, since they preserve the month information. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:58, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I just remembered what I had been doing previously for this type of object: I sorted them as 19990115, which places them at the middle of the month. and leaving the actual date no more than 15 days off. However it would be less obvious to editors rather than an object displayed with ? for the date; perhaps 19990115? would work? exoplanetaryscience (talk) 14:49, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's good; I like it! ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:53, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, on second thought, by that logic, we would then use 19990615? for objects with unknown month & day...which is just weird. And making it no more than 15 days off is irrelevant when the date is obviously non-existent (00). Also, 19990115? could be misinterpreted as "tenatively or possibly discovered on the 15th", instead of the intended "sometime in January", conveyed by 0100. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:02, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should be sorted as ? for a completely unknown date, and I suppose day=?? could work for an unknown day, as you had suggested earlier. How does that sound? exoplanetaryscience (talk) 01:23, 11 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

|?]] for unknown month & day is good, instead of |19990000]].

|199901??]] for unknown day also works, instead of |19990100]].

Let me know if you want any help updating all the categories. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 01:44, 11 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

exoplanetaryscience, fyi I just went through a tripley-recursed list of unique mainspace articles in Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery (27,031 pages worth). I only found these 14 pages that matched discovered in[^\|\[\]]+\|\s*\d\d\d\d(0000|\d\d00)\s*\]\]:

I'll fix these later tonight or tomorrow, unless they're fixed before then. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:40, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No need to; just fixed them all now! Unfortunately having sorted a few with "15" for an unknown day would be more difficult to determine, but hopefully those will show themselves soon enough. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 21:27, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

About that...I found 875 pages matching a sortkey discovery date on the 15th via discovered in[^\|\[\]]+\|\s*\d\d\d\d\d\d15\s*\]\]. Luckily, 816 of them are numbered minor planets, so I can write some code to automatically check their discovery dates against JPL to find the errors. All the remaining 59 non-MPs that should have their discovery date verified are:

59 non-MPs requiring discovery date manual verification

~~Alpha Centauri~~ Left as is - day of binary discovery is unknown, but it was seen while observing C/1689 X1, only observed from December 9-22.
~~Bursting Pulsar~~ fixed
~~Butterfly Cluster~~ fixed
~~C/1890 V1~~ ok
~~C/2007 E2 (Lovejoy)~~ ok
~~C/2015 ER61 (PANSTARRS)~~ ok
~~Canis Major Overdensity~~ fixed to 01 Nov
~~Cosmic Horseshoe~~ fixed to 15 Jun
~~Crab Nebula~~ fixed
GCIRS 8* fixed to 31 May
~~Galilean moons~~ removed as is also on each moon page
~~Gould Belt~~ fixed
~~Great Comet of 1556~~ already fixed
~~HD 162020~~ ok
~~Huge-LQG~~ fixed
~~Hydra (moon)~~ ok
~~Janus (moon)~~ ok
~~Kronberger 61~~ fixed
~~MACHO-98-BLG-35~~ fixed to 25 Jun
~~Messier 103~~ fixed
~~Messier 13~~ fixed
~~Messier 15~~ fixed to 07 Sep
~~Messier 2~~ fixed to 11 Sep
~~Messier 25~~ fixed
~~Messier 32~~ fixed to 29 Oct
~~Messier 35~~ fixed
~~Messier 4~~ fixed/incorrect year
~~Messier 71~~ fixed/incorrect year
~~NGC 18~~ ok
~~NGC 311~~ fixed to 18 Sep
~~NGC 3184~~ fixed to 18 Mar
~~NGC 3185~~ fixed
~~NGC 3190~~ ??? (fixed)
~~NGC 3198~~ ok
~~NGC 3226~~ ok
~~NGC 3227~~ ok
~~NGC 4452~~ ok
~~NGC 5253~~ ok
~~NGC 53~~ ok
~~NGC 81~~ ok
~~NGC 85~~ ok
~~Nix (moon)~~ ok
~~Omega Nebula~~ fixed
~~SN 1000+0216~~ fixed to Nov(?)
~~SN 1961i~~ fixed to 3 Jun
~~SN 2007bi~~ fixed to 6 Apr
~~Scholz's star~~ fixed
~~T Tauri~~ fixed
~~Tempel 1~~ fixed to 3 Apr
~~U1.11~~ fixed to 31 Aug
~~UDFy-38135539~~ fixed to 10 Sep
~~ULAS J1120+0641~~ fixed to 30 Jun
~~V1280 Scorpii~~ fixed to 6 Feb
~~WISE 0350−5658~~ fixed to 9 May
~~WISE 0359−5401~~ fixed to 9 May
~~WISE 0535−7500~~ fixed to 9 May
~~WISE 0647-6232~~ fixed to 17 Jun 2010
~~WISE 1541−2250~~ fixed to 23 Aug
~~WISE J2030+0749~~ fixed to 16 Jan

We can <s> them out as we verify them. I'll post shortlist #2 of the numbered MPs with an incorrect discovery date of 15 in the next day or so. I can only automate part of that process since the discovery info may exist in the infobox and/or the text, and require a manual check. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 03:10, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

800 of the 816 have a discovery date of "15". These are the only ones left from that group that need to be double checked manually (shortlist #2):

16 more objects needing a manual check

~~7133 Kasahara~~ ok
~~48P/Johnson~~ Fixed to 19490825
~~36P/Whipple~~ ok
~~29P/Schwassmann–Wachmann~~ ok
~~276P/Vorobjov~~ ok
~~2010 JL88~~ ok
~~2007 VE191~~ ok
~~2004 FH~~ Fixed to 20040316
~~2003 RW11~~ ok
~~1993 RP~~ ok
~~166P/NEAT~~ ok
~~12275 Marcelgoffin~~ ok
~~11332 Jameswatt~~ ok
~~10183 Ampère~~ ok
~~(8365) 1990 RR5~~ ok
~~(8364) 1990 RE5~~ ok

~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:47, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like you've done most of the work, but covering the lat two, it looks all clear here. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 04:30, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Trouted

Whack!

You've been whacked with a wet trout.

Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know that you did something silly.

You have been trouted for: NO REASON AT ALL

Reconciling Legality of cannabis by country and Legal and medical status of cannabis?

Your feedback invited: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cannabis#Reconciling Legality of cannabis by country and Legal and medical status of cannabis?

Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 02:55, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Searching

That link you gave me to search "insource" works great but I can't get things to come up some of the time. How can I make it so I can find an article containing this subheader, "Line-up (Band members)". thanks. --Jennica✿^{talk / contribs} 23:10, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Jennica, insource uses and expects WP:REGEX syntax (with some limitations). Parentheses are part of that syntax, so you have to "escape them" by preceeding them with \, so insource:/Line-up $Band members$/ is what you want to use. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 00:08, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Tom.Reding: thanks a lot! What kinds of things do you usually search for and fix using AWB? --Jennica✿^{talk / contribs} 00:10, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of stuff! Mostly gnomish fixes, anywhere from template & citation syntax fixes, to bulk formatting changes, to double checking & correcting Wikipedia's articles with online databases. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 00:31, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Tom.Reding: do you know how I would search for Personnel:? It doesn't go through with the colon. --Jennica✿^{talk / contribs} 08:58, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It works for me. When in doubt, you can always escape weird and/or normal characters without any side-effects. 12:29, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm here to bug you again about this. I've tried a couple different ways to no avail. I'm looking to search for "Credits lifted". it's not a header, but just text in the article. it makes me cringe lol and I gotta change them! And most likely the article isn't formatted correctly either. thanks! --Jennica✿ / ^talk 00:48, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Jennica, I find 50 using insource:/Credits lifted/, and 51 using insource:/[Cc]redits lifted/, which searches for case insensitive "C". I almost never use WP's normal search anymore b/c it just returns the equivalent of a 10th+ page google result (i.e. Credits lifted finds 8500+ "matches"). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:53, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if you figured this out but in AWB, if you go to Source: "Wikisearch (text)" and put in what you would usually input on the insource search, it will work... no copying over to an Excel sheet necessary! WEE!!! --Jennica✿ / ^talk 03:45, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Jennica, I've tried that out before, but it doesn't provide the same results as an insource search. As a test, I typed [Cc]redits lifted into AWB's "Wiki search (text)" and got 0 results instead of the 2 that I should've gotten via insource:/[Cc]redits lifted/. :( ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:49, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh.. that's weird. I typed in insource:/= *Credits and personnel *=/album and it worked for me. --Jennica✿ / ^talk 19:52, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That does indeed return 1000 results from me, but it's not a small enough test-search (ideally < 1000) to test whether any false positives are returned (which may or may not be the case here). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 21:18, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Revise MPCit_JPL & MPCit_MPES

Tom, I think the template {{MPCit_JPL}} needs to be revised.

The template links to the object view of JPL's SBDB for a given MP-number.
I am not aware of any JPL template that functions like its {{MPC}} counterpart.
So, {{JPLdata}} would be a better name and in line with the widely used ref-name tag
Optionally, several anchors, e.g. #discovery, could be added to the template's target, to explicitly link to a section; similar as in {{JPL small body}}
I'm also wondering whether using the SPK-id (exmpl) would be a better choice than using the plain MP-number (exmpl).

What's your take on this? Rfassbind – talk 05:36, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, {{MPCit JPL}} is in desperate need of a makeover, mostly due to its potentially confusion-inducing (and slightly annoying) name—does the MPC cite JPL or something?, etc. {{Cite JPL}} seems to be what the author was intending, and would fit in with current citation template naming conventions, but it doesn't wrap a {{cite web}}, {{citation}}, etc., so that name is just as misleading. {{MPC}} is the most relevant analogous template, so renaming {{MPCit JPL}} to {{JPL}} would make the most sense.

The JPL page is pretty compact, so adding target anchors wouldn't help much, unless you could link to some special cases. If indeed useful, |anchor= could be made to accept either free-form or pre-approved text and append to the link.

Using the MP's number is the most transparent usage. It's easy to machine-check the page, and it's intuitive to both the experience and lay astro-editor. For a few special cases though, SPK is necessary, and {{JPL small body}} accepts both SPK & the MP's number, with no change to the root link, so you can use either. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:12, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. MPCite_JPL is a "funny" abbreviation for Minor Planet Discovery Citation at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's object view page

{{JPL}} is consistent with {{MPC}}. I'm just a bit worried that "JPL" might be too generic and cause disagreement/renames in the future. {{JPLdata}} would be somewhat more specific, hence less controversial. But I trust your judgment here. So whatever the new name will be, it's definitely an improvement.
Anchors: they are indeed not so important. An example where this could be useful is the close approach data for NEOs. But that can wait.
MPC-number or SPK-id. One reason why most people use JPL's object view rather than MPC's is because of the search functionality and our discussed template should make the best of it. Again, this can wait, since the "JPL"-template's default parameter will definitely be the mpc-number.

I don't think this rename is controversial. Currently the template just needs to be renamed. I also strongly favor to change the (default) label from "†" to "JPL". Agree? Rfassbind – talk 15:17, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have to go for a bit for the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.; will get back to this when I have time. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:43, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind,

I googled "JPL database" to see if JPL has any other databases besides their small-body one, such that {{JPL}} wouldn't be a specific-enough name. All I find, though, are links to the SBDB, so I don't think {{JPLdata}} is a necessary disambiguation. If you find out otherwise, let me know.
Anchors: good example... I agree.
Ok.

~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:03, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OK, then let's rename {{MPCit_JPL}} to {{JPL}}. I presume you also agree to use "JPL" as the new label (instead of "†") and to wrap it with  tags, as done with {{MPC}}. Rfassbind – talk 23:16, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, by default, with the option to modify the link text. I haven't looked at all instances, so that if "JPL" looks weird, it can be changed to "†", or whatever's appropriate. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 05:52, 25 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Same with {{MPCit JPL}}'s corresponding template, {{MPCit MPES}}. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:22, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But {{MPES}} calls looks like they will need to be transferred to {{JPL}}, since they both use the same root link, http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:39, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, all {{MPES}} instances need to be converted to {{JPL}}. I found one instance in Meanings of minor planet names: 17001–18000#081, for example. After all instances have been converted, {{MPES}} should be deleted, as it serves no purpose other than contribute to confusion. Rfassbind – talk 03:03, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:47, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template:DoMP

Tom, I created {{DoMP}}, alias {{DoMPN}}, that creates a link to a MP naming citation at Springer.

This template fills in the gap of missing citations. For example, the naming cite for 1759 Kienle can only be found at DMP, but not at JPL and MPC.
Allthough there is still the Minor Planet Circulars (large PDF files; archive) publication itself, it can not be easily linked to and is inappropriate for an external-link template of type JPL/MPC/DoMP.
Any improvement of this new template and its documentation is appreciated.

Since there are no other sources on the web, at least as far as I know of, this piece of the puzzle is now resolved as well. Rfassbind – talk 03:34, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What an unnecessarily confusing website. I'll take a look. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:44, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Errors caused on page you updated

Hi Tom! When you have a moment, please take a look at the errors that were produced with your edit. Thanks https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Huguette_Clark&oldid=747298589 Level C (talk) 23:26, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Level C, what errors? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 01:34, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! The error which read something about "PARAMETER" in red letters near this text "$50,000 (equivalent to $690,000 in today's dollars)", somehow disappeared. Thanks for getting back. Level C (talk) 01:51, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proplyd

I tried to fix up a bit of tortured text in the article Proplyd, but it is still rather clumsy around the "one of two types" part. Can you peek at it and maybe incrementally improve it? Shenme (talk) 07:50, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Shenme, thanks for the notice. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:25, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MP-object articles: Infobox revision

I'm currently revising approx. 750 minor-planet object articles including their infoxboxes. It would be great if we could put our heads together about the following issues:

harmonize your Infobox planet update code with my most recent version,. e.g. 1789 Dobrovolsky
make changes in the {{Infobox planet}} template (i.e. revising some labels and their links)
think about future article improvements, which can be applied generically to most articles next year

Just let me know, Rfassbind – talk 09:14, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rfassbind, excellent; #1 is something that's been on the back burner until 2017 anyway. I'm limited in code complexity since making custom functions and subroutines isn't allowed in AWB as far as I know, which mostly applies to "value ± error"-parsing/enumeration. 1789 Dobrovolsky's infobox looks good, except for the · separated values in |abs_magnitude=, which doesn't happen elsewhere (not sure if that was done un/intentionally). It would be good to designate a few prototypical MPs for standardization purposes and work on those prior to me codifying the format. I recall seeing many instances of (IRAS), for example, appended to some values, so at least 1 other prototype MP will likely be needed.

For #2, which labels/links did you have in mind? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:39, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Tom,

basically all articles with a regular link color in the above list have been revised and can be considered prototypes (NEOs, JTs and MBAs differ of course).
As for the |abs_magnitude= I followed your suggestion not to list them line-by-line. The dot-separator seems a perfectly legitimate way to separate figures (as done with the "alternative names"). It also resolves some issues and makes the {{wrap}} obsolete in most cases.
Since the topic of code-harmoniztaion and infobox-tpl-amendments contains so many items, maybe I should list them on a dedicated user-page, otherwise it will probably get unmanageable.

What you think? Rfassbind – talk 12:49, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I created a new project page in my user space. It links back to here. Rfassbind – talk 15:21, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Extended confirmed protection policy RfC

You are receiving this notification because you participated in a past RfC related to the use of extended confirmed protection levels. There is currently a discussion ongoing about two specific use cases of extended confirmed protection. You are invited to participate. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk (sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:31, 22 December 2016 (UTC))[reply]

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