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Wikidata-driven infoboxes for telescopes and observatories

Hi all. I've recently been working on automatically populating infoboxes using information from Wikidata, mostly using Template:Infobox telescope as a testbed. Doing this makes the wikitext at the top of an article a lot simpler and more newbie-friendly, and simplifies maintenance across the different Wikipedias, since we only have to update information in a central location rather than in every language article. It seems to be working quite nicely - have a look at South Pole Telescope, where all of the contents of the infobox are drawn from Wikidata (just through including {{Infobox telescope}} at the top of the article). I've also been implementing this in Template:Infobox observatory, see for example Jodrell Bank Observatory (just using {{Infobox observatory}}). Note that the templates only pull information from Wikidata where it isn't set explicitly in the article - so for pages with existing template parameters, the infobox continues to work as usual. And in order for this to work, the appropriate parameters (described in the template documentation) need to be filled out in the Wikidata entries for each telescope/observatory.

The next step is rolling this out consistently across all of the telescope and observatory articles, and identifying the use cases where this approach won't work so well. Would anyone be interested in helping to do this? And does anyone forsee any problems that need tackling first? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:03, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

I do see a problem, though I have not specifically been looking for them. There was parameter (|dome=) that was removed from Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, when its wikidata item did not exist, effectively losing that information. My concerns are: how many other parameters have experienced this? How did this happen, and what checks are made to ensure that it doesn't happen?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:27, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Template:Infobox telescope seems to provide a mapping, so any changes to use the Wikidata infobox would have "lost" the unmapped information if not locally specified. I can't help beyond that, because {{infobox telescope}} doesn't include any documentation about some of the parameters. --Izno (talk) 19:42, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Hi @Tom.Reding, thanks for the feedback. :-) 'Dome' is one of the parameters that isn't available through Wikidata yet (it probably needs a new parameter adding to Wikidata). I removed that parameter from the FAST article as it's set to "none", which seemed a bit pointless - if there's no dome then why mention domes in the infobox? That part of my edit was reverted, though, and if you access the article at the moment then you can see "Dome: none" in the infoboxes. I'm currently making manual edits to individual articles (although hopefully a bot could be used in the future to mass-update articles), so the check here is made by wikimedians - i.e., myself and others working on the articles being edited. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:43, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I definitely prefer manual edits at this point, to preserve information.
|dome= is a binary value, so |dome=yes is just as important as |dome=no. By migrating to wikidata, you're putting youfself in a gatekeeper/facilitator position. To unilaterally decide that |dome=none is irrelevant is not appropriate behavior for someone in your position. You need to bring it up at the appropriate template page and/or project page—which you've only luckily done (because I happened to bring it up). You're free to do that, but it's much easier for everyone involved if there was just a complete, unbiased transfer of information.
Don't get me wrong, the idea of wikidata is great. But if implemented poorly, it's not helping.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:29, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
OK, I'll stick with manual edits for the foreseeable future. :-) I'm not trying to assume a position, but I am probably playing a 'facilitator' role here - definitely not 'gatekeeper'! I'm glad that you've raised this issue here. I'm not sure that 'dome' should be binary, though - my expectation was that if a dome exists, then the shape/radius/material should be described, and if it didn't exist then there's no point providing those details. I'm trying to implement this as best as can be done, so please help make sure that it isn't implemented poorly! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:56, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
That said, it is uncharacteristic at best and discouraged at worse to indicate that a value in an infobox has "no value", binary or not. |dome=none being removed is more in keeping with the rest of Wikipedia. --Izno (talk) 21:00, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
|dome=none is not <null value>. Its value is "this observatory has no dome". Put in whatever other info you want about its existence or lack thereof. Most observatories have domes. The fact? that this one doesn't is important.
Mike Peel, focus on how to add |dome=, and every single other parameter you see, to wikidata. The template has been around since 2004. It's been looked at by many, many people. Take its current state (and all other templates you decide to work on) as the current consensus state. Why can't |dome= be added? Is there a conflict with another parameter? Is it too short of a name? That should be your mentality as a facilitator. If you can't do that, then let someone else, please.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:40, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
OK, can you provide examples of how the 'dome' parameter is used, please, and how it could be incorporated into Wikidata? I don't think that there are any conflicts here, but if we're going to propose it as a new properly than examples need to be provided to the community. If someone else can help transition things to Wikidata, then please volunteer. :-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:56, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I've never worked on telescopes, but to help answer your question I randomly looked at telescopes at the top of List of largest optical reflecting telescopes (not to be overly critical, but you could have easily done something like this yourself before you unilaterally eliminated a parameter). Here are the values:
So it looks like the parameter is used inconsistently, but often conveys important and relevant information about the telescope. Is it difficult for Wikidata to support this sort of parameter? Please be careful about this sort of thing in the future since when you replace an Wikipedia infobox with a Wikidata-sourced one, the changes that occur as a result are not apparent to editors watching the page. A2soup (talk) 22:58, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Ah, I work on radio telescopes, which don't often have domes - I should have thought to look at optical telescope examples. ;-) Thanks for the pointers. So far I've only been working with existing parameters on Wikidata, and there isn't an obvious one for dome at the moment, hence why it probably needs a new property creating to cover domes/enclosures.
Note that I haven't "unilaterally eliminated a parameter" - the template works as before, just with fallbacks to Wikidata where the parameters aren't defined in the article. So even without the dome parameter being available through Wikidata, it can still be set locally. Also, note that changes to Wikidata items associated with articles show up on watchlists when you're watching the articles, so editors do still see changes to data in the infobox. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:34, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Did not know that about locally configuring parameters not on Wikidata - that's a great functionality. A2soup (talk) 18:40, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
As long as edits like this, that remove a parameter which doesn't yet exist on wikidata, are brought to ~0, you have my support.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:36, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
OK, I'll try to do that. Right now, I'm more worried by how many telescope articles don't yet have infoboxes! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:55, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
@Mike Peel: I'm new to wikidata but would like to learn more about it. I also edit observatory/telescope articles and would be willing to help out where I can. There are a couple of parameters in the infobox that are not well documented which leads to inconsistency in usage. One is "weather" which is often a link to the ClearSky chart, but I've also seen it used for a count of clear nights per year. Another is "telescope name" which is sometimes a proper name like Hale Telescope but is often a generic term like 2 meter. Perhaps there needs to be a separate param for aperture and name would be left blank if there is no proper name? BTW, "observatory code" refers to the IAU Minor Planet Center list which is rigorously defined and updated daily. It should probably be wikidatafied. Please ping me as this develops, and let me know if there is anything that I can help out with. --mikeu talk 17:04, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
@Mu301: That's great. :-) I'd encourage you to have a go at editing Wikidata by picking an observatory and adding data about it to wikidata (see Jodrell Bank Observatory's Wikidata entry as an example). Inconsistent usage isn't something that fits into Wikidata well, particularly things like charts vs. numbers - given the inconsistent use I'm wondering if it's worth keeping the 'weather' parameter in the long run or not... Telescope name should ideally be a link to an article about that telescope, but often we don't have articles on those telescopes (for good reason in a lot of cases, since they aren't notable), which again doesn't work too well with Wikidata. I was wondering about the observatory codes - that's definitely something that can easily be transferred to Wikidata, although I'm not sure that most observatories have such a code (Jodrell Bank doesn't seem to have one!). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:33, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
The observatory codes are primarily used to report minor planet astrometry including asteroid or comet discoveries. It is an important identifier (for those that have one) but it is not a sign of wp notability as there are some backyard amateur observatories that have codes and some major observatories simply don't do that sort of research. Personally I would support removing the weather param as it is sometimes used in a very subjective or inconsistent way. Proper names for telescopes, just based on my own personal impression, seems rare. At many facilities they simply refer generically to the "1 meter" (see Yerkes Observatory) and the usage is often inconsistent. The layout of the template kind of forces the issue of figuring out what the name should be. In many cases that should be left blank. --mikeu talk 21:43, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Category:Minor planets Sterilization

I'm going to tackle this very soon, at least in part.

For the numbered minor planets only, I will check for, and soft-handedly enforce the logic: (DEFAULTSORT || Category sortkey) == 0-padded 6-digit (0p6d), in the following ways:

  1. If "{{DEFAULTSORT:" is absent from the text, I will add {{DEFAULTSORT:<0p6d>}}, for 3 reasons:
    1a. There are more asteroid categories which sort by number than there are that sort by name.
    1b. 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.
    1c. Most of the objects discovered by multiple people, and hence with multiple [[Category:...discovered by <blah>]]s already use the more-appropriate alphabetic DEFAULTSORT.
  2. If a 0p6d DEFAULSORT and 0p6d cat sortkey exist, I won't touch anything (WP:GENFIXES removes the cat sortkey in this case).
  3. If a 0p6d DEFAULSORT and !0p6d cat sortkey exist, I'll remove the cat sortkey.
  4. If a !0p6d DEFAULTSORT and !0p6d cat sortkey exist, I'll correct the cat sortkey to 0p6d.
  5. If a !0p6d DEFAULTSORT and 0p6d cat sortkey exist, I won't fix anything, since it ain't broke.
    5a. If the DEFAULTSORT != (0p6d || <name> || <prelim>) then it is removed. Goto rule #1.
  6. If, after my changes, all cats on the page have a 0p6d sortkey, then the existing DEFAULTSORT is effectively useless. Replace the useless DEFAULTSORT with the 0p6d one, and remove the sortkey from all cats.

That should account for all permutations.

I'll take care of the preliminary designation asteroids later, maybe, after we come to a firm consensus.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:23, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Of the 579 subcategories of Category:Minor planets, I see 23 asteroid-containing cats that should be sorted by name, which can be summed up with these 6:

for reference.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  05:34, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Other fixes

  1. "Liberally" applying the WP:NASTRO comment to #REDIRECTS (allowing for that to be the sole change to a page IIF preceded by a page which triggered rule #1-6).
  2. Adding [[Category:Discoveries by <astronomer>]] if explicitly stated in the text.
  3. Adding [[Category:Astronomical objects discovered in <year>]] if %%pagename%% includes <prelim designation>, or if |discovered= or the text includes the discovery year.
  4. Adding [[Category:Main-belt asteroids]] if {{Beltasteroid-stub}}, or similar, exist, and none of the 42 main-belt-family cats exist on the page.
  5. Adding [[Category:Main-belt asteroids]] if an asteroid-family orphan (and after double-checking JPL).
  6. Replacing {{MinorPlanets Footer}} with {{Small Solar System bodies}}, and removing duplicate {{Small Solar System bodies}}. (I didn't notice the prevalence of {{MinorPlanets_Footer}} with a "_" until ~2/3 of the way through, though)
  7. Replacing {{MinorPlanets Navigator}} with {{Minor planets navigator}}.
  8. Adding {{JPL small body}} to the end of ==External links== (create ==External links==, if necessary).

  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:35, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Preferred sort for Category:Discoveries by astronomer

This is a fairly large uncle-category which appears on most minor planet pages: 177 subcats, 7,637 unique pages, 9,522 non-unique pages, only 1 cat deep. Either someone has gone through a lot of trouble to sort ~66% by prelim, or no one decided to (or had the energy/desire/ability to) challenge the {{DEFAULTSORT:YYYY WW#}} convention, until now. Either way, here's a summary of the 8 most-populated subcats, representing 42.5% of all categorized pages, and how they're sorted.

Subcat Entries Composition Sort method Prelim Name #
(Approx)
Category:Discoveries by Hiroshi Kaneda 652 96% #+prelim, 4% #+name 95.5% by prelim, 3.5% by name, 1% by # 623 23 7
Category:Discoveries by Seiji Ueda 652 "" "" 623 23 7
Category:Discoveries by Henry E. Holt 631 96% #+prelim, 4% #+name 95% by prelim, 4% by name, 1% by # 599 25 6
Category:Discoveries by Henri Debehogne 623 ~95% #+prelim, ~5% #+name 87% by prelim, 12% by name, 1% by # 455 75 6
Category:Discoveries by Robert H. McNaught 399 90 #+prelim, 10% #+name 85% by prelim, 9.3% by name, 5.7% by "(" 339 37 0
Category:Discoveries by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth 381 >98% #+name, <2% #+prelim 63% by name, 37% by # 0 240 141
Category:Discoveries by Eric Walter Elst 372 ~20% #+prelim, ~80% #+name 88% by name, 12% by prelim 45 327 0
Category:Discoveries by Edward L. G. Bowell 339 99.7% #+name 99.7% by name 0 338 0
Total 4,049 2,684 (66%) 1,088 (27%) 167 (4%)

What I'm about to do is pretty much a 1-way street right now, at least if/until AWB implements a $pagetitle$ feature, or the like, which I've recently requested here (but I'm half convinced I'm simply throwing my request into a black hole, since I have ~12 still-open requests from a year ago). Grabbing the numeric or name portion of MPs is easy, but as soon as we're allowed to use {{mp}} for the page, it gets really, really hard to make a reliable regex pattern to always get the page name and nothing but the page name, which would need to be operated on several times to get back to how it is. That's why I want to be very careful, and certain, about doing this.

This is resolved, since %%pagename%%, thankfully, exists! It was just not easily found in the AWB documentation. 2-way street established; hesitation diminished.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:49, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I think we all prefer to sort all of these subcats in the same way, whatever it is. Personally, I agree with exoplanetaryscience's view that asteroids in these cats should be sorted by #, if possible. I just want to be absolutely sure that we all agree on this.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:26, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Support Yes, sorting by zero-padded ID# seems to make the most sense; that would also place them in discovery order. Looks like it would take a fair amount of work to accomplish that though, unless it can be scripted. Praemonitus (talk) 14:27, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Scripting is complete (it took just 16 60 122 rules), and there will be very few (if any) exceptions. I'm only waiting for project members' approval.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:06, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Oppose I've been editing the sortkey of the Category:Discoveries by astronomer-subcategories for vast number of articles and redirects. The order of listing was a complete mess (for several reasons, such as change of DEFAULTSORT key, lousy implementations of redirects, or neglected update of recently named bodies). Now, you propose to sort them by number and no longer by name. Oh well... Fact is that many/most articles about astronomers, who discovered minor planets, contain a wikitable with their discoveries. As these wikitable are all sorted by number, sorting the category also by number would be redundant. Sorting the categories by name would avoid that redundancy. In addition, sorting by name creates more subsection (A-Z), not just one or two subsection (0 and 1). Also, sorting by name separates named minor planets from those with a provisional designation. (Former may have an article, latter is most likely a redirect). For all these reasons, sorting by name is better, but most importantly a consistent sort order is needed. For example, here are some "discoveries-by" subcats I revised to consistent a sorting by name. Previously they were a complete mess.
Sorting by NAME is better, less redundant with wikitables displayed in the biographies, more sectioned, and separates named from unnamed bodies. Rfassbind – talk 18:29, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm literally just fishing for arguments, and these are all good. This sounds very similar to my question about asteroids#1b (and comets#2) proposal for preliminary designations above, regarding (seemingly) needless duplication of chronological sorting: replace "chronological" with "numeric". Therefore, I agree.
The goal of the table above was to test whether the cat's composition (i.e. 95% #+prelim) had an equal sort-% of some kind (i.e. either 95% by #, or 95% by prelim). Because some of them had very different composition-% vs. sort-%, I became very hesitant. Given your reasoning, and the fact that the majority sort for these cats is by name, the question now is: why shouldn't I sort these name? That's a hard question to answer now, but we'll see. I'll go with name-sort here, unless a better argument comes up.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:12, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Preferred sort for Category:Main-belt asteroids

17,500 entries. I went through the first few-dozen pages to find ~25% sorted by #, ~25% sorted by prelim, and ~50% sorted by name, (ugh): 

 17 pages under heading "0": 17*200 =~3,400 (vast majority are #+name, and sorted by #)
 23 pages under heading "1": 23*200 =~4,600 (vast majority are #+prelim, and sorted by prelim)
 ~1 page  under heading "2":  1*200 =  ~200 (50/50 #+prelim/#-name: #+prelim are sorted by prelim, #+name are sorted by #)
 ~½ page  under heading "3-9":      =  ~100 (mostly #+name, sorted by #)
41.5 total pgs under heading "0-9": =~8,300 (~47.5% of category)

~46 pages under headings "A-Z": 17,500-8,300 = 9,200 (~52.5% of category) (nearly all are #+name, and nearly all sorted by name)

I've also requested at Template talk:Large category TOC numeric that 1 more 0-padded level be added, so that 0p6d cats can be looked through in steps of 1,000, instead of steps of 10,000.

I'm thinking about putting the non-family-member, prelim-only pages in a child Category:Main-belt preliminary asteroids, since there are comparatively so few pages of them.

Going 1 step further, I could make the child: Category:Main-belt numbered unnamed asteroids, leaving all the #+named in Category:Main-belt asteroids? I like this the more I think about it. What about everyone else?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:16, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Update

Überrun complete! Thank you all for being patient while I blew up your watchlists.

Category/Template Before After Change (Improvement)
[[Category:Main-belt numbered unnamed asteroids]] 0 3,934 –
[[Category:Main-belt preliminary asteroids]] 0 3 –
[[Category:Main-belt asteroids]] 17,501 14,973 –2,528
Additions to [[Category:Main-belt asteroids]] – –
1,415 (10.5%)
Subcategories of [[Category:Discoveries by astronomer]] 177 233
56 (32%)
Unique pages in [[Category:Discoveries by astronomer]] 7,637 7,909
272 (3.6%)
Non-unique pages in [[Category:Discoveries by astronomer]] 9,522 9,816
294 (3.1%)
Subcategories of [[Category:Discoveries by institution]] 0 13 –
{{MinorPlanets Footer}} → {{Small Solar System bodies}} ~260 54 −206 (79%)
{{MinorPlanets_Footer}} → {{Small Solar System bodies}} 840 218 −622 (74%)
{{MinorPlanets Navigator}} → {{Minor planets navigator}} ? 2 –

All numbered asteroids (named & unnamed) should now be sorted properly. ~17,600 edits made, 72 categories created, and 24 "(<number>) <name>" asteroids had their categories stripped to avoid duplication. All new categories, and most existing ones, have a sortkey note at the top either explicitly stating their sort convention for asteroids, or a note pointing to their parent, which has the explicit convention, lest they drift in the future.

Very minor exceptions are 1) between 50-75 Category:Numbered asteroids are on #REDIRECT pages (1.8% of that category), and 2) 110 and 316 Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery with either a "?" or empty sortkey, respectively.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  05:35, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Great! Now if only all those redirects could be tagged as redirects rather than stubs or start-class... Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:06, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
That would've been great to bring up a lot sooner. No one has mentioned Category:Minor planet redirects on the topical archive, or since then, as far as I know. Only Category:Main-belt-asteroid stubs was addressed and cleaned (brought down from 17,077 to ~2,000) at that time. Category:Minor planet redirects doesn't fall into the scope of this run anyway, actually, since it doesn't exist in the Category:Astronomy hierarchy (its parent is Category:Main namespace redirects). All asteroid redirects have an {{R}} template, so they're all accounted for in that sense, but that's probably not your concern here, I'm guessing. If you want to start another thread, I could do this, if there's support.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:31, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm talking of their talk pages/Wikiproject banner assessment. E.g. Talk:24899 Dominiona says it's a stub, but 24899 Dominiona is a redirect. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:21, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I see. Yes, their importance scale should be identified as "NA" and "class" should be changed to "Redirect". I've corrected Talk:24899 Dominiona as an example. This would move most of the 24,471 pages out of Low-Stub into NA-Redirect on the project matrix. I don't see any objections to doing this, either, other than clogging up watchlists.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:58, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I'll only modify existing, incorrect WPAst banners on #redirects for now. If there are no objections by the time I finish those, I'll add the correct banner to the remaining redirects that are missing one.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:11, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Don't really see the point in doing it in two batches, but as long as it all gets done in the end, I'm not fussy on the details. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:26, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
There are ~25 talk pages which are #redirects to asteroid lists, and ~50 ~500 non-existent talk pages, which I will correct as well.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:12, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 Done. ~15,944 total talk page banners fixed! Breakdown: ~15,294 talk pages had their banners corrected, 65 were missing the banner, 25 were #redirects to the list, and 560 talk pages did not exist for their associated #redirects (I originally missed them b/c I was using an old list from earlier this month).
This should bring the 'Low-Stubs' on Astronomy quality statistics down from 24,470 to ~9,176 (62.5% smaller), and 'NA-Redirects' up from 1,599 to what should be ~17,543 (11x larger) (needs another day to update). 9k 'Low-Stubs' still seems like kind of a lot. I'll see if I can find any errant #redirects in there.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  03:54, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
I found 1,321 #redirects bannered as 'Low-Stub'. They are mostly uncategorized (the reason I missed them) numbered asteroids, with 159 HD stars, 60 non-star/asteroids, and 25 improperly titled asteroids (i.e. (4384) Henrybuhl). The cleansing continues.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:21, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

 Done (again). Of these 1,321 'Low-Stub' #Rs: 1,197 were rebannered as 'NA-Redirect', and 124 banners were removed on duplicate #Rs (32 were numbered, named MPs, 92 were preliminary MPs). 'Low-Stubs' should now be completely void of #redirects. Also, 973 MP #Rs were found and had their categories propagated from before they were #redirected (so they can be found more easily).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

How important is Category:Minor planet redirects?

I started a disussion on its talk page, Category talk:Minor planet redirects#How important is this category?. Basically, I'm asking whether we want this relatively-small cat (619 redirects) to be: 1) emptied, then deleted, 2) filled, or 3) left alone and incomplete? Please reply there.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:00, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I personally don't see the point in having such a category. Maybe as a hidden maintenance category, but why bother in the first place. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:37, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
It would actually be useful for me, and anyone wanting to find, operate on, or investigate all of the legitimate MP #Rs (not the #Rs from typos, diacritics, etc.), now and in the future. I regret not being aware of this cat during my #R maintenance, since I would've otherwise added it wherever I could. So, I'm in favor of either this or a maintenance category. I just don't know how to go about setting up the latter, just the former.
(Copied from the cat talk page) Right now, (almost) all "worthwhile" MP #Rs (excluding #Rs for typos, renames, misspellings, etc.) are in the Category:Minor planets hierarchy, but alongside legitimate articles. To find the MP #Rs, I need to recurse that cat about 5-6 times in AWB, then sweep though that list (again with AWB) to extract only the #Rs. I'm somewhat ok with doing this, but it makes the complete listing of MP #Rs inaccessible to other editors. I only recently discovered this category, and am wondering why it's been so neglected, given its usefulness.
I initially wanted to get rid of it, since it indeed seemed forgotten and not useful. But the more I think about it, the more I like it.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:04, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I recently finished writing some AWB module code (~1,100 lines, heavily augmented by Excel) that extracts the discovery date and discovered-by info (only 1 person 4 persons deep(probably sufficient) at the moment ) from the JPL SBDB, and am about to run it on all MPs missing "discovered in <year>" and/or "discoveries by <astronomer>" category, and/or their corresponding sortkeys. To this I'm tacking on the WP:NASTRO comment and {{R unprintworthy}} to all MP redirects. Since I haven't received any dissenting arguments against Category:Minor planet redirects since posting this here and on the cat's talk page yet, I would like to include it as well—to passively add this category alongside other corrections, instead of dedicating a run to it, seems like the wisest choice at the moment.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:25, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. You have been doing very well with your category ideas. -- Kheider (talk) 15:36, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

transit of planet1 from planet2

I've just noticed that there are a number of Transit of Planet1 from Planet2 pages that lack citations. If a transit has never been observed from a planet are these phenomena notable? There are important exceptions such as Transit of Phobos from Mars and Transit of Mercury from Mars, but many of the others look like WP:OR that fails to meet the criteria of "significant coverage." My inclination is that these are only notable in cases where observations have been made such as Cassini measurements of the Transit of Venus from Saturn and/or that are discussed at length in reliable sources. Thoughts? --mikeu talk 20:40, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Unless, as you say, specific transits have been viewed (or attempted), these should be deleted. See Transit of Mercury from Venus for how incredibly OR these can be. There is little to no encyclopaedic information on such pages, and what's there could easily be condensed onto one (or two) pages. Primefac (talk) 04:21, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
I agree that if it's never been observed, it doesn't meet our notability guidelines. Such article should be either deleted, unless we can find a suitable redirect for them. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:43, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
I've narrowed it down (slightly) to 21 pages that are all almost carbon-copies of each other (and all of them "unobserved"). If anyone is trying to tag these, please hold off so I can do this properly and get them all in one go.Primefac (talk) 04:59, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Please join in the discussion here. Primefac (talk) 05:23, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Lists of minor planets sortable?

Why aren't lists of minor planets sortable? People may want to see them by date of discovery, discovery site or discoverer. They might also want to refer to the provisional designation numbers. If the lists are sortable, navigation would be easier, wouldn't it? The Average Wikipedian (talk) 15:24, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

The minor planet list is much too long to do that, since it is split over many articles. We'd need to make a new set of lists to do just that. Though since our lists are numerically ordered by minor planet number, we already have a rough idea of when they were discovered, since the numerical ID approximate the order of discovery. -- 70.51.200.135 (talk) 06:57, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
 Done I've changed it, and it doesn't look like I broke anything. It even works on the List of minor planets: 1001–2000 type pages. Thanks for the suggestion. Personally, I'd like to see a 'JPL Link' column, or have it available somewhere on each line, but that's asking a lot more.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  07:21, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Could somebody quickly review the readability of short WP article for a good cause?

Wikiversity:Second Journal of Science is a new type of online journal that aims to produce short articles that are focused at a specific educational level. I am the chief editor, who also happens to teach college astronomy, and have picked an article I like for the journals first issue. If you did not contribute to Astronomical spectroscopy, please look at v:Second Journal of Science/Past issues/004 and leave a brief comment at v:Talk:Second_Journal_of_Science/Past_issues/004. As I explain here, this journal freely discloses that articles extracted from Wikipedia will be assumed factually correct and reviewed wiki wiki, at least until this journal gets off the ground, so I just need a quick "second opinion" regarding the readability of this article at the freshman college level. Thanks much--Guy vandegrift (talk) 05:40, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

This is really out of curiosity more than any sort of hurt that you're choosing to ignore my input, but... why would you not want my input for this simply because I've edited the page? Primefac (talk) 05:47, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
Conflict of interest. I like the Astronomical spectroscopy for its concise pedagogical focus at one educational level. If your edit was minor, go ahead an "referee it", but if you made significant contributions, I need a neutral judge. But I want this journal to eventually grow into an actual refereed journal, and authors cant referee their own work. I started the journal expecting to be the sole referee and editor, but another journal v:Wikiversity Journal of Medicine is really trying to set a precedent that these journals need to be refereed, and I am trying to be a "team player". BTW if you see another science article on WP where you did not contribute, let me know and I will be the "second opinion".
@Primefac: Here is an article you could referee: v:Second_Journal_of_Science/Past_issues/006. It's on Alpha Centauri.--Guy vandegrift (talk) 08:45, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Notice to participants at this page about adminship

Many participants here create a lot of content, have to evaluate whether or not a subject is notable, and much more. Well, these are just some of the considerations at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.

So, please consider taking a look at and watchlisting this page:

You could be very helpful in evaluating potential candidates, and maybe even finding out if you would be a suitable RfA candidate.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:55, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

"First observation of gravitational waves"

First observation of gravitational waves has been proposed to be renamed, see talk:First observation of gravitational waves -- 70.51.200.135 (talk) 06:33, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Preferred sort for Category:Discoveries by PLS

To let Category:Palomar–Leiden survey conform to the Category:Discoveries by institution hierarchy, its contents are being moved (and expanded) into Category:Discoveries by PLS. The sortkey for Category:Palomar–Leiden survey is its preliminary P-L designation, which is removed from the article's title when given a name, and (hopefully) added to/kept in the article text (standard for all MPs, as far as I can tell). The sortkey for all other Category:Discoveries by institution child categories is 0-padded 6-digit (maybe because their survey designations are either hard to find, or complicated).

My question is, do we want to:

  1. Keep the P-L designation sortkey, and, by extension, all other survey-designation sorkeys, or
  2. Replace the P-L designation sortkey with a 0-padded 6-digit (this would affect 99.8% of Category:Palomar–Leiden survey (all but 1))

?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:38, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Just curious, but why not name the category Category:Discoveries by the Palomar–Leiden survey? Seems like it would be easier to visually identify that way. — Huntster (t @ c) 03:22, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
We could. I've held off on editing anything P-L related until/if there's a firm direction here. I/we try to balance complexity, readability, and addability when naming categories. Category:Discoveries by the Palomar–Leiden survey is in the middle, somewhere between Category:Discoveries by the Palomar Observatory and Category:Discoveries by OLS‎, so it can go either way. The ndash is the main issue, since, to add the category properly, it takes the extra steps of looking up which dash-symbol it uses (n, m, or keyboard, minus?), which is a source of error if an editor isn't careful. I would only feel comfortable with a small constellation of category #redirects to Category:Discoveries by the Palomar–Leiden survey to alleviate the possibility of this. If there are bots that move cats from cat-#Rs to their target, great; if not, I prefer Category:Discoveries by PLS.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:49, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
Tom.Reding: Moving items to a new category is easy-peasy with AutoWikiBrowser, so just let me know exactly what you want the name to be, and I'll take care of the moves. I can also move everything out of Category:Palomar–Leiden survey to whatever the target is, easily, if I'm correctly understanding that this is the end goal. As to your original question, if the designation numbers are now static (aka no more are being created, and I assume this is the case since the survey took place in the 1970s), then I see no reason to switch to the 6-digit key...that's only useful if you're trying to future-proof an ever-expanding data set. — Huntster (t @ c) 17:01, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
My concern isn't the initial moves (I've got 1300 lines of code & ~150 custom AWB rules fixing & sorting MP pages). My concern is unnecessary (or easily avoided) category maintenance in the future, since we have yet to categorize all of the P-L objects. Do you know if a bot takes care of cat-#R moves (moving a page from a cat-#R to the target)? I see Category:Main Belt asteroids and the like moved to Category:Main-belt asteroids, but there are no cat-#Rs to the proper name, so this is very likely done due to popular demand, and not universally. I wanted to save some time here, but I'll ask the bot owner too (discussion here).
I agree with point #1 as well.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:33, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm ok with using Category:Discoveries by the Palomar–Leiden survey now, given Russ's response. I'll give a little more time for comments on option #1 vs. #2 before I proceed.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:29, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

With help from Rfassbind, all objects currently associated with the Palomar–Leiden survey cats and the Trojan surveys cats are now sorted into their discovery and/or survey catalog cats. The hierarchy can be seen starting at Category:Asteroid surveys, Category:Astronomical surveys, and Category:Palomar Observatory. I'll continue to search for PL objects as I progress through the MPs, and on pages I've already gone though.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:44, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Very nice job. That's a lot of work, and it looks good. — Huntster (t @ c) 22:04, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Draft:VV 166

Hi all,
This draft is up for speedy deletion, but my guess is that a group of galaxies probably meet the notability guidelines, as they are, well, galaxies and stuff.
Could you possibly have a look into this?
Thanks! Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 08:01, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

There's an old paper here that you could add to an external links section to help establish notability:
  • Kormendy, J.; Sargent, W. L. W. (September 1974), "Tidal effects as criteria for membership in small groups of galaxies − Application to VV 166", Astrophysical Journal, 193 (1): 19−25, Bibcode:1974ApJ...193...19K, doi:10.1086/153122.
Praemonitus (talk) 16:07, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

The link lists at User:Iceblock/Oxford Dictionary of Astronomy and User:Iceblock/Oxford Dictionary of Astronomy/Red links might be of interest to your WikiProject. Iceblock (talk) 21:09, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Do you also have such lists for Wiktionary as well? -- 70.51.200.135 (talk) 01:56, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
@Iceblock: can you copy "User:Iceblock/Oxford Dictionary of Astronomy" to your userspace on Wiktionary? (ie. wikt:en:User:Iceblock/Oxford Dictionary of Astronomy ) -- 70.51.200.135 (talk) 05:04, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
70.51.200.135: wikt:en:User:Iceblock/Oxford Dictionary of Astronomy is now created. Iceblock (talk) 16:44, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
Thank you -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 06:52, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for this. A lot of those red linked entries we do have articles on, just with different titles. I created a handful of redirects, but it would be a huge job to go through the whole list. Modest Genius talk 13:32, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
It looks like some of those could be used to further expand the Glossary of astronomy article. Praemonitus (talk) 17:29, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
We should probably make a glossary page on Wiktionary as well wikt:en:appendix:glossary of astronomy ; we already have a wikt:en:Appendix:List of astronomical terms -- 70.51.200.135 (talk) 05:04, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Spectrohelioscope and spectroheliograph

Would anyone watching this talk page who understands the difference between spectrohelioscope and spectroheliograph be able to check those two pages for accuracy? I think there has been some confusion among the editors who created and edited these articles - see also my edit here and Talk:Spectrohelioscope. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 23:48, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Opinions sought: appropriate material to include in an article about an amateur astronomical society

The article on the Astronomical Society of New South Wales has recently been heavily edited by @Arianewiki1:, who says that the material violates NPOV. But I struggle to see how an edit like this one is constructive, because it removed nearly the entire section of material that was supported by independent references, and left an un-referenced stub in its place. At the moment, there is discussion about whether notable members' achievements should be included in the article. Rather than engaging in a two-person debate, if anybody can lend an experienced, independent view then please comment at Talk:Astronomical Society of New South Wales#NPOV and Self Promotional Material Issues.--Gronk Oz (talk) 16:39, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Do we need a stub for every NGC object?

OwenJiang's contributions

Only another 7,000 or so to go, which might take a while at this rate. Lithopsian (talk) 15:34, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

This duplicates a discussion at WT:ASTRO, FYI. Primefac (talk) 16:05, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
Creating a bunch of low value stubs doesn't seem beneficial. I'd prefer to see more quality than quantity. Praemonitus (talk) 17:35, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
Clearly not. WP:NASTRO applies - they need significant study in reliable sources, not merely being listed in the NGC. Modest Genius talk 18:08, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
Having the data on Wikidata might be more useful, then in the future we could perhaps have Wikidata-driven article placeholders. Pinging @OwenJiang to alert them of this conversation. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:18, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
WP:NASTRO Criteria #2 pretty much states that all NGC are notable as they are part of a catalog of interest to amateur astronomers or a catalog of high historical importance. -- Kheider (talk) 18:50, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
So it does. I was aware of that section, but thought that the example given was the Messier catalogue, not NGC. I question whether the NGC, with thousands of entries, is really of suitable interest to be included under that criterion, which may need to be rewritten. Modest Genius talk 11:47, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
The section you quote states that they are probably notable. It appears to be more of a guideline than a definitive criteria. You still need to satisfy WP:GNG. What I'm finding is that around 10% of them have been the subject of an individual study, while the majority are either in group studies or mentioned as a comparison. But there are some that have virtually no information available published in the Google scholar lookup. Praemonitus (talk) 20:19, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
As far as I'm concerned, they're all notable. But that doesn't mean the each need individual articles, if it's just listing basic info we have lists for that. I'll point out that the mass-creation of stubs and such is still governed by WP:MASSCREATION. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:03, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
Okay, here's a possible test case for lack of potential NGC notability that I ran across today: "NGC 4524". There is a NED page, but most of the other sources I checked were just general catalogues. There was a brief mention in a couple of web sites, but not what I'd call substantial information. It's borderline non-notable. Praemonitus (talk) 18:05, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
I too have been unable to find any substantive coverage in published sources, just entries in catalogues or inclusion in large surveys of objects (mostly on the Tully-Fisher relation). I searched on NED, SIMBAD, ADS and Google. Appears non-notable to me, so something for a list rather than a full article. Modest Genius talk 11:24, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
The next object I encountered like that was "NGC 4582". That has been a fairly typical rate up to this point. So... perhaps a ~2% non-notability rate for higher numbered NGC objects? Praemonitus (talk) 18:07, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Shortlist of minor planet redirect candidates

I made a list page of 376 candidates (for now) at User:Tom.Reding/Shortlist of minor planet redirect candidates, so we're all on the same page (figuratively & literally), and so we're not doing more work than is needed. Now, have at it!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  07:55, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

If anyone sees some borderline cases, feel free to add them.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  08:05, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Only ~58 "unchecked" candidates remaining!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:10, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I noticed that Template:Infobox zodiac carries the banner of a sub-project of this project, so I want to notify the group that I'm making improvements to that infobox so it will issue correct dates of passage of the Sun from one zodiac sign (not constellation) to another. The current Template:zodiac date will be replaced with Module:zodiac date.

The old Template:zodiac date contained equations which tried to predict the crossing dates, and I identified a number of instances where these equations were giving incorrect dates. So I interpolated the apparent geocentric ecliptic longitude of the Sun using a computer almanac from the U.S. Naval Observatory to find the crossing dates, then encapsulated the results in a Lua table. The new version will provide results traceable to a reliable source through most of 2050. Since the only articles calling this infobox are mostly about astrology, I have started a discussion of the change at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astrology. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:54, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

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There are up to 30 one-year ASP accounts available to Wikipedians through this partnership. To apply for free access, please go to WP:ASP. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 07:06, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Acronym: ppm

Hello. The article on the space observatory CHEOPS#Goals uses the units ppm in a context unfamiliar to me (I am a biologist), and it does not have an inline reference. I want to clarify the meaning of this unit by adding its meaning within parenthesis or adding a Wikilink to the appropriate article. Is it "parts per million" (parts of what?); is it "Positions and Proper Motions"? Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 14:58, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

The statements require a citation to a reliable source. I believe the ppm refers to parts per million, that is, while a planet is transiting a distant star, the brightness of the star detected at earth would be tens or hundreds of parts per million below the brightness of the star when no transit is in progress. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:23, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
It comes from http://cheops.unibe.ch/cheops-mission/executive-summary/. Ppm might also refer to photons per minute, but I'm not sure. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:30, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Parts per million, according to arXiv:1305.2270. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:35, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Possible WP:SYNTH at astrophysical jet

An ip user has adding material to astrophysical jet on the jet of a specific object that (at least superficially to me) appears to be original synthesis. The eyes of somebody more familiar with the subject area would be very useful. TR 07:53, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Whoever it is, appears to have been at it since January 2016, and is a NYC Verizon Fios customer -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 08:09, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Infobox planet

You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Infobox planet. There are two discussions about adding parameters to {{Infobox planet}}, a template that is within the scope of this WikiProject. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:33, 25 March 2016 (UTC) --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:33, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

FYI, we need more than 1 yes-vote (other than myself) to add |mean_motion= and/or |tisserand= to {{Infobox planet}}. Please & thank you!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:32, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

BOSS Great Wall

This is a recent discovery, two months ago. Its paper is comprehensive, but the article is poorly written. Need help on improving it; it would be highly appreciated. SkyFlubbler (talk) 03:21, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

"Stars of ..." and "... constellation" templates

This template, which is almost ubiquitous in star articles, automatically provides a list of star-type objects by constellation. There is a category with most (possibly all) of them. However, it appears to come in two different flavours. The ones labelled "Stars of ..." (the visible title of the infobox, not the template name) includes only stars, with Orion as an example. Essentially all of the objects listed in the template include the template in their article. The other flavour is "... constellation", with Andromeda as an example. This second type additionally lists non-stellar objects (hence the title change?) such as nebulae, clusters, and galaxies, and most constellation templates now seem to be of this form. The problem I see is that the majority of non-stellar objects listed in this template do not include the template. Also, they tend to have additional templates such as NGC objects (not that I like that template very much). So, where is all this going and should I be slapping this template onto every galaxy and supernova article I see? Lithopsian (talk) 13:31, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Good question. The cross-navigating might be helpful (i.e. so one could jump from, say, Alpha Apodis to S Apodis or something....I have no strong opinion either way. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:01, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I believe it's possible to have Navboxes of nested Navboxes, so they can be divvied up then collated in the higher level Constellation Navboxes. Praemonitus (talk) 21:17, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
    • If you specify the first unnamed parameter to be "child", you can make a navbox into a child navbox inside a navbox. This would mean modifying the "stars of..." templates to accept a child-mode specifying parameter, and adding a parameter to its call of {{navbox}} -- 70.51.45.100 (talk) 04:46, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Radiation laws - template

Are there anyone here who wants to make a navigational template out of Draft:Radiation laws or find an existing template that fits? Or do you have other ideas about this page or what should be done? :-) Iceblock (talk) 22:26, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

What kind of radiation is this supposed to cover? It can't be called unspecified "radiation" since that's overly broad for a navtemplate with the content of the dab page. -- 70.51.45.100 (talk) 04:44, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
In physics, "radiation law" refers to the set of blackbody radiation laws: Rayleigh-Jean, Wien, Planck, and Stefan-Boltzmann. Here is a undergraduate astrophysics text that discusses these. Kirchoff's law is also sometimes in the group. --Mark viking (talk) 16:01, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
That would be {{blackbody radiation laws}} if we were to create such a template, instead of a more general template on various laws of radiation (like Snell's Law, the inverse-square law for radiation propagation, etc.) As a nav template, it can list subconcepts and overarching concepts. -- 70.51.45.100 (talk) 05:26, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

"Mercury"

The usage and primary topic of "Mercury" is under discussion, see Talk:Mercury (planet) -- 70.51.45.100 (talk) 05:05, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Looks like of no action is taken most Exoplanet articles WILL BE DELETED!

This is sort of a panic post as I am getting a lot of pings and I'm still not 100% what is going on here but I want to inform everyone in WP:AST to deal with this because I can't deal with all this by myself. Several exoplanet related articles have been up for deletion because the only reason why these articles exist is because they assume that some exoplanets are potentially habitable (imo the key word that these editors missed is potentially), apparently @I9Q79oL78KiL0QTFHgyc: (who often signes as jps) believes that this falls into WP:OR and has been going around removing tables and opening AfD's such as:

I'm concerned that this could go around to deleting pages regarding actual exoplanets which it probably has, but I want to know if this is ok and its just me freaking out about these proposed deletions? To me these proposed deletions seem obscene. Davidbuddy9 Talk  02:32, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

EDIT: User:I9Q79oL78KiL0QTFHgyc has removed citations from PHL/HEC calling them OR and then opening an AfD which I find interesting. Also this user claims that "This ESI score is based on original research and does not belong in Wikipedia." On the Template:ESIScore TfD found here Davidbuddy9 Talk  02:40, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

There's also another template up for deletion with {{HabPlanetScore}} ; and {{ESIScore}} needs fixing up, since its missing categorization and documentation -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 04:00, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

@70.51.46.39: I have no idea how colourizing numbers from 0 to 1, red to green needs a peer reviewed source. I attempted to revert this user's edits on Earth Similarity Index which was reverted instantly. Davidbuddy9 Talk  05:38, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
To claim that most Exoplanet articles will be deleted is hyperbole to the extreme. exoplanet, astrobiology, habitable zone, list of exoplanets, etc. etc., etc. are all better and more appropriate articles.
The big problem is the uncritical use of the ESI score, an idea that is not cited in WP:MAINSTREAM academic literature. This means that its notability is derived from its mention in the popular press. The fact that there is a self-published website is not good enough to justify using such a page as a sole resource at Wikipedia. We have guidelines that explicitly warn us about this.
jps (talk) 05:30, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
@I9Q79oL78KiL0QTFHgyc: So your trying to say that we should not use the ESI Scores from PHL/HEC? Yes or No? Davidbuddy9 Talk  06:04, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Not unless one other source has noticed them. Otherwise it is self-published and Wikipedia is acting as a legitimizer. There are other sources which identify the ESI of something or another, but none of them are academic sources and it will have to convert into a piece about how this index has been used in the popularization of science rather than science itself. jps (talk) 06:07, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

First of all, Davidbuddy9, calm down. Even if the articles are deleted, many admins will be happy to email you their contents or restore them to your userspace so you can either work on establishing notability or incorporate the information elsewhere. This isn't as time-sensitive as you seem to think - none of this information will be imminently destroyed. With that out of the way, I will say that when I poked around exoplanet articles months ago, I was somewhat concerned with the focus on ESI scores. If it is true that ESI scores are not referenced by any academic sources besides PHL (a big if!), then I think their prominence in existing articles and the creation of articles based only on high ESI scores should be reevaluated. I am not necessarily in support of eliminating ESI scores from Wikipedia entirely, but I do think they are currently being given undue weight if it is, in fact, true that they have not been picked up by any other academic sources. A2soup (talk) 00:54, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't think the main problem has been addressed here, and it is probably better to get it out in the open that to fight proxy wars over individual articles. There appears to be an implicit assumption that an exoplanet is notable simply by existing. That is clearly untenable and perhaps some effort should be directed towards agreeing criteria for what makes an exoplanet notable. Then we can produce useful articles about those, without edit wars and AfDs, rather than creating hundreds and then thousands of stubs that will never be expanded, Lithopsian (talk) 18:51, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
@A2soup: This is why there are 2 RfC's open below this section, it is best to discuss there to help us go somewhere rather than running around deleting tables, articles, and major sections of articles and claiming that the new "updated" versions of these articles have been "vetted by experts". But I do feel that many exoplanet articles are indeed somewhat notable to a certain extent. I feel that this proposal by @Lithopsian: could turn out for the worse for the reader. Rather than starting new proxy wars deal with the ones that are open right now and take action on them, and please comment on those RfC's really because that is where this conversation should be taken place. Davidbuddy9 Talk  03:51, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

@Lithopsian:: The question as to exoplanet notability is a good one. Right now, we're struggling with trying to determine the notability of candidate exoplanets. I think, for the most part, almost every KOI that hasn't had a significant number of papers written explicitly about it should be considered not notable. jps (talk) 10:37, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

KOI deletion discussions

In principle, certain KOIs may be notable if, for example, many papers have been written about them or there is some sort of WP:GNG-related sources. However, I think for the most part they all fail WP:NASTRO. To that end, I have started the following deletion discussions:

jps (talk) 12:13, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Note also previous discussions:

Sockpuppetry

Hello,

After reviewing a sockpuppetry case, it has been found that QuentinQuade is a sockpuppet of Davidbuddy9. The open community discussions have been corrected to remove duplicate votes. However, one of the articles that Davidbuddy9 has edited was reviewed as a good article by QuentinQuade. (Please see here.) I'd greatly appreciate if someone could review this article to ensure that it does meet the requirements of a good article. Best, Mike V • Talk 19:06, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

That's a shame. I will have some of the exoplanets experts I know review the article and see what they think. jps (talk) 19:15, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, very much appreciated. Mike V • Talk 19:19, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
@Mike V: The article starts out well enough, but the existence of this planet is disputed and it may very well not exist. The latter sections of the article all act as though it really does exist, and discussions of the habitability of a likely non-existent planet are really not very encyclopedic. I would not say it is a "good" article for this reason. Discussions of "physical characteristics" and especially "habitability" need to be downplayed in the context of the dispute or possibly removed entirely just to conform with WP:NPOV.
Not knowing how to proceed when a GA has been done by a sockpuppet, I leave it to the admin to decide what to do with this information.
jps (talk) 04:15, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
I've removed the GA tag, given your hesitations and the fact that it really should be formally reviewed by a separate party. Mike V • Talk 00:36, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
I've removed the review template from the article talk page, and I've tagged the bogus review-page for speedy deletion. Alsee (talk) 02:24, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Category:Numbered asteroids -> Category:Numbered minor planets

As pointed out to me, Category:Numbered asteroids isn't the most aptly-named category. I'll migrate it to Category:Numbered minor planet articles Category:Numbered minor planets later today or later if no objections.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:49, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be Category:Numbered minor planets? If you include "articles", it becomes a meta category. Does this mean you intend on getting rid of the parent "Category:Asteroids" as well, or will you simply move "Category:Numbered minor planets" up one parent to "Category:Minor planets"? — Huntster (t @ c) 18:10, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
About 3 months ago when I solicited for maintenance on Category:Numbered asteroids, the consensus was to only include MPs articles, no #redirects, in that category. That restriction is already mentioned in the category description, so including "articles" at the end would make it more self-explanatory, but also a bit redundant. And now that you mention it, I vaguely recall reading a WP policy that advises against the use of meta categories, but I'd have to look around for it. If you can point it out that would be helpful too.
Either way, I agree that Category:Numbered minor planets (or Category:Numbered minor planet articles) would be better placed 1 category higher.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:38, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
I don't recall the policy/guideline/whatever, but no, meta categories should not be used like this. Metas are typically maintenance or otherwise non-encyclopedic categories. — Huntster (t @ c) 19:42, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
I thought we agreed to rename Category:Numbered asteroids to something like "Category:Numbered minor planet articles"? Now I see that it has already been moved to Numbered minor planets, triggering tons of category moves in minor planet articles. Why? Because of being a meta-cat like Category:Minor planet redirects? Why were these changes so urgently made, just 1 day after the original proposal? This is all rather disturbing. Rfassbind – talk 15:11, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
All articles have been moved from the old category to the new, so there is no more maintenance required. I think we all agree that it is an uncontroversial improvement (since the cat contains objects like 1 Ceres).
Category:Minor planet redirects is indeed a meta-category, and as such it resides outside of the Category:Minor planets hierarchy (I unwittingly tried to bring it into that hierarchy when I first encounted it, but was quickly reminded by admins not to do so). Instead, Category:Minor planet redirects resides under Category:Main namespace redirects. I (nor you, I think) did not want to make such a large change to Category:Numbered minor planets—i.e. to rename it to a category which would then remove it from the Category:Minor planets hierarchy. If that is desired, however, it certainly warrants a much longer review period, and a much more comprehensive discussion of our category structure.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:23, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
Yes, it needs a comprehensive discussion of wiki's category structure, since its "asteroid-vs-minor planet" legacy is still significant. If a problem can't be solved, enlarge it. The renamed category is unpractical (size) and still inadequate based on previous decisions (i.e. to use it exclusively for articles, not for redirects, from which it was removed). Rfassbind – talk 09:10, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
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