Wikipedia talk:Notability (astronomical objects)

Chrisrus

I see Chrisrus is up to his Wikipedia:I just don't like it using User:Anomie/Asteroid list. He made a wiki request for tagging. (See also: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomical_objects/Archive_21#Step_TWO and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Archive 22#Straw poll: Automated stub redirection.) He simply has an agenda to remove as many asteroid-stubs as he can. Asteroids numbered below ~2000 should not be aggressively targeted since they are fairly large and easily observed by amateurs with small telescopes. Make a honest guide and there will always be someone in the group that will try to take advantage of it. -- Kheider (talk) 08:37, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping up with him. I think with any guideline, there will be those who abuse its recommendations, as you said. I think we'll just have to take Chrisrus on a case by case basis unless he does something extremely disruptive, in which case administrator help may be warranted. AstroCog (talk) 12:24, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

It seems to be a fact of life on Wikipedia that there are a number of people performing fussy activities that aren't particularly beneficial for either the readers or the editors. I see that type of behavior almost every day; just witness all the recent fuss about astronomy category name changes. But one could argue that having so many minor planet articles makes consistent maintenance all but impossible. It is very easy for a vandal to make a modification to a stub page that may not be caught for years. In the overall scheme of things on Wikipedia, I've reached the perspective that it is better to focus on quality rather than quantity. Having 500 high quality asteroid pages is better than having 500,000 uninformative stubs. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:41, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Mass redirects

The primary list of the 4862 minor planets being considered for re-direction to generic Wikipedia lists is located at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Astronomy/Candidates for redirection new and is currently being discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects/Archive 22#Feedback requested for Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 50. -- Kheider (talk) 16:44, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

List of minor planets

Talk:List of minor planets#Delete? Chrisrus is forum shopping. -- Kheider (talk) 16:23, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

NASTRO possible failures

I see that there is an ongoing effort at deleting several articles about stars. While I agree an article containing just a star location and spectral type (for example) can be safely deleted, it seems that NASTRO allows failures like allowing for the deletion of objects like (for example) HD 142093 or Gliese 146. Both articles contain reasonably encyclopedic information about the object which is well sourced and unlikely to be controversial. Not all of this information cannot be brought to a suitable merge target, as far as I can see, thus failing somehow WP:PRESERVE.

The point is that it seems, judging from the above, that WP:NASTRO allows for deletions which are not in the interest of the readers or the encyclopedia. The articles there discussed are not mere catalogue entries: they contain encyclopedic,accurate and neutral information, and cannot be easily merged: there is no way therefore removing them actually helps readers, and it is clearly encyclopedic information. I am especially worried by this wording in the guideline:

unlike Earth-based geographic features, arbitrary astronomical objects are unlikely to be visited or run across by a general reader of Wikipedia. Therefore, unless an astronomical object has significant coverage in the media or published sources, the likelihood that a general reader would choose to search Wikipedia for an arbitrary astronomical object is quite low. This is not a matter of dubious predictions; it is just common sense.

This seems an exceptionally poor criterion for notability. The likelihood that I'll walk in the neighbourhood of Gliese 146 is zero: so is the one that I will pet a Velociraptor. It is actually a dubious prediction that I will not choose to search WP for some of these objects: for example I may want to parse categories of solar twins, or of fast-proper motion stars, to look around. This is not as far-fetched as someone apparently thinks. But even if such occurrence is very low, still is a disservice to the few readers that could be interested, and it carries no obvious contrasting benefit.

Again, just to be clear: I agree many articles about stars or other objects (e.g. minor planets) contain little information and can thus be merged in appropriate lists or linking to the appropriate catalogue. But some, even if they have never been the subject of a full paper, have enough information from academic literature to build a meaningful article. I think we should think about what to do with these articles, and possibly amend the guideline. --cyclopia^speak! 09:54, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I think that the two stars you mention plainly fail WP:GNG, particularly the significant coverage component of it. They are only interesting because they are in a class of objects (nearby late-type main sequence stars) that is interesting for habitable planet searches. Therefore, their content should either be deleted or merged to a list of stars in that class. Thus, I see no problem with the astronomical object notability guideline. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 10:47, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

My point is that instead of following guidelines robotically we should think about our readership, and how these actions help actually readers of the encyclopedia and/or the encyclopedia itself. The sources are enough to avoid WP:OR, there are not WP:NPOV concerns, so meaningful articles can be built. I fail to see the advantage in such deletions. --cyclopia^speak! 10:49, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

But WP:OR and WP:NPOV aren't in dispute here. This is about notability. Something has to be notable to merit its own Wikipedia article, and these stars aren't notable (as defined by the sensible Wikipedia policy). —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 11:00, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Sensible wikipedia guideline, not policy. Which is prefaced by this text: it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply.. As all guidelines, it makes sense to apply it, in general, iff it helps the encyclopedia and our readers. It usually does, for the reasons explained at WP:WHYN. The issue here is that basically all points covered by WP:WHYN are met by the articles above. Thus, a normally sensible guideline seems to fail for some edge cases -and it's fine, one cannot think of all possible cases when drafting a guideline. It seems thus that either WP:NASTRO needs amend, or some explanation must be had of what is the help to our readers and the encyclopedia in removing these articles.--cyclopia^speak! 11:05, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I am applying common sense. If there is no reliable source that focuses on an object, that object is not notable. I think that any other standard is unreasonable. I also see no reason to make an exception for the particular stars in question here. Please point to a reliable source that suggests notability. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 11:15, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Repeating "it's not notable" is not really an argument. Can you explain how removing these articles helps our readers? That's the point. --cyclopia^speak! 11:19, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me that you're suggesting that topics which have no established notability should be included in Wikipedia; if so, that's a fairly radical change to practice which would require a much wider discussion. Having articles which essentially parrot SIMBAD for every nearby star fragments editor attention and makes useful information harder for readers to find.

I don't generally like slippery slope arguments, but one does apply here. If we make up a guideline that doesn't use reliable sources to establish notability, where does it stop? I think we all agree that we don't need an article for every star that's in a table in some paper, and I think both WP:ANOT and WP:GNG represent good thought and consensus about the kinds of topics that are useful to readers to have their own articles, and I think that logic applies well to the particular stars we're discussing here.

Again, I think merging the content into a single list of nearby stars would be useful, and there's no reason not to keep the star page as a redirect. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 11:46, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Sigh. I must have a weird curse that makes it impossible for me to explain myself clearly.

I stated above that,generally speaking, notability guidelines make sense for the reasons at WP:WHYN. I also stated very clearly in my first post that articles which just parrot catalogues are not worth of keeping. I am speaking of a different kind of beast, namely objects where one can build an informative article well beyond a simple catalogue entry, due to multiple studies, reported in reliable sources (peer-reviewed papers, for example) having determined things about them, and that fulfill the motivations behind our notability guidelines. What makes it hard to keep these articles is the fact that, in these specific cases, the guidelines seem to be at odds with their own stated goals, and the general goal of helping the encyclopedia. Is it clearer now? --cyclopia^speak! 12:24, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

The two stars you mentioned (particularly Gliese 146) are lacking sources that allow building an article beyond a simple catalog entry. If sources existed, they would meet point 3 of the astronomical object notability criteria. So I remain unclear how the guideline fails. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 12:51, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

It is obvious that this user is just arguing from religious devotion to inclusionism. They clearly haven't investigated the cited "sources" for Gliese 146, otherwise they would realize the sources are superficial websites that parrot each other and provide no substantial coverage. Gliese 146 wouldn't even pass WP:GNG, so complaining about the "failure" of NASTRO is not just beside the point, it's light years away from it. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 12:59, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Please remember to assume good faith, I have no religious devotion whatsoever, and while I happily call myself an inclusionist, my argument is no more "religious devotion" to it than yours is religious devotion to deletionism. If it were so, I would go around challenging every notability guideline. I don't.

Now, the issue is that for example, for Gliese 146, we are able to say this:

Its speed relative to the sun is 38.1 km/second, and its galactic orbit ranges between 20,800 and 25,400 light years form the center of the Galaxy.[1] Its a suspected variable star.[3][4] It belongs to the Hyades supercluster of stars[7] It is one of 155 K type stars within 50 light years.[6] It is one of 500 stars selected for the SCUBA-2 All Sky Survey for stars with debris disks.[8]

This is much more than a simple location-and-spectral type one-sentence kind of entry. It seems to me perfectly decent, good and reliable coverage. Even if no single source devotes itself to the star only, we can build a reasonable entry from lots of reliable, neutral sources. To meet conditions to do this is the purpose of notability guidelines, and this purpose is met, even if the technicality is not. Removing these articles seems to be of no help to either readers or the encyclopedia. That's why I call it a failure of NASTRO (or even of GNG, if you may wish so). --cyclopia^speak! 13:13, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I apologize for my unwarranted assumption. I do appreciate your passion for having useful information on Wikipedia. None of us would be here if we didn't share that passion. We spent many months debating WP:NASTRO and carefully writing it. The purpose of NASTRO as an accepted guideline is to provide a tool to evaluate articles for inclusion related to astronomical objects - I'll briefly summarize the main rationale for not including every object in Wikipedia: doing so doesn't increase the usefulness of the encyclopedia, it actually decreases it. Too many insubstantial stubs dilutes the overall useful information. Far more useful is to gather the trivial data and parameters for non- or marginally-notable objects into list articles, which WP:NASTRO clearly encourages instead of deleting the information. Everything in your quote box above could be placed into a table on a list article with greater utility than a stand-alone stub. A reader, either amateur or professional, would benefit more from having a table of data for grouped similar objects than from having to hunt around individual stubs. Many of these cases at AfD end in merging to lists, and not pure deletion. AfD is just the standard way of going about this process currently. I encourage you to carefully read WP:NASTRO, its adoption thread (from the talk page), and especially this page: arguments to avoid in deletion debates. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 13:34, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate your answer. What you said makes a lot of sense in general, and I agree in general (I am also very well aware of WP:AADD, I participate in AfD since a long time). My issue is: some of that information doesn't appear to be easily mergeable in a list. If this is indeed possible and there are suitable merge targets, this is perfectly satisfying: I do not care so much about the individual article, but of having the information available somewhere. But in this case WP:AFD is not required: all the nominators should do is simply merge and redirect, which does not require deletion. And I would appreciate if possible merge targets are given explicitly. Does this make sense? --cyclopia^speak! 18:09, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I am agreeing with Astrocog to some extent, but with the variation that the merge may not just be to a list article, but may also be to a section in an article about a category of objects. Many of these stars may have a bit more to say than makes sense in a table. A box in a table with a paragraph of text is not as good as just a paragraph of text. However I do agree with Cyclopia that too much content is just being deleted without being merged. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:30, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I think merging to a list is probably the best idea in this scenario. As has been explained by ASHill and AstroCog above, these stars do not pass WP:GNG, much less WP:NASTRO (and if you look, you'll notice that I have withdrawn all my nominations of stars which have been demonstrated to meet the GNG). Anyways, I would support a list much in the style of the minor planet lists, such as "List of stars within 26–30 light-years of the solar system". However, I currently do not have the time to compile such a list due to real-life and other on-wiki commitments. If consensus goes that we should create these lists, I'd be happy to help in the writing as much as I can. However, for now, these stars do not pass either the GNG or NASTRO, and thus have to go. There's no reason to make an exception for these stars, anymore than there is for some random star that doesn't have an article yet. StringTheory11 (t • c) 21:14, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

We already have lists of stars by IAU constellation. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 04:47, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

The merging suggestion in a list as the one above is excellent. However the current approach seems backwards: However, for now, these stars do not pass either the GNG or NASTRO, and thus have to go. There's no reason to make an exception for these stars. This "shooting first, merging later" approach makes it harder to recover the information for the list by deleting stuff and then having to painstakingly ask for userfying/sending copies of deleted articles to recreate the list. Would a 1-2 weeks moratorium of nominations until a list is set up be an idea? I am happy to collaborate in starting such lists as soon as possible, asking to relevant wikiprojects for help (even if I created/edited some astronomy articles, I'd prefer to have some expert input on this). At that point, I could also help in the cleanup by simply redirecting and merging, without even passing through AFD, I suppose (in case the star is notable, the redirect can easily be reverted). It seems this makes everyone happy: no more non-notable articles, all information happily preserved. --cyclopia^speak! 17:58, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Don't get too worried about making a new list after deletion, just remember the names of the articles and I will assist when anyone is ready. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:26, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

"Too many insubstantial stubs dilutes the overall useful information" This is exactly where I disagree. I mean not with what you say of course, but whether it applies here. In most areas of wikipedia yes, that would be true, but here, the only way that any reader is going to come across e.g. a separate article on Gliese 146 is because they are interested in that particular star.

Can you think of any way that extra individual star articles dilute the overall useful information in other articles in wikipedia for the readers?

The problem with merging is that you can't merge all the information about all the stars in your list. You can't do a star box for every star in the list for instance.

E.g. almost all the information about Gliese 146 would be left out in a merge - its exact spectral type, constellation, apparent magnitude, that it's a suspected variable star, that it belongs to the Hyades supercluster, its alternate names, details of its galactic orbit and motion relative to the sun, and so on.

It would completely overburden any list to put all the information from the individual star articles into one huge list of say 100 stars or whatever. Also the same star may appear in several different lists, and if you attempt to include this information in any lists that mention that star, that means a lot of repetition.

It is much more straightforward, to avoid burdening any long list with unnecessary information to have separate articles for each star - for ones that are near enough to have information about them available in dozens of different surveys. So e.g. for my idea of a list of all the nearby orange dwarfs within 50 light years, the list would just give its distance from the sun and its apparent magnitude perhaps, and say of each one whether it has planets detected yet, or debris disks, and then link to the stars individually for more information.

As Cyclopia said, deleting these individual star articles, as far as I can see doesn't benefit the reader of wikipedia in any way at all. They don't dilute the searches since you have to search specifically for the individual star to find its article. I think those are all great points. While at the same time totally agreeing that if someone adds an entry for an insignificant tenth magnitude star chosen at random from SIMBAD, then this serves no value at all in wikipedia, as we are not trying to build a star catalogue. There seem to be occasional users who do that, and their star articles are rightly deleted, but many of the star articles are contributed by users who have chosen the star for the article because they consider the star to be interesting, e.g. in an interesting class of nearby stars, even though it doesn't have a paper devoted to it. And that's not OR since it is simply collating together material from many different online sources to provide the star article.

In short, for nearby stars with a lot of information available about them, then to avoid overburdening the reader, I think putting that into separate star articles is a better way to organize the material than to attempt to put it all into one big article. It's not to do with an attempt to confer notability on the star. It is just to do with a better way to organize the material. Robert Walker (talk) 16:04, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the spirit of User:Robertinventor above, however for the sake of a compromise I think that a list-merge is fine iff there is a, say, "Notes" or "Features" entry where one can put all the published non-standard information about each object. --cyclopia^speak! 16:55, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, User:Cyclopia but am not sure that compromise solution would work. Would you have a lot of sections with headers, like the individual star pages and edit each section just as at present people edit the individual star articles?

What about the references and external links, do you put them all at the end of the whole page - or put them at the end of each section? Makes more sense if the references are about that individual star to put the references at the end of the section for that star rather than have a list for the whole page, so end up with a page with lots of distinct reference lists in it. Same also for the external links, to have a list of all the relevant external links for all the stars on the page at the end of the page, can't see that working, so they also would be separate for each section in the merged list.

Also, if the same star is in several different lists, e.g. Gliese 146 would be in a list of the nearby K type stars (K stars between 40 and 50 light years, GL146 is in the list), but would also be in a list of the members of the Hyades supercluster, if someone decided to put a list like this one into wikipedia Hyades supercluster (Gliese 146 is the entry HD 22496]. A star might easily end up in two or more lists like this.

Also many of the stars in the lists may have separate star articles already, because someone has written a paper about them as individual stars, so presumably your notes page wouldn't duplicate that material and would only list the stars that don't have articles yet. Then as time goes on you would be continually moving stars off your list into separate star articles as papers are written about them, or as planets are discovered in the case of the nearby orange dwarfs. Many of them will probably eventually be found to have planets.

It just seems a bit unwieldy, and I don't see why it is better to do things this way. It is for simplicity really, seems simpler and a better way to organize the material to have separate articles for each star even though the individual articles would be rather short.

What do you think about these points? Does what I say here make sense? Robert Walker (talk) 19:47, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Your points make sense -having an article would be easier and clearer indeed. Let's see what the others above think.--cyclopia^speak! 19:57, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Merging to appropriate lists is the way to go, if preserving the information is wanted. It doesn't matter if there is more than one list, e.g. "List of nearby stars..." and "List of solar analogs..." that have the same objects on them. If you, or other editors, are so interested in these objects, then compile the lists the verifiable data that exists. I do not agree that creating new, or keeping existing, articles for non-notable objects is necessary. I am not particularly convinced all this data needs to be culled in lists, though. As well, an inconsequential stub doesn't help anybody - the random person who does happen to look for information on a non-notable star is likely a professional, or an advanced amateur astronomer - in that case they have other, better databases to consult. From NASTRO: "It is not the job of Wikipedia to needlessly duplicate content in these databases." I have seen no compelling case that stars such as Gliese 146 merit a pass by the general notability guideline. Arguing that stars with no substantial individual coverage merit individual articles, because they belong to an interesting class, or because they are within some arbitrary distance, goes against one of the foundational principles of NASTRO: notability is not inherited. Just because a few users like these stars, doesn't mean we should make a mockery of the community's notability guideline with arbitrary special cases. The "unwieldy" scenario in which individual articles are created as significant coverage is made of individual objects is exactly what should be happening. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 20:23, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I agree with StringTheory11, Graeme Bartlett, et al that these should be deleted and merged into a list article (in case it wasn't clear above). As noted repeatedly, they plainly don't meet the notability criteria which are well established, project-wide, for good reason. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collector of information, and all the data about these stars that users note is important is better suited to true astronomical databases like SIMBAD, unless reliable sources indicate that there's something interesting about a particular star. We can't synthesise or determine importance ourselves when no reliable source does. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 20:36, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)There is a misunderstanding here. We're not arguing that the stars pass GNG or NASTRO in their current form. We are arguing that guidelines should be fixed so that they do. We're talking exactly of cases where there is more than mere database duplication, but where the information is fragmented among many studies and sources instead of having a single source full deep coverage. I agree we should not start from arguments of intrinsic notability (even if NASTRO explicitly allows it for many objects, e.g. naked-eye objects! so it's hardly a "foundational principle"). We should instead start from what is the real foundational principle of notability: Notability is a set of conditions that allow the topic to develop into an article (see WP:WHYN). In this case we have, given the particular nature of the topic, the capability to realize such articles even in cases that are accidentally excluded by the guidelines. Thus the guidelines need rethinking.

Also please don't make assumptions about readership as in As well, an inconsequential stub doesn't help anybody - the random person who does happen to look for information on a non-notable star is likely a professional, or an advanced amateur astronomer - in that case they have other, better databases to consult. - That a stub doesn't help us doesn't mean it doesn't help anybody -this is hardly a provable assumption. We do not have to care about who is likely to look for the article or not, and where they tend to hang around. Wikipedia is there to provide information, not to worry about who and how will look for it. The point is not that I like articles on stars, or that we have to serve the amateur astronomer community. The point is that these articles meet the spirit of under our concept of notability, are of service (at least potentially) to readers, and as such should be merged or kept. That guidelines disallow that means that guidelines have to be fixed, or that at least a solution to fully preserve the information has to be found. --cyclopia^speak! 20:43, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

There's no misunderstanding here. I see what is being proposed, and I don't agree with it. You referenced WP:WHYN to support your argument, but failed to see that every line of it is an argument against your proposal. Notability guidelines are not "a set of conditions that allow the topic to develop into an article". They are a set of minimum of conditions that provide for topics that can be developed into an article, and do not provide for topics that cannot. Your proposal to water down NASTRO so that it will include these inconsequential objects in individual articles goes against the consensus of many months of debate on NASTRO, and the subsequent debate on its adoption as a guideline. The community decided to explicitly exclude the creation, or maintenance, of individual articles for astronomical objects which cannot be developed beyond a stub. There's not many ways for editors to know which articles can be developed beyond a stub, but the best way is to judge the individual coverage in 3rd party sources. None of the objects we're discussing here have significant coverage. If they did, they would meet the common sense criteria of NASTRO. The objects at the heart of this current discussion don't meet the "spirit" of WP:WHYN, or WP:GNG, or NASTRO.

As an aside, I'll briefly defend NASTRO criteria #1, which was attacked above. Of the roughly 10,000 (my order of magnitude estimate) objects visible to the naked eye, probably a small fraction have individual articles. NASTRO grandfathers these objects in for article inclusion, because an article for an object that is visible to the naked eye (brighter than, say, 5 or 6 apparent magnitude) likely can be developed beyond a stub article. Criteria #1 is hardly an arbitrary cutoff - indeed, the set includes the objects most likely to have significant coverage in independent sources. If an object in that list doesn't have the necessary sourcing, we could have a common sense discussion on whether to create a stub for it (I would actually vote "no"). I would gladly revisit this criteria if it could be shown that a significant fraction of this set of objects doesn't meet the general notability guideline.

As a rhetorical device, let me ask a question from reducio ad absurdum: should Wikipedia eliminate or reduce the need for significant coverage of individual people to allow stub articles on any individual. A phone book lists names of people, along with their phone numbers. An internet search can even turn up an address in many cases. A search for the basic Facebook profile can yield even more information about an individual. This is bound to be useful for somebody out there - we cannot predict who it will be useful for. Surely if NASTRO is to be modified to allow astronomical object articles without the need for significant coverage, then we should do the same with the notability criteria for people, since there's only 7.1 billion people, but the number of astronomical objects is, well, astronomical. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 14:23, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

It would greatly depend on what information we deign to include on the suggested new list, since I would assume it would include the common name, position, magnitudes, distance, constellation, stellar classification. And that any merger would also merge the star to the lists of stars by constellation (ie. List of stars in Pyxis) -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 04:16, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Well I am not really proposing merge to a list, but merge to an article on the class of object. Which article names would depend on what reliable sources write topics on. Such an article would no jsut be a table, but could ahve paragraphs on each of the non notable objects. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:28, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

This seems an interesting suggestion, however I am unsure of how it would look like. Any examples of similar types of articles, to have an idea? Also, an object can belong to several classes, depending on how it is classified: do we want a list/article by spectroscopy? By distance to Sun? Articles can be at the intersection of several categories; a merge target needs instead to choose one overarching feature to classify for. I'm not saying "no" to the proposal, only it raises some questions. --cyclopia^speak! 11:17, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The suggestions I have seen are by constellation (for which we have lists), by radial distance from the sun, and by type of object eg K class solar analogs or stars with debris disks. We could do intersections of these eg M type binaries in Capricorn but I suspect this does not follow reliable source usage. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:08, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Intersection articles do not look good, it seems a trivial intersection. Also, what of objects that belong to more than one class -this would require duplication of entries, which is nightmarish. It would also be difficult to justify a duplication with the current lists by constellations. If there were examples of articles that work in the same way (articles which contain a number of paragraphs about separate entries) this could help me understand.

Perhaps instead the constellation lists should be able to accomodate the information, as previously was (almost) agreed? If the "Notes" entry of the constellation lists allows that, it's a start -for objects like WASP-9, which are interesting for one thing only, seems a good compromise. For others, I'm less sure, but I'd like to hear more. --cyclopia^speak! 12:19, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

(By the way, WASP-9 is covered at List of unconfirmed extrasolar planets, even if it doesn't contain the full info that is at its own article. It seems a good example however).--cyclopia^speak! 12:24, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I do not think merging to a class-object article is such a good idea, such lists grow rather large, and have to be split off anyways, so instead, should be listed by class-object-type, it should start as a list of those, and not as a section of the class-object article. We should only list the very significant examples in the class-article (such as the archetype, prototype, nearest, usual examples of the class) ; remember we already have a list of nearest stars -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 13:36, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply above, User:Astrocog. I answer here for the sake of other readers of this discussion. I feel, from your rhetorical device, that there is still some misunderstanding instead. Perhaps I can try three toy examples to show what I mean by "watering down" the guidelines.

Article one:

Vega (α Lyr, α Lyrae, Alpha Lyrae) is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, the fifth brightest star in the night sky and the second brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus. It is a relatively close star at only 25 light-years from Earth, and, together with Arcturus and Sirius, one of the most luminous stars in the Sun's neighborhood...

We all agree this is notable .

Article two:

XYZ 123456 is a star in the constellation Musca. It is a very far K2 star. (database ref)

Here we all agree that this star should not be in an article.

Issues appear with article three:

QWERTY 467 is a G0 star in the constellation Aquila. It has been characterized spectroscopically as exceptionally metal poor [ref where it is studied with other 10 metal poor stars]. Nevertheless, it possibly has a debris disk [ref where it is studied with other 5 debris disks around metal poor stars]. It belongs to the Twinkle Twinkle moving group [ref about stars in the moving group].

In this case, there is plenty of information about the object that makes it possible to create a substantial article, even if no study is specifically about the object. Collating of these sources requires no original research: it's simply a listing of independent facts. This is the kind of edge cases I am talking about. Is it clearer now? I don't want to open the floodgates to all sorts of random catalogue-like entries. When there is more than a blip on a database, and the star happens to be included in studies here and there, we go beyond that. The only issue is that no individual study tackled only that object.--cyclopia^speak! 14:51, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Also: I have read the discussion that brought to NASTRO promotion as a guideline, and others. I agree that in general it makes lots of sense as a guideline. It is simply, in my opinion, that at the time such edge cases weren't taken into account, and quite reasonably so: one cannot hope to get everything right at the start. Also remember that consensus is not fixed in stone: guidelines are subject to change, and consensus can change. That's the point of the friendly discussion here. I understand you spent lots of energies and love into the guideline, but it doesn't mean it should now be regarded as immutable. --cyclopia^speak! 14:56, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes I agree, all good points. I think one of the things that have changed in the last few years is the increasing interest in nearby stars that are not visible to naked eye. There's the increase in the amount of information available about just about every nearby star. Also there is the increased interest in nearby stars generally, because they could have detectable planets or debris disks, and so are targets to look at for that reason. So it is now easier to write a fair amount about a nearby star than it was a few years ago, and there is also more interest in these stars.

The requirement that there should be a separate article about that star seems a bit artificial nowadays, when there is enough information in all the catalogues and studies of types of stars to make an article about the star. The only difference really is that the information is spread out over maybe 50 or 100 papers, and in databases, rather than collected together in a single article. The total amount of information available in the literature for a nearby star, say, within 50 light years, is typically, I'd say, at least for the orange dwarfs, more than the amount of information you would have in a typical paper devoted to just that star. Robert Walker (talk) 15:34, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Let me admit up-front I have strong exclusionist/deletionist tendencies, though I haven't made any RfD's myself: for example, my personal preference would be that naked-eye brightness is insufficient for a star to have its own article, in the absence of other interesting data; and I am a now-inactive-in-research astronomer. I am a little leery of Robert Walker's argument; deciding a star is notable because its collective data from 20 or more survey papers (each of which has hundreds or more stars' data, and none of which single out the star under discussion for specific mention) assembles to an interesting combination ... this is in fact a violation of WP:OR. That is how some of my professional colleagues select individual stars for original research study; it is an act of individual research, correlating disparate data to identify something new.

Second, I believe that in the absence of other interest-piquing evidence, possessing extreme brightness, velocity, color, what have you ... does not make an object notable. There is a Fritz Zwicky anecdote (which is from my education rather than my reading, so I cannot provide a citation) where a student wanted to study a particular galaxy merely because it was the brightest galaxy in its cluster, and Zwicky's response was to the effect, some galaxy had to be the brightest in the cluster, why not that one? The point is that an object which is an outlier among its fellows in one of its properties need not be an object worthy of study, i.e., that doesn't make it notable by itself. Rutherford's infamous "All science is either physics or stamp collecting" comment goes in the same direction, though I am closer to the "stamp collectors" he was backhanding. My deletionist tendencies stem from a belief that after the first few, the forest is what is notable, not the individual trees in it. I would, by myself, delete Gliese 146. Once one or more appropriate lists (e.g., List of members of the Hyades moving group, List of stars at 10 to 20 parsecs distance) are identified, I would include the star's name, whatever properties are decided to be included in the list itself, and a link to its SIMBAD page ... and nothing more, until some datum more demanding of individual attention arises about that particular star. Umbrella articles about the moving group, or about the local star population, etc., should be used to provide the overview for the larger category (the forest, in the trees-vs-forest analogy). In effect, I apply a "So what" argument to any astronomical object article I see, and if I can't find a reason that satisfies, I'd be willing to support a delete.

Cluttering up an encyclopedia with thousands (or more) of articles of not even trivial/stub-class interest on astronomical objects which are unremarkable is a disservice to an encyclopedia user: it wrongly suggests that there's something to that object that anyone other than a specialist might bother with. Similar to AstroCog above, I have made (and I stand by) the uncharitable comment that the extreme-inclusionist attitude naturally produces a very lengthy (ultimately, on the order of 10²²) series of articles about stars that, prior to the creation of their articles, were notable only for their being the brightest star not to have its own dedicated WP article.

This may seem like a divergence from my personal activities, creating or expanding articles on obscure individual stars like HD 122563, HD 140283, SN 1972e, BD Camelopardalis, RR Telescopii. But each of those are, or were for some time, key example objects of particular classes (which makes them Mid-level importance under WP:AST's importance scheme). I would heartily endorse keeping an article like the QWERTY 467 example above; it feels like the same level of notability as the real articles I've linked, a key individual case in a larger phenomenon. Ideally its article should highlight those features of the star that are important for understanding the class it exemplifies. Gliese 146, by contrast, does not and cannot do this, from the data which exists in the astronomical literature now, and for that reason I would support deleting it. BSVulturis (talk) 21:46, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing your view on the star articles. Most of it is a matter of what you think wikipedia is for, and though we have many guideline, still those have to be interpreted and as Cyclopedia said the main aim is to create an encyclopaedia useful to the reader. Guidelines like notability are not to be followed blindly for their own sake but to help improve the encyclopaedia. For these star articles particularly, I doubt if it can ever become an "open and shut case".

Just a couple of observations. First, where do you get your 10²² from? I make it that there are about 9000 naked eye stars. For stars within 50 light years so possible to have similar amounts of information about them as Gleise 146, there are 1400 of those. So if you added a blanket approval of all stars within 50 light years then that's only 1400 max new star articles, most of which would probably never be created just as for the naked star sky articles.

As for original research, if someone did a paper about a star then they would gather information in order to study it to find out more about it, and the OR would be whatever they add that is over and above what is already known. These articles don't do that and just collate already known information about the star. Also these articles don't confer notability on the object. There is no implication that a star deserves to be singled out for special study as a separate object of its own in an astronomical paper, just because someone took the care to collate some of the easily available data about it into a separate entry in wikipedia.

I still stand by my original view that since Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia and these star articles don't turn up in searches unless you search for the star itself by name, then they don't dilute or pollute wikipedia. They also make it easier to cross reference between lists, you can jump to the star article and then from the information there find out about other lists it belongs to (e.g. Gleise 146 belongs to at least three potential lists possibly more), and helps to avoid repetition in articles that refer to them. And unlike most AfD discussions, these articles add information to wikipedia that is uncontroversial, accurate, and backed up by citations, and they are more readable for the average reader than the SIMBAD database entry for the star, and can include details not in SIMBAD

Compare Simbad entry for Gliese 146 and Gliese 146. The wikipedia entry is easier to read for the average reader, and is also more informative, it has a few details not in the SIMBAD entry such as its galactic orbit, that it's a member of the Hyades moving cluster (which is mentioned elswehere in SIMBAD but for some reason not in its star article itself). Another benefit over the SIMBAD database entry is that it also has the cross links to other wikipedia articles on habitability of orange dwarf stars and to other nearby stars in the "See also" section. As new lists are made that include these nearby stars, then you can add cross links to those lists as well e.g. to a list of other nearby orange dwarf stars which I'd like to add some time. Robert Walker (talk) 08:36, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

BTW the AfD discussion for Gliese 146 is interesting, is not a consensus, and there are several Delete votes but also several Keep votes and clearly there are quite a few wikipedians who agree with me and Cyclopedia on the benefits of including these articles about nearby stars. The result of the discussion was "no consensus" Robert Walker (talk) 09:06, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

BSVulturis, in your argument you seem to conflate "notable" with "interesting", "remarkable", "exceptional" or something semantically in the same ballpark. That is not how WP notability works. Notability is, instead, roughly speaking, a measure of "do we have the conditions to write an article about this?" - The subject does not need to be exceptional at all. What it needs, summing it up very quickly, is enough reliable material published about it that we can assemble in an article. So, when you say that an article existence wrongly suggests that there's something to that object that anyone other than a specialist might bother with., you're getting it wrong. The existence of an article suggests nothing of the sort -we're not a collection of the exceptional, we're a collection of knowledge, in general. We have tons of articles on extremly specialistic stuff, in all disciplines, which is nonetheless notable by far and large according to our standards.

Also its collective data from 20 or more survey papers (each of which has hundreds or more stars' data, and none of which single out the star under discussion for specific mention) assembles to an interesting combination ... this is in fact a violation of WP:OR. - That's not how OR works. OR requires you to do your own research or to reach conclusions not stated in the sources. That's not what happens here. Collating facts from sources is exactly how every article is made. --cyclopia^speak! 11:40, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the comments! First, to Robertinventor ... my 10²² number is from Observable universe#mass of ordinary matter, subheading Extrapolation from number of stars. Astrocog raised the kind of argument I was trying to make, though not quite in the same way. My number was exaggerating for emphasis; in principle that represents what I perceive as the logical conclusion of the inclusionist spirit, one article per star that has ever been cataloged in any way, and I feel that that is not what should come about, and the existing NASTRO correctly prevents. To take a more concrete and possible case, it ought to be possible for someone to program a bot to populate WP from the entries in SDSS-I and SDSS-II, 930,000 galaxies and 120,000 quasars from their web page, one article per object, with the data from that survey, with only the data from SDSS with the rationale that other editors can fill in other things if they want. I would consider that an act of vandalism. It seems that others would feel otherwise. Second, to Cyclopia, you have correctly represented my interpretation of "notable", and that interpretation will continue to govern what I choose to add and edit into WP, and by extension, what I think ought to be in general. I recognize that is a much stricter policy than present consensus even under the existing NASTRO, but as long as I refrain from putting debatable things up for deletion and don't beat people up for acting otherwise, it governs only my own contributions and is of no further concern. Happily, that is something I find easy. Third, about my comments on WP:OR ... I see those comments were a product of my own interpretation of "notable" coupled with the act of choosing to create WP articles based on the results of correlating data in catalogs; the OR is not in the content of the articles themselves, but rather in the selection of what gets created. I know from personal acquaintance with those who did it that correlating data from different surveys and looking for anomalies and outliers was in fact the first step in their research. That is the way HD 122563 was originally selected for inclusion in a research program, as hinted at in the "Spectral Type" section of that article. This is closest to, but not quite, the issues hinted at in WP:SYN. That is probably not likely to become an issue here in WP:AST-land. Fourth, I do see dilution of WP with one-line-plus-starbox articles of no interest as being an issue, in one concrete if trivial case. As someone who sometimes kick starts his brain in the morning by browsing WP over his morning Cheerios by hitting the Random Article link, I find it annoying to have to do this repeatedly to get past the one-sentence stubs about English footballers, German railway stations, popular music artists, etc., and adding lots of nameless minor planets, stars and galaxies to that would only make it worse. (Looking at the talk page, I see I may be able to filter out stub-class articles with a .js file, something I hadn't known until now, sigh.) Fifth, Cyclopia mentioned consensus can change. I perceive that's what is trying to be initiated here. Like a couple of others have previously commented, and I am happy with the present NASTRO, and I do not see a need to alter it at this time. BSVulturis (talk) 17:59, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

the OR is not in the content of the articles themselves, but rather in the selection of what gets created. WP:OR is about the content, not about what one decides to create. There is no original research involved in deciding to create an article about a star (unless in the hypothetical circumstance one has discovered that star and publishes it first on WP).

I find it annoying to have to do this repeatedly to get past the one-sentence stubs about English footballers, German railway stations, popular music artists - That's a WP:IDONTLIKEIT argument -for example I perused articles about German railway stations a lot during my last stay in Germany, and obviously pop music artists are important to many people, even if maybe not us two. Your problem about kickstarting yourself is easy -just click again the random article link until you find something that you like. Much better than excluding content which can be informative for many just because it isn't what you want for your breakfast.--cyclopia^speak! 18:11, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi BSVulturis Okay first about the random articles, there are currently 4,331,285 articles in wikipedia with 198,285 added last year. So if all 1400 of the stars within 50 light years were added then your chance of coming across one of them in a random search would be about 1 in 3000. Probably only a few hundred of them will ever get articles, so that would be 1 in 15,000 chance or less of coming across those articles. The number of star articles sent for AfD recently is quite large of the order of dozens, but not hundreds and that includes a few that everyone agreed should be deleted.

I totally agree that it would be an act of vandalism to try to turn wikipedia into a star catalogue. One line entries + a star box - no problem deleting those - unless there is a good chance they will be expanded. For objects within 50 light years, then there is a good chance they could be expanded to make quite a substantial small article as there is so much material about them in the databases, also in articles studying various small classes of nearby stars. For more distant stars, would have to be a very interesting type of star. Still, if there happens to be lots of information about those types of stars, and not just a list of figures all in a single database but something worth collating into an article, then they could be worth inclding too.

In the recent spate of deletions there were a few stars like that, ones that were e.g. 14th magnitude distant stars hundreds of light years away, and just info copied over from the SIMBAD database. Everyone I think agrees those should be deleted. Robert Walker (talk) 00:12, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with much of the above from Robertinventor. I'm not going to wade into the random article discussion, which I think is beside the point of this entire thread. Our notability guideline is perfectly capable of handling all the cases and examples that have been mentioned. The onus is always on the article creator/editors to establish notability in questionable or borderline cases. I have yet to see a compelling reason to modify the guideline. Either an astronomical object has the significant coverage to build an article, or it doesn't. However, I'll go a little beyond Robertinventor and say that even some articles that have more than one line of text are not suitable. Some of the recent examples that were debated are just multiple lines of terse fact-stating, essentially rehashing what's in the info box. I don't agree with the sentiment from other editors above that an encyclopedic article can be made by cobbling together little bits of physical parameters from large survey papers or bulletins. The spirit of NASTRO (and the General Notability Guideline) is to favor objects that have significant coverage. Coverage doesn't have to be singular in an article, but it should be substantial and not trivial (e.g. the object is listed with 1000 others, and its mass is stated). I also don't yet see a compelling reason to arbitrarily include stars within 50 light years (what's special about 50? Why not 60, 75, or 100?). Many of those will have coverage - but I think it's reasonable at this point to just expect the article creator/editor to include such evidence. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 14:05, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't agree with the sentiment from other editors above that an encyclopedic article can be made by cobbling together little bits of physical parameters from large survey papers or bulletins. - Why? You keep rehashing what NASTRO currently is, but you don't explain why it is an advantage for the public, nor how does it advance WP goal of summing up knowledge. All articles are made by cobbling together stuff. The significant coverage criteria is usually necessary because it usually implies that otherwise there is little or no information about the subject available to build an article. That's the spirit of GNG, as explained in WP:WHYN. The point is that stars and other astronomical objects happen to be an exception: you can have plenty of information to build an article even without one source significantly covering it. If the spirit of NASTRO is to prevent perfectly fine, informative, encyclopedic articles, then then spirit of NASTRO is at odds with the project. --cyclopia^speak! 14:37, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

If all that can be stated is from a handful of survey data, what is wrong with summing up that knowledge in a list, or a table within a section of a larger article, where context is better provided and a general reader can compare to related objects. My assertion is that is more advantageous. There isn't any prohibition against summing up this knowledge on WP. I disagree that astronomical objects are an exception to the GNG, as have many other editors in the process of creating this guideline. I think stubby information is best served by lists. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 15:14, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

We've been through that. In principle I'd agree but the problem is: which list? See above discussion. --cyclopia^speak! 15:21, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Whichever list is most appropriate for the object. If one doesn't exist, then an editor can be bold and create one. If a list exists, but without a column to house an important piece of information an editor wants to include, that editor can be bold and make a new column. The choice of list to merge stub information is more within the scope of the object or list's talk page, but if you have a reasonable proposal for a merging recipe that could be incorporated into the "Dealing with..." section of this guideline, then this is a good place to consider it. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 18:05, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll point out that most of my suggestions above are taken care of in the "Special cases" section: WP:NASTHELP. AstroCog (talk) 18:09, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

The problem with lists is that a star can belong to many lists. Plus the references are different e.g. take Gliese 146 again as example it can be in a list of K dwarfs within 50 light years, or a list of members of the Hyades supercluster, or list of objects between 40 and 50 light years, or the list of objects of interest for search for debris disks or in the Horologium constellation. If you try and put all the information from the article into a list type article it will leave most of the information out, or else will be almost unreadable and each entry in the list would have a separate set of bibliography entries, and "see also" sections. And the lists would have duplicate information.

It's like - the only reason for presenting this information in list form in a big long list or several lists is to comply with the notability criterion for the star as a separate object. It doesn't benefit the reader of wikipedia to do it this way. But the notability criteria are meant to be there to improve the encyclopedia for its readers, that's their purpose. So they seem to be failing in their purpose if when you apply them has the effect of making the information harder to read and organize. Robert Walker (talk) 14:52, 21 September 2013 (UTC) Robert Walker (talk) 14:52, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Comments by Modest Genius

Section break to save lots of scrolling, and because this section is too big and slow for my syntax highlighter!

I came here via a request on WT:ASTRO for comments from an uninvolved editor, started reading, and simply ran out of steam after the first few thousand words. Have you really written a dissertation-length discussion on (what appears to me) a straightforward issue? WP:DEADHORSE appears to apply.

For what it's worth, I don't see any problem. Gliese 146 has no demonstration of non-trivial coverage in reliable sources, has no particular claim to fame I can see, and simply consists of the SIMBAD entry turned into words, which violates WP:DIRECTORY. It should be deleted and redirected to a relevant list article, perhaps List of nearby stars or List of Gliese objects.

To address the counter-arguments presented by cyclopia: 'It is one of 500 stars...' is clearly neither notable nor relevant; 'Its speed relative to the sun is 38.1 km/s' simply repeats information available on SIMBAD (wrongly) and 'Its a suspected variable' does the same (again wrongly, it's a known variable). I could go on.

The other example given at the start, HD 142093, has already been deleted so I can't comment.

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. As such, it is not its purpose to collate entries in catalogues or databases, simply to save someone a SIMBAD or VizieR search. This is enshrined in policy (WP:DIRECTORY) and WP:NASTRO simply reflects that. I think the way it does so is reasonable, consistent and useful.

Robert Walker raises a valid point about list-type articles, and the possibility of multiple redundant ones being created just because of NASTRO. I suggest this issue is considered separately, as it is important and not really related to the issues which started this thread.

Conclusion: I see no problem with NASTRO as currently written, at least in the arguments I read above (which wasn't all of them). There's no need to change it. Now can we all go back to applying it and writing articles? Modest Genius ^talk 19:57, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

First, I appreciate your input especially as a professional astronomer. But interested to know, then, what is your solution to the lists issue? You say it should be considered separately, but I'm not sure the lists issue is separate from this question of notability of nearby stars. Keeping these separate articles seems the best solution for nearby stars likely to be in many lists - if you think about how best to present the information in a way that is easy for a reader to navigate. What other solution is there that works as well as that? Plus the separate article is easier to read than a Simbad entry for a non professional astronomer and if you really know your way around SIMBAD you can find e.g. that Gliese 146 is a member of the hyades supercluster, but is not obvious from its entry that it is, and once you are in Simbad you no longer have cross linking back to wikipedia while if you stay in wikipedia then go to Gliese 146 and you can then just click on the link to get to the entry on the Hyades supercluster or the entry on habitability of dwarft stars etc. The separate articles are not meant to confer notability on these stars as entities, certainly not saying they deserve an astronomical article, just make it easier to organise the content.

We all agreed that it is not the task of Wikipedia to become a new directory of stars, and that star articles that are little more than a brief database entry of distant stars should be deleted, this is just for eg. nearby stars with lots of information available, and is to do with helping to make wikipedia better for the average reader. There is a bit more to it I think than first meets the eye which is why it became such a long thread. And these star articles have been in wikipedia for years, is only recently that the issue came up when someone started PRODing them, is not a new policy direction in that sense. I am not sure you have resolved it though it is good to have a fresh eye on it. Robert Walker (talk) 15:40, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Bulk-ish deletion or merge/redirection of minor planet sub-stubs: is a manual search for notability really necessary?

(Moved here from Wikipedia_talk:Minor_planet_articles_that_might_fail_NASTRO)

Looks like we have a bunch of tiny asteroid stubs created by bots that should get deleted or merged. IANAAdmin but if we want to do what are basically (trivial) merges (into "list of minor planets") and not WP:AFD's, does anyone really need to bother performing a manual Google search for notable sources for each of these tiny little stubs?

Per WP:MERGE: "If a page is very short and is unlikely to be expanded within a reasonable amount of time, it often makes sense to merge it with a page on a broader topic."

Per WP:PM: "mergers that are so obviously necessary and appropriate that no one is expected to object..." "...it is not necessary to propose a merger at all. You should boldly do the merger now, without formally proposing it. (In the event that someone unexpectedly objects, then the merger can be undone easily, and you can formally propose the merger for discussion at that time.)"

An alternative thought is that, if we can get the co-operation of the owner of whichever bot created all these little stubs, we might be able to delete many of them without a manual notability check under "author requests deletion" WP:CSD#G7.

All IMHO of course. Chrisrus noted this might conflict with WP:NASTRO, so I brought the discussion here. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 01:35, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I know ClueBot II created a lot of them. I've unceremoniously redirected lots of these, but I generally check the history and talk pages first, so I was interested to see ClueBot II of all things involved. I think you'd be surprised, though, how many are not bot created. So many are just articles with identical text, save for the catalog name, that it's pretty easy to create these by hand - even just a few fingers: "ctrl-v, click. ctrl-v, click. ctrl-v, click. ctrl-v, click. ctrl-v, click." See what I did there? ;-) The thought of asking the bot master to agree to an author requested delete is interesting, but my first (cynical) thought is that whomever programmed the bot to create lots of stubs isn't going to be too concerned with deleting them. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 03:37, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Any asteroid numbered below 5000 should be left alone during a mass re-direct since they are on average the largest asteroids and the ones most likely to be of interest to amateur astronomers. I also suggest only re-directing the numerous main-belt asteroids at this time and leaving near-Earth asteroids alone. But I know Chrisrus just wants to delete and/or merge as many articles as he can. -- Kheider (talk) 11:46, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree. AstroCog (talk) 12:40, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Can I get an explicit second opinion (besides myself) as to whether merging into a list article, without a manual search for WP:RS, is acceptable according to WP:NASTRO? Rolf H Nelson (talk) 03:07, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, I think the answer you your question immediately above is "no, it is not acceptable according to NASTRO". Before redirecting a stub NASTRO gives guidance that "a good-faith search has been done to locate supporting references". But I think the proposal in this section is that we should not abide by the guidance in NASTRO as it is presently stated. Whether that would be wise is a somewhat different question. Can you clarify (to someone who only occasionally passes through the asteroid belt), when you say "merge", do you really mean "redirect"? Please link me somewhere to avoid duplicating any discussion. Thincat (talk) 20:43, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

To be a bit less pedantic, in terms of general WP policy and guidelines I believe that redirecting without an RS check may well be OK. The guidance is at WP:BLANKANDREDIRECT and does not suggest any need to search for references. The main requirement is to avoid arguments(!). Thincat (talk) 21:07, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

There's no other significant discussion that I know of, the Wikipedia_talk:Minor_planet_articles_that_might_fail_NASTRO) discussion was just "this should be discussed on NASTRO". I was hoping the community that created WP:NASTRO would immediately say "of course you don't have to search for notability for bot-created stubs, that's clearly not the spirit of NASTRO", but if not then I'll formally ask for WP:NASTRO to add to the policy to explicitly address the current situation one way or the other. IMHO we should either decide that it's not worth deleting the articles, in which case WP:NASTRO should basically say "don't bother the admins by AfD'ing a single minor planet; there's an infinite more where that came from and you're just wasting everyone's time" (more politely than that of course), or it should address how to bulk-delete these if someone ends up wanting to bulk-delete them. (I should add that I don't know how to count how many stubs there actually are; it's possible there aren't very many and I'm making a mountain out of a molehill.) Rolf H Nelson (talk) 21:48, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

As far as the question of "is this a merge, or a blank-and-redirect", I don't know what the difference is; it sounds like it's a moot point as neither requires a manual search for notable sources. I think the WP:NASTRO example is subtly incorrect if it classifies this as a straight delete rather than a merge or redirect, since 100% of the information in the article is already in the "list of minor planets" article that it's being merged into. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 22:01, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

My personal view (with more experience of deletion policy than asteroids) is that to send them to AfD without checking is (strictly) contrary to AfD procedures (WP:BEFORE). To redirect or merge is OK. So, if there is rough consensus here (however informal) to redirect or merge (perhaps turning a blind eye on NASTRO) that would not incur the wrath of the gods. Thincat (talk) 22:15, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Regarding WP:MERGE v. WP:REDIRECT. The former at one point says "If there is no information to be added to the destination page, you can simply redirect the other page there, but please make this clear in the edit summary". If you think everything relevant in the stub is already in the target, a merge can become merely a redirection. Thincat (talk) 22:26, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

WP:NASTRO is a notability guideline, so other guidelines/policies/philosophies(?) may come into play when considering a bulk merge/redirect/deletion. I'm of the opinion that if you were to boldy carry out such an action, say, on main-belt asteroids above 5000 (as Kheider suggested above), you wouldn't get much pushback. My gut tells me that, even so, you'd probably want to announce this action at WP:Astronomical Objects, or the talk page for List of minor planets, and be nice about it. For myself, I generally look at them on a case by case basis. If the article's a stub, has only 1 ref to the JPL database, and hasn't been edited by a non-BOT in months-to-years, I've got no qualms about creating a redirect. I ain't gonna cry if somebody redirects or deletes the bulk of stubs for the rocks occupying the higher number lists. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 00:20, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

My experience has been that references for asteroids past 1,000 become increasingly difficult to come by. There are exceptions, of course, but if you stick to bare bones articles for minor planets over 5,000 you'll be fairly safe. The exceptions can always be re-created without undue difficulty. Praemonitus (talk) 19:18, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for new asteroid notability definitions

Since the Notability guidelines have been added for minor planets, there's been quite a bit of discussion on what actually defines an asteroid as notable, or not, and by the description included in WP:NASTRO, it might appear that only about 1000 or so of the 20000+ asteroid articles would pass NASTRO (only 5%). As such, the effort to remove all other asteroid articles would be pointless. As such I propose a new definition of Asteroid notability: All asteroids with a name assigned to them, and/or making frequent close approaches (<0.1 AU) to Eart, and/or orbiting outside the conventionally described Asteroid Belt, and with an uncertainty parameter above (below) 9. This leaves most of the asteroids failing WP:NASTRO and waiting to be deleted (which is an extremely long waiting list) accepted, while not including asteroids with poorly-determined orbits, completely non-notable numbered asteroids in the asteroid belt (like (6618) 1936 SO). In addition, it allows the inclusion of recently-discovered objects, and objects which are on their own notable, but belong to a group so large that they alone do not have any particular study to them. How does this sound? exoplanetaryscience (talk) 18:21, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Attaching a name to an asteroid doesn't render it notable, per WP:INHERITED. So retaining named asteroids would fly in the face of WP:NOTE, which this guideline is supposed to supplement. I'm not clear that the remainder of the proposal is particularly helpful. For example, recent discovery does not make an asteroid notable. Praemonitus (talk) 19:09, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Well currently there are around 700,000 known asteroids in the solar system, ~99% of which were discovered in the last two decades. Beyond these, very few asteroids are named. My purpose for keeping named asteroids isn't necessarily relating to WP:INHERITED because it's not whether the names are notable that makes the asteroids important, but rather the fact that current qualifications for asteroid notability are quite vague in comparison, and a 'named' qualification would provide a more meaningful difference, as it is implied that in naming the asteroid that sufficient study of it over other asteroids was made on it. Additionally, I was not saying that an asteroid is notable simply because it was discovered recently, but the current WP:NASTRO qualifications say nothing about notability of asteroids because of anything about them themselves, but rather whether they were studied by anything of note, so technically WP:NASTRO itself violates WP:INHERITED. By its definitions, a particularly large asteroid orbiting in the Kuiper Belt isn't notable unless people happen to notice it and it starts appearing on news websites. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 17:31, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Asteroid size does matter

I am one of the original NASTRO authors. The guideline was written in part to prevent bots from creating 100,000+ articles about every known asteroid. When it comes to asteroids, the two most important things are SIZE and ORBIT. Any main-belt asteroid more than ~50km in diameter deserves an article. Asteroids 20+ meters in diameter with a better than 1:10000 chance of impacting Earth also deserve an article. It is lame to delete/re-direct 50km main-belt asteroids when Wikipedia still has numerous computer-generated stubs about main-belt asteroids that are much less than ~10km in diameter. -- Kheider (talk) 15:28, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I suggest amending NASTRO Wikipedia:Notability (astronomical_objects)#Dealing with minor planets to state, "Main-belt asteroids more than 50km in diameter are considered notable for their size. Smaller main-belt asteroids may be notable for other reasons." NASTRO currently does not say anything useful about what would make a bot generated main-belt asteroid article notable and there has been a large number of deletion nominations at Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy/Article alerts by Boleyn (talk) since April. I fear this is a case of WP:POINT and AFD is not cleanup. -- Kheider (talk) 15:41, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I would say that the following qualifications should be mandatory for the inclusion of asteroids, and any asteroid articles with at least one or two of these criteria can not be, unless under speciall circumstances, deleted.

• at least 50 kilometers in diameter
• Asteroids with an Earth MOID of less than 1 lunar distance
• Asteroids with (as you said) a 0.01% chance of impacting the Earth
• PHAs that will pass within 5 LD of Earth in the near future (~50 years)
• All asteroids that are known to make a close approach of less than 1 LD in the future that have been observed at least one opposition prior to this close approach.
• Asteroids with known spectral types, diameters, masses, moons, occultation observations, or rotation periods.
• Asteroids in unusual orbits with sufficient orbital certainty that the unusual nature of their orbits are nearly certain
• All TNOs larger than 20 kilometers
• All TNOs with high inclinations/eccentricities
• All TNOs relatively certain to be members of the Haumea family
• All Jupiter Trojans larger than 20 kilometers
• All non-jupiter planetary trojans of any size
• Main-belt asteroids that have been imaged by a spacecraft with sufficient detail to resolve to more than a couple of pixels
• Main-belt asteroids that have been discovered, subsequently lost, and rediscovered more than 30 years later.
• Any object that has a higher than 0.1% chance of impacting another object in the future
• All asteroids that are likely members of a confirmed asteroid family.
• All asteroids that mark a milestone discovery
• All of the first 1000 numbered asteroids.

exoplanetaryscience (talk) 17:47, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I don't get this. If an article only gets created by a bot, it seems obvious to me that the subject of the article is very unlikely to be notable. Also, defining notability guidelines in terms of the size, orbit, or anything else about any object is clearly inconsistent with WP:N. What's wrong with a simple application of WP:GNG? In particular, an object must have significant coverage in reliable secondary sources to be notable. Any object that doesn't meet that guideline should be in a list, possibly with a redirect, rather than its own article. The secondary source requirement would knock out the vast majority of asteroids. —Alex (Ashill | talk | contribs) 17:56, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

First of all, some of the asteroid articles (especially lower numbered ones) created by a bot are notable even if a human did not create a wiki-article before a bot did. Secondly, significant coverage is poorly defined. Can an article in the News media count as significant coverage? There needs to be some kind of simple rule(s) that will keep non-astro Wikipedians from causing the appearance of disruptive behavior. The asteroids that seem to be causing 99% of Wikipedia's laments are main-belt asteroid articles created by bots. Having some kind of a lowered bound on the diameter would help prevent excessive re-directs. Obviously a main-belt asteroid may be notable for other reasons. -- Kheider (talk) 18:16, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The issue with that would be that 99% of asteroids currently with articles would fail that. Except for perhaps a few hundred, essentially every asteroid with anything of note wouldn't be included unless someone happened to notice it and make a magazine article out of it. Of course WP:GNG would work well for people, places, things, and ideas on Earth, because those are well-represented and there's a more specific defining line between notability and non-notability in them, but of all the nearly 5 million articles on wikipedia, only a small portion of them are asteroids, a smaller portion of which would qualify by your standards. Why shouldn't a 50 kilometer wide asteroid have an article, and a Football player for the Kiel Baltic Hurricanes or an Ephemeral stream or A city with not even 500 people living in it should? exoplanetaryscience (talk) 18:19, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

"...every asteroid with anything of note..." implies these asteroids have been noted, so where? It doesn't matter whether it was a magazine article, or if it was a detailed individual study from a scientific journal. If the coverage was significant enough, which NASTRO does define, then I'm not clear why asteroids should be held to a different standard than other objects on this regard. I have no problem with 99% of the asteroids with articles failing GNG and being deleted. However, I agree with Kheider that we should perhaps update NASTRO with a specific minimum standard to help alleviate the problems at AfD - NOT the big list Exoplanetaryscience provided because it's too long and many will overlap - but something more like Kheider's suggested size minimum since it would encompass nearly all the big asteroids and the ones that have been studied extensively. All the others can pass or fall on NASTRO's other criteria, or GNG alone as far as I'm concerned. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 19:18, 6 May 2015 (UTC)