Talk:The Ensigns of Command

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Do Trek fans / editors approve of Sheliak redirecting here when it’s the official proper name of an actual star?

While the Sheliak are an interesting fictional species, the name originally refers to the IAU-recognized proper name for a real-life star system, Beta Lyrae in the Bayer designation, located in the constellation Lyra, not even mentioned in the episode. Since they are named after a real-life star, that is arguably the more notable use of the term.

Unfortunately, this is part of a larger problem on Astronomy Wikipedia, as prior to 2016 or so (when the IAU appointed a commission to officially recognize the mostly-Arabic proper names of the brightest stars in English use), Wikipedians went on a purge removing almost all references to (non-European origin) proper names for stars, and replacing them with the subsequent (greek-letter) Bayer names, describing their locations in fictional Roman constellations (instead of Arab ones, as those were deemed “non-systematic”). The Latin-named stars were conveniently left alone, as those were officially recognized long ago.

Sheliak is an especially egregious example, because if you look at the history of the redirect, as part of this War on Terror-era movement to purge Arabic-named stars from the lexicon, (a decision that has been reversed by the IAU), Sheliak (the article on the real-life star) was actually replaced with a redirect to a section on List of Star Trek races that was subsequently deleted as “fancruft”.

This was brought to my attention by a video whose author was surprised to discover the star name was of Arabic origin, and assumed it was actually nick-named after the fictional home of the Star Trek alien (due to improper redirect) instead of the other way around! It seems a very un-Trek like thing to do.

Proposed solution: Since folks over at Astronomy are unlikely to reverse themselves on the issue of IAU-approved English proper names for stars of “unscientific” origin, it would make sense to turn Sheliak into a disambiguation page, with the species definition referencing both this and the listicle page. I’d log in and do it myself but I don’t want to ruffle any feathers. ~~berr 66.44.14.23 (talk) 04:14, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would also replace the redirect hatnote on this page as follows: This article references the fictional Star Trek species known as the "Sheliak” (disambiguation page). For the star in the constellation Lyra, see Beta Lyrae. [direct link] ~~berr 66.44.14.23 (talk) 04:41, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]