Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of asteroids/120901–121000

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep since no good reason has been shown for deleting this list other than "Gosh! how MANY of them ARE there?" HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 13:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of asteroids/120901–121000

List of asteroids/120901–121000 (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

None of these asteroids are notable and Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate list of information Nardman1 02:11, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

• Strong keep Are you serious? None of the asteroids are notable? How do you measure the notability of an asteroid? Although Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, this list can hardly be considered a useless collection of facts. Lists like this which maintain valuable scientific information are exactly the sort of data which make Wikipedia useful. Niffweed17, Destroyer of Chickens 02:33, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Maybe someone should write a guideline at WP:ASTEROID? In any case I'm not really advocating this article's deletion, just questioning its place on Wikipedia. I still think it failed WP:NOT Nardman1 02:41, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
    • If you ask me, the guidelines at WP:NOT are totally inappropriate in this particular instance. It's not like any newspaper columnists are going to write a review about an asteroid. In a case like this, the notability guidelines should be overlooked in the interest of the protection of potentially useful scientific information. Niffweed17, Destroyer of Chickens 02:47, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Not overlooked, but properly interpreted. Special topics require this sort of interpretation, because it is impractical to amend the general ones to reflect all cases. Therefore we need to rely on the fundamental meaning, which justifies the

• keep. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DGG (talk • contribs) 02:48, 12 February 2007 (UTC).

• Strong keep You could then delete all other asteroid listing pages, using this as precedent. mrholybrain's talk 02:46, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
  • You're right, you could delete them all, but I don't this is a good reason for or against inclusion. --Kevinwiatrowski 08:40, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, highly recommend withdrawing the nom for now. While I'm not a big fan of data dumps like this article, it would be much better to work with the creators of this article (and the THOUSANDS of other similar articles) in order to get them into some sort of encyclopedic format. Also, a listing of discovered asteroids is a notable subject as all asteroids are covered in reliable sources.--- RockMFR 03:19, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

• Everyone should take a look at Category:Lists of asteroids and the number of pages within it before commenting. --- RockMFR 03:21, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Comment, how biased is your vote on rocks due to your username? Just joking around here... Mathmo ^Talk 04:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

• Keep My God, this is real life astronomical data. Inkpaduta 03:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Any reason why this particular list has been singled out and not the dozens of others? As noted above, this is legitimate and encyclopaedic information. WP:SNOW might apply here, I think. 23skidoo 04:46, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I happened to come across this article by clicking "Random article". Nardman1 13:50, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
    • That is a problem I've been mulling over. The 100-count pages were created to ease editing and server load; they are not meant to be browsed directly. I'm thinking of enclosing them in an includeonly tag so they would become redirects to the "main" (1000-count) pages when accessed directly. Make sense? Urhixidur 00:55, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep - I probably wouldn't support an article on every single asteroid, but this list should definitely stay. See WP:LIST: it is informative and aids navigation. -- Black Falcon 04:54, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per RockMFR. Mathmo ^Talk 04:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. How else would we present this information? Clearly valuable scientific content. WjBscribe 05:43, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

  Comment. Mmm. I'm just starting to realise quite how many pages of the asteroid lists there are. Check out [1]... WjBscribe 08:54, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

• Delete I may be a voice crying in the wilderness on this one, but... this is a list of trivial astronomical information. None of these asteroids have articles, probably never will. Is Wikipedia a host for reams and reams of trivial astronomical info? What is next - bulk star catalogs? Does everyone realize how much data this would mean, and how little it would be of value to anyone except astronomers? Grains of sand on the beach, stars in the sky... asteroids are not far behind. Out!!! --Brianyoumans 05:48, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete This table is a copy of other source material published by the Minor Planet Center. For instance, this article's information is found on this Minor Planet Center reference page, with the columns even in the same order. WP:NOT#MIRROR explains that mere collections of source material may not go in Wikipedia. The point is further made in WP:NPS, which makes a good suggestion that large sources are candidates for WikiSource. --Kevinwiatrowski 08:38, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, verifiable, informative... what's the problem? Lankiveil 12:47, 11 February 2007 (UTC).
• Strong Keep This data, while admittedly only of interest within a narrow intellectual framework, is nevertheless invaluable. A really genuine encyclopedia article, as are the large number of related articles detailing other asteroid series.--Anthony.bradbury 15:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as pointed out by Brianyoumans and Kevinwiatrowski above wikipedia is not a mirror site or directory of information. The information could be transwikied to wikisource if it is in the public domain but it does not belong in Wikipedia - it is not a data repository! Madmedea 17:30, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

CommentOh and the same should happen to the other lists - could have been bundled into this AfD but is it too late? Madmedea 17:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Keep. It has potential. --Bryson 22:42, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. I see no reason why this can't be kept. Belongs in an encyclopedia. --MasterA113 22:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
• This discussion has been added as a test case to the proposed guideline Wikipedia:Notability (science). ~ Nardman1 00:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
• Send to Wikisource That's what it was created for. I fail to see any cogent argument why this should stay on Wikipedia despite WP:NOT#MIRROR and WP:NOT#DIRECTORY, or the WP:RS provision that Wikipedia articles should rely on secondary sources. ~ trialsanderrors 04:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete as copyvio per [2]. ~ trialsanderrors 04:33, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Can you explain how this is a copyvio? Is the data itself copyrighted? I can see that the page says that everything on their pages is copyrighted, but does this basic data really fall under copyright? --- RockMFR 04:58, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
      • If it's basic data you can retrieve the data yourself and create your own list. The compilation effort, i.e. retrieval, decision on what to include and exclude and presentation in a certain format is a creative act and is copyrighted. The provision that might make it usable is "Freely-available datasets may be redistributed as long as the source for the data is clearly specified." I'm not sure if that applies for this database but even then this is a primary source dump and should go to Wikisource. ~ trialsanderrors 05:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
• Question Is this tied to an article about these asteroids? KP Botany 04:29, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
• Note I'm going to bold this, because I think everyone voting should read it. If you look on the Minor Planet Center site where this list came from, you can see clearly that there are 150,000 of these asteroids identified so far. Yes, that is "one hundred and fifty thousand" - and thousands discovered each year. How many of these is anyone ever going to care about? Probably 0.1% of them, if that. Why don't we start a list of NOTABLE asteroids? This enormous list of astronomical trivia belongs on Wikisource, if anywhere other than the Minor Planet site. I also took a look at the copyright terms, and I have no idea if our usage is legal as is; my guess would be not, principally because we haven't reformatted or reworked the data in any way.--Brianyoumans 08:21, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. I agree that we are not an indiscriminate collection of data, but I'm inclined to feel that this data is not indiscriminate: we're not seeking to list every grain of sand in the sky, we're simply providing an organised arrangement of data. Although obscure, I'd rather have the complete list than edited highlights in a "list of notables". WMMartin 14:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
• Comment — It should be possible to come up with a concensus for what makes an asteroid notable (or any Solar System object for that matter). We shouldn't have to record every single 100m rock in the sky. Here's a few thoughts:
  • It was discovered prior to the use of photography for finding asteroids.
  • It has had (or will have) a close approach by a spacecraft.
  • There is a solid diameter and/or mass estimate, along with good orbital elements.
  • It has been imaged by radar or other sensors, including but not limited to occultation profiles.
  • It has unusual spectral properties.
  • It has had (or will have) a close-Earth encounter.
  • It is known to have a moon.
  • There is a published paper on the asteroid.
  • It is a trojan asteroid for a terrestrial planet.

— RJH (talk) 22:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

• Keep Sure, there are lots of these rocks out there, but "notability" applies to individual asteroids, in my mind. I feel the Wikipedia list is much easier to consult than the MPC or Lowell astorb data files, if only for the links. I would love to see how it could be deposited in Wikisource --we've kept the discovery data and "meanings of names" lists separate precisely with Wikisource in mind. As for copyright concerns, the list is scientific data. We have reformatted it massively (all the wikicode in the individual pages, plus the organisation into blocks of 100 asteroids). I'm certain there is no problem whatsoever on that axis. Urhixidur 00:45, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

• Keep Definitely encyclopedia worthy. — MrDolomite • Talk 18:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
• Question Is this tied to an article about these asteroids? Could someone answer this question? If it's not tied to any article that discusses these asteroids it's simply a list of asteroids and doesn't belong on Wikipedia. KP Botany 03:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
  • There is no article about these asteroids because there is no encyclopedic information about them. The data in the lists could be supplemented with orbital elements and magnitudes but that's it for most of them (see List of asteroids for the complete run down). I say transwiki the whole kit-and-cabbodle to wikisource and ony allow lists of asteroids that are named or otherwise assert notability. These lists are clearly useful but they are also clearly directories which Wikipedia is expressly not. Eluchil404 08:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.