Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aspects of Pluto

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 No consensus. Cúchullain ^t/c 04:23, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Aspects of Pluto

Aspects of Pluto (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

sister articles prod'ed: WP:OR, inherently unencyclopedic content. Would perhaps belong in an almanac. Potatoswatter 01:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment This concerns astrology, not astronomy. Some of these numbers are useful when making predictions... (in which case WP:CRYSTAL still applies?) But knowing how bright Pluto is some day 10 years from now is really, really, unimportant. If you want to observe on a given day you can consult a calculator; these numbers aren't for "today". I didn't stress that at first. Potatoswatter 09:03, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Not CRYSTAL - astronomical motion is regular & predictable. Ventifax 06:49, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I was being sarcastic about astrology. Potatoswatter 07:11, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment THIS INFORMATION IS REALLY TRIVIAL. Try Googling ephemeris calculator or even aspects of Mars - there are lots of links to choose from. Or ephemeris#External links. This is spurring lots of WP:NOT related legal discussion. WP:NOT is NOT the issue, and I apologize for bringing up the almanac thing. I thought it was clear that an almanac is by definition an indiscriminate collection of information... anyway, consider WP:NN. Wikipedia is not an almanac and indiscriminate information is discouraged because it is NN. I don't know why people want ephemeris tables like these specifically from Wikipedia, but look at that list of calculators! You can get any data you want, very easily. The original author ignored the prod on the other articles. Could someone weigh in on how these articles are actually useful, or advantages over the calculators and tables linked from ephemeris?
  • Before I post... I suppose lots of Google hits would defeat the NN argument. But also consider that many of those sites are also more informative on astrology as well, not to mention having much more data. What we need is more information in ephemeris so interested people can learn... not an independent handbook for astrologers who happen to like Wikipedia. Potatoswatter 21:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I am also nominating the following closely related pages:

Aspects of Uranus (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Aspects of Neptune (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Aspects of Mars (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

• Not really WP material, but looks informative enough that it should be transwikied sometwhere (Wikisource, perhaps?). Grutness...wha? 03:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Considering that the original author copied the tables out of his astronomy software, it might be borderline copyvio. I'm not sure... see the link from the deletion log on Aspects of Saturn. Either way, people who know enough to use this info should have a source already or a way of generating it. Potatoswatter 04:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
    • FWIW, data generated by an ephemeris programme is not copyrightable. If it is generated correctly, it will lack originality, and originality is one of the requirements for copyright. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep and comment Wikipedia is full of almanac information. Almanac facts are not copyrightable, only commentary is. I just find the name confusing. --68.186.42.46 07:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I disagree... almanac info is inherently NN and therefore rare on Wikipedia. Do you have examples? You are right on the copyright side, although I still don't like the idea that he just copied and pasted from his calculator to generate several articles. (He didn't contest the prods, either.) This looks authoritative because there are lots of numbers, but again, anyone with a use for them already knows where to look. This info is readily available in eg Sky and Telescope magazine. The article doesn't even link to ephemeris (and I'm too clueless on astrology to be able to usefully fix that). Potatoswatter 08:55, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Generic info such as this could more appropriately be merged into a generic article like ephemeris. It would still be cumbersome, NN, and lack context though. Potatoswatter 08:55, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - pointless and listcrufty (and crystalbally) Vizjim 09:20, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - I recently helped take the Mars article to featured article status Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Mars :) and at least two of the reviewers asked for me to include information that is in this table - so since the aspects of Mars page already existed, I just pointed them at it and they were satisfied. So, delete this page and I will just have to include the info in the Mars page? This info isn't just for astrology - that's just a pointless comment. Yes the info is taken from a program but I provided a ref for one column of it and it checks out. Kind regards, sbandrews (t) 10:42, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, with some reluctance. Wikipedia is not an ephemeris. If this data was, in fact, generated by software, those who want it should get and run a comparable program. The data presented is both constrained in time to a few years before and after the present; this will require perennial updating, and there is a point after which old data will become much less interesting. Frankly, I expected this to be about aspects of Pluto and their significance in astrology: that is an article I would cheerfully keep. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:16, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi, and thank you, I agree that this is the criteria that WP:NOT is the criteria we should be looking at - but I don't see it written that wikipedia is not an ephemeris on the WP:NOT page - so could you narrow it down to the specific part of WP:NOT that you think this page contravenes? Regards, sbandrews (t) 14:32, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:NOT, and especially the sections that might arguably be relevant, are very problematic right now for just this reason. There are those who would call this "indiscriminate" information, when it isn't really; however, it is essentially raw data, not really subject to editing, only to reformatting. Perhaps a transwiki to Wikisource might be the best solution to preserve ephemeris data. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I read the WP:NOT talk page and came to the same conclustion. It's as easy to edit this page as any other on wikipedia - I suspect that the main argument against this page is that it is numerical, and people just don't like numbers. Incidently there is a WP:NOT clause that argues in favour of the page, WP is not paper. I notice that on talk:Ephemeris there is someone complaining that ephemeris data is missing on wikisource, if the info is moved there who will safegaurd it from being deleted from there? Is this just a case of NIMBY, or NNIMBY (No Numbers!), regards sbandrews (t) 15:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the point of transwikiing it to Wikisource would be to preserve the data; and the Wikisource page could be linked from the main Pluto page by a simple template. Besides, everybody knows that numbers higher than three are mythical, don't really mean anything, and were invented by city slickers only to confuse us. - Smerdis of Tlön 16:02, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I just went over to wikisource to take a look round, never been there before - it's kinda small still, 50k pages in the English one. Anyway, this[1] page seems fairly catagorical that this page will not find a happy home there - and honestly, who said anything about going as high as three? sbandrews (t) 16:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Never really looked at the criteria for Wikisource, either. There probably ought to be some kind of coordination between there and here. Unless another home is suggested that will surely take and keep this sort of data, I'm changing my opinion to keep. - Smerdis of Tlön 17:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep Wikisource apparently does not want to include data tables, as is relevant to the LC Classification discussion also. there might well be a need for a WikiAlmanac, though I'm not about to propose it here and now. There are other articles that are mainly collections of data. I suggest that the article could be improved by a discussion of the intended use of the information. DGG 23:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
• Transwiki — An ephemeris doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. If not wikisource, then a wikibook in an astrology and/or astronomy section might serve. I wouldn't think an astronomer would be using this information to plan an observing session. More likely [s]he'd want concurrent data, and there are online sites that provide such tables. — RJH (talk) 21:12, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
• comment I am a little doubtful about basing decisions on what may be available elsewhere: For almost all non-historical subjects, there is material readily available elsewhere on the web. Where WP differs is selectivity and organization. Athletic results, for example, are available on the web, and in greater detail than shown here. Worldcat includes millions of books, but WP has a selection of the notable ones. etc. I thing convenient summaries like this are appropriate for WP. Possibly we can develop a more specialized location, but then it could be argued that election results should go there, while in fact they are included in articles about most politicians. there's immense amounts of data in W. This is not going to distort the balance. DGG 22:06, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, but this doesn't appear to be a particularly selectively interesting bit of information. There is no claim to notability or context. Potatoswatter 22:17, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete unsourced unorganized data-dump of a trivial nature, without explainations. 132.205.44.134 23:08, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, do not transwiki - "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information." These articles are comprised entirely of indiscriminate information; they merely lists some arbitrary statistics on various planets. It is not clear as to whether the information is relevant to either astronomers or astrologers (or even who the intended audience was). The information is unreferenced and presented in a confusing manner; for example, it is unclear as to whether the distances and diameters correspond to the dates on which the planets are stationary, the dates on which the planets are in conjunction, or the planets are in opposition. Hence, copying these data to wikisource or wikibook is not even worthwhile. I therefore recommend straightforward deletion. Dr. Submillimeter 06:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
• Change/Expand/Replace The suggestion above of a page explaining the significance of aspects of Pluto in astrology is a good idea & could be integrated into this. As it is, it's pretty unclear & looks incomplete. Ventifax 05:56, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment shouldn't they all be merged into a single ephemeris in the Solar System article then, following your line of reasoning? 132.205.44.134 22:37, 4 April 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.