Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Meanings of asteroid names (139001-140000)

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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 to delete these, and no compelling policy reason to delete despite the lack of consensus. However, I personally think these pages aren't very useful as they apparently contain no actual content yet, and it might be a better idea to just include this information when written on List of asteroids pages, as seems to have been suggested in this discussion. But this can be done without an AfD. W.marsh 18:09, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Meanings of asteroid names (139001-140000)

Meanings of asteroid names (139001-140000) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) - (View log)

Also:

I'm striking out my vote, since someone working on the project says that they are necessary. I still wonder why the links in the main article and the empty placeholders were created at all, but I'm now neutral. Squiddy | (squirt ink?) 20:18, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete per nom and Coredesat -   •The RSJ•   Talk | Sign Here 16:39, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong keep Let me address the concerns one by one:
    • « These are simply placeholder articles with no actual information. » Wrong: the fact that these asteroids have as yet no permanent names *is* information (to quote Einstein, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
    • « Asteroids 100000 to 140000 could probably stand to all be merged into one article. » Perhaps, but eventually they will become large enough (see the first few of the list, such as Meanings of asteroid names (1-1000)) that they'll need to be split again. Managing such a large list with a varying chunk size would be a major pain.
    • « All of this information (for asteroids that actually exist) can be found in the articles on those asteroids. » It is extremely unlikely (and certainly unnecessary) that *each* asteroid will ever get an article. The overwhelming majority of minor planets are just uninteresting chunks of rock, which don't deserve more than an entry in one or more master lists such as this one. Suggesting that individual articles be created systematically would lead to much more clutter than keeping the current arrangement of lists.
    • « A link to the relevant external database would be the correct way to handle this kind of information. » Bull. The {{MPCit_JPL}} database is as yet incomplete, with no guarantee of ever including the "citations" preceding the time (roughly, mid-1940s) when the MPC citation procedure was put into place. Furthermore, there is no way to see the meanings together (MPCit_JPL lists only one asteroid at a time). And you never know when it will break (see {{MPCit_MPES}} for a current example). The Wiki entries in this list are also usually more complete than the raw citations (links to Wiki content, miscellaneous precisions added, and so forth), not to mention that they've been reworked in order to avoid any copyright issues.
    • « Delete the ones that say 'There are as yet no named asteroids in this span of numbers'. They'll be redlinks in Meanings of asteroid names, which won't do any harm. » Neither would keeping these short articles, so why delete 'em, just to be forced to re-create them when the next batch of namings comes out of the Minor Planet Center? Leaving red links does do harm, because it leaves the reader with a doubt: are these articles missing because there are no names to explain, or because they haven't been written yet?
  • To summarise, I understand the temptation to collapse the shorter articles into broader-spanned ones, but I must insist on the logistic nightmare this would represent. I suspect none of the 'deleters' that have piped up above have contributed one iota to the enormous amount of on-going work these pages represent. Urhixidur 18:05, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Reply The first articles in this series only represent 500 asteroids, it is only after #5000 that they are in groups of a thousand. What I am merely suggesting is that at a certain point, the articles start being group by, say, five or ten thousands. As it stands, even someone interested in the subject will find themselves very frustrated to think they're getting information when they're not. A redlink simply says "sorry, put we don't have any information on this yet", but a bluelink implies that there's information to be had. Empty bluelinks mislead and waste time.--SeizureDog 22:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete all - Useless articles Kamope · talk · contributions 18:11, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - wikipedia is not paper. If they are meaningful articles to somebody who knows something about the topic, I assume they are verifiable and will be expanded. I trust the editor to have thought about the articles and the scheme for the articles and I support his efforts. --Golden Wattle talk 19:12, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep - The information is relevant and if deleted, cannot be found in any other articles (as of right now), therefore the above mentioned articles should stay. Merging the articles would be bad, because they almost certainly will have to be split some time in the future. Spot87 20:04, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong keep, as per Urhixidur. Even the place holders should stay, but should be merged for now. J Milburn 20:11, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep although I would strongly urge the use of redirects for these "placeholders". --Dhartung | Talk 20:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Urhixidur summed up my view on this matter quite well. The only possible variation I would add to this is the possiblity of adjusting the group sizes and although logistically a pain, readjusting them as more names are accepted and assigned. Note that there is a limit to the number of names per astronomer or group can submit, 2 per month. With some groups discovering 100's of SSSBs in a month, in many cases it is quite possible, many will never recieve names. The lack of name or more importantly when a SSSB recieves its name in comparison to when it was discovered, or if it is ever given a name, will help show the degree of importance that either the group or individual astronomy placed on it. —The preceding Abyssoft 05:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. Lists like this would be useful and encyclopedic if they had something in them. But for all the articles currently listed the main content as "There are as yet no named asteroids in this span of numbers." In other words, there is nothing here to describe the meaning of. No prejudice whatsoever against recreation once we get at least one named asteroid in the span of numbers so that there is something to put here. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete, because there are no asteroids with those numbers. They will soon be some asteroids in the near future, but in the meantime, they have no use, so I don't have a reason why they should be kept for now. Also, you can't assume that those asteroids will soon be assigned those numbers, that is crystal balling - WP:CRYSTAL. RaNdOm26 07:55, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong keep, as per Urhixidur. Removing them would be pointless.--JyriL talk 15:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • keepThere surely will be content for all in time, and some have it already. Given the prior pages in the series, it should be continued, and I can not see why anyone would object to setting up this small number of pages in advance.DGG
  • Keep as per Urhixidur and DGG. See how out of about 140 such lists of largely mundane asteroids, there's only 14 which have not yet acquired links, and they're mostly the newest numbered asteroids. Names will certainly come. Merging them to make less articles but with huuuge lists of many thousands in each is too cumbersome. Imagine looking for asteroid 123456 in a list from 100 to 140 thousand. Deuar 18:31, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Ctrl+F, search "123456". Not hard at all.--SeizureDog 21:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

17:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete — I'm all for keeping even relatively obscure astronomy articles, but these pages have no value in my mind. There are an infinite number of asteroid numbers with no names assigned. It is trivial to have a page saying that these asteroids have no numbers. This fact can be summarized on a single page. — RJH (talk) 19:40, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Can't resist...« There are an infinite number of asteroid numbers with no names assigned » Wrong, there are only 147,951 numbered asteroids [1], hardly infinity. « It is trivial to have a page saying that these asteroids have no numbers » Ah, but they do have numbers. :-) Urhixidur 03:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Meanwhile, here's an update. In the latest batch of asteroid numberings and namings, the numbers have extended from 145,705 to 147,951, and one of the deletion candidates has acquired a named asteroid (which will be filled in shortly): Meanings of asteroid names (126001-127000) : 126749 Johnjones. Urhixidur 04:51, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: I added a long comment to this page which was not really relevant for the deletion discussion but concerned a related issue. I have moved it to the talk page of Urhixidur, which is a more appropriate place. Nobody else had made any comment on it. up◦land 06:50, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep — While the empty pages may be of little immediate utility, a framework is in place, one that would make the task of including asteroid discoveries that much easier. Note well that asteroids are being discovered at an increasing rate, what with LINEAR and Spacewatch in place. I also trust Urhixidur's judgement in this topic area, as he has furnished consistently high quality edits on astronomical and solar system matters, and this framework would probably make his life easier. Gosgood 04:28, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The score so far stands at:

  • 7 Delete
  • 2 Merge (and other compromises)
  • 10 Keep
  • 1 Neutral (including stricken votes)
  • Comment — To clear up a bit of confusion, the straw poll above is not a part of my disposition discussion, it was furnished, according to this page's edit history, by Urhixidur and whom, I trust, forgot to sign his name. ;) Insofar as to the utility of straw polls, I would like to remind all that the goal of discussion is consensus, which is different from a mere tally of comment summaries. Wikipedia is not a democracy, and all that. See 3.2 Discussion in the venerable Guide to deletion. Take care. Gosgood 16:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
  • A proposal - Some good points were raised in this discussion, albeit in cavalier fashion by the "deletist camp". I'm thinking now that we should rework the entire Meanings of asteroid names series in a way similar to what has been done with the List of asteroids itself: parcel the meanings out into blocks of 100 entries in sub-pages, which would in turn be displayed within "holder pages". The difference from the List of asteroids pages lies in their varying size. As has been noted, the early pages are pretty much topped off, whereas the pages at the bottom of the list are very thin indeed. Because of the required flexibility (which must not complicate the logistics, I insist), this will require some preparatory thinking on my part. What I'd like to know, before I expend my grey matter in this way, is whether this seems like the right way to go? Urhixidur 03:43, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Here's why I think such a merge would not work. I've tried to keep the "List of asteroids" as language-neutral as possible: about the only language-sensitive column is the "Location" one, and I've tried to use the local name as far as possible (since they're redirected to the English entries anyway). Such language-neutrality is, obviously, impossible with the "Meanings" explanations. The unstated goal was to make the "List of asteroids" a sort of Wikisource set, or at least something which could be, very nearly, cut and pasted into other-language Wikipedias. Once you understand this perspective, the organisation of the lists (and the heavy use of templates) should make a lot more sense. Urhixidur 22:35, 30 January 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.