Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Space Shuttle missions table

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 Delete. If User:futurehawk is interested in userifying this article to continue working on it, let me know & I'll restore it into your work space. — Scientizzle 17:38, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Space Shuttle missions table

Space Shuttle missions table (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

I'm nominating this article because in my opinion, it is totally unreadable. It is also an incomplete list, and we have much better alternatives. For instance. List of Space Shuttle crews List of space shuttle missions and of course all the individual mission articles. At most some of the pre-STS1 construction and test information, might be useful in the articles of the respective orbiters. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Delete Redundant article to List of space shuttle missions which presents more data in a clearer form. Nigel Ish (talk) 17:27, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

• Weak Delete I agree that it's unreadable. I'm intrigued by the format (columns with illustrations), which was apparently intended for side by side comparison. It doesn't work in this case, since shuttles tend to "take turns" in going into space, and since the streaming goes on for 30+ years. A lot of work went into it, obviously, and this type of display might work for other articles. Mandsford (talk) 17:45, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Delete I've had this on my watchlist for a while now, as a member of WikiProject Space Missions, and it has annoyed me, both that it forces horizontal wrapping, and that it is simply, as DJ points out, unreadable. It is also as mentioned, redundant for the most part, as any number of other articles cover the same info, notably, as Nigel mentioned, List of space shuttle missions, which is a featured list. I agree with Mandsford, a lot of work did go into it, but it is ultimately unhelpful overall, and the featured list is much more helpful. Ariel♥Gold 17:52, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

• Delete as redundant to other articles, as well as unreadable/unusable, and sixty swats with a wet tufte to the creator. The individual orbiter articles have most of this information and there is no WP:ENC need served by merging it all into a ginormous timeline. A bar chart of orbiter lifetimes could sum it all up visually. --Dhartung | Talk 21:46, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Redundant and unreadable, per others. Chris! _ct 02:28, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
• Comment We could think about creating a vertical timeline of launches/landings per shuttle (stripping the images and commentary). Would help illustrate how long orbiters have been away for extended maintenance perhaps. But you would still end up with 4 empty columns at the bottom, which again would be pretty unreadable. Also I notice how almost all images used seem to be separately uploaded, while most of them already existed in Wikipedia. Including most crews and patches... That makes me think that it might be one big copyright violation.... --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:56, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I might be missing something, but how would they be copyvios? The images I checked are all from NASA, and licensed with PD-USGOV-NASA. I still think this table is redundant, and doesn't provide helpful information in a readable format for the average reader, that cannot be found in other articles, even if it was re-designed, however. Ariel♥Gold 12:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking more about the table. Like someone copied the table and then uploaded all the images to accompany the data. But I took a few strings from the table, and they seem quite unique. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:10, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment As the creator of the offending article I would like to respond to the points against this article. INCOMPLEATE I’ve only been adding a year or so per month, I had expected to complete the article sometime next year (unless others pitched in). READABILITY yes it is not as readable as I had hoped to make it, I had hoped after the article was complete to address this maybe by causing the header to remain stationary while scrolling through the content. I also hoped others would help with clean up. REDUNDANCY my intention was to present the missions visually in an easily referenced table (clearly easily is a subjective word), the List of space shuttle missions is good as a list of missions but it is not a visual referance. I realized some time ago that this article might come up for deleation, but as no one seemed to be paying any attention to it, I just keeped working on it as the mood struck me. Obviously I would like to keep the articale and make it easier to use, but I bow to the rule of the majority. I only wish these point had been brought up sooner so I could have attempted to correct them. futurehawk|talk 21:45, Monday, Nov 26, 2007(UTC)

I totally feel for you, cause I know you put a lot of work in it, but I just cannot see how this article can become more readable. As you might see from my nomination, this is my main problem with the article. And in all honesty, I just don't see how this article can become readable without looking a lot like List of Space Shuttle crews, List of space shuttle missions and Timeline of Space Shuttle missions. If you have any ideas how that could be achieved, then I think no one would mind you continuing work on this. And it's always possible to move it into your userspace for that time being of course. I just stumbled upon it, and thought it was better to nominate this article now, than in 6 months or so. I'm glad you at least had the chance to weigh in on the discussion. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:56, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I’ve reformatted the article to improve readability. There are a few minor glitches I’ll work out later if it’s not deleted. I know this doesn’t address all the problems but it’s the only one I have time to correct at this time and seemed to be the biggest. Let me know what you think. futurehawk|talk 18:53, Tuesday, Nov 27, 2007(UTC)

Well at least its more readable now. I'm still not sure if it's actually that useful, but I'm not totally against it. PS. Over the last couple of days I have been replacing jpg insignia, with png (+transparency) insignia from commons. As a result of that many in this table are now broken. Check the tables history for User:CommonsDelinker or just to here commons:Category:Logos of STS missions to find those. Other broken images, are probably also the result of "NASA-image" cleanup drive :D --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:04, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Keep under certain conditions The main editors of the article should consider keeping a copy in their own sandbox if they anticipate it taking a year or so to complete the task. I did this for a chart that I inserted later into an article. Grossly unfinished work, such as unfinished tables, are not looked upon kindly in Wikipedia if unfinished for a long time.
What I got out of this article is different from other comments above. I thought it was a potentially interesting collection of mission patches. To see each patch otherwise requires clicking possibly 100 articles, which is a lot of effort!
The question of whether this article is notable is an important point. I think it is notable.
The question of whether it is a content fork is not settled. Content forks are discouraged in WP. However, there is not editorial debate, rather a different ordering of information. If the consensus is that the article is a content fork, then weight should be given for deletion.
I think this article would be better if renamed to focus on what makes it unique, i.e. the mission patches and crew photos all in one article. Since this AFD does not discuss name changes, I'll leave that to the main editors. A new name for the article (which would sharpen it's focus and it purpose) could allow a KEEP. The current name is too close to other tables and articles and could point to a delete decision.
Archtransit (talk) 22:19, 28 November 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.