Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Moon/Archive 1

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 Articles to Add 2 Hello. 3 Article assessment 4 Photo galleries? 5 "Importance" of craters, mountains, features, mare 6 Category:Craters on the Moon, and Category:Moon 7 Geographical divisions for features 8 Full moon cycle proposed for deletion 9 No original research discussion at Village Pump 10 Equations: Original research and verifiability 11 Wikipedia Day Awards 12 Eclipse cycle: confusing, or not? 13 Moon PR 14 Planet Infoboxes TfD's 15 Moon Categories 16 Proposed merge of Lunar year with Lunar calendar 17 Basin Groups article proposed for deletion. 18 Lunar crater stubs 19 New navigational footer 20 Lunar effect? 21 Genesis Rock 22 new article 23 Proposed merge of Independent evidence for human Moon landings into Apollo Moon Landing Hoax Accusations 24 Article up for deletion: Independent evidence for Apollo Moon landings 25 Two similar articles

Articles to Add

I Think it would be good if you also added something here for amateur astronomers who have personal telescopes. One particular thing might be concerning optimal viewing times, filters to use and names of the more prominent features. I wouldn't mind doing this if it is accepted. Feel free to contact me on my talk page concerning this. CommanderSoloho 14:32, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[User:CommanderSoloho]

I think an article such as "Observing the Moon" would be useful. Feel free to start it! Lunokhod 20:04, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea to me as well. I'd be particularly interested in some commentary on the recent dramatic improvements in amateur astrophotography of the Moon. — RJH (talk) 20:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

hopefully that could include a bit about International Space Station lunar transits.. a google search for "ISS lunar transit" gives lots of interesting hits, like this one.. all done by amateur astronomers. Mlm42 10:24, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah everyone. Personally, I didn't think my idea would even take off. Thanks for all the interest. I am starting the article today, so if anyone who stargazes wants to help, feel free. It is under the title "Observing the Moon". Personally, I don't think I have quite the knowledge base for this, I've only done stuff with my telescope for about three years or so. If anyone wants to help me work this page, let me know either here or my talk page.CommanderSoloho 14:29, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[User|CommanderSoloho]

Hello.

I just wanted to let you know that there is a Guide available which mentions some of the ideas which can be used to keep a successful project going. A few of the comparatively easy ones are creation of a project banner which can be used on talk pages and of a userbox which members can add to their userpages. A few samples of these can be found at {{WPMoon}} and {{User WPMoon}}. Feel free to use them if you so desire. It also helps from a strictly internal perspective to have a members list on the project page, which, right now, this one doesn't have. I am also about to add this project to the Project Directory, so that people will be able to find it there. Lastly, I would like you to consider perhaps engaging in assessment of articles as per Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment. Doing so gives you a clear idea as to the comparative current quality of articles in the scope of your project, and makes choosing futurre collaborations easier. It will also make it easier to select articles for inclusion in any future CD or other packages. Anyway, please feel free to contact either the WikiProject Council or me directly if you have any questions or want any help, and best of luck with the project! Badbilltucker 15:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Article assessment

Does anybody know how to include article assessment in the project banner? As an example, see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Space_exploration/Assessment and {{WP Space exploration}}. This is beyond my competance at this point... Lunokhod 16:10, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot for how to use the bot that updates the lists, and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index for a list of all wikiprojects using article assessment. to make a banner, you can mostly copy it directly from another project's banner, changing all (there are a lot of hidden ones) the appropriate links. Mlm42 17:49, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I got everything set up with the exception of the optional "comments" tag. Lunokhod 19:34, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Photo galleries?

In cleaning up the page Moon, I removed a bunch of (good) gratuitous images. Perhaps it would be a good idea to have a few links to "photo galleries", as a large portion of the people who come here probably care less about the text! For instance, under "exploration of the Moon" there could be a carefully selected subset of images from the manned Apollo and other unmanned missions. Under landscape we could add a galley of selected Lunar Orbiter photos of craters and features in the maria, etc. What do you think? Lunokhod 09:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it's general practice to provide a link to the Commons page, for image galleries. Mlm42 10:35, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

"Importance" of craters, mountains, features, mare

I've tagged a number of lunar features as being "Mid" importance. The sole criteria is that they play some prominent role in lunar science or the exploration of the Moon. In my opinion, the rest of the untagged pages (and there are hundres!) should be considered "Low" importance. Hopefully, this will help people to focus on improving some of the more important craters and mare pages. Lunokhod 16:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd rate Aristarchus (crater) as important due to the interesting geological features. Also Copernicus (lunar crater) because it's probably a common look-up. Cases could perhaps be made for Plato, Schroedinger, Tycho and Tsiolkovsky as well. Both Mare Orientale and Mare Imbrium seem worthy of higher importance. Just my opinion, of course. — RJH (talk) 22:14, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I think I tagged all the important mare, but the craters you mentioned should be given a higher than average importance. Lunokhod 22:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Both of the maria I mentioned are rated of mid-importance. — RJH (talk) 18:34, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Category:Craters on the Moon, and Category:Moon

Should all the craters under Category:Craters on the Moon be also listed under Category:Moon? I bring this up because I added SPA to Category:Moon, but this was reverted. At a very minimum, I think that following should be listed under Moon, given their importance in lunar science:

• SPA
• Imrium
• Nectaris
• Eratosthenese
• Copernicus

Lunokhod 13:23, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

No. There's 1450 of them and someone's going to have to go through them with AWB (or a bot) to do the recategorizations. Just tagging the little ones with {{moon-stub}} has taken me about 6 or so hours so far (and there's still 650 to go). As for tagging the talk pages, there are a number of bots, such as User:Kingbotk, which you can use. MER-C 13:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I have to comment here that tagging the lunar crater articles with stub tags seems close to ridiculous. Most of those pages have no additional information at this time. They are not going to be expanded until we can get some better geological spacecraft to take a closer look (and get better images). Is there a counter-argument to this? If so, I'd really like to see a suitable source for ultra-detailed crater information because, frankly, I haven't found one. In many cases wikipedia has the most extensive descriptions. So, basically, I'm strongly urging that those stubs removed from the crater pages. I've regularly stripped those out in the past, and I'm sorely tempted to do so now. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 19:01, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I long ago gave up on the whole concept of stub tagging myself, I think it'd be easier and make more sense to just create a {{non-stub}} template. :) Or you could do what I did; go to your custom CSS page (probably User:RJHall/monobook.css if you're using the default Monobook skin) and add the line "#stub {display: none;}". It doesn't get rid of the stub categories but you'll only see stub templates themselves when editing. Bryan 20:52, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I moved South Pole-Aitken Basin to Category:Geological features on the Moon as an interim compromise, since it does seem like the most significant of the group anyway, but there shouldn't be redundant categorization. Would creating a subcategory of "craters on the Moon" called something like "impact basins on the Moon" to hold the big guys be reasonable? I don't know whether there's an actual basis for distinguishing these features from other impact craters. Bryan 17:50, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that most of the impact basins are also maria. (E.g. mare orientalis.) So perhaps there needs to be a dual category for "mares" and basins? — RJH (talk) 21:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Geographical divisions for features

The category Category:Craters on the Moon has about 1500 articles in it and I'm thinking it might be useful to subcategorize based on the locations of the craters, much like how Category:Craters on Earth is. Anyone else think this might be a good idea? And if so, does anyone have suggestions on what regional divisions would be best? Earth has widely recognized continent and ocean boundaries but I don't know what the equivalent for the Moon would be. Bryan 03:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

One categorization could be just near side and far side. The other traditional categorization is mare and highlands, but this division isn't always so clear. Lunokhod 11:38, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Selenography mentions octants, which from the diagram at Selenographic coordinates look like they'd fit quite nicely underneath a nearside/farside division while allowing for even more specific subdivision. It's a pity terrae aren't mentioned much, I tried to find a map of them a while back without success. (update: I just found one. Yay! List of features on the Moon#Terra. Unfortunately it looks like only nearside got terra names, though.) Bryan 18:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

You might want to see this link. However, I'm not sure if this is a standard naming nomenclature. There are also "names" for small scale maps here, here, here, and here, but I believe that, again, these is only for the nearside. Also, I'm not sure how the naming convention scales with map scale. I'm not an observationalist, but in the scientific literature, I can say that it is very uncommon to see quandrant names associated with features. You might want to look at the Bussey and Spudis book (ref at Moon). They might have some naming procedure, and given that this is the most recent and global map that's been published in book form, it might be useful to follow their lead. Lunokhod 19:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

A local library has that, but it's a bit out of my way so it'll be a while before I have a chance to dig it up. I'll see what it says. Bryan 02:49, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Full moon cycle proposed for deletion

Full moon cycle has been proposed for deletion. Please go to the appropriate page to leave your comments.Lunokhod 00:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I note that thus far there is no mention of calendrics in the WikiProject Moon. The moon has been very important for millennia in calendars, so I suggest that is an oversight. Should lunar calendrics be added to the project, I would suggest that the Full moon cycle article would be relevant. In fact, that is where the article had its origins. Victor Engel 22:05, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this is relevant. The rationale for deletion is that the topic does not conform to wikipedia policy. In particular, it is being argued that this topic represents Original Research, which is forbidden. See Wikipedia:No_original_research. Lunokhod 07:04, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Please note that I was referring mainly to calendrics in general -- not the Full moon cycle article in particular, although I commented on that, too. I realize I posted in a section for Full moon cycle. Feel free to move my comment to a new section on calendrics if you think that more appropriate. Victor Engel 15:58, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

No original research discussion at Village Pump

There is currently a debate about the high levels of original research in full moon cycle, new moon, full moon, and lunar phase that is being discussed at Village Pump. If you have an opinion on this, please let it be known there. Lunokhod 15:01, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

"High levels of original research" is Lunakhod's characterization of the articles. The discussion at Village Pump is, in fact, an attempt to establish where the boundary of original research ought to be. Victor Engel 18:08, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, add IMHO! Lunokhod 18:22, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Equations: Original research and verifiability

I have started a policy discussion concerning how much an equation can be changed before it becomes original research on the talk page of WP:NOR. If this topic interests you, please let your opinion be known. Lunokhod 17:17, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 16:51, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Eclipse cycle: confusing, or not?

I recently put a "confusing" banner on two sections of eclipse cycle, but this has been challenged by someone who appears to be the person who wrote the sections. Would someone please be so kind as to weigh in with an objective third opinion? Also, I was considering placing the same confusing banner on the subsection "Saros series" of Saros cycle, so I'd appreciate it if someone could consult with this topic as well. Lunokhod 15:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Moon PR

Since the Moon article has achieved GA status, I went ahead and put it up for another peer review to see if anything else is needed for FA (in readiness for somebody actually taking it through FAC, that is.) Please comment. — RJH (talk) 18:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing. I'm going to be working on a few loose ends over the next week, but I see a few deficiencies preventing FA status: First, the ecplise section has to be expanded to discuss boht solar and lunar eclipses. Secondly, the sections "eclipse", "observation", "exploration", and "human understanding" have very few citations. Finally, as in Venus (planet), I think that we should give a short list (in paragraph form) of books and films where the Moon played a prominent role, such as 2001, and voyage sur la lune. I've also been trying to trim down the large number of "see alsos" and "external links", to those that are really useful (links like Google Moon are toys that keep popping up...). Any help would be appreciated. Most of my efforts so far have been on sections for which I actually have some understanding... Lunokhod 20:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The "Moon in art and literature" page gives a fairly extensive list already. I'm not sure where we'd draw the line on that sort of material. — RJH (talk) 23:08, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Planet Infoboxes TfD's

These include Template:Planet Infobox/Moon. Please see Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 January 11. Mike Peel 20:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Moon Categories

I just recategorized most of the lunar topics. The general idea was to get rid of all the topics with Cat:Moon, and place these into appropriate subcategories. Things aren't perfect now, but I think that it is much more logical than before. Please feel free to make any changes you think are necessary. In particular, I was thinking of perhaps making a category Lunar geography, but I haven't gotten around to doing this yet. Lunokhod 20:16, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Lunar year with Lunar calendar

It has been proposed that Lunar year be merged with Lunar calendar. Please leave your comments on the talk page. Lunokhod 13:03, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Basin Groups article proposed for deletion.

I have proposed the Basin Groups article for deletion. Please leave your opinion at the appropriate page. Lunokhod 10:33, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Lunar crater stubs

In the hopes of doing something about the large size of the Cat:Moon stubs, I've created {{Moon-crater-stub}} / Cat:Lunar crater stubs, and am 'bot-populating it now (from those that are also in the corresponding permanent categories). However, it looks to me as if almost every {{Moon-stub}} is about a crater (they're just not all categorised as such), so ultimately this will just turn one large stub type, into another, with a teeny parent. Is there anything more useful that can be done to split the craters up further? By LPC Crater Type? By location? Alai 05:43, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Again, why are the crater stubs needed? Sorry but this seems almost daft to me, as if we're begging somebody to fill each crater page with useless drivel. Almost none of those pages are going to be significantly expanded until we get better lunar atlases. Why are sub-categories needed for the craters? Who is ever going to look up a crater by their LPC crater type? At best they could be split by near side/far side, but even that is dubious. What about craters in libration zones? Are they near side or far side?

I would argue strongly that the lunar crater category is fine the way it is right now. When I want to look up a particular crater I don't want to go looking through a bunch of sub-categories. I would look for them by name. So at best maybe sub-categories by initial would work. — RJH (talk) 22:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Since there was no rebutal, I'll just assume that there is no objection to removal of the stubs. — RJH (talk) 23:06, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed the earlier discussion on either stub-tagged or categorisation, no intention to open old wounds. But these pages a) exist, and b) already have stub tags on them: no "begging" to add "useless drivel" is involved, at least on my part. It sounds like you're objecting to one or other of these, rather than to re-sorting them. If you want to delete or merge these articles on the basis of being unlikely to grow beyond being stubs, then I'd have not the slightest objection. However, if they remain as stubs, then they ought to be tagged as stubs, and the resultant (huge) stub category has to be "managed" -- if nothing else for the sake of the non-crater moon-stubs being swamped thereby. If further categorisation or sorting beyond that isn't worthwhile, then fair enough (though if the LPC types aren't topics of specialisation, or otherwise of interest to researchers, one wonders why they were coined in the first place). Also note that (permanent) sub-categorisation needn't exclude categorisation by one or more other means, they can be placed in both. (As distinct from the stub categories, which there's a general effort to keep within reasonable size bounds, these being for a distinct purpose.)

Just removing stub tags from admitted stubs wouldn't be very constructive (and it escapes me how that would follow from your first comment). As to where the boundary between "stub" and "short but reasonably complete article" actually lies, I leave that for you domain experts to determine, other than to note that if it's drawn so low as to lead non-wikiprojecteers to consistently conclude that it's the former, that's apt to simply result in endless "churning", if others conclude it's simply a stub, and hence is in need of being tagged as such, rather than thinking "permanent stub, so I won't tag it as such". In extreme cases, merger might be the better medium-term solution.

BTW, about half of the craters tagged with {{Moon-stub}} lacked even a Cat:Craters on the Moon permcat when I initially looked at them, so someone might want to add that, at least, whether or not something more specific is also desirable. Alai 22:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I just visited the WP:WSS project, and after trying to organize Category:Moon, I see what the rationale is for doing this. However, in order for this to be useful, once a moon-crater-stub is added to a crater article, the moon-stub should also be removed. Right now there are too many crater stubs in the moon-stub category. Could someone take care of this with a bot (I don't know how to do this, and I don't want to do it by hand.)? Lunokhod 17:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. Per WP:Stubs, "Another way to define a stub is an article so incomplete that an editor who knows little or nothing about the topic could improve its content after a superficial Web search or a few minutes in a reference library. An article that can be improved by only a rather knowledgeable editor, or after significant research, may not be a stub." Based on this I don't believe that most (if not all) of the lunar crater articles qualify as stubs, due to the paucity of more detailed information. (This may change in the future following new space missions and such.) I think that an article that can not be further expanded based on the lack of availability of information should not be considered a stub. — RJH (talk) 20:18, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

My opinion on this is the follows: First, IF there is going to be a crater-stub, first remove the moon-stub from the article. The whole purpose of stub categorizing is defeated if this isn't done. Second, I don't think that crater-stub should be added to every single impact crater. In some instances, certain craters might indeed be stubs, such as South Pole-Aitken, or the craters near the poles. But as RJH mentions above, the vast majority of crater-stubs will never be expanded upon: there are just too many lunar craters, and not much is known about them besides there fundamental morphologic characteristics. So... I'm leaving towards getting rid of the crater-stub class as well. Lunokhod 20:30, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Lunokod: I've looked at everything in Cat:Moon stubs, and everything in Cat:Lunar crater stubs and I don't see any double-stubbing with {{Moon-stub}}. Indeed, all the populating I did of the Cat:Lunar crater stubs was on precisely the basis of replacing {{Moon-stub}} with {{Moon-crater-stub}}. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, I really don't see what the difficulty is. (Nor is there going to be much point in elaborately retagging things if you're then going to ask for the tags to be removed, anyway.)

RJH: as you're surely aware, you've quoted only the second, "alternative" definition of what's a stub. If you systematically remove stub tags from articles which are so short that the qualify as stubs by the first definition (very short length), and don't in the second (not straightforward to expand), then you have the difficulties I've described above. I don't think "untagged permastubs" is a good way of organising information, so if you want to get rid of those numerous stub tags, I'd suggest looking at different ways to organise the information. Alai 03:50, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

You're right about the their not being double stubs. The problem is that there are a large number (200 or so) of lunar crater articles that have a Moon-stub, and not the crater-stub. For consistency, all these Moon-stubs should be converted to crater-stubs. If you look at the Category:Moon stubs, you'll see what I'm talking about. Lunokhod 09:54, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Not to crater-stubs, to moon-crater-stubs (different stub tag, somewhat adding to the confusion in the above). But as I mentioned earlier, there are a large number of these that have no permanent "Lunar crater" category, and thus didn't get picked up by the 'bot. And as I just said, Nor is there going to be much point in elaborately retagging things if you're then going to ask for the tags to be removed, anyway." If people add appropriate permcats (as ought to happen anyway, sooner or later), and the tags do in fact remain, I can re-run the bot to pick them up. Alai 00:41, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Merging the crater articles on the basis of their length would not make much sense. Where possible true stub articles have been merged on the basis of geographic proximity. (See, for example, Lacus Felicitatis.) If an article already provides the available information on a topic with little possibility of expansion, then I'd consider that it has satisfied the initial condition of providing the available useful information. As for the "churning" issue, well up until this point I had considered it a manageable issue that only happened to a handful of crater pages. As for the definition of a stub; defining it strictly on the basis of length makes no sense. It has to be based on content. So the second definition appears the more appropriate in my mind. — RJH (talk) 16:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

New navigational footer

Here is my attempt at a new navigational footer. There was a complain concerning the image, and rightfully so, in my opinion. It's more detailed, but is still almost the same height as the previous version. Please feel free to make as many changes to the style as you want. I'm no graphic designer.... Lunokhod 20:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Lunar effect?

Does Lunar effect fall within the range of this project? (Currently someone is asking for it to be cleaned up.) Bubba73 (talk), 01:41, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Genesis Rock

I could be wrong, but i don't think that the image of the "genesis rock" found at Genesis Rock and Moon rock is in fact the aforementioned sample. Could someone look into this? It kind of looks like a basalt, as opposed to chunk of anorthosite. Surely, we could find a color photo of this rock instead. Lunokhod 19:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Just to let everyone know, the correct photo has been uploaded. Lunokhod 10:35, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

new article

Would members of this project take a look at Independent evidence for human Moon landings? Bubba73 (talk), 22:18, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Independent evidence for human Moon landings into Apollo Moon Landing Hoax Accusations

Go to the talk page to leave your opinion. Lunokhod 18:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Article up for deletion: Independent evidence for Apollo Moon landings

Please leave your comments on the appropriate page. Lunokhod 20:27, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Two similar articles

There are two similar articles to the one above (proposed for deletion).

• Examination of Apollo moon photos
• Apollo program missing tapes

Both are also spin-offs of Apollo moon landing hoax accusations, the first one more directly so. I think the first one serves the purpose of reducing the size of the main article, and a summary of it is in the main article. The second one needs some work. Bubba73 (talk), 03:56, 7 February 2007 (UTC)